You have to smile a little at the enthusiasm with which the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph (not online) trumpet the problems caused by ‘alien’ species. The ‘battle to stop foreign invaders killing off native British wildlife’ is costing £1.7bn a year apparently, including £70m to get rid of Japanese Knotweed ahead of the Olympics….
Category: Uncategorized
Whales, spiders and viruses
931 people took part in this 4-question poll (and lots of you emailed me about it too). It was all about choices – if you could save a species, which species would you save? You were put in a position where ‘all of them’ wasn’t a possible answer and so, perhaps, our choices (because mine…
Just crumbs
I was pleased to see that there is some evidence, from the BTO, that the decline of urban House Sparrows has stopped, paused or slowed. Let’s hope that the House Sparrow is on the up again. This is what I wrote about it for The Independent.
Blackberry makes $1bn loss!
Blackberries are quite late in ripening this year. But with a little effort, you can still pick an ice-cream container full in half an hour. And they still taste yummy in blackberry and apple pie. What’s all the fuss about? …
Four questions on extinction
Blue Whale: “Mike” Michael L. Baird CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) via Wikimedia Commons Smallpox Virus: PhD Dre at en.wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] via Wikimedia Commons Parachute Spider: Zoological Survey of India CC-BY- SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses /by-sa/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons This is just for…
You readers
This rather wiggly table (sorry about that – I’ve spent ages trying to get it to look perfect and failed!) shows you the number of unique visitors to this website in each of the last 12 months and in August 2012 and 2011 (for comparison). VISITORS AUG 2011 1918 AUG 2012 4909 SEP 5816 OCT 7179 NOV 7660 DEC 8123…
Plastic environmentalists
I attended many political party conferences in a former life and I got to grow to enjoy them. Moving from the LibDems to Labour to Conservative conferences became part of the autumn scene. There were individual members of every party with whom one could have sensible and constructive conversations about nature and the environment but…
Silly biofools!
MEPs voted for a 6% cap on food-based biofuels yesterday. It could be worse (it always could) but it should be an awful lot better. Action Aid report. RSPB report. EEB report. BBC report. Business green report. Thomson Reuters report. EU Observer report. I am amazed that in this world when things are speeding up…
Binoculars
I would be very surprised if readers of this blog have been worrying about the fate of my binoculars since I dropped them on the concrete outside a motel at Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, on 23 June. A few days later (28 June to be precise) I took them into Hawkins in Northampton to see…
Biofuels – a burning question
Please do this today: ask your MEP to vote for the lowest possible limit on the addition of biofuels to transport fuels by clicking here and supporting Action Aid’s campaign. There is a vote tomorrow where MEPs will be asked to decide whether to limit biofuels to 5.5% or 6.5% of transport fuel volumes. The…