I feel a bit Goring-like when I hear the word ‘partnership’. I’m all for partnership but only as a ‘means’ and not as an ‘end’. All too often these days, those in nature conservation talk of partnership as if it’s the only way to get things done but it clearly isn’t. I’m all for…
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
Half way to 21 January
Our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting is today half way through its six-month life. It closes on 21 January. My fear when starting it off in July was that it might fail, in the six months now allowed, to pass the total we reached in over 10 months last year. But I should have…
New wasp (genus) for UK
An ichneumon wasp new to the UK was caught in a chance sweep of a butterfly net at the RSPB’s Broadwater Warren nature reserve is a type of wasp never before recorded in the UK. Back in 2013, Tony Davis of Butterfly Conservation was undertaking a moth monitoring programme at Broadwater Warren when he came…
Guest blog – A ‘Minor’ Encounter with Nature by Findlay Wilde
Findlay Wilde is a friend of mine. He blogged here in 2012 (Is the future in safe hands?), 2013 (Guests at Nature’s Table), 2014 (Wishing you a Harry Christmas) and now this is his 2015 blog! Back in June this year, I posted a series of guest blogs on…
Talks given
I’ve been talking to Yorkshire recently – has it been listening? I’ve never given exactly the same talk twice in my life – that’s partly because every talk is somewhat tailored to the audience (as best as one can – sometimes one doesn’t know that much about the audience) and they are usually of slightly…
Shifting baselines
The idea of shifting baselines is an important one. We tend to be trapped in our own memories – our imaginations fail to grasp what we haven’t seen for ourselves further back in time. We all have our baselines and they affect what we feel about everything, what we regard as normal and acceptable. In…
Marmite
It’s quite fun reading the reviews of Inglorious on Amazon. Now there are 22 of them and they average at 4 stars out of 5 stars. That’s pretty good. But I can’t help noticing that if you only look at the reviews that are from verified purchasers of Inglorious (eight of them) – then they…
#justiceforannie thunderclap
‘Annie‘ was a female Hen Harrier which was found shot on a grouse moor in Scotland. She has become the symbol for attracting people to sign up to a social media thunderclap tagged as #justiceforannie. This was the idea of the Moving Mountains Nature Network (@MMNNActionUK) and it will send out a message about our…
A rather fluffy gauntlet – the report
The Response for Nature report by 26 wildlife organisations in England is unexceptionable and unexceptional. There is nothing wrong with it and nothing very new or exciting either. It is the semolina of wildlife reports – you couldn’t really dislike it but I’d be surprised if it’s your favourite. In fact it’s a bit gruel-like…
A rather fluffy gauntlet – the event
Last Tuesday a bunch of NGOs launched their ‘Response for Nature’ report (or reports actually – one for each UK nation) at an event in London. I’ll comment on the reports later today but the event was a room full of wildlife conservation organisation staff talking to themselves. There were speeches: from Steve Backshall, Josie…