Environmentalists first promoted a climate change bill when Britain was enjoying an economic boom – albeit through an evidently unsustainable housing bubble and consumer credit.

When the economic crisis of 2008 unfolded, I was a journalist at the Sunday Times newspaper and was told by Nicholas Hellen, then deputy news editor, that any environment stories were – as a result – immediately off the agenda. Consumers could no longer afford to ‘go green’.

But the momentum of the climate change legislation then passing through Parliament was enough to see it through to royal assent, with almost universal support across the political and economic spectrum. A tiny rump of free market Tories were the only MPs to voice any opposition.

Big Ask

The original Climate Change Bill was drafted by Friends of the Earth in 2005 as part of its Big Ask campaign. It was presented to Parliament by the then former Labour environment minister Michael Meacher MP as a Private Members’ Bill, and supported by Conservatives Tim Yeo and John Gummer (now Lord Deben).

The bill was resurrected after the 2005 general election, when almost three-quarters of MPs, representing the main political parties, signed an early day motion – only the fourth time in British history that such a proposal had received such widespread support.

Thom Yorke, the singer-songwriter for Radiohead, who were on the up at the time, was the celebrity face of the Big Ask. But the support for the legislation was almost universal. The Confederation of British Industry lent its support, as did its economic opposites at the Trades Union Congress.

Ed Miliband, environment minister at the time, was responsible for steering the bill through Parliament and – in the wake of more alarming findings from leading climate scientists – changed the draft to increase the target for carbon emissions from 60 to 80 percent.

Three parliamentary committees subjected the draft bill to extensive scrutiny, taking evidence from experts and also Lord Lawson, the one-time chancellor who created the privatised, complex monopoly running the carbon-intensive British industry.

Future Generations

In his retirement, Lawson had taken a keen interest in the issue of climate change, even penning a short book. The Eton and Oxford educated economist argued it would be terribly unfair to ask the poor to suffer today in order to prevent climate change tomorrow.

He argued that economic growth – which was about to come to a juddering halt – would ensure that future generations could afford to adapt to whatever droughts, storms, sea-level rises and chaos that four degrees of global warming was likely to create. 

“So that is the great existential threat facing the planet,” he argued.

“The question, in a nutshell, is how big a sacrifice should we impose on the much poorer present generation in order to avoid the horror of people in 100 years’ time not being more than seven times as well off as we are today but only slightly less than seven times as well off as we are today.”

The MPs and peers at Westminster listened to Lawson’s arguments very carefully. And then, on 26 November 2008, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill – including the binding 80 percent cut in emissions.

Fossil Fuels

But the legislation did have two unintended consequences. It served to galvanise a tiny rump of MPs opposed to any limits on the use of fossil fuels.

And it woke the slumbering coal, oil and gas monopolies around the world to the danger of climate regulations becoming law nationally, outside the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process.

The almost entirely unknown Christopher Chope, Philip Davies  and Andrew Tyrie – a former employee of oil monopoly British Petroleum – were among the five Tories to act as tellers or vote against the Climate Change Act.

Ann Widdecombe, a radical right winger perhaps best known for having a pregnant prisoner handcuffed, at least had some profile.

And then, of course, there was Peter Lilley. Lilley had been an investment advisor in North Sea oil in the early 1970s and, at the same time, chairman of the Bow Group of free market Tories closely linked to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

The year Margaret Thatcher became prime minister he was chairman of London Oil Analysts and consultant director of the Conservative Research Department. He was, in short, the bridge between wealthy oil investors and the party of government.

Close Ally

Lilley became a close political ally of Nigel Lawson. At the 1982 Conservative party conference, the two men conspired to continue a drastic increase in gas prices for families and businesses – just in time to sell off the fattened goose of British Gas to the City of London.

A few years later, he was rewarded by Lawson who appointed his ally as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS).

Lawson recalled in his memoirs: “I had long been trying to persuade [Margaret Thatcher] to give a job to my PPS, Peter Lilley… [due to his] high intelligence and commitment to free market principles, he would make a good minister… shortly after my resignation, Margaret put him in the Cabinet.”

Lilley would rise to the post of Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, during which time he showed his Peter by attacking single mothers – including singing during the Tory party conference in an episode that today can only be described as harrowing.

His hardline approach won him loyal friends at the IEA, which presented him in 2005 with the Arthur Seldon Award for Excellence. It is no surprise, then, that Lilley would become the main cheerleader for IEA-produced climate denial.

Against the Science

The oil analyst got hold of the Climate Change Bill regulatory impact statement before it went in front of Parliament. He claimed the benefits of the bill had been calculated at £52 billion while the costs would be at least £95 billion more.

“He was stunned,” Rupert Darwall reported in his authorised biography of climate denial. “It was probably the most expensive legislation ever put before Parliament.”

Lilley said: “I wasn’t voting against the science. I’ve never disputed the science at all. I remember thinking, ‘here’s no point in hanging around the chamber and seeing this humiliating result come out’, so I went out to have a drink in the bar, and on the way I looked out the window and it was snowing in October.

“And so I went back and called a point of order – which is quite difficult to do during a debate, you have to put on a top hat and other fancy things, but the speaker let me do so – and I pointed out to the house that we were passing a measure on the belief that the world was getting warmer and it was snowing in October in London for the first time in 74 years.

“Immediately, I was told that extreme cold is a symptom of global warming. I thought that this was proof enough that this was an unfalsifiable proposition. If things can heat up and cool down and both of them prove that it’s heating up, you know you can prove anything!”

The reaction of the other MPs, he added, was “‘Oh, poo poo’ and ridicule and ‘mustn’t bring facts into our debating, we’re having a nice cosy vote, we’ve convinced ourselves that the world is getting warm and the fact that it’s getting colder outside is something to be ignored. It’s not something we are going to take into account’. And since then, of course, we’ve had lots of cold winters.”

Lawson and Lilley

Lilley and Tyrie would become the centre of a new grouping of Tory MPs. At first, this was little more than a network of tittle-tattle and self-affirmation – mostly centred on a mail-out of climate denial stories in the national press.

But soon this tightly knit group of politically motivated men grew in confidence and numbers. Lilley would encourage his former mentor Lawson to set up a new “cross party and all party” charity, stuffed with peers who were not so tightly whipped.

This new policy foundation could have political influence without being accountable to any party or indeed constituency. (Seven years later and Lilley is now one of only two active MPs sitting on the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Board of Trustees.)

The group’s aim was to fundamentally undermine the Climate Change Act and ensure that industry would never have to meet the costs of fossil fuel pollution being dumped into the global atmosphere.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

There have been 34 tremors in the Blackpool area since Cuadrilla began fracking at nearby Preston New Road three weeks ago, according to data from the British Geological Survey.

All of these seismic events have been imperceptible on the surface. This begs the question: do they even matter?

From the driller’s perspective, they absolutely do. Any tremor over 0.5 Local Magnitude (LM) on the richter scale requires fracking to stop and testing and monitoring to commence.

Threshold

So far Cuadrilla has been given the so-called ‘red light’ twice, for a 0.8 quake a fortnight ago and a 1.1 seismic event last week. The company’s CEO has since called for the standards to be relaxed, claiming they are ‘strangling’ the industry.

For local people, however, the answer is less obvious. If they don’t feel the quake, should they care? 

The traffic-light-system was brought in by the coalition government in 2014 in response to the 2011 Lancashire earthquake widely-attributed to Cuadrilla’s fracking operations, one which was felt at ground level.

The system put in place a series of checks to ensure seismicity is monitored, and requires drilling to stop for 18 hours in the event of tremor that exceeds 0.5ML, a standard recommended to government by three leading British geologists in a 2012 government-commissioned report.

The Preese Hall paper said the 1.7 threshold initially proposed was “undesirably high from the viewpoint of prudent conduct of future operations,” and that if it were in place it would mean “no action would have been taken before the magnitude 2.3” quake that Cuadrilla’s fracking operations triggered in 2011 since there hadn’t been a tremor larger than 1.7 in the weeks leading up.

Reevaluate

Ed Davey, energy secretary at the time the policy was put in place, told Unearthed: “This was a key decision – based on the best science available – and after extensive consultation. Indeed, I insisted on consulting on the report itself and its recommendations to promote as much transparency as possible.”

Professor Peter Styles, one of the authors of the Preese Hall paper, told Unearthed: “The 0.5ML is a significant level as evidence from around the world shows that it is above that when we see the start of stimulation of movement of small (initially) faults and induced earthquakes which tend to increase in magnitude as more of the fault (or more faults) become involved. That is why we recommended fracking halt for further appraisal at that level.”

But fracking’s years-long interval has complicated matters: “Our original traffic light system then had a sequence of scenarios which might have permitted recommencement of fracking activities until a higher level of 1.0ML and then possibly if not very likely to 1.5ML.

The current simplistic TLS which DECC selected has no plan built into it as to what to do next and so we see a sequence of stopping at 0.5ML, restarting after 18 hours and then stopping again etc etc.

“It should also be recognised that the initial traffic light system was devised 7 years ago when there was anticipation that there would be more wells drilled and fracked in the nearish future so that we (or someone else) could reevaluate the situation and perhaps modify the recommendation.”

Little quakes

A key reason experts supported such a strict red light rule is the prospect that even small quakes could signify that fracking is impacting existing faults – which are cracks in the earth’s crust.

This could (a) lead to more significant seismic events and (b) could have an attritional affect on important fracking components, such as well casing.

Styles, for instance, is concerned that the recent tremors could “indicate that the fracking process is interacting with existing faults and is causing them to move slightly, which may lead to higher seismicity if they weakened.”

Though he believes we are already witnessing such an interaction, he said: “we need to analyse the details of the fault mechanisms from the seismograms to be 100% sure.”

Not everyone agrees smaller tremors could signify larger ones to come, however. Professor Zoe Shipton from the University of Strathclyde said: “Almost certainly not, though you’ll never get a scientists in earthquake to give you a certain no.”

Crockery

In any event it’s important to be clear about what we mean when we say a more significant quake. The quakes in the US can exceed 4 on the richter scale are thought to be caused less by drilling than the practice of wastewater reinjection.

“The clear difference for the UK though, is that the huge uptick in earthquakes in the US has very little to do with fracking and is actually more to do with reinjection of water produced from conventional oil and gas wells, as well as fracked wells,” Shipton said.

That’s not allowed in the UK which means the kind of tremors we could likely see here would be more comparable to those we’ve seen in the past from coal-mining.  The Preese Hall report suggested that existing evidence from coal-mining induced earthquakes suggests “a maximum magnitude of ~3.0 ML.”

You’d certainly feel that, but your house wouldn’t fall down. As the report notes: “There have been no reports of structural damage from mining-induced earthquakes of this magnitude in the UK, so an event induced by a hydraulic fracture treatment at a greater depth is unlikely to cause structural damage.”

That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem for people living in the area who like their plaster intact and their crockery where they left it.

“There are, however, examples of mining induced earthquakes of similar magnitudes in the UK that caused superficial damage, for example, minor cracks in plaster, though these occurred at shallower depths. Such an event would be strongly felt by people within a few kilometres from the epicenter and could cause some alarm.“

Indeed Blackpool South MP Gordon Marsden has said of his constituents: “As the tremors increase, so does the distress and worry to local people.”

Local distress

For Dianne Westgarth, who lives not 800 metres from the Preston New Road site, the underground earthquakes represent yet another fracking-related headache for those in her community exhausted by the fight against fracking. Trust in industry and government is low.

“I’ve absolutely lost faith. We have a group of 16 people and we have all written individually as local residents at least twice and we’ve still not had a response with regards to the seismic activity.”

“The concern is that whatever is happening underneath is that is could be far more significant than these so-called minor tremors”

It’s a view shared by Susan Holliday, who lives even closer to the edge of Cuadrilla’s fracking site.

“We don’t know what damage is being caused beneath the ground, short or long term,” she told Unearthed.

Fresh air

“There are many small faults on the Fylde coast and we don’t know how much movement is or will be caused as fracking fluid migrates into them. As the fracks move along the horizontal well the seismic events are getting closer and closer to our home.”

Holliday noted that many of these minor seismic incidents are happening after fracking has ceased for the day, including a 0.7 tremor that occurred 48 hours after pumping had stopped.

“What we don’t know is what could happen in the future and the size of it”

The prospect of stronger quakes could pose particular hazard to the elderly residents of Carr Bridge, an estate of 366 people, many of whom are “really worried” by the reports of seismic activity, according to Westgarth.

“They’ve come out here to breathe the fresh air and live the rest of their lives in peace. I can’t speak for everybody, but most of them are really concerned about the seismic activity.”

Well integrity

But surface impacts are not the only concern. For Davey, the issue of well integrity was also important factor in his decision to adopt the 0.5 threshold: “Issues would have included the integrity of well casing but there is a long list of issues one would want any analysis to consider from fracking techniques to particular geologies and their implications.”

The 2012 Preese Hall report noted casing damage was found at Cuadrilla’s fracking site after the quake.

Professor Richard Davies, who runs ReFINE, the leading international consortium on fracking,  told Unearthed: “If the fault that shifts is the one that has been drilled through then it’s significant and the wellbore will shear or deform.

“A sheared wellbore would mean you lose well integrity and this could lead to contamination of surrounding rock layers.

“It’s happened in the North Sea and I know of an example in south east Asia but it’s a black swan event really – highly unlikely but possible.”

Underground impacts

The importance of this is, again, debated. Fracking takes place well below the water table so any contaminants which do escape may struggle to reach the surface.

Shipton said: “Wells are designed with several barriers to stop any leakage into aquifers, and in the most sensitive layers there are regulations that state how many runs of casing are required to be cemented in.

“So in the unlikely event that well casing was sheared or the surrounding cement damaged (and the 2011 earthquakes were, and still are quite an unlikely event), any contaminants still have a long way to go before reaching the near surface, and when they get there, there are extra layers of protection.”

The debate over earthquakes comes as industry opposition to the seismic standards is rapidly rising.

Though it was mentioned at the time that the 0.5 red light threshold could be raised once industry and regulators had gathered enough information to understand the underground impacts of fracking, there are signs that government and drilling firms may want to accelerate that timeline.

Industry concerns

Unearthed revealed that energy minister Claire Perry had written about the prospect of relaxing the tremor standards, but she has since rejected calls from industry to raise the threshold: “It would be a very foolish politician who would do things that would be considered to be relaxing regulatory standards when we are trying to reassure people about safety.”

This comes as Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan has been making the media rounds casting aspersions on the conservative regulations, and warning that the industry “could be strangled before birth” unless the government acted “within weeks.”

A Cuadrilla spokesperson told Unearthed: “Micro seismic events such as these result in tiny movements that are way below anything that would be felt at surface, much less cause any harm or damage.

“Without the sophisticated monitoring in place at Cuadrilla, they would not be detected. It is reassuring that the monitoring and traffic light system is working as it should.

“There have been a series of micro-seismic events but it’s not true to say they have got bigger or increased, there has been no pattern. We have been testing different stages of the well and each has responded differently since we began on October 15. Some have been higher and some have been lower. All have been managed well using the traffic light system operated by the Oil and Gas Authority.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

The failure of local authorities in the UK to enforce protection zones today is threatening fish populations – including the very young, with no evidence of any benefit for fishing communities. 

In 2012 the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and ClientEarth were at the point of challenging the UK government in court over its failure to protect Special Areas of Conservation or ‘SACs’ from fishing.

SACs have been designated under European laws – mainly written by the UK – since the 1990s. The MCS was likely to win, so the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) convened the marine regulators or Inshore fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs) in order to establish clearer controls of our inshore waters.

By 2014, the IFCAs had brought in effective by-laws to protect reefs, seagrass beds and maerl habitats, the most obvious habitats to protect – but the story didn’t end there. 

Commercial trawling

These by-laws included the Northumberland SAC. With very limited commercial trawling interest in the site, it was all closed with no negative impact on the fishing industry. Set nets and pot-fishing for crab and lobster were to continue.

Northumberland SAC is a Marine Protected Area stretching along 60 miles of thinly populated coast between Amble to just across the Scottish border. 

It has not been commercially trawled for more than 15 years – these inshore waters tend to shelter smaller, younger fish that move away into deeper waters as they grow and become more valuable to the fishing industry. 

The IFCA promised that ‘non-reef parts of the site’ could be re-opened to trawling if evidence was forthcoming that the seabed was not all reef. 

So even with little commercial trawling interest in the site, the IFCA and Natural England then paid to survey it. They found 3-4 areas of ‘sand’ interspersed within the reef areas.

Precautionary principle

Recent research in Lyme Bay, after the 2008 closure there, showed that what looks like ‘sand’ may cover reef that a storm can remove, allowing seabed biodiversity associated with reefs to recover.

This only tends to affirm the value of the ‘precautionary principle’. This states that where an activity is causing unacceptable harm, even if scientific understanding is still incomplete, the activity should be subject to restrictions.

Meanwhile, in January 2018, DEFRA committed to move away from a ‘feature-based’ approach to marine conservation to a ‘whole-site’ approach. In other words: wider ecosystems, processes and functions should be protected, not just single elements within them.

Recent findings from the South Arran MPA show that different species of fish measurably benefit from a ‘mosaic’ of habitats. The reef, mud, sand and seagrass which they need at different times should ideally be close to each other, and healthy.

As in Lyme Bay, it has been found that ecological communities, left to themselves, will ‘extend out’ beyond defined features, allowing recolonization, recruitment and growth in sandier habitat. 

Protection from exploitation

These are all exciting developments, including DEFRA’s change of tack. Yet none of them mattered when, ignoring protests from the MCS, the Northumberland IFCA decided to re-open three sandy areas to trawling in Spring 2018.

A potential nursery area for fish has been jeopardised because a minority of the fishing fleet may at some point in the future want to come back if the fish recover. But if it’s mainly an area for younger fish why would it ever be worth trawling in the SAC?

The decision brings no significant economic benefit to fishermen. Added to this, the most recent ecological research, DEFRA’s new ‘whole-site’ approach to management, protection of fish nursery grounds, the precautionary principle, and a progressive interpretation of law have all been disregarded.

Granting access to three small areas – comprising less than 5 percent of the site – will complicate, and almost certainly compromise, protection and the ability to control trawling throughout the rest of the SAC.

The IFCAs are contractually obliged to balance the need to protect the marine environment from – or promote its recovery from – the effects of such exploitation against the social and economic benefits of exploiting fisheries. 

Dismissing benefits 

The behaviour of the Northumberland IFCA is not unusual. Similar stories have emerged in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Kent and Essex. 

Quietly, without attracting undue media attention, the ‘balance’ these bodies are legally and ecologically obliged to strike in protected areas is being ignored. 

It is a measure of the insincerity with which Marine Protected Area management is applied that we still have no large areas closed to all types of fishing.

All good experiments have controls – where nothing happens – in order to compare the impact of an intervention – e.g. trawling. The reason we don’t have any large No Take Zones is that these would, in time, provide a baseline, an irrefutable means of comparing the impact of intervention to that of non-intervention.

The lack of these zones keeps matters and decisions usefully vague; the benefits of conservation can be dismissed as utopian or hypothetical as long as people have no way of seeing them for themselves.

Further uncertainty 

The role of many regulators has been to regulate as little as possible whilst keeping themselves and the government out of the law courts and the newspapers. That is the only ‘balance’ they have really struck. 

All this matters for the outlook beyond Brexit. The precautionary principle in the Habitats Regulations will be weakened. Don’t expect coherent, pro-active regulations that recover the seas from decades of trawling.

EU law helped some more progressive regulators, such as in Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, Sussex and Cornwall to future-proof their MPAs against potentially damaging activities – one fisheries regulator Chief Officer from Devon has said as much.

Our current arrangements, as they operate in practice, are already troubling enough.

In addition, we now have further uncertainty and a weakening of those bodies which were set up to benefit both ecosystems and fisheries. Under these circumstances it is far from clear that we will improve on European protections after next March.

These Authors 

Jean-Luc Solandt is a marine biologist and principle specialist in marine protected areas at the Marine Conservation Society. Horatio Morpurgo is a journalist and campaigner who was involved with the campaign to establish an MPA in Lyme Bay and has been writing about these issues for 10 years.

Recent published reports by IPCC and WWF are demanding a transformative response from communities everywhere. We are faced with the challenge of redesigning human impact on earth at local, regional and planetary scales within the lifetime of the generations alive today. 

Gaia Education’s courses enable people everywhere to contribute to this necessary transformation by improving skills, regenerative literacy and the capacity for whole systems design.

Our Training of Trainers in Findhorn, Scotland – starting 10 November – will answer an international demand for forward-looking, innovative educators. It will support facilitators who can build capacity for regionally-focussed regenerative development and the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at local level.

Professional pathway

All of Gaia Education’s courses have a ‘glocal‘ focus, catalysing change at local and regional levels to scale-out global impact with over 100 partner organisations on six continents.

The Training of Trainers, which is also referred to as ToT, is a course organised by Gaia Education that helps people deepen their experience of how to teach, facilitate and train people to become more effective local and regional change agents on the path to sustainability and regeneration.

The ToT is part of Gaia Education’s ‘professional pathway’ to becoming an official ​Gaia Education Certified Trainer​. The ToT is the next step on our learning journey after a learner has completed the 125-hour face-to-face ‘​Ecovillage Design Education​’ programme, and at least one of the four dimensions of the ​Gaia Education Design for Sustainability​ online programme.

The path towards working as a trainer and facilitator within our global network is open once the learner has completed the ToT and passed a final interview,

Participants who successfully complete the course will be able to coordinate face-to-dace as well as ​project-based learning programmes taking place in 50 countries​.

Regenerative future

The curriculum primarily focuses on developing core skills of participatory facilitation and learning. 

Participants are equipped with the skills and methodologies to facilitate transformative learning environments and host multi-stakeholder conversations that enable collaborative action.

Capacity building at the scales of communities, cities and bioregions is a critical aspect of the transition towards a world that works for all. Gaia Education has partnered with the UNESCO Global Action Programme (GAP) to work together with other organisations on supporting the implementation of the UN Agenda 2030 at local levels. 

In the face of this urgent, monumental task, the upcoming seven day Training of Trainers in Findhorn offers you an opportunity to become an active part of the change you would like to see in the world.

It will enable your to help others in your community to come together and co-create projects that implement the SDGs locally, build community resilience and contribute towards a regenerative future.

Sustainability educators

The Findhorn ToT will be facilitated by Gaia Education trainers with decades of experience in their role as facilitators of positive change.

The trainers of this year’s ToT Findhorn include May East​​, CEO of Gaia Education and UNITAR Fellow. East is a renowned sustainability practitioner, educator and designer who has been leading many sustainability educators across the globe delivering capacity building activities in 50 countries in both rural and urban contexts.

She has specialised in working with intergovernmental agencies, educational institutions, and the United Nations in the creation of policy guidelines for sustainable development. She has been named as one of the world’s 100 Global Sustain Ability Leaders by ABC Carbon three times in a row.

Jane Rasbash​​, co-founder of the Grassroots Leadership Training, works in sustainable development using an empowerment and engaged spirituality approach. Jane is based in Findhorn Ecovillage, and has taken a significant part in the delivery of Ecovillage Design Education programmes in Findhorn, Sieben Linden, Myanmar and Thailand.

Jane is also a life coach who mentors leaders in the South, often working in incredibly challenging situations.

Get involved

Dr Deborah Benham​​, founder of Wild at Heart and UK Coordinator for 8 Shields, is active in many environmental fields, including environmental education, sustainable community development, social and ecological sustainability.

She focusses on supporting the regeneration of healthy, resilient communities and natural ecosystems, and has years of valuable experience in delivering workshops and working together with global changemakers to support sustainability and regeneration programmes and projects.

Develop your core skills of participatory facilitation and learning to unleash the creativity inherent in edge work. Registrations for the ToT in Findhorn are open until 9 November 2018 (start date 10 November). Find out more information and register here​.

This Author

Nuvaquahu Namingha is digital marketing and partnerships officer for Gaia Education. Gaia Education is an international NGO based in Edinburgh that is actively involved in paving a more sustainable and resilient future and providing educational sustainability programmes to people of all ages and cultural backgrounds.

When Susan Crawford was invited to study the knitwear at the archives of Shetland Museum she selected 27 pieces – some nearly a hundred years old.

She set about researching the makers, wearers and social history surrounding them, and painstakingly writing patterns for each one, in some cases even making her own yarn to ensure the recreation was as truthful to the original as possible.

The latest edition of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now!

It was the start of the “all-consuming” Vintage Shetland Project, recently published as a book, that was to dominate her life for the next eight years. 

Close attention

Much has been written about the history of the Shetland knitwear industry and how it has gained an international reputation. But Crawford’s project stands out because of the attention paid to individual garments.

Carol Christiansen, textiles curator at Shetland Museum said: “The knitting held in Shetland’s museums is exceptional because pieces are one-off creations, designed and executed by the knitter, applying the professional standards they practised for the export market to the knitwear they made for home use.” 

The colours and motifs of each garment appear to reflect not only the shades and contours of Shetland’s cra­tered peat hills, but also the personalities of the people who made them.

One tunic, which Crawford names the ‘Suffragette’, was knitted by local political activist Christina Jamieson. Christina was a well-known local campaigner for women’s suffrage, presenting lectures and writing.

In a letter to the Shetland News around 1909 – under the nom de plumeGirzie – she wrote: “As for women being weaker, I nivver fin it said at A’m weaker in mind or boady whin der work ta du…” (“I’ve never found it said that I’m weaker in mind or body when there’s work to do”).

Simply incredible

The elaborate tunic, in natural white, blue and yellow with red motifs, is knitted using a Fair Isle intarsia technique widely used in the 1940s but very rare in Shetland at the time.

Crawford said: “The garment is simply incredible, just like its owner. It is well worn and obviously loved, and in its every stitch reflects Christina’s outspoken nature and confrontational attitude.”

In another garment, a jumper knitted by Doris Hunter for her fiancé Ralph Paterson, the darning is as much a testament of love as is the knitting itself. It has a remarkable history.

Doris spun the wool from a full Shetland fleece and other natur­ally coloured wools to make this Fair Isle ‘all-over’ jumper – a style highly popular in the 1920s. This cherished garment ended up with Ralph in an internment camp in Hong Kong during the second World War.

With limited resources in the camp, items such as flour sacks were unravelled to repair clothing, as were socks donated by the Red Cross.

Resurgent interest

Crawford said: “It is very likely that the jumper was darned using threads from the thousands of unwound socks, along with other remains from clothing no longer usable.

“It’s a sobering thought that after his eventual release, in late 1945, he brought part of the camp home with him – woven into the very fabric of his jumper.” The jumper was kept in the family until after Doris’s death in 1987.

Crawford continued: “I hope that as a result of the project there will be many new versions of Ralph’s jumper, each of them living its own long life and with much love knitted into each and every stitch.”

The popularity of the book The Vintage Shetland Project– the first edition sold out after a few months – comes at a time when knitting is enjoying a full-hearted revival in the UK.

In Shetland too, despite concerns that knitting skills were not being passed down within families, there is a resurgence of interest.

Living heritage

After the local education authority stopped funding knitting classes in schools in 2010, local
charity the Brough Lodge Trust set up the group ShetlandPeerieMakkers to provide lessons on the island of Fetlar.

Following an injection of funding in 2017, the group now teaches in 27 schools across the archipelago.

This living heritage is something I deeply appreciate. My grandmother, born and raised in Shetland, was an incredibly skilful knitter.

I have memories of her knitting needles quiet­ly clicking away as we all watched Saturday evening game shows on television. Her eyes barely glanced down at the work in her hands, but slowly, miraculously, the separate strands of wool meeting between her fingers would transform into a beautifully patterned arm or neck.

Years later, after a stroke left her partially paralysed, she knitted my sister and me two intricate lace scarves out of sky blue wool, using just one hand.

Creative muse

For Crawford, writing patterns for the garments in the project was no mean feat, particularly because a number of pieces had been knitted in a weight of yarn not used today.

The details of the designs would be impossible to recreate without this fine yarn so Crawford decided to manufacture her own wool, including one type of yarn spun from the organic fleeces of a flock of sheep owned by two of her friends.

These friends, and their sheep, live on Vaila, an island on the west of Shetland, a place Crawford described as her “creative muse”: “It was a connection to Vaila and its landscape that spoke to me throughout the project.

“Its history and its own interconnectivity with the stories I was researching and writing about were a significant influence in how I approached the book.”

On her Instagram page, Crawford reposts images of the knitwear readers of the book have recreated for themselves: “Each time someone knits a new version of the original garments, they are keeping the story around that garment alive”.

Perpetual storytelling

She continued: “They will tell other people the story of the original, and in that way both an oral and a physical continuation of the story are maintained, and therefore the stories about the people behind the garments are also passed on and remembered.”

My own knitting skills will need quite a lot of honing before I could ever attempt knitting a lace scarf with just one hand, but I’m tempted to recreate Ralph’s jumper.

When I do, I will be thinking of him, of my grandmother, and of the wind-driven landscape of Shetland.

The Vintage Shetland Projectis published by Vintage (2018).

This Author 

Marianne Brown is deputy editor of Resurgence & Ecologist. The latest edition of the magazine is out now!

The global economy was in a death spiral and Britain was at the centre of the financial tornado. The legacy of chancellor Nigel Lawson – reliance on the deregulated and seemingly craven denizens of the City of London – meant Britain, in particular, was in serious peril.

At the same time, environmental groups and campaigners had finally persuaded the Labour Government to address the serious risk that profit-seeking oil companies posed to the global ecology.

The Climate Change Bill passing through Parliament in 2008 would introduce statutory reductions in carbon emissions.

Puffed-out

It was at this moment that Lord Lawson – who had retired to a picturesque and sleepy French village and who was conspicuous through his long absences from the House of Lords – decided to stage a remarkable political come back.

Lawson chose the traditional platform for his bid to return to the international political stage: a book.

An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming was published by Duckworth Overlook, which had a long history of producing works by authors associated with free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

Indeed, the Appeal was a puffed out version of a pamphlet Lawson authored for the Centre for Policy Studies. As recounted previously on DeSmog UK, the CPS was originally a spin-off of the hardline free market IEA set up to lift Margaret Thatcher to power with the support of both tobacco and oil backers.

Lawson on completing his manuscript dedicated the work to David Henderson, the IEA fellow who first approached the one-time chancellor and persuaded him to join the curious cause of climate denial. (Henderson recently passed away).

Julian Morris, the IEA intern turned $100,000-a-year director of the climate denying pioneers at the International Policy Network was also praised in the short acknowledgements – although his involvement seems to have caused embarrassment in some quarters.

The former chancellor complained bitterly that his small book had been turned down by other, more prestigious publishing houses, assuming conspiracy was afoot. This was a historical echo of Friedrich von Hayek’s publishing frustrations in the 1940s before The Road to Serfdom became a bestseller.

Dubious arguments

Lawson’s book itself was little more than a rehearsal of the same attacks on climate science, economics and policy: manufactured and distributed mostly by American free market think tanks funded directly or otherwise by oil-vested interests from Koch to ExxonMobil.

And, it contained at least one excruciating error. It seems Lawson was unable to translate temperatures between Celsius and Fahrenheit, leaving the book peppered with hilariously daft claims about the heat in various cities around the world.

This flaw was graciously passed over by most reviewers. But some were in any case scathing about Lawson’s efforts. “But the best that can be said about this book,” Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute wrote, “is that it is mercifully short.”

Ward adds: “But his account of the science of climate change still sucks – it is a highly idiosyncratic and partial account, seemingly driven by ideology rather than by reason… Lawson parades most of the dubious arguments constantly reversed by the free market lobby groups in the United States.”

Michael Meacher, the former Labour environment minister, was kinder. “Nigel Lawson has provided a valuable antidote to the sloppiness surrounding climate change,” he wrote. “But he wants to go further than tilting his lance at the sillier eccentricities of what he sees as the climate-change establishment.”

He told Daily Mail readers: “He wants to demolish the entire infrastructure of climate change theory. Here his arguments are badly flawed.”

Lawson would send his book to the chief scientific advisor to the Labour Government – and elicit a response. But Professor John Beddington appeared to be singularly unimpressed by his interlocutor’s contribution to knowledge.

“There are a number of points related to the underlying science of climate change that are incorrect or presented in a misleading way,” he explained patently in private correspondence – since released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the book was attacked by Richard Lambert, the then director general of the Confederation of British Industry. He claimed Lawson’s argument was “based on two dangerous assumptions”: that the risks are small and the costs of mitigation are unfathomably high.

“This is the kind of analysis you might have developed in 1913 to tell the people of western Europe not to get too fussed about the threat of imminent war… Lawson resorts to the kind of hyperbole that would make the most fanatical environmentalist blush.”

Conervative Influence

The clangers and scientific muddles of An Appeal to Reason did not stop it from becoming an influential pamphlet. Christopher Booker, the Sunday Telegraph columnist who appears only to believe in things he already agrees with, praised Lawson as the only “senior political figure in Britain [who has] dared stand apart from this stifling orthodoxy.”

The book was also read by Conservative politicians. Ann Widdecombe was among the Tory right-wingers to confirm she had been influenced by Lawson’s appeal – she would later become one of just five Parliamentarians to oppose the Climate Change Act in the House of Commons.

She complained: “…there was an orthodoxy which was enforced with all the rigour of communism or fascism or, for that matter, the Spanish Inquisition. Dissenters must not be heard and global warming became a religion.”

And that was precisely the point of the book. Lawson never intended to persuade anyone who understood the science of climate change, and certainly was not appealing to environmentalists or, to a significant extent, the public at large.

Instead, his short polemic was designed as a briefing note for free market advocates and the right wing of the Conservative party.

It allows them to present what appears to be reasoned and considered opinion to disgruntled constituents when they attacked climate science. And leaves them free to act in alignment with the interests of the oil industry.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk. 

Graphic new footage of a stag killed by a hunt in the West Country has led to renewed questioning of the hunt’s claim they are taking part in ‘research’.

Professional investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports were joined by the BBC as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds chasing a red deer stag across nine miles of moorland.

At least two gun shots, separated by over a minute, rang out indicating the kill was botched. Footage was later obtained of the hunt ritually carving up the carcass of the animal.

Illegal hunting 

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, former head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and a serving police officer for 31 years, said: “The idea that this hunt is undertaking research and observation is ridiculous.

“This is simply illegal hunting but with a lame excuse not dissimilar to the Japanese Government’s rationale for butchering whales.

“It’s a cruel and unnecessary spectator sport with horrible parallels to trophy hunting only the long chase makes it even worse.”

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds have been using a loophole in the hunting law which they claim allows them to hunt under the guise of ‘research and observation’, though the League believes this is a cover for illegal hunting.

Sir David Amess MP, for Southend West and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “I am appalled to see the hunting of deer with hounds still taking place across the British countryside.”

‘Truly shocking’

Amess continued: “The pursuit of deer to exhaustion, ending with a bullet to the head and being carved up for trophies, is truly shocking and the public expect such cruel and macabre bloodsports to be consigned to the history books.

“The Hunting Act must be strengthened as a matter of urgency – including by removing the ‘research and observation’ exemption – so that there can be no cover for this cruelty.”

The incident happened in the last week of October 2018, thirteen years after hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales. It featured on the South West BBC regional news with presenter Ben Woolvin who accompanied League investigators as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds were followed by hundreds of people on horseback, in cars, and on quad bikes and motor bikes.

Hunt officials were caught on camera collecting the ‘cap’, the fee that is charged to people who follow the hunt as spectators throughout the day.

Extreme stress

Martin Sims said: “We sadly witnessed a magnificent creature being hounded for miles across Exmoor before being shot and carved up for trophies.

“There is no excuse for what happened and sadly this is going on week in, week out for most of the year. We have evidence that hundreds of deer are being killed by the hunts each season in a cruel and barbaric fashion that has no place in a modern and compassionate society.”

Prior to the hunting ban coming into effect in 2005, the chasing of deer was proven to cause deer extreme physiological stress along with mental distress in a major study by Professor Patrick Bateson.

Unable to sweat, the deer often end up in water at the end of the chase –this particular stag was killed in the river Barle.

League Investigators heard two shots after the three-hour chase and then filmed the dead deer being loaded up onto the back of a four-wheel drive.

Carve-up

The carve-up, which was filmed by the BBC at the end of the hunt, involves the deer’s entrails being fed to the hounds and the hooves, known as slots, and the teeth given out as trophies to supporters of the hunt. You can see footage of a carve-up taken by the League in March 2018.

The heart is normally given to the owner of the land where the deer was killed and the head and antlers given to the Master of the Hunt as a trophy.

Three hunts are currently chasing and killing red deer in Devon and Somerset – the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds.

A further two hunts – the Exe Valley Buckhounds and the Cheldon Buckhounds – are chasing and killing roe deer, the eponymous hero of the Bambi novel. The red deer hunts have just finished their stag hunting season and are about to switch to killing hinds – sometimes pregnant and often accompanied by calves.

A League petition calling for an end to the killing of animals by hunts in the UK has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

Graphic new footage of a stag killed by a hunt in the West Country has led to renewed questioning of the hunt’s claim they are taking part in ‘research’.

Professional investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports were joined by the BBC as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds chasing a red deer stag across nine miles of moorland.

At least two gun shots, separated by over a minute, rang out indicating the kill was botched. Footage was later obtained of the hunt ritually carving up the carcass of the animal.

Illegal hunting 

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, former head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and a serving police officer for 31 years, said: “The idea that this hunt is undertaking research and observation is ridiculous.

“This is simply illegal hunting but with a lame excuse not dissimilar to the Japanese Government’s rationale for butchering whales.

“It’s a cruel and unnecessary spectator sport with horrible parallels to trophy hunting only the long chase makes it even worse.”

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds have been using a loophole in the hunting law which they claim allows them to hunt under the guise of ‘research and observation’, though the League believes this is a cover for illegal hunting.

Sir David Amess MP, for Southend West and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “I am appalled to see the hunting of deer with hounds still taking place across the British countryside.”

‘Truly shocking’

Amess continued: “The pursuit of deer to exhaustion, ending with a bullet to the head and being carved up for trophies, is truly shocking and the public expect such cruel and macabre bloodsports to be consigned to the history books.

“The Hunting Act must be strengthened as a matter of urgency – including by removing the ‘research and observation’ exemption – so that there can be no cover for this cruelty.”

The incident happened in the last week of October 2018, thirteen years after hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales. It featured on the South West BBC regional news with presenter Ben Woolvin who accompanied League investigators as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds were followed by hundreds of people on horseback, in cars, and on quad bikes and motor bikes.

Hunt officials were caught on camera collecting the ‘cap’, the fee that is charged to people who follow the hunt as spectators throughout the day.

Extreme stress

Martin Sims said: “We sadly witnessed a magnificent creature being hounded for miles across Exmoor before being shot and carved up for trophies.

“There is no excuse for what happened and sadly this is going on week in, week out for most of the year. We have evidence that hundreds of deer are being killed by the hunts each season in a cruel and barbaric fashion that has no place in a modern and compassionate society.”

Prior to the hunting ban coming into effect in 2005, the chasing of deer was proven to cause deer extreme physiological stress along with mental distress in a major study by Professor Patrick Bateson.

Unable to sweat, the deer often end up in water at the end of the chase –this particular stag was killed in the river Barle.

League Investigators heard two shots after the three-hour chase and then filmed the dead deer being loaded up onto the back of a four-wheel drive.

Carve-up

The carve-up, which was filmed by the BBC at the end of the hunt, involves the deer’s entrails being fed to the hounds and the hooves, known as slots, and the teeth given out as trophies to supporters of the hunt. You can see footage of a carve-up taken by the League in March 2018.

The heart is normally given to the owner of the land where the deer was killed and the head and antlers given to the Master of the Hunt as a trophy.

Three hunts are currently chasing and killing red deer in Devon and Somerset – the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds.

A further two hunts – the Exe Valley Buckhounds and the Cheldon Buckhounds – are chasing and killing roe deer, the eponymous hero of the Bambi novel. The red deer hunts have just finished their stag hunting season and are about to switch to killing hinds – sometimes pregnant and often accompanied by calves.

A League petition calling for an end to the killing of animals by hunts in the UK has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

Graphic new footage of a stag killed by a hunt in the West Country has led to renewed questioning of the hunt’s claim they are taking part in ‘research’.

Professional investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports were joined by the BBC as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds chasing a red deer stag across nine miles of moorland.

At least two gun shots, separated by over a minute, rang out indicating the kill was botched. Footage was later obtained of the hunt ritually carving up the carcass of the animal.

Illegal hunting 

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, former head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and a serving police officer for 31 years, said: “The idea that this hunt is undertaking research and observation is ridiculous.

“This is simply illegal hunting but with a lame excuse not dissimilar to the Japanese Government’s rationale for butchering whales.

“It’s a cruel and unnecessary spectator sport with horrible parallels to trophy hunting only the long chase makes it even worse.”

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds have been using a loophole in the hunting law which they claim allows them to hunt under the guise of ‘research and observation’, though the League believes this is a cover for illegal hunting.

Sir David Amess MP, for Southend West and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “I am appalled to see the hunting of deer with hounds still taking place across the British countryside.”

‘Truly shocking’

Amess continued: “The pursuit of deer to exhaustion, ending with a bullet to the head and being carved up for trophies, is truly shocking and the public expect such cruel and macabre bloodsports to be consigned to the history books.

“The Hunting Act must be strengthened as a matter of urgency – including by removing the ‘research and observation’ exemption – so that there can be no cover for this cruelty.”

The incident happened in the last week of October 2018, thirteen years after hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales. It featured on the South West BBC regional news with presenter Ben Woolvin who accompanied League investigators as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds were followed by hundreds of people on horseback, in cars, and on quad bikes and motor bikes.

Hunt officials were caught on camera collecting the ‘cap’, the fee that is charged to people who follow the hunt as spectators throughout the day.

Extreme stress

Martin Sims said: “We sadly witnessed a magnificent creature being hounded for miles across Exmoor before being shot and carved up for trophies.

“There is no excuse for what happened and sadly this is going on week in, week out for most of the year. We have evidence that hundreds of deer are being killed by the hunts each season in a cruel and barbaric fashion that has no place in a modern and compassionate society.”

Prior to the hunting ban coming into effect in 2005, the chasing of deer was proven to cause deer extreme physiological stress along with mental distress in a major study by Professor Patrick Bateson.

Unable to sweat, the deer often end up in water at the end of the chase –this particular stag was killed in the river Barle.

League Investigators heard two shots after the three-hour chase and then filmed the dead deer being loaded up onto the back of a four-wheel drive.

Carve-up

The carve-up, which was filmed by the BBC at the end of the hunt, involves the deer’s entrails being fed to the hounds and the hooves, known as slots, and the teeth given out as trophies to supporters of the hunt. You can see footage of a carve-up taken by the League in March 2018.

The heart is normally given to the owner of the land where the deer was killed and the head and antlers given to the Master of the Hunt as a trophy.

Three hunts are currently chasing and killing red deer in Devon and Somerset – the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds.

A further two hunts – the Exe Valley Buckhounds and the Cheldon Buckhounds – are chasing and killing roe deer, the eponymous hero of the Bambi novel. The red deer hunts have just finished their stag hunting season and are about to switch to killing hinds – sometimes pregnant and often accompanied by calves.

A League petition calling for an end to the killing of animals by hunts in the UK has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports. 

Graphic new footage of a stag killed by a hunt in the West Country has led to renewed questioning of the hunt’s claim they are taking part in ‘research’.

Professional investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports were joined by the BBC as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds chasing a red deer stag across nine miles of moorland.

At least two gun shots, separated by over a minute, rang out indicating the kill was botched. Footage was later obtained of the hunt ritually carving up the carcass of the animal.

Illegal hunting 

Martin Sims, director of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, former head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and a serving police officer for 31 years, said: “The idea that this hunt is undertaking research and observation is ridiculous.

“This is simply illegal hunting but with a lame excuse not dissimilar to the Japanese Government’s rationale for butchering whales.

“It’s a cruel and unnecessary spectator sport with horrible parallels to trophy hunting only the long chase makes it even worse.”

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds have been using a loophole in the hunting law which they claim allows them to hunt under the guise of ‘research and observation’, though the League believes this is a cover for illegal hunting.

Sir David Amess MP, for Southend West and patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “I am appalled to see the hunting of deer with hounds still taking place across the British countryside.”

‘Truly shocking’

Amess continued: “The pursuit of deer to exhaustion, ending with a bullet to the head and being carved up for trophies, is truly shocking and the public expect such cruel and macabre bloodsports to be consigned to the history books.

“The Hunting Act must be strengthened as a matter of urgency – including by removing the ‘research and observation’ exemption – so that there can be no cover for this cruelty.”

The incident happened in the last week of October 2018, thirteen years after hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales. It featured on the South West BBC regional news with presenter Ben Woolvin who accompanied League investigators as they monitored the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

The Devon and Somerset Staghounds were followed by hundreds of people on horseback, in cars, and on quad bikes and motor bikes.

Hunt officials were caught on camera collecting the ‘cap’, the fee that is charged to people who follow the hunt as spectators throughout the day.

Extreme stress

Martin Sims said: “We sadly witnessed a magnificent creature being hounded for miles across Exmoor before being shot and carved up for trophies.

“There is no excuse for what happened and sadly this is going on week in, week out for most of the year. We have evidence that hundreds of deer are being killed by the hunts each season in a cruel and barbaric fashion that has no place in a modern and compassionate society.”

Prior to the hunting ban coming into effect in 2005, the chasing of deer was proven to cause deer extreme physiological stress along with mental distress in a major study by Professor Patrick Bateson.

Unable to sweat, the deer often end up in water at the end of the chase –this particular stag was killed in the river Barle.

League Investigators heard two shots after the three-hour chase and then filmed the dead deer being loaded up onto the back of a four-wheel drive.

Carve-up

The carve-up, which was filmed by the BBC at the end of the hunt, involves the deer’s entrails being fed to the hounds and the hooves, known as slots, and the teeth given out as trophies to supporters of the hunt. You can see footage of a carve-up taken by the League in March 2018.

The heart is normally given to the owner of the land where the deer was killed and the head and antlers given to the Master of the Hunt as a trophy.

Three hunts are currently chasing and killing red deer in Devon and Somerset – the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds.

A further two hunts – the Exe Valley Buckhounds and the Cheldon Buckhounds – are chasing and killing roe deer, the eponymous hero of the Bambi novel. The red deer hunts have just finished their stag hunting season and are about to switch to killing hinds – sometimes pregnant and often accompanied by calves.

A League petition calling for an end to the killing of animals by hunts in the UK has attracted over 100,000 signatures.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the League Against Cruel Sports.