Visit to Aberdeen

It was great fun talking to a packed lecture theatre in the Zoology Department in Aberdeen about Passenger Pigeons and Hen Harriers on Tuesday evening.  We also all had the opportunity to look at a stuffed Passenger Pigeon in the adjacent museum – which I always find is a rather poignant experience. I was talking…

Guest blog – Crunch time for Britain’s bees by Joan Walley MP

    As MPs return to parliament from party conference season, leading MP Joan Walley, says the Government’s plans for bees ‘fail to offer’ the solution bees need.         The decline in bee and other pollinators’ populations is a very real threat not just to the pollinators themselves but also to the world…

More on vultures

I’m grateful to the Vulture Conservation Foundation for an update on situation with diclofenac (a medical drug that is a bit like aspirin for you but more like cyanide for vultures feeding on animal carcasses which contain it). A review of the evidence for the impact of diclofenac on European vultures has been produced by…

Simon Barnes

The removal of Simon Barnes from The Times disappointed many readers of this blog. I am still getting emails about it from people in response to these two blogs – here and here. I had lunch with Simon a few weeks ago and I’m looking forward to reading his new book, Ten Million Aliens, which…

Letter to my MP

To Andy Sawford MP   Dear Andy   I hope this finds you well. I am writing to enlist your support in getting some information out of Defra – in fact, I wonder whether you could check whether anyone is at home in that department. I have made several FOI requests to Defra via my…