The UK’s largest shooting organisation has written to Kersten England in response to comments attributed to a council spokesperson in the media over the weekend.
BASC has also used the letter to clarify its response to a legal letter sent to BASC by the council last week following the association’s online coverage of a tractor mowing Baildon Moor at a crucial time of the year for ground-nesting birds.
In the letter to Ms England, Dr Conor O’Gorman, BASC’s head of policy and campaigns, said: “The legal letter and your media comment of this last weekend could be seen as an attempt by your council to intimidate an organisation that is simply trying to get to the bottom of an incident of apparent environmental abuse which occurred on ‘your watch’.”
BASC has also told Ms England that a press statement issued by the council does not represent significant engagement with either BASC or the other rural organisations and individuals who raised concerns about the mowing.
Dr O’Gorman added: “People care passionately about what has taken place up on the moor and, right at the outset, BASC and others were demanding to know how it happened and what the council is doing to prevent it happening again.
“The response of Bradford Council has, so far, fallen short of what is expected of a public body and we are asking its chief executive to act quickly to take the matter in hand.”
