I tweeted recently - I'm @charliemoores if you'd like to check this out or follow me - that I'd been a little bit quiet on Substack, the blogging platform I use.I explained why in a post I wrote called 'Choosing sides on August 12th'...and it occurred to me that actually I'd been a bit quiet on Buzzsprout too - so here's that blog in audio form, slightly changed to fit the rhythms of my speech but well, the sentiments and intentions are exactly the same...

So, About five years ago a senior charity figure ‘advised’ me (way too aggressively for my liking) to ‘choose sides’. It seemed an odd and unnecessary thing to say. I had ‘chosen sides’ years earlier: I was on the side of wildlife, of plants, of biodiversity and nature and was utterly opposed to hunting, shooting, cruelty, exploitation, and wildlife crime. I’d proved that over and over again, right back from when I launched Charlie’s Bird Blog (hat was in a distant past before WordPress and home wi-fi) writing about what I saw birding around the world with an airline I worked for (and which I left in 2010). Proved it again when after what I thought was a friendly merger with a similar but US-based blog called 10,000 Birds I was booted off at short notice (literally almost overnight) because my anti-hunting views were ‘upsetting’ Americans and I refused to compromise. Again when I launched Birders Against Wildlife Crime (BAWC) a decade ago and came up with the 3Rs (Recognise, Record, Report). When I helped launch Hen Harrier Day - an idea initially conceived by BAWC member Alan Tilmouth and brilliantly taken up by Mark Avery and Chris Packham. When I started podcasting under the Talking Naturally banner. When I joined the board of League Against Cruel Sports to help fashion a policy on shooting (I did my term and moved on). When in 2015 I was asked by Lush founder Mark Constantine - a Talking Naturally listener - to make podcasts on wildlife and the environment for him and Lush.

Listening back to all of that I suppose I have moved around a bit looking for the ‘ideal situation’, but I’d clearly chosen sides a long, long time ago. And I like to think I’ve carried on in the same vein since with The War on Wildlife Project and Off the Leash. In just the last four months I’ve written or podcasted about, for example, gamekeepers and raptor persecution, explained why if foxhunting is banned it still takes place, discussed the royal immunity from crime in relation to two Hen Harriers killed at Sandringham, and why the shooting industry needs - unequivocally - to be stopped.

Anyway, I’m on the move again, taking my love of wildlife and my total opposition to hunting and shooting with me. Taking everything I’ve learned over the years, and all of the experiences I’ve built up and the contacts I’ve made. Taking my energy, focus, and drive. Where am I going? I’m going to be joining Rob Pownall and Matt Smithers at Keep The Ban.

• Follow me on Twitter  https://twitter.com/charliemoores
• For more information on Keep The Ban please go to the website https://www.keeptheban.uk/ and follow them (us!) on Twitter, on Facebook,  and on Instagram

In this podcast I talk with professional ecologists Tom Langton and Dominic Woodfield as we discuss a number of related issues that we’ve grouped together under the tite ‘Badger Culls, Biodiversity, Birds and the High Court’. It’s a complex conversation, and it takes experts like Tom and Dominic to explain everything so clearly: it includes duties to protect wildlife and the repeated failure of statutory bodies with respect to those duties which – depending on an upcoming Court Appeal on July 26th– could bring the ‘Next Steps’ 2020 badger cull policy crashing down; a report using volunteer data produced in 2018 by the British Trust for Ornithology, which supposedly looked at the impact on ground-nesting birds of carnivore or mesopredator release (a phenomenon in which populations of medium-sized predators eg foxes rapidly increase in ecosystems after the removal of larger, top carnivores eg badgers) – a report that was rejected by peer reviewers but still emerged – re-written – in 2021 and has been used to justify the badger cull since then; and something called ‘the no difference defence’ used by government nature bodies to justify their actions, which - in my opinion - is just mind-blowing…

For more information on the badger cull:

• BadgerCrowd Twitter feed - https://twitter.com/BadgerCrowd
• EuroBadger Twitter feed - https://twitter.com/euro_badger
• Tom Langton Twitter feed - https://twitter.com/tomlangton60
• Dominic Woodfield / Bioscan - http://bioscanuk.com/default.aspx

A conversation with a pioneer of non-animal testing Dr Carol Treasure. Carol is a founder of XCellR8, a laboratory exclusively devoted to animal-free safety and efficacy tests for the cosmetics, personal care and chemical industries. XCellR8’s clients include high street retail brands, large ingredient manufacturers and fast growth SMEs. 

Many of XCellR8’s tests are for moisturisers, soaps and shampoos – in fact, if you use a product from Lush, chances are its components were tested for how they will react with your skin by Carol and her team right here in the north of England…

There are two parts to our chat: the first takes place in the XCellR8 lab itself, and the second in a much quieter meeting room upstairs. We cover quite a range of issues ranging from the ethical to the scientific and the commercial – all with Carol’s good humour and infectious enthusiasm to the fore.

But first of all, let’s get over that tricky first introduction…

• Website https://x-cellr8.com
• Donate - https://x-cellr8.com/about-xcellr8/donate-to-xcellr8/
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/XCellR8_Labs
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/XCellR8
• Carol on Twitter - https://twitter.com/DrCarolTreasure
• Anne-Marie Barton 24hr Crate of Loneliness - https://www.gofundme.com/f/24hr-crate-of-loneliness
• FRAME website – https://frame.org.uk
• Animal Aid - https://www.animalaid.org.uk/