Standing up for Nature
Thank you to all who have supported this appeal to protect the Ecuadorian Chaco Forest. Today is the last day of Big Match Fortnight where your donation will be doubled by other generous donors who are standing by to encourage you to donate. More than that, Andy Langley’s fundraiser is an even better deal: your…
There is a widespread belief among the population as a whole that MPs are ignorant wastrels. So give me your views on these proposed amendments to the Environment Bill, please. How far did you get? There is a lot of good stuff in here, little of which will probably get adopted by government. Did you…
Following The Times‘s support for the RSPB’s moderate shuffle forward on gamebirds along comes The Guardian too. Maybe less surprising that the Guardian thinks that greater regulation is all very sensible – but they are right. Some quotes: Since some of the damage to wildlife associated with the dramatic recent intensification of shooting is widely…
The Wild Justice Badger e-petition is heading for 60,000 signatures. I always think that’s a more useful milestone than 50,000. At forty-something thousand, people think you’re halfway there, and at 50,000 you are, and then at fifty-something thousand it still feels as if you are ‘about halfway’. But at 60,001 there are ‘only’ 39,999 signatures…
The RSPB’s statements at the weekend have wrapped up within them a return to a publicly prominent position on lead ammunition. This must partly be because Debbie Pain is now an RSPB Council member. Since Debbie and I (in our previous existences) wrote to the Labour ministers in 2009 calling for a review of the…
The RSPB believes that; … new laws backed up by tougher enforcement will be needed to end … vegetation burning on peatlands. These practices are entirely incompatible with the imperative to address the climate and ecological emergency and there are perfectly practical alternatives. https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/martinharper/posts/outcome-of-the-rspb-s-review-of-gamebird-shooting-and-associated-land-management DEFRA is dragging its feet on this matter and the long-awaited England Peat Strategy…
The RSPB statement on gamebird shooting – click here to read it. It’s written in black and white and yet already there are some who are giving it their own interpretation. Driven grouse shooting Critically RSPB says; We will provide an annual assessment of progress and review our position within five years. Failure to deliver effective reform…
I’m rubbish at plants so I don’t know how much I will use this book, but I’m interested in books on natural history and I can see that this is a high-grade piece of work. This is another Princeton University Press/WildGuides field guide and they are almost always clear, well-designed and written by experts (see…
The most controversial aspect of gamebird shooting is whether you call its unwilling participants gamebirds or game birds. Aside from that it is widely agreed that things must change. But mass shooting of gamebirds has become a habit, a bad habit, and the macho so-called leaders of the shooting industry are so stuck in the…
I’ve sat in audiences and listened to David Attenborough, I’ve talked to him, briefly, with others, and, like you, I’ve watched him and listened to him on television. He once phoned me at the RSPB and as Claire, my PA, said ‘It’s David Attenborough on the phone’ my brain thought ‘But I need to be…