Walshaw Moor Estate is applying for planning permission to build a big new track through an area of moorland protected for its wildlife interest. Track building has been highly contentious on this site for many years (see here, here) and the statutory nature conservation agency, Natural England, is well aware of that. However, NE is…
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
Guest blog – Flood and Blanket Bog Management in the Peak by Bob Berzins
Bob writes: I have a life long passion for the outdoors through rock climbing and fell running. A cancer scare in my thirties made me appreciate many things I simply hadn’t noticed before, from the smallest plants to the gap in the sky from a missing raptor. It’s all worth fighting for and that’s what…
Wuthering Moors (56) – the shameful capitulation of state nature conservation
I’m grateful to NE for responding rather rapidly to my EIR/FOI on the moorland management plan for the notorious Walshaw Moor area of west Yorkshire. Although I am grateful to NE for providing the plan, which you can see is very oddly called a Catchment Restoration Plan, they should be deeply ashamed of its content….
We are 12,200 ahead
We, by which I mean the supporters of a ban on driven grouse shooting, are now 12,200+ signatures ahead of the forces of conservatism who wish this unsustainable hobby of shooting birds for fun and profit to continue. But it’s not quite as simple as that, as there are three e-petitions including Ed Hutchings’s e-petition,…
Guest blog – Protecting Scotland’s honeybees by Callum MacGregor
Callum Macgregor is a postdoctoral researcher, currently based at the University of York. His research interests cover the ecology and conservation of pollinators (especially butterflies and moths) under the influence of human-induced environmental change. In his private life, that passion for insects extends to all wildlife, especially birds, and a particular enthusiasm for raptors and…
A fun quiz
I quite like Country Life – I might take out a subscription. In this week’s magazine there is a quiz to see whether you are a real countryman (women need not apply). It is quite fun, and consists of 100 questions set by Simon Lester, who is apparently a naturalist and former gamekeeper (an…
Tim Melling – Tibetan Fox
This beautifully ugly creature is also known as the Tibetan Sand Fox (Vulpes ferrilata). They live on the high Tibetan Plateau where they feed on Plateau Pikas, which are superabundant in the area. If you look just to the right of the fox you can see a Plateau Pika peeping out. I took this one…
An Unreliable History of Birdwatching (45) by Paul Thomas
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Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
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A commission I did for http://eeb.org/ for their campaigning at the EU level on plastic pollution
Sustainable dilemmas (5) – milk
Milk – there are lots of issues around milk and I’ll get to some of them in future blogs. Three days a week I pick up glass milk bottles outside the front door. I often stop and listen to bird song but sometimes I scurry back indoors to shut the door on the wind or…