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? …
BLOG POSTS
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…
M&S – a response
This response from M&S at 1653 this afternoon – just so that you know I haven’t been sitting on it. It seems that M&S are beginning to get their heads around these matters. No promise to do anything about labelling on the issues surrounding lead. I suggest that either M&S label all their shot game…
Grouse – various
Isn’t nature wonderful – the image at the head of this post is of strongylid worms (the white things) crawling out of some red grouse poo. It’s possible that quite a few people and organisations feel like they are in the ‘grouse poo’ at the moment but, on the other hand, maybe they are all…
M&S: the smoking gunner?
How interesting that the meat buyer for M&S, Tom Harvey, is, in his own words ‘a massive fan of anything shooting/game or wine related‘ according to his Twitter account. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. If he’d like to buy me a glass of decent Rioja then I’d be very happy to…