Standing up for Nature
North West Bird Watching Festival at Martin Mere cancelled because of bird flu. A dead Hen Harrier with bird flu from Highland in this week’s non-informative update from Defra (see here). Also five Gannets tested positive from two locations in Cornwall. Remember, the number of birds testing positive may not be the number of birds…
This is a very individual book, and I’m afraid it didn’t appeal much to this individual but that does not mean that it won’t appeal to you. So let me describe it. There are four parts to this book; First Contacts; To Describe, Name, Represent; Ecopoetics: Life Force and Resistance; Towards a Symbiotic Way of…
This book, by farmer’s daughter and now-journalist and media presenter Anna Jones, is one of the most enjoyable and interesting books I have read this year – and I write that in full knowledge that in a few weeks I’ll be choosing my books of the year (click here for 2021’s list). It examines the…
Just have a listen to this amazing interview of Robert Goodwill (ex-DEFRA minister (though not for very long)), farmer and Conservative MP for Scarborough and Whitby, by Charlotte Smith, on BBC Radio 4 Farming today this morning. I had to have an extra Digestive biscuit with my tea to recover from it (click here, 9…
Two things; today’s weekly update from DEFRA and an interesting remark on this morning’s Farming Today. 1. DEFRA’s weekly update (click here) is the usual less than transparent and informative list but you don’t often see Long-tailed Skua mentioned on a UK government website – might this be a first? Many of us heard about…
There’s a very good article in October Birdwatch by David Campbell – of course it doesn’t make happy reading but it covers the ground and the issues well, including some interesting international aspects. As the article says ‘…losses were catastrophic’. On Farming Today this morning (click here about 7 minutes into the programme) there was…
Who I am – Scottish with a fascination for wildlife from childhood – in lieu of formal qualifications (and not being able to flash them about!) – was on the 1990 International Youth Conservation Exchange to Hungary, was the 1993 winner of the BBC Wildlife Magazine ‘Realms of the Russian Bear’ competition and spent nearly…
There’s a new government in the UK and an almost completely new team in Defra, but they’ve already made their mark by making statements which, taken at face value, look like an attack on the legal protections that apply to sites, habitats and species and also the greener policies that are being developed for farming…
A book about one of my favourite bird species – the amazing, the beautiful, the persecuted Hen Harrier. This volume takes the same approach as the authors’ previous The Red Kite’s Year and is a month by month account of what Hen Harriers are doing and what is sometimes done to them. Interleaved amongst the…
This year and last: this time last year, from the end of July to the beginning of October, there were hardly any positive cases of bird flu in wild birds recorded by the government surveillance scheme. In 10 full weeks there were only three weeks with positive cases, though these were all Great Skuas, and…