From the Guardian, 27 June 1987

This newspaper (pages 1-2 and 31-32) has been lining a drawer since before our children were born but it relates to Nicholas Ridley’s plans to privatise the 10 regional water authorities in England and Wales, and thus was a step on the road to the mess that is water and sewerage services and their regulation…

Les faisans et les squamates – evidence from Belgium that Pheasants reduce reptile numbers.

Pheasants eating reptiles, but not simply eating them, eating them in such large numbers that they disappear from areas of ‘massive’ releases. I’m assuming that the main mechanism is from devouring the snakes and lizards rather than the other possible mechanisms but, to be fair, this study cannot distinguish mechanisms. You could say, that since…

Guest blog – Save Danes Moss by Simon Browne

Simon enjoys watching wildlife and hands-on conservation work in his spare time. Voluntary work includes being a parish councillor, which allows some championing and practical enhancement of the local environment, but he finds the battles against development that involves extensive nature destruction very frustrating, though necessary. The work of the Save Danes Moss group has…

Sunday book review – Rooted by Sarah Langford

  I liked this book, which at its best is a mix of James Rebanks and Jake Fiennes at their best. It’s about farming and the changes in farming over three generations, and what might happen in future. I think the author ends up in the right place, more or less, but I wondered whether…

Sunday book review – Audubon at Sea by Christoph Irmscher and Richard J. King (eds)

This is not a picture book, although there are plenty of Audubon’s sketches and reproductions of his finished artwork in these pages. This is a book of Audubon’s words, some of which were intended for publication and others which were more private jottings, or accounts meant for the later reading by his family.  In our…