The Home Office will provide specific funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit of £136,000 for 2013-14. This is good news. And some of the credit must go to all those who contacted their MPs on this issue. And some credit must go to those MPs who responded by signing EDM 603 and by raising…
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Rainham Marshes – Allsorts.
I had the chance to pop in to the RSPB nature reserve at Rainham Marshes on Friday – so I took it! Just off the M25 on the north bank of the Thames, a rural idyll this isn’t. And that’s part of the attraction. I made my way, by car, past Purfleet station where I…
Severn Barrage
The Severn Estuary has the second largest tidal reach in the world. The gravitational pull of the moon causes huge amounts of water to flow in and out of the estuary twice a day. If only we could tap that power in some way… Tidal power is infinitely renewable. It’s a bit like wind…
Maybe not the biggest surprise ever…
Yesterday’s Today programme (at around 0639 and 0812) disclosed that high lead levels can make us more aggressive. We know that ‘Lead damages the brain’ and ‘this is why there is a drive to keep lead levels very low and to keep lead levels in children particularly low’. Hmmm. Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Another…
I’m looking forward to this…
The second installment of the new BBC1 wildlife series on Africa is this evening at 9pm. Was it just me who found the first episode amazing, enchanting, uplifting and intriguing? Fighting giraffes, cunning little drongos, rhinos at night, leopards up trees, ostriches and more and more and more. I watched some of the repeat on…
Early Day Motion 603 – please help protect the National Wildlife Crime Unit
Red kites are ‘eating up lots of larks’ according to ‘real countryman’ Clive Aslet and our species has to intervene. But at least the Countryside Alliance admits, when faced with the evidence of an almost complete lack of breeding hen harriers in England, and Bowland Betty’s shooting in northern England, that the odd case of…
Parked at the ‘mid-term’ with no sign of any LibDem drive
The coalition mid-term review hardly mentions the environment in any meaningful way. There are a few poor jokes – the two mentions of ‘greenest government ever’, the promise to protect the marine environment with protected areas, the continuing obsession with a badger cull rather than control of bovine TB and closing an ash door after…
Problem with site corrected – I believe
If you have visited my website recently and encountered some information about V****a on it then I’m sorry about that but the site was temporarily hacked. I don’t think this lasted for more than a few hours, and I know that only a small number of users during the relevant period even noticed it (I…
Painless giving
I mentioned Give as you Live in a blog before Christmas and it still seems like a very easy way to raise money for charity. If I download ‘something’ while I am shopping online (don’t ask me how it works – I just click) then my chosen charity (which happens to be the RSPB) gets…
To do
This morning’s blog has attracted lots of comments – as raptor-related blogs almost always do. If you feel strongly about this issue then why not write to your MP about it. There is an excellent letter in the comments to this morning’s blog (by MK) to his (her? I suspect his) MP Alistair Burt (who…