Standing up for Nature
And a belated piece of news from Scotland – a pair of Hen Harriers, after many years, has finally produced some young in the Angus glens. You can tell this was big news because it appeared in The Courier on 5 August and the Press and Journal on 6 August. You’ll notice that the coverage…
This book arrived in the post out of the blue from the publisher, probably because they had spotted that I have favourably reviewed two previous books by Prof Helm, Natural Capital and Green and Prosperous Land, and they were right to bank on my admiration of this further volume. It contains the same mixture of…
Tim writes: I know that this isn’t a contender for bird photograph of the year but it does show something interesting. It shows that ducks moult all their flight feathers simultaneously, so they are completely flightless for a time. Most birds moult their flight feathers gradually, one pair at a time so that they are…
Natural England has been forced into some wise back-tracking which they call clarification and some unconvincing verbal contortions through the pressure put on them by blogs such as this and the social media storm into which they often blunder. They are, after all, No-Mates Natural England. Their attempt to shore up their reputation came in…
I requested some stuff from Natural England – a sample of the application forms for successful applications for conservation licences made last year – see here for a quck update. I got a pile of stuff the other day and I will work my way through it this weekend. But here is a taster of…
Given that the government isn’t clamping down on field sports, you can see why the industry thinks they’ve got powerful mates. The rule of six decision has woken up the Labour party and millions of other people to ask why nothing has been done. The scale of it is just massive, yet partridge and pheasant…
The Avery household was thrown into paroxysms of self-doubt, mutual recrimination and abject shame when our recycling was rejected by the bin emptiers with a red tag of shame almost two weeks ago. We’re hoping to make the grade this week. Of course it was my fault. I had put a bag which I regarded…
‘Nearly’ has an interesting meaning here – over six weeks of reviewing a petition of fewer than 60 words. Many petitions, and I do hope this one, take much less time to reach 100,000 signatures than they do to get reviewed by the Petitions Committee. It’s about Badgers, by the way.
On Wednesday afternoon I was chairing a meeting of the World Land Trust’s trustees. This was, of course, over the internet with all of its disadvantages and advantages. It’s the third such meeting I’ve chaired and we are all getting used to it. One of our number was dialling in from the Uists but the…