I read a lot of words (and I write quite a few too). I try to take care to understand what the writer intended me to think so I read the words, think about them, and put together in my head what the passages mean. I’m also long-practiced in reading words from government departments and…
Category: FARMING
Greg and Janis Thoren to Receive Illinois Leopold Conservation Award
Greg and Janis Thoren are the recipients of the 2026 Illinois Leopold Conservation Award®. The award honors farmers and forestland owners who go above and beyond in the management of soil health, water quality, and wildlife habitat on working land. The Thorens, who raise crops and cattle near Stockton in Jo Daviess County, will receive…
RSPB report on farming
The RSPB sets out vision for how farming can help save nature In a brand-new report, published at this week’s Oxford Farming Conference, the RSPB sets out how farming can help reverse wildlife declines. The RSPB calls on governments to make three key steps to support farmers in making this transition, as well as detailing how…
Sunday book review – Ghosts of the Farm by Nicola Chester
Nicola Chester writes superbly well and has a close relationship with the natural world. This book takes the area around the author’s home, and where she grew up, and travels back to the 1940s, war time, to describe the rural community then. Much of the detail comes from the diaries of a woman farmer and…
Sunday book review – Words from the Hedge by Richard Negus
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I’ve been looking forward to reading this book and that feeling was justified by the pleasure it gave me. Most of the pleasure was because this is a well-written book by someone who seems to be an interesting man with whom I’d be very happy to share a few pints at some stage. He is…
RSPB press release – Stone-curlews
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Projects working with farmers to bring endangered bird back from the brink celebrate over double the number of Stone-curlew thanks to 40 years of effort Two projects working to benefit Stone-curlew, a threatened and unique looking bird, are celebrating their 40th anniversaries, with the population now having more than doubled in size since a nationwide population…
Sunday book review – The Farming for Nature Handbook
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This book is published in Ireland but it looks to me that there is much of value and interest in it to many farmers in the UK. This impression is reinforced by favourable comments from some Brits including the suggestion from Martin Lines, CEO of Nature Friendly Farming UK, that all farmers should have this…
Poor response from Rebecca Pow – the Minister ‘responsible’
The Westminster government is a busted flush – it does not do the big things right and cannot even do the small things. I wrote to my MP, Tom Pursglove, on 19 January – click here – to enquire about lack of progress by government on five straightforward matters on which simple government action is…
Guest blog – Times are a changing by Ian Parsons
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Ian Parsons spent twenty years as a ranger. He now writes books and articles on wildlife. He has contributed many articles to this blog. His book A Vulture Landscape was published by Whittles Publishing in 2020, this was followed by Seasonality in 2022. His new book, Of the Trees and the Birds is now available…
Guest blog – Creating Shrike Shrublands by Steve Jones
Steve Jones (stevecjones.uk) has worked in UK and international conservation for nearing three decades. He’s unusually fond of shrikes. In fact, he’s written a short book about how to create ’Shrike Shrublands’ in the UK (click here). Here, he summarises how we might go about creating species-rich grassland-shrubland mosaics. Twitter: @SteveCJJones ‘Scrub’ has…