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…
BLOG POSTS
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…
EDM 603
Early Day Motion 603, which calls on the Home Office to stump up its share of the cost of the National Wildlife Crime Unit has attracted six new signatures from MPs in the last week and has now reached 114 signatures. It is now the 8th-most-signed EDM of this session of Parliament (and has risen…
Severn Barrage
The Severn Estuary has the second largest tidal reach in the world. The gravitational pull of the moon causes huge amounts of water to flow in and out of the estuary twice a day. If only we could tap that power in some way… Tidal power is infinitely renewable. It’s a bit like wind…
Talking
I’m looking forward to talking to the Cambridgeshire Bird Club this evening. Don’t go to St John’s College – lovely place, but not where I am speaking (click here for location). And if you’d like a signed copy of Fighting for Birds then I’ll be happy to sell you one for 1p less than 13…
Maybe not the biggest surprise ever…
Yesterday’s Today programme (at around 0639 and 0812) disclosed that high lead levels can make us more aggressive. We know that ‘Lead damages the brain’ and ‘this is why there is a drive to keep lead levels very low and to keep lead levels in children particularly low’. Hmmm. Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Another…