I’ve been looking at the proofs of my first article for a well-known and excellent birding magazine. My first column as the Political Birder will appear soon. But where and when? Watch this space…. And I think that a reader called CaperKylie wins the prize (there is no prize) for the most amusing merger suggestion…
BLOG POSTS
What’s happening in the NGO family?
Everybody seems to be talking about NGOs this week – last week government was shouting at them! Greenpeace is 40 this week . WWF is 50 this week. The late, great, Sir Peter Scott who founded the Wildfowl Trust, now Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, and had a lot to do with setting up the WWF…
Sparing the Dogger Bank
This blog brings together information and ideas from several previous blogs. A long time ago, in another life, I wrote this blog about data loggers and kittiwakes heading from Bempton cliffs to the Dogger Bank. It’s a long way to go if you are a little kittiwake – 150km of sea to cross to get…
Are all Americans stupid?
I am, of course, only referring to American bird species. I ask the question because of a conversation I had back at the Bird Fair but first let me tell you about the Carolina parakeet. The Carolina parakeet was a native north American parrot that was widespread in the east of the USA when the…
Sharing or sparing?
A couple of my mates, and a couple of people I don’t know, have recently produced a paper in Science – the US-based not-quite-so-good version of Nature. They look at two versions of land-use and ask which is best as in the title of this blog. Starting from the point that we may soon have…
I’ll be Doggered now I know a bit…
Many thanks to Amanda in the Defra Press Office for the following answers to my questions: Does the Dogger Bank have any extra protection already? On 26th August Dogger Bank was put forward to the European Commission to be selected as a candidate Special Area of Conservation. Under Article 6(2) of the Habitats Directive there…
Do you trust them?
It’s all getting quite heated out there. And so it should – although it always looks bad if the government Ministers are the ones losing their tempers whilst the environmental campaigners are cool, calm and collected. But it’s not surprising, because the government is in a worse place over planning reform than it was over…
I’ll be Doggered if I know…(3)
I phoned the Defra Press Office today, and I now have more faith that someone will get back to me – but they haven’t yet.
I’ll be Doggered if I know (2)…
I phoned the Defra Press Office on Monday and they said they’d get back to me. I phoned the Defra Press Office on Tuesday and they said they’d get back to me. I phoned the Defra Press Office on Wednesday and they said they’d get back to me. All I want is the details of…
An interesting event – of some significance?
Those readers of this blog who are also signed up to my monthly newsblast will have read that I have quite kind thoughts about the content of the England Biodiversity Strategy – except that there may be too little money to implement it. But I noticed that a group of wildlife NGOs – the RSPB,…