I listened to Theresa May’s conference speech and was quite impressed by it – it was quite clever in many ways (full text here). But I still won’t be voting Conservative. However, there were two sentences that were next to each other that just sum up why the Conservative Party, Michael Gove, Therese Coffey et…
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
A positive response from Tim Farron
Tim Farron, Lib Dem MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, is a former party leader and currently the Lib Dem Environment spokesperson and spokesperson for the North of England. His response to a constituent about the Manifesto for Wildlife is both quick and positive – and also demonstrates that he has at least glanced at its…
Guest Blog: Quadruple your donation to World Land Trust! by Andy Langley
Why I support World Land Trust About five years ago I wanted to give some money to protect rainforests and spent some time trying to find the best charity through which to do this. After a lot of research I settled on World Land Trust (WLT), a charity that I hadn’t heard of before but…
#justice4henharriers next step
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As we head towards our two days in court on 5 and 6 December (when our judicial review of NE’s daft licensing of brood meddling will be heard – do indicate here if you are likely to attend) the latest milestone along the way has just been passed. We’ve received what I believe are called…
What price your interest in wildlife?
Each year, the US Fish and Widlife Service (hmmm – maybe we could have something a bit like that one day?) produces an analysis of the economic value of hunting, fishing and wildlife watching. Wildlife-watching is apparently worth almost as much to the economy through expenditure on cameras, bird food, binoculars and travel as are…
Time to fast-track Hedgehog Highways
One of the proposals in Kate Bradbury’s Urban Spaces section in the Manifesto for Wildlife is for ‘Hedgehog holes to be made compulsory in all new fencing‘. This is one of the simplest, most practical and dead easy recommendations in the whole manifesto. And another of the ‘ministers’ involved in the Manifesto for Wildlife, Hugh…
Wuthering Moors 72 – burning issues
Blog posts titled Wuthering Moors are about the issue of burning of blanket bogs by grouse shooting estates (e.g. Wuthering Moors 28, 15 October 2012), the inability of the government agency Natural England to do its job properly on regulating landowners on protected moorland sites (Wuthering Moors 68 – the background to an unlawful decision,…
‘To save the environment from a Conservative government’ – Michael Gove
I’ve never used an autocue but they can work out a bit badly. I’m pretty sure that Michael Gove said in his speech something about saving the environment from a Conservative government. Well, maybe he said something about how there is lots of action, to save the environment, from a Conservative government. Maybe the autocue…
Red Kites in September
I’m keeping a note of whether I see Red Kites on each day through the year – the September tally was a very low 12 days out of 30. that’s partly because I was in Iceland for a week at the beginning of the month, and I’ve spent time in London too. But it looks…
Upland Britain – a brighter, fairer future
Let us consider the uplands of the UK. My little essay in the Manifesto for Wildlife set out a list of 10 actions to rejuvenate the uplands and to make our hills better for wildlife and for people. It has attracted a lot of enthusiastic praise as being far-sighted and at the same time a…