“Wildlife groups fear that influential landowners who have interests in removing police focus from wildlife crime could take inspiration from the situation in Dorset, and that this pattern could be repeated throughout the country.”

Helena Horton www.theguardian.com 

Birds of prey are being put at risk by the disbanding of one of the country’s leading wildlife crime teams, campaigners have warned, raising fears it could be part of a nationwide pattern.

Wildlife crime officers work to stop offences such as raptor persecution, where birds of prey are poisoned or shot by gamekeepers and landowners.

Earlier this year, a rare white-tailed sea eagle was found poisoned on an estate in Dorset. The local wildlife policing team opened an investigation led by PC Claire Dinsdale, a recipient of the Queen’s police medal for her work on wildlife crime. But weeks later, the case was abruptly closed, and a search on the estate where the eagle was found dead was cancelled. The RSPB described this decision as “baffling”.

Around the same time, the local wildlife crime team was rebranded – removing “wildlife” from its name. Dorset police rural wildlife and heritage crime was renamed as Dorset police rural crime team on its Twitter account, and police sources confirmed this rebrand took place to “reflect the broader work we are undertaking to ensure we provide exceptional local policing to our rural communities”. The wildlife crime section of the local policing website has also been removed.

Dinsdale then went on leave, and the Guardian understands that she has been told that on her return she will no longer be a wildlife crime lead.

Sources who were part of the white-tailed eagle death investigation told the Guardian that they were concerned about the hostility to wildlife crime investigations in the area, pointing out that the local MP, Chris Loder, said that police funding should be focused on other crimes.

Wildlife groups fear that influential landowners who have interests in removing police focus from wildlife crime could take inspiration from the situation in Dorset, and that this pattern could be repeated throughout the country.

Dr Ruth Tingay, a co-founder of wildlife campaign group Wild Justice and author of the Raptor Persecution blog, said: “If police wildlife crime teams are disbanding or rebranding to exclude wildlife crime, this flies in the face of government and police commitments to tackle wildlife crime, and particularly raptor persecution which is supposed to be a national wildlife crime priority but is on the rise according to the latest annual reports.

“There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for ignoring these crimes when there is a statutory duty for raptors to be protected.”

The RSPB, which is still conducting its own investigations into bird poisoning in Dorset, said it was concerned by the changes in Dorset police.

RSPB’s head of investigations, Mark Thomas, said: “RSPB Investigations enjoy a good working relationship with police wildlife and rural crime teams across the UK, especially in relation to fighting raptor persecution, the illegal killing of birds of prey, most often relating to land used for gamebird shooting.

“Dorset police … has been an exemplary force to work with. We obviously have concerns if the level of response from any force to wildlife crime incidents was diminished in any way, as there is clearly lots of work to be done, especially at a time when raptor persecution is at a modern day high and we have suspicious deaths of amazing birds like white-tailed eagles.”

A spokesperson for Dorset police said: “Dorset police is committed to keeping everyone in our county safe, including our wildlife, which brings so much to our beautiful countryside and our communities.

“As part of the police uplift programme and working together with the office of the police and crime commissioner we have reviewed our rural crime strategy for the county and allocated increased numbers of officers to the rural crime team to tackle the issues that matter. This includes all aspects of rural, wildlife and heritage-related crime.

“We will continue to work closely with many different partner agencies in relation to these issues. We want to make it clear that we take any and all potential wildlife offences seriously and will act to prevent and detect offences wherever possible.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We recognise the importance of tackling wildlife crime and those who hurt animals should be subject to the full force of the law. However, it is for operationally independent chief constables and elected police and crime commissioners to align their resources to tackle local priorities.”

Ninety-seven per cent of rivers are off limits to the public, and tens of thousands of acres of woodland have benefited from public subsidy yet remain publicly inaccessible.

Locally, the Exe Estuary and the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths provide an important recreational resource for the local community. However, they are sensitive environments which are important to international nature conservation.

The increased housing development and consequential footfall in East Devon has required mitigation strategies to be put in place. (I.e. trying to keep people out!). One of these is the  creation of the Clyst Valley Regional Park.

Another reason we need the protection of absorbing the East Devon and Dorset AONBs into a new national Park. – Owl

Minister defends shelving right to roam report: ‘the countryside is a place of business’

Helena Horton www.theguardian.com 

The English countryside is a “place of business” and already has “hundreds of thousands of miles of public footpaths”, a minister has said in response to questions about why the “right to roam” report has been shelved.

The comments by Mark Spencer, the leader of the house, came as campaign groups expressed their fury over the Treasury’s decision to shelve the review, which was commissioned to search out a “quantum shift in how our society supports people to access and engage with the outdoors”.

The review, headed by Lord Agnew, had included a potential expansion of the much-fought-over “right to roam”, which campaigners fear will not now go ahead. In response, activists are planning mass trespasses to raise awareness of how much of England’s land is out of bounds. The right to roam exists over only 8% of the country.

Spencer made the remarks after the Green MP Caroline Lucas asked why the responses to the Agnew report into making more of the countryside publicly accessible would not be published.

He said: “I think we are blessed in this country with hundreds of thousands of miles of public footpath to allow people to access the countryside. We have to recognise the countryside is not just a place of leisure, but it is also a place of business and food production.”

Lucas responded: “Utterly feeble ‘defence’ from leader of house on government quashing review into the right to roam. Working and leisure are not incompatible – is this really the government’s excuse?”

Ninety-two per cent of England’s land is privately owned and not available to access. The Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000 gives a legal right of public access to mountains, moorland, heaths, some downland and commons, and the English coastal path. Campaigners have asked for this to be extended to cover rivers, woods and green belt land. Ninety-seven per cent of rivers are off limits to the public, and tens of thousands of acres of woodland have benefited from public subsidy yet remain publicly inaccessible.

This weekend, the Right to Roam campaign is celebrating the 90th anniversary of the 1932 Kinder Trespass, when hundreds of activists trespassed on Kinder Scout in the Peak District. They were there to highlight the fact that walkers in England and Wales were denied access to areas of open country.

A group of ramblers will be walking to Kinder Scout on Sunday for a Kinder in Colour event, which will be led by people of colour.

The organisers said: “Even with a small amount of rights of way available to ramblers, the countryside is still rife with barriers to access, especially for black people and people of colour. With this in mind, we want to celebrate the Kinder Scout legacy by creating a new culture for the countryside, one which is fully inclusive and embraces differences.”

The Right to Roam campaign is planning a series of mass trespasses planned between May and September, including in Totnes on 8 May and West Berkshire on 14 May, with more to follow.

James MacColl, the head of policy, advocacy and campaigns for the Ramblers, said the UK government was not doing anywhere near enough to improve access to the countryside.

He explained: “The government … isn’t making use of its own Environment Act powers to set public access targets. Its new farm payments scheme shows no sign of rewarding farmers for improving access on their land, despite repeated promises. Proposed changes to the planning system don’t prioritise access to nature.

“As the Ramblers continue to campaign for access rights, this weekend we’ll be celebrating the 90th anniversary the Kinder Scout trespass, a landmark protest on the route to improving access to the countryside for all.

“Access to these green open spaces is still currently very limited and unequal and the Ramblers wants to see government extend the freedom to roam across England and Wales so that it is more easily accessible, and better connected to our path network and our towns and cities.”

Comment from a correspondent: “Fiddling while Rome burns.  I’ve been changed to an internet phone (Virgin) and offered an alternative phone if I am vulnerable.”

Simon Jupp www.exmouthjournal.co.uk

In our modern age, some increasingly old-fashioned things are still sticking around.

Cash and coins are thankfully still widely used despite never-ending efforts to make everyone go contactless.

Not everyone likes tapping a card and cash helps businesses manage small and informal payments like tips.

It seems traditional landline telephones will stick around a bit longer, too.

Regular readers may remember that I previously wrote about plans by telephone bosses to switch off the copper-wire technology which make calls on landlines by 2025. Everyone would have been moved to an internet-based connection. 

The good news is that BT Openreach – who manage the UK’s phone network – have now paused plans to disconnect traditional phone lines.

I raised my concerns with the Secretary of State a few months ago that half of older people over 75 are not online, areas with no mobile signal and without internet risk being cut off from essential services, and internet can go off in power cuts leaving no alternative to make emergency calls if you don’t have a mobile.

Storms Arwen and Eunice brought the last key concern into sharp focus and drove BT to announce that they’re pausing the programme for now. They will only transfer people who request it.

To give a quite tragic example reported in the news of where the digital switch-over could potentially go wrong, during Storm Arwen a man’s home burned down in a remote part of Scotland because he had no mobile signal and could not call 999 on his internet-based landline phone during the power cut.

BT admitted they need to sort out how to raise more awareness of the digital change, how to provide emergency solutions like battery-back up units or hybrid phones that can switch between the internet and mobile networks, and how to address so-called mobile ‘not-spots’. Regulator Ofcom has also warned that some devices such as panic alarms which use analogue phone lines would cease to function, potentially affecting 500,000 vulnerable people.

As your MP, I will continue to pressure BT, Ofcom, and the government to make sure nobody is left behind.