Press release from CIEEM on Johnson Speech

Response to the Prime Minister’s Green Recovery Speech CIEEM (Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management) is extremely disappointed to hear the Prime Minister’s words at Dudley this [Tuesday] morning. Despite heralding a green recovery and promising investment into a green future, the Prime Minister sent mixed messages by belittling the importance of biodiversity through his attribution…

RSPB press release – Newts being used

Conservationists concerned that newts are being used to mask real reasons for slow rate of house building The RSPB, the UK’s largest conservation charity is refuting the Prime Minister’s headline grabbing claims that newts are responsible for the Government’s inability to deliver new housing and construction projects. Despite working to the same regulations as France,…

Guest blog – Down the Pub by Ben Hoare

Ben lives in Somerset and was Features Editor of BBC Wildlife magazine from 2008 to 2018. Now he is a freelance wildlife journalist, editor and children’s author, but his daughters just call him the word policeman. He is the only Guardian reader in the village. Twitter: @benhoarewild With Super Saturday looming, pubs are on many…

Badgers

I’ve been thinking, talking and writing about Badgers today. The Wild Justice crowdfunder is going well – click here There is a Wild Justice blog with details of the PAP letter – click here

Riddled with errors

You must read this blog by the National Gamekeepers Organisation (I keep wanting to put an apostrophe in there but I mustn’t because it’s their name and they can call themselves whatever they want). In fact the NGO call themselves the ‘largest group of professional conservationists in the UK’ which is a bit of a…

An interesting study

This study is open access for 50 days so get in quickly and read and inwardly digest it. ‘Protected’ areas in the UK don’t differ from the rest of the uplands in their number (density of tracks) which is slightly surprising. Managed heather (grouse moor) landscapes have the highest densities of both surfaced and unsurfaced…

Even children find Natural England laughable

There’s no doubting that Wild Justice has been the best crowdfunder that Natural England has had. NE is now recruiting 200 staff to do its job better. Although the recruitment advert is ghastly, and makes Natural England sound like a support group for tree huggers, whereas it is actually an environmental regulator and enforcer with…

A record June for this blog

With 119,378 pageviews and 28,301 readers this was a record June for this blog. In fact, in terms of the number of readers this is the most successful month for this blog since its high point in August 2016 when there was great interest in my epetition to ban driven grouse shooting as it approached…

Press release from the GWCT

“The end of an era” as Professor Nick Sotherton retires from the GWCT After 44 years with the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), Director of Research, Advisory and Education, Professor Nick Sotherton is retiring this week (30 June 2020). Professor Sotherton has been with the Hampshire-based conservation charity since joining to study for his…