The open season on Red Grouse ends today and reopens on the Inglorious 12 August 2016. What better day to add your name to an e-petition to get the Westminster parliament to debate the future of grouse shooting? Grouse shooting is a pointless and environmentally damaging hobby for people with guns. this would be fine…
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
Legal clarification from Natural England
I’m grateful to Natural England for getting in touch today over the issue of medication of Red Grouse raised in Ruth Tingay’s Guest Blog of Monday. Here is what NE wrote: ‘In the recent guest contribution to your Blog, Dr Ruth Tingay asked for clarification from Natural England and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) regarding the…
Defra drowning not waving
George Monbiot pretty much nailed it on Monday – the approach to flooding in this country is woeful and relies on treating symptoms not the underlying illness. There was a great rush of political comment about the floods in the north of England, not just in Cumbria, which seemed to focus on how much money…
Congratulations to Rob Sheldon – and WWT
Yesterday saw a surge of support for Rob Sheldon’s e-petition to ban toxic lead ammunition from use. It passed the 5000 signatures mark with well over a thousand new signatures in one day. Not, perhaps, as impressive as over a third of a million signatures to ban Donald Trump from entry into the UK arriving…
Westminster Hall debate on toxic ammunition
The transcript of yesterday afternoon’s Westminster Hall debate on lead ammunition is available here. I’m always impressed by how quickly these things appear. I attended the debate, even though you can watch it on TV – it’s like live sport, it’s much more fun to be there to see the tackles going in. As a…
Guest blog – Would you eat an alien? by Prof Christine Nicol
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Professor Christine Nicol obtained a degree in Zoology from the University of Oxford, and then completed a PhD on the welfare of laying hens. This led to her involvement with many committees and working groups that oversaw the European ban on battery cages in 2012. In 2012 she was awarded the UFAW Medal for outstanding…
Scientific consensus on lead
Scientists occasionally produce consensus statements on issues. These are designed to be statements on what the science is and what it might mean. Here’s one on lead ammunition: ‘We, the undersigned, with scientific expertise in lead and human and/or environmental health, draw attention to the overwhelming scientific evidence, summarised below, on the toxic effects of…
Trust
My December Birdwatch column nudges the National Trust towards doing a bit more for nature – after all it is a massive land owner with a massive membership. My case is not that the National Trust does nothing, nor that it does nothing of any value, but that it could, and should , be doing…
Government attacks your right to environmental justice
This blog has made occasional attempts to highlight the attacks by this government on access to environmental justice (eg Guest blog by Carol Day Fifty shades of Grayling, 14 March 2014 but also UK fails to provide citizens with access to environmental rights, 12 June 2015). These matters are terribly dull but terribly important. They…
Guest blog – GWCT confused by Dr Ruth Tingay
Dr Ruth Tingay is a raptor conservationist with field experience from North & Central America, Europe, Africa, Central and SE Asia. She studied the critically endangered Madagascar Fish Eagle for a PhD at Nottingham University and is a past president of the Raptor Research Foundation. She’s currently researching the illegal persecution of raptors & its…