Moorland managers exhibit further lack of control

West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service has ordered landowners to stop heather burning with “immediate effect” after 15 (some reports say 20) fire vehicles, and crews, had to respond to a fire that got out of control. Nick Smith, assistant chief fire officer with West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, said; We are disappointed to…

RSPB press release – #BreakfastBirdwatch

RSPB’s Breakfast Birdwatch From today, Tuesday 24 March, the RSPB begins a daily Breakfast Birdwatch, taking place between 8-9am weekdays, at a time when many of us would have been commuting to work, doing the school run, or otherwise unable to enjoy the splendour of nature, from the safety of our homes. Using #BreakfastBirdwatch on…

Chatting to Charlie

Charlie Moores is a very nice man. His latest good idea is to have a series of podcasts ‘checking in’ with various people. Here’s him checking in with me – recorded on Sunday morning – where we talk about life, birds flying past, Wild Justice’s legal challenge against Natural Resources Wales and a few other…

My column in April Birdwatch

The editorial team at Birdwatch are very kind to me, my copy deadline for each issue has gradually crept closer to publication day to enable my political birder column to be vaguely topical. And so it was first thing on 10 March that I sent Rebecca Armstrong my words for the April issue and it…

Response, of a kind, from DEFRA

Guy Shrubsole asked DEFRA some questions – see here. They redacted some information on apparently scientific reports they had received. I asked them some questions about that. They have replied as follow. I do have some queries and some grounds for complaint. This letter could be summed up in two words and it doesn’t take…