Losing what we love: England’s planning system is destroying nature piece by piece Between 2009 and 2020, local authorities in England published an average of 422,000 planning decisions per year, of which about 85% granted planning approval. Of the 98 Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects applications, only four have been refused and one partially refused. A…
Category: THE WILDLIFE NGOs – RSPB, Wildlife Trusts Wild Justice, BSBI etc
Did you do a BGBW last weekend?
I counted birds in my garden for an hour last Sunday – as usual. Numbers were a bit lower than usual and Chaffinch and Greenfinch didn’t turn up at all. There have been very few Greenfinches around this year and my only garden records for 2022 are a few fly-overs. House Sparrow numbers were low…
Press release – Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust and the future of the Birdfair
Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust regret to announce that they will no longer run the annual Rutland Water Birdfair Over the past 31 years, Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust (LRWT), supported by our hardworking staff, volunteers and members, has been proud to run Birdfair, the foremost and internationally-renowned bird-watching, wildlife and conservation event. Working with…
RSPB press release
New report reveals huge declines in Europe’s birds New data suggests around 600 million breeding birds have been lost in the EU and UK since 1980 A significant proportion of these losses are as a result of massive decreases in the more common and abundant bird species The largest drop in population is seen in…
Press release – Argaty Red Kites/Beaver Trust
Argaty Red Kites granted beaver translocation licence In a significant policy step, Argaty Red Kites in Perthshire has been granted Scotland’s first edge-of-range beaver translocation licence. Argaty, a working farm which is home to the award-winning red kite project, has been awarded a licence by the Scottish Government’s nature agency NatureScot for the release of…
Latest Wild Justice legal challenge and crowdfunder
The Northern Ireland authorities license the unrestricted killing of Wood Pigeons and Rooks for conservtion purposes, unlike authorities elsewhere in the UK. They don’t explain why they do this or what the conservation benefits might be. In well ovr 30 years working in nature conservation I’ve never come across an instance where conservation has been…
World Land Trust seeks two new trustees
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The World Land Trust is looking for two new trustees – might one of them be you?
Changes in the NGO world
Plantlife is one of my favourite small wildlife conservation charities and over many years I’ve worked with them and in the last decade done a few bits of work for them. And to be fair, in the past I’ve pinched a couple of their staff to come and work at the RSPB. There seems to…
Some small but significant bright spots in a landscape of gloom
The new BirdLife International red list of European birds is worth a long and detailed read – at first glance it seems to be a tale of woe with a few bright patches. So that seems quite accurate. But the fact that the bright patches are the result of conservation action gives us all hope….
Roy Dennis gets RSPB Medal
Roy Dennis is this year’s recipient of the RSPB Medal – an award which is given to those who make a very significant contribution to nature conservation. Previous recipients have included David Attenborough, John Gummer, Chris Mead, Michael McCarthy, Dick Potts, Ian Newton, Robert Gillmor and the BTO/SOC/BWI team who produced the last Breeding Bird…