Congratulations to Ian Arnett of the Chilmark & Clifton Foot who won the Limited Edition Daniel Crane Print at the Harrogate Hound Show yesterday.

Many, many thanks to Daniel Crane for donating the print, to everyone who bought tickets and to the amazing Becky Wallis who helped sell so many tickets.

This tweet was recently posted by Labour shadow Education Secretary, Angela Rayner.

This after Jeremy Corbyn's appointment last month of a vegetarian shadow Farming Minister and a vegan shadow Secretary of State for D.E.F.R.A. in 2015.

When you have a would-be Prime Minister who seemingly cannot understand, or doesn't care about, the glaring contradiction in expecting vegetarians or vegans to be able to empathise with, or gain the respect of, an industry that is more then 50% livestock-based and a minister in charge of the education of our children who plainly cannot distinguish between real life and children's' fiction herself, what hope is there that a Labour Government can ever hope to provide proper representation for our countryside and the people who live and work in it?

A very good article by Dan Needles on the Farmers Forum here.

One of the things that the animal-rights lobby consistently fail to understand is that with the privilege of being the temporary custodian of parts of our Countryside comes great responsibility - namely the responsibility to take the tough decisions that are necessary to pass on environments and ecosystems that are as viable as they were before you took on that custodianship.

They refuse to recognise - and shame on them for it - that by interfering, sometimes illegally and sometimes legislatively, in the way that the current custodians of the land manage it, they are forcibly taking onto themselves the moral responsibility to try to ensure that it is managed better thereafter.

The Lynx UK Trust have, for some time, been preparing plans for the trial re-introduction of Lynx into the UK, with two trial areas proposed; one in Kielder Forest in Northumberland and a second area in Argyll and Inverness-shire.

See the recent article in the Daily Telegraph Here.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea, in principle, of controlled re-introduction of any species back in to the British Countryside, providing that it is done with due care and attention for the existing eco-system and the farmers and landowners who have to live, work and try to make a living within it.

What I do object to, however, are the inherent double-standards that are applied to a lot of these schemes and specifically by the reaction of the media, the public and politicians to them.

A new study, carried out by scientists from Newcastle and Durham Universities, has established that Grouse Moors are good for more than just Grouse - finding 76 bird species on the grouse moors including 43 endangered ones.

See an article in the Daily Telegraph HERE.

Curlews, which the RSPCA have said should be “considered the UK’s highest conservation priority bird species” are six times more prolific on moors with high levels of predator control than on unmanaged ones.

The RSPB, however, seems in this case to choose to ignore all of the benefits to the Curlew and other species in favour of concentrating solely on perceived problems with the Hen Harrier population.

And yet, this is the same RSPB which chose to walk away from the Hen Harrier Recovery Plan - an action that seems to have been more about what is popular or politically correct rather than what is best for the species involved.

Once again the prejudice of animal rights is allowed to outweigh the practicality of animal welfare.