Stuart Housden writes: On 21st April 1945, seventy years ago, Derek Ratcliffe climbed to his first peregrine’s nest in the north Pennines. He was then a schoolboy at Carlisle Grammar School, but described that day in his memoir In Search of Nature as his ‘red letter day’. In fact, he was almost killed, as the…
Category: BLOGS by guest authors
Guest blog – In favour of the EU by Richard Wilson
Richard Wilson is an independent professional ecologist with more than 15 years experience. When in the field, he specialises in avian and invertebrate ecology, with a smattering of botanical surveying thrown in for good measure. His background as a consultant has led to a keen interest in EU and UK law in the context of…
Guest blog – The case against the EU by Richard Wayre
After twenty-some years pursuing a career in marketing and management consultancy I jumped ship and returned to academia, initially to study Countryside Management and then moving on to read for a degree in Ecology. The marriage of my old world and new is not a comfortable one. From the dual perspectives of environment and economy,…
Guest blog – Food security by Roderick Leslie
Although I worked as a forester I actually studied Agricultural & Forest Science under the great agricultural educationalist Mike Soper. Even back in the 70s I remember the question ‘where does it all end?’ was being asked – the risks of flash-over resistance to antibiotics from pigs to humans as a result of them being…
Guest Blog – To protect the environment, the UK must stay in the EU by Stephen Tindale
Stephen Tindale (@STindale) is a Research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform (www.cer.org.uk). His policy brief on the green benefits of Britain’s EU membership is at http://www.cer.org.uk/publications/archive/policy-brief/2014/green-benefits-britains-eu-membership Europe will be an issue in May’s General Election. Nigel Farage will make sure of that. Whatever you think of UKIP’s policy proposals, (I think they’re appalling),…
Guest blog – Snail Trail by James Harding-Morris
James Harding-Morris is a primary school teacher who currently works as the Schools’ Project Coordinator for the RSPB. Despite having no qualifications in conservation, ecology or similar, he persists in spending his days getting over-excited about wildlife and trying to encourage other people to feel the same. He can found on Twitter @UKSnailTrail. I…
Guest blog – SWAFH by Rodney Hale
I was brought up in a family of farmers and bloodsports enthusiasts – that is with the exception of my mother who nearly left my father when he returned home from a shooting trip with his car covered in blood. Had she done so I might not have been sitting here now. I have vivid…
Guest blog – Where green objectives clash by Peter Marren
Peter Marren is the first person to have their third Guest Blog on this site (see here and here for his previous Guest Blogs). Peter used to work for an excellent organisation called the Nature Conservancy Council (who remembers them? – and yes we didn’t always think they were excellent at the time but how…
The potential extinction of a not so horrid spider
Vanessa Amaral-Rogers is the Campaigns Officer for Buglife. After finishing her Masters in Conservation Biology at the University of Derby on bat ecology, she now works on science communications, legislation, pesticides and pollinators. In a quarry in the South-West of England, a small spider lurks. The Horrid ground weaver (Nothophantes…
Guest blog by Hugh Webster: response to Tim Bidie
Mark writes; this was originally posted as a comment on yesterday’s Guest Blog by Tim Bidie but it seemed so good to me (and so long) that it might be better to publish it this way. Hugh Webster is a a biology teacher with a PhD in Behavioural Ecology, earned studying competition between large…