My Twitter timeline seems to be full of pictures of mown verges where tidiness has been prioritised over nature. I totally accept that for reasons of road safety some grass cutting is needed at some time in some places, but there seems to be an awful lot of it going on – and it happens…
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
Gökotta
I’m writing this first blog of the day at 5am after having enjoyed 45 minutes of Gökotta. I didn’t set the alarm to wake up at 4am, I hardly ever set an alarm as waking up is not a problem, but going to bed soon after 9pm these days often results in me being wide…
After…things I would like to be different (1)
After coronavirus (which might be quite a long way away), or at least when the world settles down to a new normal, there are some things that I’d like to be different. So over the next days and weeks I’m going to write them down. They will mostly be to do with our relationship with…
RSPB consultation on gamebird shooting
The Wild Justice response to the RSPB consultation can be found here.
Primates 3
Comments Off on Primates 3
This was the last episode in an excellent 3-part series and was entitled Protecting Primates although, really, it wasn’t mostly about protecting primates and it was about quite a lot of things. If one wanted to be critical of the programme one would say that it was a bit bitty – and lacked a narrative…
Press release – The Sound Approach
Gökotta: A new type of bathing this spring Lockdown has been a long and difficult process for many people, with thousands finding solace and calm in nature. Whilst some absorb the richness of their local environment through visual means, there’s an experience we should all learn to embrace which allows for productivity and creativity to…
Conflict over the uplands in social media?
If you all turn to p273 of your copies of Inglorious then you will find an exhortation from me to use social media in our campaign to ban driven grouse shooting. Written in January 2015 it lists the Twitter followers of the following organisations and individuals. Here are what they were then, in June 2016…
Guest blog – A Chance Encounter with a Weevil by Jane V. Adams
Jane is a naturalist, photographer and nature writer living in Dorset. Her work has appeared in books, anthologies and blogs for charities such as The Wildlife Trusts and the International Bee Research Association. When she’s not exploring Dorset’s lanes and countryside she can be found lying on her stomach watching insects in her garden. Jane’s…
Bird song (50, the end)
I’ve enjoyed putting together these 50 blog posts on bird song and I’ve had a great deal of very positive feedback on them (which is obviously very nice). They seem to have hit the mark with many of you. I’ll finish with two short lists of bird songs: one of species that I have actually…
Survey on views on genetic engineering as a tool for supporting conservation efforts
I got the following by email recently from ‘A Bigger Conversation’. For me it definitely fell into the ‘Sounds important, a bit complex and dull, and not very urgent’ so I didn’t do anything with it until now (isn’t that how we end up being unprepared for things like global pandemics). I responded in a…