I read on Raptor Persecution UK today that the Scottish Government is going to say something about the Werritty report tomorrow afternoon – good. After all this time of setting up the group, writing the report, publishing it and then reading it, we need to see some action on the subject in Scotland. I’m quite…
Category: THE POLITICS: Ministers, MPs, government policy
What a contrast
What a contrast between this image from the Peak District NP in Bob Berzins’s latest blog; …and this image of a potential future for Exmoor NP from Lee Schofield’s guest blog of yesterday; …and what a shame that the Glover report failed at all adequately to address the choice facing our National Parks and AONBs….
Westminster Hall debate on moorland burning scheduled for Wednesday
Thought to be 16:30-17:30 – it will be interesting to see which backbench MPs show up. More details when I know them.
News: English general licences, for 2021, published – and they are different
DEFRA has just published the general licences for England for 2021 (helpfully alongside the existing licences which expire on 31 December 2020 so that one can compare and contrast). Click here for ‘conservation’ licences. Click here for serious damage licences. Click here for safety licences. I’m reading them, as are the Wild Justice lawyers.
USA moves towards a Biden presidency?
I am very fond of the USA and of individual US citizens who, as a rule, on their home turf, I have found to be wonderful hosts and friendly people. But they do elections in a strange way, don’t they? The matter of selecting a President appears, as far as votes counted are concerned, to…
Waiting, waiting, waiting…
One does wonder what the Scottish government is waiting for – surely it has made up its mind on the Werritty report. Why dither any longer? But the words in this recent response to correspondence do look vaguely promising.
New General Licences coming soon?
Last year DEFRA carried out a consultation on general licences in England – this was forced by the successful Wild Justice legal challenge of the Natural England general licences. Over 4,000 responses were received , which is quite a lot, but not so many as to justify such a long wait for any decisions from…
DEFRA begins to reply
In response to the e-action organised by Wild Justice, Hen Harrier Action and the RSPB, voters in England are beginning to receive, via their MPs, responses from DEFRA. Having given DEFRA the opportunity to impress us all with their grasp of the subject and their fast pace of policy action these responses are very similar…
UK Biodiversity Indicators (4)
Following three earlier blog posts today (here, here and here). This is a quite spectacular graph showing the decline in public sector biodiversity spend in the UK over the last decade or so. There has been a steady increase in expenditure by NGOs but not enough to fill the spending gap left by our taxes…
UK Biodiversity Indicators (2)
Following on from an earlier blog. Maybe we’ve decided that once-common birds that live on farmland don’t matter to us any more (but if we have, when did that happen and I’m not signed up to that view) but we must care about the best places for wildlife and priority species – surely? So let’s…