Standing up for Nature
This study is open access for 50 days so get in quickly and read and inwardly digest it. ‘Protected’ areas in the UK don’t differ from the rest of the uplands in their number (density of tracks) which is slightly surprising. Managed heather (grouse moor) landscapes have the highest densities of both surfaced and unsurfaced…
Here’s a very big example of what Dominic Woodfield wrote about in his excellent guest blog this morning. There’s a nuclear power station, Hinckley C, being built on the Severn Estuary and part of the conditions for it being built were to do with protecting fish which use the estuary and which might be sucked…
There’s no doubting that Wild Justice has been the best crowdfunder that Natural England has had. NE is now recruiting 200 staff to do its job better. Although the recruitment advert is ghastly, and makes Natural England sound like a support group for tree huggers, whereas it is actually an environmental regulator and enforcer with…
With 119,378 pageviews and 28,301 readers this was a record June for this blog. In fact, in terms of the number of readers this is the most successful month for this blog since its high point in August 2016 when there was great interest in my epetition to ban driven grouse shooting as it approached…
“The end of an era” as Professor Nick Sotherton retires from the GWCT After 44 years with the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), Director of Research, Advisory and Education, Professor Nick Sotherton is retiring this week (30 June 2020). Professor Sotherton has been with the Hampshire-based conservation charity since joining to study for his…
Prof Jerry Wilson FRSE will take up the post of Director of Science for the RSPB in August when David Gibbons retires from the role. I know Jerry and he is an excellent choice. He’s very bright, very wise and very nice. Here is the RSPB announcement – click here. And here is an interview…
Dominic Woodfield is the Managing Director of Bioscan, a long established and well respected consultancy specialising in applied ecology. He is a life-long birder, a specialist in botany, habitat restoration and creation and in protected fauna including bats, herpetofauna and other species. He is also a highly experienced practitioner in Environmental Impact Assessment and Habitats Regulations…
Wild Justice is taking on the Badger cull – or at least the licensing of free shooting of Badgers by Natural England. A crowdfunder launched at 2pm has raised £9,000 by 6pm, which is pretty amazing and probably indicates the level of anger about this cull of one of our most charismatic native species. To…
This is just a very quick passing reference to capitalisation of species names. I’ve written about it before – see here for discussion of shy albatrosses and Shy Albatrosses. When people write guest blogs here I do not instruct them to capitalise species names (because I’m very tolerant – renowned for it) but I do…
Mike Priaulx is a sustainable buildings consultant who founded the Islington Swifts Group in 2016. Working with the Council, residents and local organisations, there are now more than 200 new nesting spaces for swifts in the borough. His twitter handle: @islingt_swifts Why do we need Swift Awareness Week? There are many other similarly endangered species…