This is the 2000th blog here. It’s been fun, and we’ve hardly got started yet!
Here are a few personal highlights from the first 2000:
- First blog – nothing very special here, I admit.
- First Guest Blog – by Reservoir Cats’s Mr White – still makes me laugh
- I got a bear! – IM(H)O, one of the best bits of writing, and it brings back good memories
- the Tangled bank – an early influential blog
- Utah in three parts
- Written c18 months ago – but still an accurate credo for this blog
- The bad old days of the NFU – don’t you just miss Peter Kendall?
- Catfield Fen – where this blog probably made a difference
- Banning driven grouse shooting – a message to other wishy-washy liberals
- The Sunken Garden by filbert cobb – probably my favourite Guest Blog (so far)
- Fineshade Wood where this blog helped
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That’s a huge milestone Mark, keep up the great work speaking out and saying the things that others are too diplomatic to say.
Stewart – many thanks
2000 times a pleasure and it has been interesting, thought provoking and sometimes funny. Thanks Mark.
Peter – you can put that on my gravestone one day.
Only sorry that I’ve only found your blog recently, now making up for lost time. It ranks with the excellent Raptor Persecution Scotland website as being virtually indispensable re knowledge of and positive action on conservation issues in the UK. Thanks!
Les Wallace – RPS is in my favourite’s list too.
I left print-offs of the petition with a few groups at Green Party conference today – one man demurred, saying he was in favour of deer stalking. When I asked if he was happy about criminals killing raptors to protect grouse to be shot for fun, he said no and accepted the paper.
The Oxford GP knew about the petition, Liverpool GP apparently not.
Two gentlemen from Shropshire told me there was a lot of shooting there (which I know as I lived over the border in Wales) – but again were not in favour of criminals killing raptors etc.
Yeah it’s strange how some people are reluctant to sign the epetition, far more RSPB members should have signed, I’m emailing local Green Party, Greenpeace and FoE groups to ask them to sign up and perhaps write into their local papers. My IT skills are so poor I can’t add links in my emails so hope they can google the epetition easily enough. Think the groups that do more active campaigning are more likely to become involved, haven’t even bothered to contact Transition groups, which may be a mistake, but prior experience says it wouldn’t be profitable. The cliche of the strident, against everything environmentalist seems to be a bit of a myth, if I’m being a bit unkind more hand wringing than complaining going on – maybe harsh, but a definite impression. Think a few do a lot of campaigning because a lot more do none.
Congratulations on the milestone Mark and thanks once again, the blog is a daily ‘must read’ for me.
Think the variety in subject and tone is one of the blog’s great strengths, although having said that you aren’t ‘alf persistent when you’ve got the bit between your teeth. For what it’s worth here are a few personal favourites of mine:
https://markavery.info/2015/02/09/nene-washes/ – as an example of the lyrical style
https://markavery.info/2014/02/11/blame/ – possibly my all time favourite
https://markavery.info/2012/11/07/guest-blog-ashes-ashes-peter-marren/ – a superb guest blog with some great comments, such a pity it had to be written.
The recent one on ePetitions was also a highlight. And before Fineshades I think the blog was quite helpful for the Sanctuary in Derby.
Plus any of Oscar’s photos, Ralph’s cartoons and many many of the comments. I hope I’m not too much of a nuisance with mine.
MK – thank you very much. I’d almost forgotten that one ofn the Environment Agency. Thanks for reminding me.
Almost all comments are welcome – and all of yours.
Mark – you’re very kind.
I blame the England Cricket Team etc. etc.
If I do not make Mark blush when he reads this then I will be very disappointed. 🙂
Truth is, my proper introduction to Mark (of course I had seen him before) was for him to plonk himself in a chair behind my workstation and ask me what people were saying and let me explain how we were dealing with it. I have a vague memory that it was some post-H5N1 crisis but more than that, I cannot recall. Outside of my own team, it was one of the few times when anyone was not actually dictating back a process but was genuinely interested in the communication conduit. I sometimes think that the true art of communication is lost in this age of social media and it was already going that way before Facebook etc. How refreshing was it then that someone (Dr Mark Avery) could hold any stock in a 2ii graduate like myself who would probably not have made it to his research team? There were many good and bad times at the RSPB but one of the better ones was Dr Mark Avery slouched in a chair behind my workstation listening to everything that needed to be said. Happy 2,000th.
Ian – blush!
Truly a voice for Nature – well done Mark!
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