Standing up for Nature
There have been over 190 votes cast for your favourite entry in this blog’s Lockdown Nature-writing challenge. Voting will close on Sunday evening after I have watched the last episode of Primates on TV. The voting is largely for fun but the more people who vote, the more the authors will feel that their work…
By now I would normally have done my first visit to each of my two Breeding Bird Survey squares. But under the current circumstances I thought I ought to let the time pass and check what the instructions were on the BTO website. Here they are: So, I was doing the right thing by not…
My name is Kevin Cumming. I work for a charity called the Langholm Initiative (LI) based in the town of Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland. I hold a BA (hons) in Business Administration and an MSc in Conservation and Management of Protected Areas. Currently I manage the LI’s Wild Eskdale project which aims…
Southern Scotland’s biggest community land buyout launches crowdfunding campaign to create vast new nature reserve An initiative to create a vast new nature reserve in Dumfries and Galloway through southern Scotland’s largest community land buyout is being launched today, with a £3 million crowdfunding campaign to help purchase 10,500 acres of Langholm Moor. The ambitious…
You’ll probably remember the furore over Natural England licensing the taking of 6 Peregrine chicks from the wild in England. Well, when I say remember, it has hardly died down. See my original blog, Gary Wall’s guest blog, a further blog by me and a guest blog by OneKind’s Bob Elliot. We all thought, probably…
Chance of a rosy future with record year for roseate terns 2019 saw a record-breaking 122 pairs of roseate terns, Europe’s rarest breeding seabird, on Coquet Island. Three webcams now installed on Coquet Island provide a window into the life of roseate terns and puffins. In 2019 there was a record-breaking 122 breeding pairs of…
An online Hen Harrier Day for 2020 In January I told you about plans for Hen Harrier Day in 2020. These were going along swimmingly until Covid-19 came along. There were plans for Hen Harrier Days in all the countries of the UK, ten events in all with more in the pipeline. There were some…
Volunteers isolate at Highlands ‘lost world’ to save thousands of young trees A team of six people from Trees for Life have been voluntarily isolating themselves at the charity’s flagship Dundreggan rewilding estate in Glenmoriston, near Loch Ness in the Highlands since 23 March – to save more than 100,000 native young trees from being…
Marian Spain has been appointed as the ‘new’ chief executive of Natural England, taking the post on a permanent basis after serving as interim chief executive since December 2018. Environment Secretary George Eustice said: I want to thank Marian for all her excellent work over the last year. As we focus on setting environmental policy…
If Starlings had contrails, like planes, then the sky above my garden would be painted with the paths of Starlings taking food to their recently hatched young. Starlings are single-prey loaders when their chicks are young (they fly out from the nest to collect one item of food and fly back to the nest with…