Yesterday afternoon our lawyers at Leigh Day received a delayed response from Natural England on our Pre-action Protocol letter about Walshaw Moor. It contained the following important phrases: ‘Natural England accepts that in relation to ground (2), the HRA could have been clearer in certain respects. In particular, Natural England accepts that it is not…
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Wuthering Moors 66 – Natural England you have lost the trust of the public
Nobody really trusts politicians these days (which personally I think is sad because there are some good ones out there) but until recently we have trusted government agencies. In nature conservation, in the olden days, some of the greatest nature conservationists of their time, of any time, worked in and led the statutory agencies –…
Amazing support – thank you! (Wuthering Moors 65)
The crowdfunder to support legal action against Natural England‘s failure to protect Walshaw Moor launched yesterday at 1pm – by 10pm it had already reached the first target of £5000. I’m so relieved and so grateful. This means that we can move forward with confidence and that I am not left with a big debt!…
Wuthering Moors 64 – a crowdfunder
I’ve been writing about Walshaw Moor for years – this is my 64th blog on the subject! But now I am asking for your help to protect this site from further damage. In fact, I am asking for your help to protect this site from Natural England who have reached a management agreement…
Going into some kind of semi-torpor
From now until, the beginning of July, blog posts here will be far less frequent and rather unpredictable, as I am travelling a lot – coming and going. This might be a good time to sign up to getting new posts on this blog to be sent automatically to you. You can do that by…
Bank Holiday Monday book review: Whittled Away: Ireland’s vanishing nature, by Pádraic Fogarty
Reviewed by Ian Carter The title of this book is taken from an Irish Government report dating back to 1969 raising concerns that Ireland’s natural heritage is being gradually ‘whittled away’. The report suggests, in the understated way of the age, that this ‘could represent a serious loss to the nation’. You could imagine much…
Bank Holiday Monday book review – Beyond Spring by Matthew Oates
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Reviewed by Ian Carter Having read his previous book describing a lifetime of watching, studying and obsessing about butterflies I was looking forward to this one. Thankfully, it shares many similarities, not least the in-depth knowledge, warmth and humour in the writing – it’s not often you catch yourself laughing out loud at a natural…
Bank Holiday Monday book review – How to Build Houses and Save the Countryside by Shaun Spiers
This book is written by a former MEP, a former boss of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the current Director of the think-tank Green Alliance. Shaun Spiers has been knocking around the policy and political world for a good few years and he’s no fool (no fool at all) and so his views,…
Paul Leyland – Large Red Damselfly
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Paul writes: The first emergence of damselflies is one of the indicators, in the insect calendar, which show that the days are getting warmer. The Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) is usually the first to be seen and it has been gradually appearing over the last few weeks. This is my first for the year,…
Wild food (33) – Cuckoo Flower by Ian Carter
Otherwise known as Lady’s Smock this is one of our most attractive spring flowers, brightening up damp pastures and roadside verges across the country with its subtle pink flower-heads. It usually starts to appear around mid-April, about the same time as the first Cuckoos arrive back from Africa – hence the name. It also…