It’s Saturday, and although I no longer have a local football team to support since the demise of the mighty Rushden and Diamonds (which has been made worse by the fact that Kettering now use ‘our’ Nene Park ground – although they do have the good grace to keep up their tradition of losing there)…
Category: THE WILDLIFE NGOs – RSPB, Wildlife Trusts Wild Justice, BSBI etc
NPPF – what do we want? And has Simon Jenkins shot the National Trust’s campaign in the foot?
This blog, prompted helpfully by reader Richard Wilson, attempted to spell out why the government’s proposed planning reforms are bad news for wildlife (click here but do read the comments as well as the blog). I don’t know how good a job I made of it but I haven’t found anything much better on the…
The tangled bank
This is quite a long blog – for you it’s a ‘cup of tea and two chocolate digestives’ blog, for me it was a ‘two glasses of Rioja’ blog. And I write of the subject covered by Peter Marren in his thought-provoking opinion piece in the Independent last week (and the news piece written by…
The mouse that roared
I bet my former colleague Simon Marsh had a bit of a busy day yesterday – and probably the day before too. The Daily Telegraph published an opinion piece by Simon telling of his disappointment in the way that the government’s planning reforms have turned out. Not much news there you might say as that…
What’s happening in the NGO family?
Everybody seems to be talking about NGOs this week – last week government was shouting at them! Greenpeace is 40 this week . WWF is 50 this week. The late, great, Sir Peter Scott who founded the Wildfowl Trust, now Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, and had a lot to do with setting up the WWF…
An interesting event – of some significance?
Those readers of this blog who are also signed up to my monthly newsblast will have read that I have quite kind thoughts about the content of the England Biodiversity Strategy – except that there may be too little money to implement it. But I noticed that a group of wildlife NGOs – the RSPB,…
Boomtime for bitterns
I’m delighted that the RSPB and Natural England have been able to announce that booming bitterns have passed the 100 mark – and reached 104 booming males in fact. Given that in 1997 (incidentally, the year before I became the RSPB’s Conservation Director) there were only 11 booming males this is a remarkable and very welcome recovery. And let’s…
Captive audience at RSPB Arne
Today I’ll be at the Bird Fair (come up and say hello – and perhaps buy a copy of Blogging for Nature from me) but last Thursday I was still on holiday in Dorset having not seen white-beaked dolphin and not seen Adonis blue butterfly. What would I not see next? Arne had already provided…
Raptor haters – an update
A reader of this blog contacted the Chair of the National Trust, Sir Simon Jenkins, over his apparent views on raptors as referred to in my blog on 9 July. And having been in contact with Sir Simon myself he writes ‘The piece was written before I had any link to the National Trust and certainly now…
A slightly dull report
Yesterday’s blog considered an interesting report by gamekeepers about the state of the countryside and today’s blog is about a slightly dull report by the BTO, RSPB and the JNCC about the state of breeding bird populations in the countryside. Yesterday’s report was based on a questionnaire survey whereas this one is based on tens…