A new GB Red List for vascular plants has just been published – click here, providing a comprehensive revision of the previous (2005) list. Red Lists use internationally recognised criteria to assess threat status, and are crucial in providing the evidence which underpins nature conservation and helps prioritise future action. Of the 1,720 species evaluated…
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Wings Across the Atlantic
This is my latest book: Wings Across the Atlantic: a year in the life of two old birders. About Wings Across the Atlantic It is essentially a re-run of the book, Birds of a Feather by Colin Rees and Derek Thomas (see my review – click here) 11 years later with Colin based in Maryland,…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 13 by Nick MacKinnon
Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won…
Guest blog – Blanket bogs and windfarms by Jenny Shepherd
New petition to amend Planning and Infrastructure Bill and protect irreplaceable blanket bog from big onshore wind farms A new parliamentary petition, launched a fortnight ago, calls for amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that will ban windfarms on protected peatland in England – click here. The difference from the previous petition to ban…
Press release – Large landowners in Scotland may need to plan for biodiversity gain by Scottish Rewilding Alliance
New law says large landowners in Scotland need to set out biodiversity plans, in ‘big step towards a Rewilding Nation’ Yesterday MSPs in the Scottish Parliament voted to create a law obliging the owners of large landholdings to publish plans on how they will increase biodiversity, as part of the new Land Reform Bill –…
On (but not on) Walshaw Moor
If there were a fan club for Walshaw Moor then I’d be a member, despite never having set foot on it. I have passed it on the roads, stopped and looked at it, been glared at by its gamekeepers and spoken about it in meetings in both Hebden Bridge and Haworth and even won a…
Beavers released in Glen Affric 400 years after extinction in Scotland
Beavers released in Glen Affric 400 years after extinction in Scotland A family of five beavers and a beaver pair have been released at two sites on Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin in the Glen Affric National Nature Reserve in the northwest Highlands. The beavers were relocated under licence from agricultural land in Tayside to an…
RSPB press release – Cow retirement communities helping to save vultures from extinction
The RSPB, working with Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN) and Renewable World, has launched a new programme in Nepal to help some of the world’s most endangered vultures while also improving local livelihoods by using such comprehensive approaches as ‘cow retirement communities’ and boosting local dairy industries. With funding from the Darwin Initiative, the programme –…
RSPB press release – Slithering success for UK’s most secretive snake
Slithering success for UK’s most secretive snake The Smooth Snake is the UK’s rarest native reptile, found only on dry heathlands in southern England and restricted to sites in Dorset, Hampshire and Surrey. Reintroductions to restore the historic range of Smooth Snakes includes a site in Devon where the RSPB, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC)…
The badly valued uplands
It wouldn’t be true to say that the following was the talk I delivered at a conference in Sheffield on 1 October, but this is a close approximation to what I wanted to get across. Some of it is also in my book Reflections, some was in the Manifesto for Wildlife of 2018 and some…