Tristan albatross Diomedea dabbenena, adult courtship dance, Gough Island, January. Andy Schofield (rspb-images.com) Island restoration would help slow global rate of extinction Introduced invasive species have been responsible for hundreds of extinctions, the majority of these on islands. Targeting 169 islands – including 20 in the UK’s Overseas Territories – as a priority for restoration…
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
Something I wrote…
… for the Green European Journal on rewilding.
20 years of Student Conference on Conservation Science at Cambridge
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Yesterday I spent some time at the Student Conference on Conservation Science at Cambridge. It started yesterday in the lecture theatre in which I had many of my first year undergraduate lectures 42 years ago. Nice to see the lecture theatre has had a lick of paint since then. I think I was wheeled out…
A good weekend
We gathered at Parkgate on The Wirral for the high tide at midday on Friday. As the tide comes in, particularly the highest tides (and this was an equinoctial high tide with a super moon!) the voles and mice on the saltmarsh swim for their lives and the predators gather for the feast (as do…
Fully funded inside 10 days!
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Wild Justice’s legal challenge to the General Licences is fully funded thanks to over 1100 of you. Thank you very much! We transferred £4,000 from the Wild Justice bank account, of donations that had arrived by that route, to the crowdfunding site, earlier today and closed the crowdfunder. We now have all the money we…
Farmers Weekly corrects itself – after a nudge
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Farmers weekly, online, published a slightly irritating article on Wild Justice’s legal challenge over the General Licences last week. We sent them the following letter early today, and had a nice chat with them, and they’ve changed the article in response to our letter. Here’s the letter; Your article on Wild Justice’s legal challenge of…
The first environmental statement from the Independent Group?
A quote from Angela Smith MP, now Independent Group MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, who is also the Westminster Parliament Species Champion for the Hen Harrier, following last week’s devastating critique of driven grouse shooting in a new scientific paper; Grouse shooting is facing serious scrutiny at the moment, especially in relation to the persecution…
The great divide
Our big brother blog, Raptor Persecution UK, has done a great job in documenting responses to last week’s damning scientific indictment of the role of driven grouse shooting in causing the near-absence of the Hen Harrier from the English uplands. Here are the links to the various blogs so far and some additions from me;…
Only farming ministers have to have some knowledge of their subject
I’m catching up on news items here as I’ve been away from my home computer and driving around the UK, or so it seems, for weeks. Robert Goodwill is the new Minister of State in Defra with responsibility for farming – he is a farmer (although his main crop seems to be dead people). Conservative…
Guest blog – Toad Rage (5 and final) by Paul Sterry
This blog by Dr Paul Sterry follows four earlier ones; Toad Rage, Toad Rage 2, Toad Rage 3 and Toad Rage 4. Paul Sterry has an academic background in freshwater biology and is a passionate conservationist. He has been writing about natural history and photographing wildlife for the last 40 years, with an emphasis on…