Indulgence

I’ve been rushing about and don’t quite have time to write a proper blog today – plenty more coming in the next few days though! – and you did get two blogs on Tuesday, so please indulge me when I just post most of an email that a reader of this blog sent to me:…

Dogger Bank – I wonder what is happening

This blog has raised the plight of the Dogger Bank in the past.  That started with a Defra announcement of the listing of the UK portion of the Dogger Bank as a Special Area of Conservation under the EU Habitats Directive a couple of months ago. Regular readers may recall that after the proud announcement…

Hopeless delay – Government all at sea

This morning Richard Benyon made a written statement on Marine Conservation Zones.  Read the statement and you might struggle to discover what it means – it means that this government and the previous government, between them, have made a massive mess of delivering the promise of the Marine and Coastal Access Act. After setting up…

Spoonies

The spoon-billed sandpiper is one of the most gorgeous birds on the planet – and also one of the most threatened.  With probably only a few hundred pairs surviving and their numbers thought to be decreasing each year it is a bird destined for extinction in the wild – perhaps. ‘Perhaps’ because the Wildfowl and…

Only a wasp

I went racing at Cheltenham on Friday, on what is called ‘Countryside  Day’.  My drive across the Cotswolds, often very beautiful at this time of year, was so misty that the autumn colours weren’t showing well at all. As I passed over the railway at Adlestrop I remembered Edward Thomas’s poem but this was no…