Our Twitter profile picture: we've changed it. The people behind Wild Justice are Mark Avery, Ruth Tingay and Chris Packham - and tens of thousands of you!
Lead ammunition: Wild Justice has been active on this subject for several years. Lead is a poison and environmentally harmful. It certainly doesn't make sense to shoot it into birds and mammals destined for the food chain and Wild Justice supports the withdrawal of lead ammunition. We have sampled game meat on sale in supermarkets in the last three shooting season and published the results (see here for something of a summary) showing that lead levels are very high. We may collect more samples this winter but it remains to be seen whether there will be much game on sale because of restrictions related to avian flu. You can help - if you see Pheasants for sale in supermarkets in October and November please let us know the supermarket and the location. That will add to our own surveys of availability and allow us to plan our work. Thank you.
Also, there is a public consultation on lead ammunition which has been delayed but has now opened - click here. The consultation closes in early December and we will brief you on what we think are the most helpful answers to feed in to this process in November. The shooting industry will no doubt mobilise its members and we want you to have your say too. Watch this space!
Licensing of gamebird releases: thank you to all of you who responded to the three newsletters (and blogs here, here and here) on this subject last week. We've read all your input and we are beginning to get in touch with some of you to ask for more information. Also, we met with our legal team last week and planned some more action. We hear that Defra is incensed that we know so much about what is happening, such as the fact that keen shooter Lord Benyon is the minister making many of the decisions about whether shooting licences should be granted against Natural England's advice, but the Secretary of State herself has played an active role.
Books for schools: just a reminder that this is an opportunity for your favourite school to get some free books on nature and the environment.
In 2020 & 2021, Wild Justice ran a project donating books to schools and libraries where 800 books were donated to 77 schools and 80 libraries from Shetland to the Isles of Scilly.
We’re doing it again, but this time would like you, our supporters, to nominate a secondary school for a bundle of books (we've had 200+ nominations so far).
To nominate a school, simply reply to this newsletter with BOOKS as the title of the email and tell us the full postal address and weblink for your chosen secondary school. This offer is only open to our subscribed supporters - and we'll check!
We’ll contact schools you nominate and ask them whether they would like 0, 1 or 2 of each of these books:
- Chris Packham & Megan McCubbin Back to Nature
- Ollie Olanipekun & Nadeem Perera Flock Together: Outsiders
- Jess French Book of Brilliant Bugs
- Dara McAnulty Diary of a Young Naturalist
- Gill Lewis Eagle Warrior & Song of the River
We'll keep sending books until our budget for this project (books, postage, packing and logistical assistance) is exhausted - so get your nominations in quickly please. This is an investment in the future generation of naturalists and environmentalists.
Badgers in Northern Ireland: we mention this legal challenge now and again because it is still a live case, and we are still waiting for a judgment. Our first email on file about this case goes back to August 2021 and that's when we started a challenge of the legality of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs's plans to cull Badgers. We started fundraising in February 2022 and you supported the crowdfunder superbly so that we were able to file papers in April 2022, were granted permission for judicial review and went to court in Belfast on 21 November 2022. Since then we have been waiting, waiting, waiting.
Our partners, very good partners, all along have been the Northern Ireland Badger Group. We hope to have news, hopefully good news, soon, but we have been hoping that for months.
Please sign the #Nature2030 petition: Wild Justice is one of over 60 environmental organisations asking politicians to act for nature. We're asking for a countryside richer in nature, that polluters should be made to pay, a strong network of protected wildlife sites, green jobs and a right to a healthy environment. Over 75,000 people have signed already, many of them Wild Justice supporters, please see if you can add your support - click here.
That's it for now!
Thank you,
Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).
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