Standing up for Nature
Thank you to the staff, visitors, volunteers and wildlife of the WWT London Wetland Centre for giving me a good day yesterday. An audience of 45-50 folk heard me talk about nature conservation issues from reintroductions to raptor persecution, and from protected areas to farmland birds. The talk seemed to go well and there was…
Today I am giving a talk at the London Wetland Centre at 230pm – I’m looking forward to it and maybe I’ll see you there. However, I have experienced the joys of working at home this week. One day a nice man brought me a lovely book to read (now, admittedly I had ordered it…
In Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday the Prime Minister said that he wants all government departments to be departments for growth. The Agriculture Department should be promoting British food, apparently. Sounds like a good idea perhaps, except you don’t have an Agriculture Department PM – you don’t even have a department with agriculture in…
I count the author of this book as a friend and therefore you might want to discount all the good things I am going to write about his excellent book – please don’t do that. Professor Andrew Balmford FRS is one of just a handful of UK academics who understands nature conservation through doing it,…
Let us start by wishing Caroline Spelman well and thanking her for being a champion of biodiversity during her time at Defra. The outgoing Secretary of State did a good job on international biodiversity protection – and was notable for her own personal successes at the Nagoya meeting. Spelman lacked charisma and had the air…
At the beginning of the Bird Fair weekend I had never done a book signing – but by the end I had done 10. You might imagine that this involves a team of helpers marshalling the eager crowds of expectant book-purchasers into an orderly queue whilst the author pens witticisms in the title pages of…
A little bird tells me that Songbird Survival is looking for a Chief Executive to work a few days a week running the charity. The little bird seemed to have this on very reliable authority so I attempted to ask Songbird Survival through their website for details and an application form as I may have…
In Chapter 15 of Fighting for Birds I ponder the future of the RSPB and that leads me on to wonder whether it is time to change the name of the organisation. The RSPB is searching for a Fundraising and Communications Director, a new post combining two existing roles, and whoever is successful in that…
I’ll tell you what day it is. On this day, 98 years ago, at 1pm local time, 6pm (I think) UK time, there was a dull thud in Cincinnati. The last passenger pigeon in the world, called Martha by her keepers in Cincinnati Zoo, had died and fallen off her perch. It was the end…
You do know what day it is don’t you? In my ‘political birder’ column in this month’s Birdwatch magazine I discuss whether nature conservationists should be causing a few more problems for the fieldsports community in response to the lack of hen harriers, buzzardgate and the call to put goosander and cormorant on the general…