On Friday, as on Saturday, I was on a panel with Tony Juniper. This time it was the first AFON conference in Cambridge. We, with Matt Shardlow from Buglife and Donal McCarthy (RSPB), chatted around valuation of nature. If you don’t put a value on it, is it equivalent to valuing it as worthless? If…
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You couldn’t make this up
The new EU Environment Commissioner is from Malta (and I’m told is a hunter (does anybody know whether this is true please?), and is certainly a former Tourism Minister) named Karmenu Vella. His role could have been written by George Osborne – ‘Protecting the environment and maintaining our competitiveness have to go hand-in-hand’. The new…
WWF
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A WWF report suggests that meeting carbon targets could make us richer too – sounds great to me!
Conferences – 1
I’d never been to a Green Party conference before, but I’d been invited to be on a panel, so I set off from home at 0645 to walk to the bus stop, spend an hour on a bus into Northampton, walk for 10 minutes to the station, catch a train to Birmingham (another hour) and…
Catch-up 2
Tomorrow I’ll be missing an event hosted by Zac Goldsmith MP calling for a massive Marine Protected Area around Ascension Island. I hope it happens but I’d put Pitcairn Island (see here, here and here) ahead in the queue, and maybe also the South Sandwich Islands. What price an announcement of one or more of…
Catch-up 1
Last week I went to an AFON Conference and a Green Party Conference – and I’ll say something about them tomorrow (or later in the week), but the rest of the world kept on spinning. Here are some things that happened: Boris Island got the elbow – hooray! It’ll probably be back one day, but…
A century and a week
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I am grateful to Seppo Leinonen (@sepponet on Twitter; seppopost@seppo.net by email; www.seppo.net/e/ website) for this beautiful cartoon. It’s a century and a week since Martha died in Cincinnati Zoo and the most numerous bird on the planet was driven to extinction.
Season of fruitful mellowness
Having spent quite a bit of last week making the point that access to the natural environment is good for you, I thought I ought to get some. So Sunday was a day for chilling out – although it was a lovely warm early September day. I started having breakfast in the garden and a…
Oscar Dewhurst – Bearded Tit
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Oscar writes: Other than Bitterns and Marsh Harriers, I also wanted to get some photos of Bearded Tits when I was at Minsmere. Luckily the best spot for them was the best spot for Bitterns! During a period of Bittern inactivity I heard the characteristic pinging calls of Bearded Tits and on turning around I…
A couple of recent reviews
I’m sorry – I just haven’t had time to review a book this week. It’s been a busy week in which I have given four talks and attended three ‘events’. But the reviews of A Message from Martha keep arriving. Here are two that pleased me a lot: The Independent (Michael McCarthy): ‘This book will…