In this occasional series of links to other interesting blog posts, here are some more blogs that have caught my eye:
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- Grantham ecology – the wildflower year around Grantham
- the Hoopoe blog by NHBS – an interview with Keith Betton and Mark Avery
- Jeff Ollerton – the holly, the mistletoe and the pollinators
- Raptor Persecution UK – Yorkshire Dales ‘Could have too many Hen Harriers before long’
- Raptor Persecution UK – Satellite-tagged Hen Harrier ‘Kathy’ found dead in suspicious circumstances
- Martin Harper, RSPB – Saving nature in 2017
- BTO Bird Ringing Demog Blog – Return of the wintering Blackcaps
- Conservative Home – If Gove could talk to the animals
Reading your NHBS interview, you rightly talk about the concern about lack of freedom – and experience of the natural world – for todays children. Its a recurrent theme and obviously one of the key issues is simple, physical access to the natural world.
So I’m increasingly surprised that I still have to see a single reference from a major conservation body to the Natural Capital Committees revolutionary proposal that we should create 250,000 hectares of community forest around our towns and cities (and maybe rural villages, too, because if you live amongst the arable prairies of central & eastern England your real green space access can be worse than most towns).
The exemplar community forests bring the natural world literally to the doorstep – just across the road from where people live in many cases. They aren’t about forestry or just about trees – there’s a whole range of restored or new habitat, including nature reserves like Rainham marshes – and the NCC reckon their plan could generate not yet another bill but £500m pa in economic benefit. So why the silence ?