Category: Farming

This afternoon the Wild Justice petition calling for an end to Badger shooting will be ‘debated’ in Westminster Hall by backbench MPs and will receive statements from Shadow and actual DEFRA ministers. No doubt the debate will wander all over the place with MPs spouting quite a lot of nonsense that makes them look foolish…

This blog is slightly about last week’s ‘announcement’ on new farming schemes in England that was made at the Oxford Farming Conference, but actually it is rather more about what people said about it. It’s more a listeners’ guide to what was said, than about what’s actually happening. The reason for that is partly because…

Two decades of nature friendly farming see bird numbers soar more than ten times Nature-friendly farming practices have seen butterfly numbers quadruple, winter farmland bird numbers rise 1,200% and given a massive boost to bumblebees while turning a profit Farmland covers 75% of the UK making it vital in the fight to reverse nature’s decline…

Miles King is Chief Executive of People Need Nature a charity working to highlight the sensory, emotional and spiritual values of nature. He has worked in nature conservation for 30 years, leading the conservation work at Plantlife, The Grasslands Trust and Buglife. He has also worked for English Nature, Natural England and as a consultant….

I was back to my farmland site to do the February visit for the English Winter Farmland Bird Survey on Sunday. It was a sunny day – and actually warmer than some May early mornings when I have surveyed this square for the BBS. There was a lot of bird song and so it felt,…