I went to London on Thursday and came back on Friday. Here are a few rambling thoughts and recollections… … standing on the platform at Wellingborough station I had a phone call briefing me about an item that was going to come up on the agenda of the World Land Trust meeting that I was…
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Fake news (4) by Diogenes
After one month
It’s exactly a month since this e-petition launched and we are over 106,000 signatures. That’s amazing! Here’s the ever-growing list of constituencies with more than 200 signatures already (as of this morning): Calder Valley, Craig Whittaker MP (Con), 491 signatures Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Drew Hendry MP (SNP), 489 signatures High Peak, Ruth George…
Guest blog – Sorry Tony, you cannot spin this into a good news story for Natural England by Dominic Woodfield
Dominic Woodfield is the Managing Director of Bioscan, a long established and well respected consultancy specialising in applied ecology. He is a life-long birder, a specialist in botany, habitat restoration and creation and in protected fauna including bats, herpetofauna and other species. He is also a highly experienced practitioner in Environmental Impact Assessment and Habitats Regulations…
Opportunity to change the shape of general licences
Defra is consulting the public, fairly properly, on general licences. But don’t worry, you have plenty of time to think about it. Today, Defra issued this consultation which asks for views and evidence – the latter is quite important. This survey forms part of the process of consulting and engaging with stakeholders for the 2019…
Wild Justice’s success on gamebird releases – what they say so far
Yesterday Defra announced that they would be consulting on how to assess the impacts of releases of non-native gamebirds on sites of high conservation importance in response to Wild Justice’s legal challenge – see here. Wild Justice’s view on Defra’s decision – see here. Inaccurate coverage in the Daily Telegraph (maybe it would help them…
Wild Justice wins latest legal challenge – impacts of non-native gamebird releases to be assessed
See here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/defra-responds-to-wild-justice-challenge-releasing-gamebirds-on-protected-sites
Richard Benwell takes lead role in Wildlife and Countryside Link
Comments Off on Richard Benwell takes lead role in Wildlife and Countryside Link
Richard Benwell is to take the helm at Wildife Link, taking over from Elaine King who has moved to be the CEO of the Chilterns Conservation Board (Chilterns AONB). Richard has worked at the RSPB, WWT, then as a Special Advisor for Michael Gove at Defra. He has also written a couple of guest blogs…
Zac and Pow!
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park, 224 signatures in favour of a ban on driven grouse shooting) has been promoted to fill the void left by Therese Coffey. Zac has had one of the quickest ever promotions having come in to Defra as a Parliamentary Under Secretary at the end of July he is a Minister of…
UK biodiversity indicators published (4)
Last week, the latest UK Biodiversity Indicators were published. Did you see the government press release about them? Did you hear Defra ministers quizzed about them on every news bulletin through the day? Some biodiveristy indices are going up despite the general loss of wildlife in our lives. There are more plants ‘protected’ in seed…