Lifetime bird watcher and over 60 years an RSPB member, Dick Newell, retired from the software industry, now devotes time to devising ways to help Swifts, which led recently to the BTO giving a Marsh Award for Innovative Ornithology to Action for Swifts. actionforswifts.blogspot.com documents a large number of case studies, designs and ideas …
Category: BLOGS by guest authors
Guest blog – Disturbing conservation by Ian Parsons
Ian Parsons spent twenty years working as a Ranger with the Forestry Commission, where he not only worked with birds of prey and dormice, but where he developed his passion for trees (see his previous guest blog). Now a freelance writer, Ian runs his own specialist bird tour company leading tours to Extremadura. For more…
Guest blog – On natural beauty, a cautionary tale by Andrew Painting.
Andrew Painting, 27, is an ecologist working in the Scottish highlands. He studies human/environment relations at Aberdeen University, and occasionally writes about environmental issues. Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life Oscar Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying‘ A few days ago I was out on the moor and I saw an exquisite little…
Guest blog – Bag Charge by Janice Hume
Janice writes: I am a bookseller by trade, currently manager of a branch of Waterstones. My passion for books is more than matched by my passion for wildlife and wild places. Bag charge It’s a year since the Government imposed a small charge on single use plastic bags and in my experience on the…
Guest blog – Saving Loughs Neagh and Beg by Chris Murphy
Chris Murphy has lived in Northern Ireland since arriving on the ferry from Liverpool in 1984 as the RSPB’s first, and last, Assistant Regional Officer. Together with his German wife, Doris, he’s known to shout HALT! when special places are threatened like the Belfast Harbour Pools and the Bog Meadows – once zoned for development,…
Guest blog – Otters by Kevin Parr
Kevin Parr is a writer, angler and amateur naturalist from West Dorset. He is the author of Rivers Run, The Idle Angler and The Twitch (which was this blog’s book of the year in 2014) and writes regularly for a variety of publications including BBC CountryFile Magazine and Fallon’s angler. …
Guest blog – What now for Beavers in the UK? by Jonny Hughes
Jonny Hughes is CEO of the Scottish Wildlife Trust and a global councillor for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Twitter: @jonnyecology What now for Beavers in the UK? It’s been an up and down kind of year for nature in the UK. The State of Nature report…
Guest blog – What we do at Knepp by Charlie Burrell
Charlie Burrell inherited Knepp Estate, a 3,500 acre dairy and arable farm in West Sussex in the 1980s. After farming intensively and unprofitably on the heavy clay for 17 years, in 2000 he embarked on a rewilding project based on a system of naturalistic grazing. It is the largest such project in lowland Britain…
Guest blog – Disturbing for Nature by Miles King
Miles King is Chief Executive of People Need Nature a new 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…
Guest blog – Looking for the wild in rewilding by Steven Robinson
Steven writes: I occasionally post comments on Mark’s blog as Apus Apus. This is my second guest blog (the first was “The taming of nature”) and this time I have written about rewilding and what it means to me. If you’re reading this, I hope you’re interested in rewilding and its ability to transform…