Today is the day when the planning committee will decide on the proposal to damage an important wildlife site on the edge of Ely (see previous blogs). Very surprisingly, the Planning Officer has recommended that the plan should be approved despite the weight of local objection and informed nature conservation objection. Maybe it’s because the…
BLOG POSTS
Birds in the Bath
I was in London last week and had my first ever look inside Westminster Abbey. The price of entry almost put me off – £18! And as we all queued to pay, everything paused for a prayer to come over the public address system – it’s good that the Church makes Mammon wait for God…
The UK and Environmental democracy – the Aarhus end of nowhere?
Carol Day is a solicitor at WWF-UK. She originally trained as a nature conservationist and worked on policy with The Wildlife Trusts and WWF-UK, but converted to law in 2002. She now advises in-house policy staff on the law around marine and fisheries, species and habitats, freshwater and access to justice. She often ponders the…
Where was I?
Yesterday I saw 75 species of birds at an RSPB nature reserve. But the species which will stick in my mind for longer were the harbour porpoises, adder and weasel. Q Where was I? A Yes, well done Doug, Bob, Stella and I guess Filbert! I’ve never seen harbour porpoise there before and there were…
Guest Blogs
Comments Off on Guest Blogs
I’m always interested in offers of Guest Blogs for this site. If you have a burning issue that you would like to get off your chest, and you can write in an interesting way, then get in touch, please. You can’t buy your way onto this site – no-one has ever paid to publish a…
The rise of Newt-Kip
Nigel Farrage (or Smooth Newt-Kip as he is known to his follower) will be supping an extra pint of Old Peculiar after Newt-Kip’s astounding poll success. Instead of controlling Ramsey council and having no MPs Newt-Kip now controls Ramsey council and has no MPs. But you can’t get away from the fact that the coalition…
I hope they sink (V)
This is the fifth blog on the subject of Cambridge University Boat Club’s plans for a new boathouse (here, for new readers, are links to its forerunners; Blog 1, Blog 2, Blog 3, Blog 4). At the time of my previous blogs I had not seen the objections to the proposed development (which is much…
Guest Blog – BTO & CLO by Andy Clements
BTO recently hosted a visit from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO), Ithaca, NY, USA marking the exciting culmination of a year’s discussions to set up a long-term collaboration between our two organisations. It is thanks to Mark for initiating contact between myself and John Fitzpatrick, CEO at Cornell Lab, following Mark’s US road…
So that was April
As we entered April I hadn’t seen a spring migrant so I have spent the month catching up. I have now seen most of the returning spring migrants that i would expect to see locally with the exceptions of garden warbler, lesser whitethroat and hobby. My first swift on Saturday, at my local patch of…
Read me
The April edition of Wild Travel (with a cute tree frog on the cover) will soon be replaced by the May one (with the rhinos (one of which is quite cute) on the cover). I really enjoy writing for Wild Travel as I get to write about biology without any politics in it, and, I…