I reviewed Tony Juniper’s book on ecosystem services quite a while back, but after a tweet from him yesterday supporting the questions I posed to Countryfile, I went back and checked what Tony had written about grouse moors. Page 102: ‘We’ll always be able to treat the water, it’s just that it’s very expensive’ [A…
Author: Mark
Born Bristol, UK
Educated: Cleeve House School Bristol, Bristol Grammar School and Downing College Cambridge
Ph.D. University of Aberdeen, Winter activity of pipistrelle bats.
NERC post-doctoral Research Fellow, Edward Grey Institute, Oxford University
Former Conservation Director of the RSPB, 1989-2011
See you at Rainham Marshes on 6 August
RSPB will be hosting a Hen Harrier Day event at their Rainham Marshes nature reserve on Saturday 6 August (time TBC) organised by Birders Against Wildlife Crime and Mark Avery. Chris Packham will be speaking. Check back on the BAWC Hen Harrier Day website for more details from mid-May and on social media #HHDay2016. The…
Please could Northumberland National Park…
Please could Northumberland National Park name, or at least give a reference, for the 20% of Britain’s spiders that will disappear if upland heather burning were to cease. I’m pretty sure that the one above isn’t one of them. But I was wondering, surely the lowlands are the place for spiders anyway – like they…
Richard Ali writes…badly!
BASC Chief Executive, Richard Ali, wrote to the BBC yesterday (presumably to BBC Wildlife magazine). It can’t really be a letter that BASC expects to be published because it looks thrown together, is badly argued (though is very argumentative), is long and rambling, and has a split infinitive in its first line. Ali is complaining…
Countryfile 2
Yesterday’s blog on the item on heather burning on Sunday’s Countryfile clearly chimed with a lot of people. It was read by over 5000 folk yesterday evening and attracted a lot of comments both here and on social media. Controlled burning to stop wildfires has been likened to throwing away all your money to prevent…