Off the Leash

A shortcast by activist Sue Bliss about snares - part of Off the Leash's series of shortcasts supporting Animal Aid’s petition to make the use free-running snares illegal

• Animal Aid petition Make the use of free-running snares illegal for trapping wildlife (Deadline 9th May 2022)
• Sue Bliss Twitter feed

Off the Leash's Charlie Moores and Dominic Dyer discuss the brutal crackdown on street dogs in Turkey - and just to be clear at NO stage do we go into graphic or upsetting detail.
Street dogs and cats have always been a part of life in Turkey's cities. Mark Twain wrote in 1867 that “The dogs sleep in the streets, all over the city. ...They would not move, though the Sultan himself passed by,” and filmmaker Elizabeth Lo, whose documentary “Stray” had its streaming release in early 2021, said she was struck by “seeing dogs roaming around freely, living life on their own terms, in this very developed city,” and by the relationship she observed between them and Istanbul’s human residents.
Istanbul is home to some 400,000 to 600,000 stray dogs and cats, according to Ahmet Atalık who oversees veterinary services for the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. There has long been a live and let live attitude to street dogs in Turkey, so what has changed so that they are now being persecuted?

• DuvaR.english Animal rights defenders fear for dogs' lives after Erdoğan targets stray dogs (26 Dec 2021)
• The Independent Turkey’s Erdogan shows bark and bite by targeting stray dogs in culture war (29 Dec 2021)

Part One of a podcast Off the Leash's Charlie Moores has made to support the Langholm Initiative and a community buy out that is turning - to quote Raptor Persecution UK - a 'knackered old grouse moor' into the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.
The buy out is a fascinating and inspiring story that is centred around Eskdale and Langholm (a burgh in Dumfries and Galloway just 20 miles north of Carlisle) and the Duke of Buccleuch, one of the richest men in the UK who owns a staggering 217,000 acres of moorland, farms and forestry - including Langholm Moor and the Tarras Valley.
in May 2019, Buccleuch Estates announced a decision to sell 25,000 acres of Langholm Moor and the Tarras Valley. Community interest in buying at least some of the land grew (and we'll be discussing just how close the community here is in Part Two). The Langholm initiative launched a fundraising campaign on behalf of the community and 'The impossible Dream' as it was termed initially, took off.
The campaign grew quickly, attracting national interest and support from all over the world, and in just six months had attracted £3.8m in grants and funding, including a crowd funder which raised over £200,000.
The community now legally owns 5,200 acres of land which includes upland moor, ancient woodland, meadows, peatlands and a river valley which is all being developed into the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.
A second fundraiser has now been set up to buy an additional 5000 acres. The money has to be raised by May 2022 or the land could be put up for sale on the open market, and the chance to manage a whopping 10,000 acres could be lost.
On December 7th - after watching a very instructive video on YouTube about the community buyout and the reserve, just two weeks after Storm Arwen battered Scotland and northern England ripping up trees and bringing down power lines, and on the very same day that Storm Barra battered Scotland (etc etc) Charlie found himself overlooking the Tarras Valley with Jenny Barlow, Estate manager of the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve, and Angela Williams,Development Manager at the reserve, before a drive along the track that winds through the valley and out the other side...

• Langholm Initiative Website and Twitter feed
• Go Fund me Crowd Funder (Community Buyout 2)
• Tarras Valley Nature Reserve Twitter feed
• YouTube Tarras Valley Live Event (December 1st)

In The Off the Leash Podcast #19 we discuss the Mark Hankinson trial and the verdict that said ‘GUILTY’ – guilty as hell, of course you and your huntsman friends were educating the lower ranks on how to throw a smokescreen around illegal fox hunting. We are talking about COP 26, the global climate summit which is set against a recent analysis that found a 99.99% scientific consensus that the climate crisis has been caused by us (take that Nigel Lawson you idiot climate change denier) and that we have just a few years left to sort out – well, sort out everything: COP 26 really does represent humanity drinking in the last chance saloon - with Boris Johnson playing the role of chummy ‘pub landlord’. We name our Heroes and Villians of course, and give shoutouts to the Emily Williamson Festival, the National Trust AGM, and Dominic's 'State of the Earth' panel debate at COP 26. But we begin with some thoughts on Sir David Amess, the MP for Southend West who was murdered on the 15th of October...

• The Guardian Obituary Sir David Amess
• Rupert Evelyn, ITV News Mark Hankinson: Leading UK huntsman found guilty of telling others how to hunt illegally
• League Against Cruel Sports Guilty! And now it’s time to strengthen the Hunting Act,
• Hunt Saboteurs Association Website
• The Guardian The heat is on: from the Arctic to Africa, wildlife is being hit hard by climate chaos
• Derbyshire Against The Cull Voices from the Cull Zone (podcast)
• Emily Williamson Festival (12 -13 November) Website
• National Trust Annual General Meeting 2021
• COP 26 State of the Earth Panel Debate (chaired by Dominic Dyer)

In this episode of The Off the Leash Podcast, Charlie Moores and Dominic Dyer look at Dorset Police’s baffling and frankly bizarre decision to halt an investigation into the poisoning of a White-tailed Eagle found dead on a Dorset shooting estate; at an FOI request from Wiltshire Hunt Sabs that found that an astonishing 53 police officers chaperoned the notorious Avon Vale Hunt at one meet in Wiltshire in early March but still couldn’t see assaults on sabs taking place in front of them; and we will look briefly at a rather clever suggestion put forward by Wild Justice about the shooting of Woodcocks. We also name our Heroes and Villains (which once again features the divisive and unrepresentative Countryside Alliance)
But we begin with a look at newly-released figures from Defra which state that at least 33,687 badgers were slaughtered in 2021 as part of its ongoing campaign to appease the dairy industry; petition updates; and Dominic's thoughts on how shifting government priorities might see the Animals Abroad Bill shelved...

• Badger Trust | Badger Trust outraged as latest cull figures reveal record proportion killed by inhumane shooting
• Off the Leash | Interview #23 Tom Langton and Dr Mark Jones | Badger Culling Research
• The Guardian | Cabinet row as plan to ban fur and foie gras trade scrapped by PM
• Raptor Persecution UK | Poisoned eagle in Dorset had 7 x lethal dose rodenticide in its liver
• Wild Mammal Persecution UK | The Rule of Law
• Off the Leash | Interview# 22 Wiltshire Hunt Sabs March 2022
• Wiltshire Hunt Sabs FOI Tweet
• Wild Justice | We ask for changes to the Woodcock shooting season
• Off the Leash | Shortcast #59 Charlie Moores Ban the Shooting of Woodcocks
• The National | North Wales PCC accused of ‘prejudice’ over hunting review