17 December: Andy Sawford (Shadow Minister (Communities and Local Government); Corby, Labour): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will publish a consultation on a licensing scheme for commercial game shooting. George Eustice (The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Camborne and Redruth, Conservative): Landowners…
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
A recap on e-petitions
Let’s just have a recap: Ban driven grouse shooting Number of signatures: 20,073 Open for signature until 30/3/15 Introduction of offence of vicarious liability for raptor persecution in England Number of signatures: 10,908 Closed 17/11/2012 Licencing of upland grouse moors and gamekeepers Number of signatures: 10,429 Closed 27/02/2014 You’d think, wouldn’t you, that…
Shifting baselines
I was in the library at The Lodge the other day, reading for writing. It’s inevitable that I bump into quite a few people I know, and have a few conversations about life, the universe and everything. They are mostly conversations about birds and nature conservation. Two of them illustrate the scale of change in…
Labour MPs’ take on the Rally for Nature
Here are three examples of responses from Labout MPs to their constituents on the issues raised by the Rally for Nature last week. You can see that each response is clearly a personal one and that’s why I haven’t revealed the identities of the MPs or their constituents. I’d be interested in any further responses…
20,000!
I woke a little while ago to find that our e-petition, calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting (in England), passed a major milestone during the night. 20,000 signatures! Thank you to all who have signed and thank you to those people, mostly individuals rather than organisations, who have promoted this e-petition since it…