Who would want to be Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs? Foot and Mouth, Bird Flu, badgers moving the goalposts, Ash dieback, floods and now more Bird Flu. The latest outbreak of bird flu in East Yorkshire is of a different strain from those of a few years ago (probably H5N8 rather…
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Catfield Fen – minded to be sensible
This may be the end of a long story, provided the Environment Agency hold their nerve – you can help them, see below. I have previously blogged about Catfield Fen on 30 May 2012, 22 August 2012, 10 September 2012, 30 September 2012, 6 August 2013 and 12 May 2014. It’s all about abstraction licences…
This time it’s the Storygraph
I spent yesterday at the NERF conference in Derbyshire but a couple of people talked to me about the latest anti-RSPB article. This weekend it was the Sunday Telegraph’s turn (and I got a mention too). It’s a very mixed-up piece. I’m not sure that the criticism of the relatively new, though not that new!,…
NERF
Yesterday I NERFed at the North of England Raptor Forum in Bakewell (whence come the tarts, or maybe puddings). I’ll tell you more about this excellent event later but the first, and, in a way, best, talk of the conference was that of Alan Fielding on the update of the Hen Harrier Conservation Framework. We…
Oscar Dewhurst – Bittern
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Oscar writes: While I was in Suffolk I wanted to photograph a Bittern against a backdrop of reed heads in nice light. On my third morning I was waiting for a female to pass by me on one of her feeding flights. I’d been standing there since dawn, and it was only an hour before…
Sunday book review – The Book of 365 by Hugh Brazier and Jan McCann
This book is not all about nature but there is quite a lot of nature dispersed through its pages, which is to be expected since one of its authors is a former Guest Blogger here. And so, it comes as no great surprise, but a delight nonetheless, to find mentions of Passenger Pigeons, California Condors…
Guest Blog – Wishing you a Harry Christmas by Findlay Wilde
By the time you read this there will probably be just over a month left until Christmas. That’s not long. And it might not be long until Hen Harriers are extinct in England. So if you are thinking about Christmas shopping, you might think about one of these special Hen Harrier Christmas cards. Now you…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Bullying doesn’t work
Yesterday the RSPB issued a toughly worded statement: The RSPB is (today) urging Defra to publish the workable elements of the Hen Harrier Action Plan, which we believe could bring about the recovery of one of England’s most beleaguered birds of prey. However, we’re also highlighting our rejection of one point of the six-point plan,…
We’re all farmers now
It must be terribly difficult being the Prince of Wales – but perhaps a little less difficult than being many of his potential future subjects. HRH writes in Country Life magazine this week about why we must put a value on the countryside. It is in these wide-ranging thought pieces that HRH seems least thoughtful…