The Home Office will provide specific funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit of £136,000 for 2013-14. This is good news. And some of the credit must go to all those who contacted their MPs on this issue. And some credit must go to those MPs who responded by signing EDM 603 and by raising…
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Guest Blog – Good v Bad Science – Good v Bad Birdwatching by David Christian Rose
David is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge. His research looks into how the interpretation of climate science affects biodiversity conservation policy-making and practice in England. He is a keen birdwatcher and has a strong interest in British wildlife conservation. I have been very interested in recent weeks to read…
Half-cooked protection
Those Yorkshiremen get everywhere don’t they? Certainly Captain James Cook seems to have done. His journeys of discovery are generally regarded as being Pacific Ocean expeditions but to get to the Pacific you have to start in the Atlantic and either hang a right and go around Cape Horn or hang a left and go…
Guest Blog – What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding? by Colin Williams
Colin Williams is a writer who explores our relationship with the natural world. He is also a conservationist and for many years worked with cetacean conservation organisation ORCA surveying whales and dolphins in northern Europe. He’s also worked for Planet Whale as a whale watching guide and in 2012 was writer-in-residence at WhaleFest. The…
EDM 603 taking off
This was a very good week for EDM 603 which calls upon the Home Office to find the funding to keep the National Wildlife Crime Unit going (in my opinion it actually needs an increase in funding!). 21 new MPs signed up to the EDM and it is difficult to imagine that that is not…
Cartoon and bits and pieces
Apologies for the non-appearance of yesterday’s blog – I wrote it and then pushed the wrong button (and then spent a lot of time driving on snowy roads). Is it snowy enough for you? Imagine its impact on wildlife. A week tomorrow it is Big Garden Birdwatch – time to get those bird feeders filled…
Guest Blog – ‘Muzzled Watchdog’ to ‘Toothless Terrier’? by Helen Kirk
Helen Kirk has been described as ‘an indefatigable and tenacious environmental campaigner and amateur naturalist’. For more than 30 years she has championed and helped safeguard the Humberhead peatlands, and the special plants and creatures that depend on them. She is the executive secretary of the Thorne and Hatfield Moors Conservation Forum and has recently…
Rainham Marshes – Allsorts.
I had the chance to pop in to the RSPB nature reserve at Rainham Marshes on Friday – so I took it! Just off the M25 on the north bank of the Thames, a rural idyll this isn’t. And that’s part of the attraction. I made my way, by car, past Purfleet station where I…
Guest Blog – Not the BTO winter thrush survey by Hugh Brazier
Hugh Brazier was at school with Mark Avery a long time ago. He then spent many years in Ireland, where (among other things) he frequented seabird colonies off the west coast, ringed lots of puffins and storm petrels, and edited the journal Irish Birds. He is now based in York, where he works as a…
Our vanishing flora – new Plantlife report
Our Vanishing Flora is a new report from Plantlife. This report tells the awful story of how local losses of plants from our counties add up to a national disgrace. Over the reign of HM The Queen 10 plant species have become nationally extinct – hardly a subject for a jubilee celebration. Those…