Dear Marian I am writing to you to ask that you carry out an urgent, independent review of the functioning of Natural England’s wildlife licensing work. I believe that is clearly underperforming and in some very serious ways. Since the bits of your licensing system that I can see are only a few, and since…
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
The 2019 Natural England licensing scandal – a few bits of context.
It’s helpful to remember that all wild birds are protected by law in the UK. There are few exemptions and even those exemptions are carefully prescribed. So, you can shoot gamebirds but only in season (apart from that there aren’t many constraints on shooting wildlife for fun, unlike in many European countries). If you want…
Rule of six? Hit for six!
It was such a bad move from the shooting industry to lobby for exemption from the Rule of Six for gamebird shooting. Drawing attention to yourself when you are in such a poor position is never a good idea. Just now, and it may only last for a while, millions of people are sensitised to…
Lots of Knots at Snetts
Snettisham Beach this morning as the mist cleared and the tide rose – brilliant. We didn’t exactly have the place to ourselves as there were lots of people with binoculars and telescopes (maybe 100 or so) but we were all outnumbered by around 100,000 waders or more – probably more than half of them were…
Revealing more details of the 2019 Natural England licensing scandal (2)
We know that last year Natural England was shovelling licences out of the building authorising all and sundry to kill unlimited numbers of any of the species formerly listed on the general licences anywhere in the UK (see earlier blog today and links therein). Is this because the applications described in detail and clearly the…
Revealing more details of the 2019 Natural England licensing scandal (1)
Recap: Bob Berzins discovered that Natural England had issued what amounted to a general licence for conservation purposes after they had stopped issuing general licences for conservation purposes (sounds odd doesn’t it – see Bob’s guest blogs Natural England licences; a cover up? Part 1 and Natural England licences; a cover up? Part 2). And…
Press release – Trees for Life
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Call for reports of red squirrel sightings across the Highlands to boost reintroduction project Trees for Life is asking people across the Highlands to report sightings of red squirrels for the Great Scottish Squirrel Survey from 21-27 September. The rewilding charity wants to increase sightings of the animals across the region during the week and…
News from Scotland
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And a belated piece of news from Scotland – a pair of Hen Harriers, after many years, has finally produced some young in the Angus glens. You can tell this was big news because it appeared in The Courier on 5 August and the Press and Journal on 6 August. You’ll notice that the coverage…
Sunday book review – Net Zero by Dieter Helm
This book arrived in the post out of the blue from the publisher, probably because they had spotted that I have favourably reviewed two previous books by Prof Helm, Natural Capital and Green and Prosperous Land, and they were right to bank on my admiration of this further volume. It contains the same mixture of…
Tim Melling – moulting Mallard
Tim writes: I know that this isn’t a contender for bird photograph of the year but it does show something interesting. It shows that ducks moult all their flight feathers simultaneously, so they are completely flightless for a time. Most birds moult their flight feathers gradually, one pair at a time so that they are…