Inglorious

Inglorious: conflict in the uplands will be available for Hen Harrier Day (9 August), the Inglorious 12th and thereafter. Published by Bloomsbury in late July – but you can order it now on World Book Day.    

Wet, wet, wet

If you are keeping water on a wetland for the benefit of wetland wildlife then it occupies some of the volume that could otherwise have been used for flood storage. This can give rise to the claim that the schemes that benefit wetland wildlife that have exacerbated flood impacts. To some extent this is bound…

Hope continues to rise

Every picture tells a story – and this one tells a big story. This graph shows the farmland bird index at the RSPB’s Hope Farm and in England as a whole. It shows a slow, steady decline in England altogether (blue line)  but a massive overall rise (red line) at Hope Farm. Read more about…

Nonsense

I did, kind of, tell you so… In The Times, once a dull but reliable newspaper, a few days ago there was a headline thus ‘Farmers praised as Skylarks soar again’ (click here but you need a subscription). The piece by Ben Webster was a write-up of the GWCT ‘survey’ of farmland birds by farmers…