Tiny wasp helps protect island bird species threatened with extinction One of the world’s rarest birds, Wilkins’ Bunting, has been handed a much-needed lifeline by a small species of parasitoid wasp. Only found on the remote Nightingale Island in the South Atlantic, the bunting’s food source was threatened by an invasive alien scale insect. Conservationists…
Author: Mark
Sunday book review – The Little Book of Fungi by Britt A. Bunyard
It’s autumn and this weekend is Fungus Day in the UK and so one’s mind turns to the Kingdom of Fungi – just forget plants and animals for a day. This is one of a series of Little Books which are little books but they pack a big punch. They will remind many readers of…
Guest blog – The Faroe Islands’ Grindadráp: whose business is it? by Alick Simmons
Alick Simmons spent most of his career in public service serving as the UK Food Standards Agency’s Veterinary Director (2004-2007) and the UK Government’s Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer (2007-2015). He is the current chair of the Zoological Society of London’s Ethics Committee on Animal Research and a member of the Wild Animal Welfare Committee. He…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 17 by Nick MacKinnon
Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won…
Guest blog – How donations to World Land Trust can be Multiplied Four Times by Andy Langley
Andy Langley is a wildlife enthusiast and supporter of World Land Trust (WLT), who will be doing a sponsored birdwatch this October to raise money for WLT’s ‘Protecting the Ecuadorian Amazon’ appeal. Each October, for the last seven years, my employer Ecclesiastical Insurance, part of the Benefact Group, has pledged matched funding up to £5,000…