Sunday book review – Britain’s Insects by Paul D. Brock

There are over a million species of insect in the world and over 25,000 in Britain and Ireland. How can one produce a useful field guide to those species? This, the latest in the WILDGuides series, is a masterful exercise in clarity, clear design and will get you to the right identification of the species…

Pow on Woman’s Hour

This was a cracking interview of Rebecca Pow, DEFRA minister, by Emma Barnett on Woman’s Hour on Thursday. We moved through plastic bags, plastic waste exports to Turkey, tree-planting v HS2, road building, coal mines, trade deals with Australia and where to go on holiday. It was robust, tough but pretty fair, and went to…

Hen Harriers

Hen harriers are nesting in the hills, and the persecution and the brood meddling go on. Here are three items of news, although the first of them is an ongoing item of non-news that may soon be of itself newsworthy. 1. Brood meddling legal challenge The story so far; 2018 – Natural England issue licences…

Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and lead in meat

Last week Wild Justice published five blog posts about lead in game meat sold by two leading supermarkets, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. On Monday: Sainsbury’s game meat – and why we tested its lead levels did just that – it was because Sainsbury’s were misleading and evasive about lead levels in game meat on sale in…

Sunday book review – Wild Winter by John D. Burns

This is the second of John D. Burns’s books I have reviewed here, but whereas Sky Dance was fictional (although it read pretty true to life to me) this is a story of walks by the author, sometimes with friends, in the mountains of Scotland, in winter. I’m going to read his other two books…