Heather Nicholson

Heather Nicholson (born 30 January 1967), also known as Heather James, is a British animal rights activist. She is best known for having co-founded three pivotal animal rights campaigns in the UK in the 1990s. In 1997, Consort Kennels in Hereford, which bred beagles for animal-testing labs, was closed after a ten-month campaign led by Nicholson and her husband at the time, Greg Avery. In 1999, Save the Hill Grove Cats closed Hill Grove Farm in Oxfordshire, which bred cats for laboratories, after a two-year campaign, also led by Nicholson and Avery. In the same year, Nicholson, Avery, and Natasha Dellemagne set up Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) with the aim of closing Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a contract animal-testing company based in Cambridgeshire.

Nicholson was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment in January 2009 for conspiracy to blackmail in connection with the SHAC campaign. Six other senior SHAC activists, including Avery and Dellemagne, were jailed for the same offences; all seven were alleged by police to be key figures within the Animal Liberation Front. Nicholson pleaded not guilty to the charges. She expects to be released in November 2012, taking into account time spent on remand.