Standing up for Nature
Last week I told you about the apparently lone female House Sparrow raising a brood of chicks in my neighbour’s roof. Possibly before that blog was published last week, very early on Saturday morning, the brood fledged and the female was feeding them in my garden and next door. The male, or any male, played…
Last week I revisited ‘my’ two Breeding Bird Survey squares to carry out the second surveys at each to complete the data collection for 2021. BBS1, as I shall call it, is arable farmland and I have now completed 17 years of surveying it for the national scheme, and BBS2 is mostly farmland by the…
I have come late to the works of Jim Crumley as this is the first of his books I have read. It’s wonderful – I have some catching up to do. This is a book about the Lake District, Crumley’s first venture south of Hadrian’s Wall, I gather. Well, he’s very welcome. Come back again…
The New Issue is a quarterly magazine produced by Big Issue North. The summer edition has an article, beautifully illustrated with photographs and well written by Roger Ratcliffe, tackling the Hen Harrier issue. Nestled between articles about Joan from Hull and her tattoos and a graphic article entitled Wives and Punishment, and near articles on…
Full list here – did I miss many people? CBE Jameel Sadik AL-KHALILI OBE FRS, Professor of Physics and Professor of Public Engagement in Science, University of Surrey. For services to Science and Public Engagement in STEM Emma HOWARD BOYD, Chair, Environment Agency. For services to the Environment William James SUTHERLAND, Miriam Rothschild Professor, Conservation…
Just over three weeks ago, George Eustice made quite good speech, but you should never go overboard on praising government departments for speeches when they have to act later to make those words into reality. This week, amendments were published to the Environment Bill which fall far short of what it seemed we would get…
Dear Mark, Following a blog published on your website in January, we thought we should get in touch. We, Saving Wildcats, are a partnership project that aims to restore wildcats to Scotland through captive-breeding and release. We believe it’s our responsibility to address the inaccurate information within Dominic Woodfield’s guest blog. The Saving Wildcats project is the next…
This is the story of the Argaty Kite project, based near Stirling, and that itself is an interesting story, but this book is more than that, in that it is a tale of Red Squirrels, Pine Martens, dragonflies and a host of other creatures, and a tale of a place and a family. I liked…
Wild Justice forced DEFRA to introduce restrictions on the release of non-native gamebirds into the countryside in a process which started back in 2019, produced, eventually a review of the evidence and a last-minute announcement that DEFRA would put Red-legged Partridge and Pheasant on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act making it an…