Off the Leash

"We need a Defra that is not controlled by industry groups to protect their interests, we need a Defra that is there to protect the interests of the environment."

A live recording of a talk given by author, campaIgner and Off the Leash Podcasts co-founder Dominic Dyer to the Oxfordshire Badger Group at the world-renowned Wytham Woods on August 1st. In just seventeen minutes Dominic manages to pull together threads on food strategy, farming, the global pandemic, and of course the badger cull (without notes and almost without pausing for breath). 

• Oxfordshire Badger Group website and Twitter feed
• Wytham Woods website

Our second episode of season two starts with a discussion of Henry Dimbleby's National Food Strategy and a look at Earth Overshoot Day (which this year fell in July).  We have a new team member - Lisa Marley introduces herself in a shortcast.  Charlie talks about August 7th's upcoming Hen Harrier Day, and Bob Berzins follows up with a shortcast about the harassment and intimidation he faces for speaking out about wildlife crime on grouse moors. In Heroes and Villains  we praise Luke Steele and Wild Moors for their work with Yorkshire Water,  student and artist Giuditta Migiani for her superb badger pictograms, and the RNLI (not a charity normally in our focus but Nigel Farage's comments were just plain stupid); our Villians of the Week are the organisers of the Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show for banning Action Against Foxhunting and the regressive 'countryside lobbyists' who want to water down animal welfare and animal sentience legislation.  Finally, in our 60 Second Shoutout we flag up our own expanding collection of shortcasts and a Defra consultation on extending the Ivory Act to cover all ivory-bearing species.

• National Food Strategy The Plan
• Earth Overshoot Day Press-release
• Lisa Marley website and Twitter feed
• Wild Justice Hen Harrier Day
• Raptor Persecution UK   Bob Berzins guest post: Organised crime, harassment & intimidation – another day on the grouse moors
• The War on Wildlife Project 'Snared' by Bob Berzins Book Review
• Wild Moors website and Twitter feed
•  Giuditta Migiani website and Twitter feed
• RNLI website and Twitter feed
• Action Against Foxhunting  AAF banned from Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show
• Defra consultation  Extending the Ivory Act

‘Shortcasts’ are short standalone audio comments and statements from conservationists, campaigners, charities, authors and members of our audience. If it needs to be said – say it here!


"...there is rarely one way to change things...listening to different voices is in my DNA". In this personal and nuanced shortcast award-winning author and campaigner Mary Colwell reflects on her collaborative approach to conservation, a non-confrontational process of dialogue rooted in years of documentary-making for the BBC.

• Mary Colwell website  Curlew Media and Twitter feed
• Mary Colwell  Beak, Tooth, and Claw (published April 2021) and Curlew Moon (published April 2019)
• Curlew Recovery Partnership

‘Shortcasts’ are short standalone audio comments and statements from conservationists, campaigners, charities, authors and members of our audience. If it needs to be said – say it here!

As wildlife campaigner (and cat lover) Maggie Wilcox says in this shortcast, "In my mind every life is precious - but every time a cat wanders outside his or her home there is a potential for a threat to life".

Maggie (who many of us perhaps know better from Twitter as NorfolkBea and the #NestsNotNets campaign) has set up a petition on Change.org 'Keep cats safe and save wild lives. Amend the Animals Act 1971 and end feline free roaming' which (to date) has attracted relatively few signatures - and not a little vitriol! However many people do eventually sign, in our opinion Maggie should be commended for at least starting the conversation - and doing so (as you'll hear) in an extremely compassionate and thoughtful way.

• Change.org   Keep cats safe and save wild lives. Amend the Animals Act 1971 and end feline free roaming
• Maggie Wilcox on Twitter

‘Shortcasts’ are short standalone audio comments and statements from conservationists, campaigners, charities, authors and members of our audience. If it needs to be said – say it here!

'Trail hunting is nothing but a smokescreen for the illegal hunting of wildlife". In this shortcast Robert Pownall, founder of Keep The Ban,  a non-profit organisation campaigning to end the hunting of wildlife in the name of entertainment, discusses the lie that is so-called 'trail hunting' and asks listeners to petition the National Trust to permanently end the issuing of 'trail hunting' licences which have facilitated the illegal hunting of foxes on Trust land.

Keep The Ban also recently launched a campaign to gather more followers on Twitter than the hunting lobby group Countryside Alliance. They have achieved that, and if you'd like to add your name to their still-growing list please follow them  @keeptheban - and please join nearly 300,000 signatories to their petition to Strengthen the 2004 Hunting Act

• Keep The Ban website 
• Change.org petition  Strengthen the Hunting Act

‘Shortcasts’ are short standalone audio comments and statements from conservationists, campaigners, charities, authors and members of our audience. If it needs to be said – say it here!
 

In this shortcast podcaster and campaigner Lisa Marley talks about the latest episode of her wonderful podcast series 'Crimes Against Nature',  which features an interview with inspirational farmer, conservationist and reintroduction specialist Derek Gow.  It includes a segment from Lisa's interview in which Derek compares doing nothing to tackle the biodiversity crisis with being on a runaway train speeding towards a 'ruinous end'.

• Crimes Against Nature  The Beaver is Back with Derek Gow
• Crimes Against Nature   Subscribe / RSS feed 
• Derek Gow  Consultancy and website
• Derek Gow  Bringing back the Beaver

Back after our summer break, season two kicks off with a withering look at the lack of animal welfare in the horse- and greyhound-racing industries. We then turn our focus on the National Trust and its support for so-called 'trail hunting' - a cover for illegal foxhunting (which includes a shortcast from Rob Pownall of Keep the Ban). Charlie tells the dog whistlers yelling 'woke' to wake the heck up.  In 'Hero and Villain' we thank campaigners at Camp Beagle and swift nestbox manufacturer John Stimpson, and pour scorn on Ian Botham's declaration of war on the RSPB and the 'penis rockets' of Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson. In 60 Second Shoutout, we highlight the new shortcasts we've recently uploaded (and introduce a new one from author and campaigner Mary Colwell), flag up Peter Egan's petition to have laboratory animals included in the Animal Welfare Act and Maggie Wilcox's petition on free-roaming cats (and we have our third shortcast of the episode from Maggie herself). Finally, Dominic trails the Oxford Badger Group 'Badger Picnic' he will be talking at.

 

• Animal Aid investigation into horse racing industry
• Founder of The Citro Glen Black shortcast
• The War on Wildlife Project National Trust and Trail Hunting 2021
• Podcast – Interview: Nick Weston, Head of Campaigns League Against Cruel Sports
• Keep the Ban website and Twitter feed
• Protesting animal experimentation  Camp Beagle 
• BBC News John Stimpson and his Swift Nestboxes
• The War on Wildlife Project  Botham declares war on the RSPB
• Mary Colwell's Curlew Media website and book 'Beak, Tooth and Claw'
• Peter Egan petition:  Change the law to include laboratory animals in the Animal Welfare Act
• Maggie Wilcox petition:  Keep cats safe and save wild lives
• Oxford Badger Group 'Badger Picnic' on August 1st

‘Shortcasts’ are short standalone audio comments and statements from conservationists, campaigners, charities, authors and members of our audience. If it needs to be said – say it here!

"It's such a sad indictment of the current way in which science is conducted and vested interests have infected our society." Ecologist Tom Langton has been looking at the scientific and legal aspects of the dreaded badger culls since 2016, and this summer represents his fifth year working on what is being described as the worst miscarriage of UK biological science for fifty years.

Tomorrow (the 22nd of July) Tom is off to London for a High Court challenge of Secretary of State George Eustice over the “Next Steps” policy, which was published in March 2020 and revealed the way in which badgers may be legally shot in huge numbers over the next five years and beyond - all the way up to 2038.

For this shortcast we asked Tom to explain a bit about the new 2020 policy and what exactly was being challenged – a challenge which, incidentally, has taken over a year of battling to gain permission for. Tom starts off with aspects of the 2020 policy in terms of what we might expect to see under the wording of the controversial new policy and the dilemma (in Tom’s words) that it now offers to those who may be invited for the foreseeable future to vaccinate badgers as long as they stand by while most of them are killed first...

• The Badger Crowd  Standing up for badgers
• Tom Langton  Twitter feed

"...to do anything other than get rid of the licences would be bad for animals...which is ultimately why we're doing this, it's for the animals..."

Charlie Moores talks with Nick Weston, Head of Campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, about why the National Trust licencing so-called 'trail hunting' is such an important issue for anyone who cares about wildlife, and what both members and non-members can do to ensure that 'trail hunting' licences that were suspended in November 2020 are banned permanently at the Trust's next AGM in October. 

• League Against Cruel Sports  Hunting, trespass, and the National Trust
• The War on Wildlife Project  The National Trust and Trail Hunting 2021

‘Shortcasts’ are short standalone audio comments and statements from conservationists, campaigners, charities, authors and members of our audience. If it needs to be said – say it here!


The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a conservation powerhouse. As the RSPB's homepage proudly states - at the time of publishing this anyway - they are 'Celebrating 100 Years of Saving Birds". So, those grim-faced men holding indistinct placards in the black and white header photograph on the RSPB's website, they would be the charity's founders, would they?

Not even close. As author, journalist, and campaigner Tessa Boase explains in this wonderful shortcast, the founders were actually three remarkable women who took on the powerful plumage trade: Emily Williamson, Etta Lemon, and Eliza Phillips.  But as Tessa also reveals, it took determined detective work on her part - and a chance find in the RSPB's own archives - to uncover the truth.  

Conservation (and birdwatching especially) has been saying for years that young women have few role models to follow, yet conservation itself appears to have buried a trio of female activists that have literally changed the world for birds and whose stories of determination, commitment, and passion are so wonderfully inspirational. Now, though, thanks to Tessa Boase, those stories are being told and will (hopefully) encourage young conservationists long into the future.

• Tessa Boase website and Twitter feed
• Tessa's book Etta Lemon The Woman who Saved the Birds
• A statue for Emily Williamson  emilywilliamsonstatue.com