I like a digestive biscuit. When we were up in Scotland in June I was sent off to an unfamiliar supermarket with a list. I struggled to find everything on the list and was delighted to stumble across a familiar pile of distinctively wrapped biscuits after minutes of looking in many wrong places for them….
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You might have missed this rally in the news
Back in April they said this – we’re going to have a rally. And they had help, advice and support from the Countryside Alliance, the National Gamekeepers Organisation (I always want to put the apostrophe in there, but they don’t…) and BASC (but it’s not just shooters, oh no!) And they did get a crowd…
Gove’s landmark environment speech
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Social media and some mainstream media are all over Michael Gove’s ‘landmark’ environment speech. Here is the text. It’s a pretty good speech but I think the signs are that it is a land-grab speech as much as a landmark one. There is so much in here about climate change and yet no-one seems to…
Natural England praises moorland estates
One can almost forgive the Moorland Association’s over-the-top spin – that’s all they have left to give. There are a few pairs of Hen Harriers on English grouse moors this year. Not as many, I think we will find, as are nesting in other places but the Moorland Association had to jump the gun (apt…
Gove environment speech
Michael Gove is to make an environment speech at around midday today. I wonder what he will say. Presumably he won’t just wave and say goodbye!
How many bad apples?
When Charlie Jacobey was telling me what I thought, and occasionally letting me get a word in edgeways, he reckoned that there were just a few bad apples in the shooting industry. I reckoned there were lots. The latest very sad news of a Hen Harrier caught in a trap on a grouse shooting estate…
Wild Justice and Countryfile
I wrote a blog for Wild Justice here.
Another…
See Raptor Persecution UK – more on this news later today
Guest blog – Volunteers in the conservation sector (2) by Louise Bacon
Volunteers in the conservation sector: Part 2, Building expertise Over the past few years, whilst working within the conservation charity sector as an environmental data specialist, recorder and amateur naturalist, I have attended several seminars/one day conferences etc. asking the question ‘where do we get our next generation of experts from?’. None of those events…
Paul Leyland – Rutpela maculata
Paul writes: I start to see these photogenic beetles around the middle of June and they stay around until the end of August. Rutpela maculata is probably the commonest of the Longhorn (Cerambicidae) beetle family, it is certainly the one I see most often. They are easy to see in the right habitat, their bright…