99 years ago today the passenger pigeon succumbed to extinction when its last surviving individual died a few feet from where this photograph was taken, in Cincinnati Zoo. A few decades earlier there had been billions of this bird flying around the forests of eastern North America. And so next year will be the centenary…
BLOG POSTS
Saturday cartoons – by Ralph Underhill
Unholy alliance?
Ian Lindsay is Director of Education at the GWCT and he writes in the September NFU Countryside magazine about reintroductions. Do they, he asks, make conservation sense? His punchline is ‘…in the context of our declining wildlife, are reintroductions a part of sound conservation management addressing key environmental priorities, or an expensive, cynical and high-profile…
Bovine TB
I heard this suggestion several years ago from a clever colleague. I haven’t heard it since but I bet he’s right – although it’s a bit late in the day now. Is there any genetic basis for immunity to bovine TB in cattle? If so, why aren’t we using the more immune breeds of cattle? …
Tendentious? Moi?
I was recently described as tendentious by one of my favourite commenters here, and after checking that I really did know what that meant, I agree! I certainly tend to tend towards tendentious, and I don’t intend to pretend that is likely to change. I think the name of the blog – Standing up for…
Yosemite fire
I suspect I am following the news of fires affecting the Yosemite National Park a little more closely than most. That’s partly because I was there around two and a half months ago and also because there is an interesting conservation back-story to present day events. Yosemite, in the California Sierra Nevada mountains, was the…
Bank Holiday Monday Book Review – Mariposa Road by Bob Pyle
This is a book about butterflies in the USA – and about the people who like butterflies and the people met ‘on the road’ while looking for butterflies. The road is quite a long one as Bob Pyle tried to see all the USA’s butterflies in a year – which meant criss-crossing the USA several…
Sunday Book review – Birds of the Heart of England, edited by Trevor Easterbrook
This volume is about the birds of 12 10-km squares in the middle of England, centred on Banbury. The Banbury Ornithological Society was founded in 1952 and this volume is a very impressive record of their work (and play) over the last six decades. I used to live in this area, and am ashamed to…
A tangled bank
If you subscribe to the excellent British Wildlife then you may have seen my article praising the wildlife NGOs for the State of Nature report which came out in June. I didn’t get the impression at the Bird Fair last week that any follow up is planned. Maybe I’m wrong, but…
NoFA Nick?
This is just a reminder to vote in the annual RSPB/Butterfly Conservation/Plantlife/Daily Telegraph Nature of Farming Award poll. You, we, get the chance to choose who we think is the UK’s most wildlife-friendly farmer. This year there are eight finalists and they all look good. You have to choose and cast your vote by…