This book, like the author’s 2018 The Ascent of Birds – reviewed here, is a very clear and interesting explanation of a complicated and technical story. How did mammals evolve into species as different as the Duck-billed Platypus, Blue Whale, Vampire Bat and you and me? The answers are here and they appear to be…
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
Land Use Framework for England
I’ve read this document – click here – several times, and I’ll need to read it several times more to get the most out of it. But my initial rating of it is 6.5/10 which is quite a bit higher than I expected. I’d be very interested in others’ views on this document and I’d…
England Land Use Framework – a textual analysis
I read a lot of words (and I write quite a few too). I try to take care to understand what the writer intended me to think so I read the words, think about them, and put together in my head what the passages mean. I’m also long-practiced in reading words from government departments and…
BBC makes another mistake over More or Less nonsense
I wrote a blog about a gross factual error (of many orders of magnitude) which was perpetuated by the BBCR4 programme, More or Less, which embarrassingly is a programme about people and organisations using numbers correctly – click here. I complained to the BBC – as I said I would in the blog. On Friday,…
Wild Justice Dartmoor victory
I was pleased to see that Wild Justice has won a judicial review of the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council’s failure to manage the Dartmoor heaths properly – click here. This case started back in 2024 and I remember writing the witness statements which set out how Wild Justice saw the issues of overgrazing and lack of…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 29 of CEP (240 MW) by Nick MacKinnon
Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won…
BSBI – Vulnerable aquatic plant found in Hampshire
Vulnerable aquatic plant found in Hampshire Opposite-leaved Pondweed has been discovered at a site in the lower reaches of the River Ems in Hampshire. This is the first record for the Ems catchment area since 1887: the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Tristan Norton, a local Government ecologist who is also the Botanical Society of…
Sunday book review – Wild Pavements by Amanda Tuke
This is a book about urban wildlife and although the author says that she majors on plants and knows less about other groups she is very clearly competent across a wide range. She is based in London and each of the eight two-chapter sections of the book sees her turning her back on St. Pauls…
Greg and Janis Thoren to Receive Illinois Leopold Conservation Award
Greg and Janis Thoren are the recipients of the 2026 Illinois Leopold Conservation Award®. The award honors farmers and forestland owners who go above and beyond in the management of soil health, water quality, and wildlife habitat on working land. The Thorens, who raise crops and cattle near Stockton in Jo Daviess County, will receive…
Calderdale Planning Authority challenges windfarm developer’s “misleading statements” and inadequate statutory consultation plans
Calderdale Council Planning Department has called for big changes to statutory community consultation plans for the contentious Walshaw Moor windfarm proposal. The Critical National Priority project is currently in its third version. The latest scaled-down revision was made in response to highly critical feedback from the Planning Inspectorate last October. The scheme’s ”proposed investment into…