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

GWCT speak with forked tongue on Woodcocks

Mark 5 Comments

The GWCT has responded to Wild Justice’s call for the shooting season for Woodcock to be changed to protect the UK breeding population from overshooting – click here. The GWCT statement doesn’t state much but attempts to do the ‘it’s all very complicated, Wild Justice doesn’t understand’ thing. But it won’t wash. In a recent,…

Countryside Alliance – not so witty, but not so daft

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Following the RSPB’s and WWT’s witty open letter to shooting organisations to join them in a call for a ban on the use of toxic lead shotgun ammunition in the UK, the Countryside Alliance have rapidly responded. Their response isn’t quite so joke-laden, and amounts to a leaden ‘No, won’t!’. Quelle surprise! The Countryside Alliance…

WWT and RSPB call out failed shooting organisations, and government, on lead ammunition (at last)

Mark Comments Off on WWT and RSPB call out failed shooting organisations, and government, on lead ammunition (at last)

WWT and RSPB have written an open letter to ‘shooting organisations’ (BASC, BGA, CA, CLA, GWCT, MA, NGO, SACS, SLE – but apparently not SGO) calling for them to join in a call for a statutory end to the use and sale of lead shotgun ammunition. The letter has two fine jokes in it where…

Sunday book review – Wild City by Florence Wilkinson

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There is wildlife everywhere and that includes our big cities, towns and villages. This shouldn’t come as a surprise really, but we are so wedded to the idea that our own activities are driving wildlife abundance down (as they are) that we, perhaps subconsciously, believe that built up areas must be the worst possible places…

Sunday book review – Tickets for The Ark by Rebecca Nesbit

Mark Comments Off on Sunday book review – Tickets for The Ark by Rebecca Nesbit

I think this is a good book and it ranges rather more widely than its extended title might suggest. The author picks up many issues connected with how we do nature conservation and why we do it in the way that we do. Much of the book is about values, and about the choices that…

Wild Justice Badger challenge in Northern Ireland

Mark Comments Off on Wild Justice Badger challenge in Northern Ireland

Last week the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs announced details of its planned Badger cull. This week Wild Justice and the Northern Ireland Badger Group filed papers in the Royal Courts of Justice seeking permission for judicial review of that decision. Wild Justice, which is meeting all the costs of the…

The shooting of Woodcock

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Woodcock shooting is a somewhat hidden activity – few birders, I think, realise the scale of shooting with something like 160,000 birds being shot each year. The UK population is around 110,000 birds in spring (based on there being c55,000 males) and so if all Woodcock shot in the UK were UK-bred the population wouldn’t…

Were you fooled at all…?

Mark Comments Off on Were you fooled at all…?

April Fools’ Day can be a minefield. There’s a great story of a young reporter rushing to their editor having swallowed a brillient RSPB April Fool story of a Polar Bear being washed up in the Hebrides one year… But yesterday, did you pause for thought when you saw;

Still earning after all the years

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I occasionally tell you about the huge wealth that comes from writing books – well, my books anyway. I’ve just had a royalty payment from Bloomsbury for Birds and Forestry (1989, with Roderick Leslie), A Message from Martha (2014) and Inglorious (2015, 2nd edition 2016). In 2022 these three books, but basically Inglorious, earned me…