The RSPB, working with Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN) and Renewable World, has launched a new programme in Nepal to help some of the world’s most endangered vultures while also improving local livelihoods by using such comprehensive approaches as ‘cow retirement communities’ and boosting local dairy industries. With funding from the Darwin Initiative, the programme –…
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RSPB press release – Slithering success for UK’s most secretive snake
Slithering success for UK’s most secretive snake The Smooth Snake is the UK’s rarest native reptile, found only on dry heathlands in southern England and restricted to sites in Dorset, Hampshire and Surrey. Reintroductions to restore the historic range of Smooth Snakes includes a site in Devon where the RSPB, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC)…
The badly valued uplands
It wouldn’t be true to say that the following was the talk I delivered at a conference in Sheffield on 1 October, but this is a close approximation to what I wanted to get across. Some of it is also in my book Reflections, some was in the Manifesto for Wildlife of 2018 and some…
Sunday book review – Endemic by James Harding-Morris
Endemic species are those found (in the wild) only in a particular area, so Britain’s endemic species are those found in Britain and nowhere else (in the wild at least). Such species are interesting as indicators of the workings of evolution since the last ice age and are ones whose futures lie entirely in our…
Sunday book review – The Book of Bogs edited by Anna Chilvers and Clare Shaw
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This book grew locally in West Yorkshire in response to Walshaw Moor’s landscape and wildlife and to the threat to it from a proposal to build an enormous windfarm on its deep peat soils. But although many of the writings collected here, some previously published elsewhere, relate to this moor, most famously the Wuthering Heights…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 22 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…
RSPB responds to government’s Planning Bill amendments
Dr James Robinson, RSPB Chief Operating Officer, said: “Dropping 67 amendments to the Planning Bill at the eleventh hour isn’t just poor process, it’s legislative chaos. There’s no time for proper scrutiny, no clarity on the cumulative impact, and no confidence this is about good planning rather than political optics. It looks like a cynical…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 42 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…
Bird flu – positive cases in species of wild bird 2016-2025
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The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published positive cases of bird flu for each week since the last two weeks of December 2016. These figures used to be updated weekly but large gaps are now appearing between updates – click here. Positive cases are dead birds sent in to the authorities in…
Defra quote challenge – winning entry by James Gilbert
Mark wrote: This Defra quote, “Britain is a proud nation of nature lovers, and this government is committed to turning the tide on its decline after years of neglect. We are progressing plans to designate nine new national river walks, one in each region of England.” (see here) might win a prize for stupidity if only…