Standing up for Nature
There are only six open petitions on the Westminster parliament website which have overtopped the 100,000 signatures and are therefore eligible for a debate in Westminster Hall. Of those, one is about to become largely irrelevant (and is talked about incessantly anyway), two have been debated, one has had a debate date set and two,…
Europe’s peatlands are drying out – due to a combination of factors including human actions. And recent estimates of carbon stored in peatlands are twice as high as previous ones. Here is an accessible and useful account of these two papers with interviews with a range of scientists. Altogether peatlands are even more important than…
It’s the RSPB AGM on Saturday – any member can attend the morning event for free (you should register first). I was planning to go, but I can’t – a family event intervenes (which isn’t England v New Zealand or the racing from Cheltenham) so I’m glad that there will be a keen observer in…
… the following quote from Inside Science (click here about 12min 40secs into programme); it’s one of those things that on the surface you think more people, more emissions, more resource demand, food demand, whatever it is but when you look at the numbers, we produce enough food in the world now to feed everyone,…
This study has cropped up before on this blog (partly because of the unusual secrecy about who funded it – see here and here) and partly because of the fact that it has been ‘quoted’ by grouse shooting interests in the past before it was published. Now it is published and the grouse shooting industry…
I am a final-year DPhil student with the Ruaha Carnivore Project and the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), at the University of Oxford. I specialise on large African carnivore research and conservation, and have worked on this in Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania. For my DPhil research I am investigating the status and special ecology of,…
Open letter to Natural England Chair, Board and staff.
First seal pups seen on the National Trust’s Farne Islands The first Atlantic grey seal pups of the season have been spotted on the Farne Islands, just off the Northumberland coast. Globally, the Atlantic grey seal is one of the rarest seal species and is a protected sea mammal. Global numbers are estimated to…
Today, Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Wildlife Crime Working Group launches its third annual report. the report is supported by a range of WCL member organisations including Wild Justice. Pete Charleston, Chair of the group and Wildlife Crime Officer at Bat Conservation Trust has written a blog to accompany the report. His blog highlights the Government’s…
Following Wild Justice’s successful challenge to the legality of the General Licences Defra has issued a consultation and the RSPB has asked its members to respond – see here. The RSPB suggestions are eminently sensible although they might need a bit more scientific justification for DEFRA to take them sufficiently seriously. Wild Justice will be…