This is the fourth blog today on the subject of burning of blanket bog (see here, here, and here). These were sparked (!) by the RSPB releasing data on the scale of the issue and calling for an end to the burning of blanket bog. There has been a little media coverage of this –…
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Wuthering Moors 42
The scale of burning of English blanket bogs revealed by the latest RSPB work is scary. There are 127 separate consents (mostly through HLS agreements – ie we taxpayers are paying for it too) for burning on blanket bogs. These affect these seven Special Areas of Conservation (SACs)(Border Mires, Kielder-Butterburn; Ingleborough Complex; Moor House –…
Wuthering Moors 41
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Following my blog ‘first’ thing this morning here is some more information on the damage that burning does to blanket bogs. Martin Harper’s blog today expands on the RSPB’s thinking about burning of blanket bog. More details of the RSPB’s complaint to the EU over the management (they clearly regard it as mis-management, as did…
Burn, maybe burn (aka Wuthering Moors 40)
The RSPB is getting stroppy about burning of blanket bogs – I like that. Burning heather on a rotation of 7-20 years is part of the industrialisation of the upland landscape of parts of the UK. The main reason for doing it is to produce totally unnaturally high densities of Red Grouse which can then…
Kids and Outdoor Play – Getting back to Nature – Guest Blog by Sarah Tramm
Sarah is a MSc Marketing graduate with a strong passion for nature and outdoor adventures. Growing up in Denmark she’s no stranger to natural surroundings and her parents frequently took her camping all over Europe which initially sparked her enthusiasm for the outdoors. She currently resides in West Yorkshire, England where she can often be…
Blackcaps in my garden – and yours?
All records of Blackcap in my garden are winter records. Here they are: 2005 1 2006 0 2007 0 2008 0 2009 0 2010 6 2011 0 2012 0 2013 11 2014 2 The earliest records are 27 January and the latest 7 April (3 January records, 9 February records, 6 March records, 2 April…
Summoned by students
Yesterday evening I was talking to a room full of bright young things – students (mostly) at Oxford and members of the Oxford University Conservation Society. I talked about large and small NGOs (because that’s what they asked me to do) and said that NGOs were like people. None was wholly good and none was…
A taste of orange
Apparently we didn’t have a name for the colour orange in English until we discovered oranges around 1512. I wonder whether that is right. This reminds me of my time at school where my Latin master told us all that oranges used to be called noranges but we English found that saying ‘a norange’ was…
Snowy Owls in Birdwatch
I’ve never seen a Snowy Owl. I’d really like to see one. Even more would I like to see loads of them. And there have been loads and loads of them further south than usual in North America this winter. The latest Birdwatch has an article on Snowy Owls and a beautiful male on the…
English SSSIs
The government aims for the proportion of SSSIs that are in favourable condition to be over 50% by 2020. Year ending March 2011 – 36.7% in favourable condition Year ending March 2012 – 37.4% in favourable condition Year ending March 2013 – 37.5% in favourable condition That doesn’t look like a trajectory that is going…