The environmental content of David Cameron’s Conference speech

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Guest post on Friday – Peter Marren

Peter Marren will be the guest blogger here on Friday – commenting on the discussion that has sprung up here since he dropped a pebble in the wildlife NGO pond with his article in The Indpendent newspaper. And the offer is open to the Chief Executives of any and all of the wildlife NGOs to…

Chancellor mentions environment shock!

George Osborne felt confident enough to say it as he saw it at the Tory party conference yesterday. “Yes, climate change is a man made disaster. Yes, we need international agreement to stop it. Yes, we must have investment in greener energy. And that’s why I gave the go ahead to the world’s first Green…

Planning for wildlife

It was good to see this story in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday.  The RSPB have a legal opinion from Nathalie Lieven QC, the environmental barrister, who has “ no doubt the draft NPPF lessens the policy protection for SSSIs”. I wrote in comments on this blog on 9 September the following: ‘Although European designations…

Never seen that before

Last weekend I revisited one of the haunts of my youth – a place called Steart or Stert.  And I’m going with Stert as I’ve always known it as ‘Sturt’ rather than ‘Steert’. As spotty teenagers at Bristol Grammar School we would, under the guardianship of masters  Derek Lucas and Tony Warren, make two autumn…

Veggie

Today is world vegetarian day.  Will that make a difference to you? I’ll be vegetarian today even though I am not vegetarian. But I am sticking to my self-imposed regime of four vegetarian days a week – and this year I think I am averaging closer to five rather than four. Why?  Well the reason…

Ecocide

Today I am hoping to attend an event in London’s Supreme Court where there will be a mock trial for ecocide – a proposed new ‘crime against humanity’ Isn’t it an interesting idea – that a company or perhaps a government could be put on trial for destroying the natural environment? But wouldn’t we all…

Not too reserved

The latest annual RSPB reserve report is out – with a very attractive black guillemot on the cover. Right up front, the first article, is an account of the numbers of various bird species on RSPB nature reserves in 2010 and their target populations in 2012 – the year when this RSPB nature reserve conservation…

Untangling the tangled bank – 3

I am now a proud member of Buglife – why don’t you join too? I am going to write mainly about closer collaborative working in this blog but I do want to put in a word for mergers before I do that. Let’s take some of the smaller wildlife conservation organisations as examples.  Let’s imagine…

Untangling the tangled bank – 2

There are some great comments on yesterday’s blog – do have another look at them if you first read the blog yesterday morning. One aspect of the work of wildlife conservation NGOs which needs considering is that of devolution.  These days, and it’s been true for quite a while, decisions on most (not quite all)…