At last! A serious and detailed plan for nature from a political party; 46 pages on how government can, and a Labour government would, save nature. Here are some quotes, rather a lot of quotes, from the document followed by my analysis of whether it is any good or not. I am pretty sure that…
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
Last chance to vote (until the general election anyway)
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Voting for the Birdwatch magazine’s Birders’ Choice awards closes tomorrow – the end of November. I’ve written about soe of my choices: Guano Award Conservation Hero Book of the Year, News of the Year, Site of the Year Campaign of the Year But there are other categories and of course you don’t have to take…
Election watch (13)
I answered every question on this site about my beliefs and found that I was: 88% in agreement with the Greens 86% in agreement with the LibDems 83% in agreement with Labour 35% in agreement with Conservatives 29% in agreement with Brexit No surprises there then. But a bit of a relief! I thought it…
Friday evening
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I can’t make this one so if you go, please tell me what happened. Venue details – click here.
No change at DEFRA
It could almost be the dead hand of Therese Coffey living on… It is, of course, wonderful that Rebecca Pow is the Species Champion for the Snipe (because of the Somerset Levels population in her constituency) but she is also a block on progress on raptor persecution and is the Minister in charge of Badger…
Election watch (12) – an important, albeit dull, sentence
The Labour manifesto contains this sentence, We will maintain and continuously improve the existing EU standards of environmental regulation. A Green Industrial Revolution. Environment. This promise does not appear to be hedged around (although hedges are of course good things). So I am taking this to mean that, if elected, a Labour government would seek…
NEWS: Another Hen Harrier ‘disappears, this one is called Ada – from the RSPB
The RSPB say: Today, Northumbria Police and the RSPB have issued an appeal for information following the sudden disappearance of yet another satellite tagged hen harrier, a female bird known as Ada. Ada hatched on a nest on the Scottish borders this summer (2019). She was fitted with a lightweight satellite tag as part of the…
Poor Field craftiness
There is a somewhat formulaic method by which the shooting press refer to Wild Justice. First of all, they hardly ever mention Ruth Tingay who is an integral and equal partner in Wild Justice alongside Chris and me. I wonder why they so often do this – it’s usually a man writing, maybe they just…
Election watch (11) – leaving parliament
In the excitement over who might be elected or re-elected to the Westminster parliament on 12 December we should just note those former MPs who are not standing for re-election. There are quite a lot of them – 76 in all. This includes four former DEFRA ministers: Caroline Spelman (a good Secretary of State), Richard…
Let me get this off my chest please…
It’s a small thing, and once I’ve told you about it, I will move on. Probably. I keep hearing people saying that 41% of UK species have declined in abundance since 1970. And they have (probably, at least of the species we know about)! No (major) quibbles there. But is this bad? If the world…