This blog has learned that the Chancellor, George Osborne, will announce in the autumn statement today that there will be a review of the Habitat’s Directive’s regulations. This, if true (and we will wait to hear the details today) is the latest sign that this government – including the hapless Liberal Democrats – is prepared…
Category: Uncategorized
Wood for the trees?
Yesterday Plantlife published a report on the future of British woodland. Rather than focus primarily on who owns ‘our’ woods Plantlife put a spotlight on woodland management. ‘More trees do not equal more wildlife‘ says Andy Byfield, Plantlife’s Landscape Conservation Manager. ‘From the point of view of our woodland wildlife, it is what we do…
Send a message to the Westminster government on raptor persecution please.
Please sign this e-petition and pass it on to others. It’s just over 1000 signatures as I post this.
A tonic for gin bush
As a kid in the mid 1960s, Sunday mornings would consist of going to church and then coming home to a roast lunch whose delicious smells filled the house while Desert Island Discs, with its originator Roy Plumley, played on the wireless before we sat down to eat. My father would have on his suit,…
Indulgence
I’ve been rushing about and don’t quite have time to write a proper blog today – plenty more coming in the next few days though! – and you did get two blogs on Tuesday, so please indulge me when I just post most of an email that a reader of this blog sent to me:…
Spoonies
The spoon-billed sandpiper is one of the most gorgeous birds on the planet – and also one of the most threatened. With probably only a few hundred pairs surviving and their numbers thought to be decreasing each year it is a bird destined for extinction in the wild – perhaps. ‘Perhaps’ because the Wildfowl and…
Only a wasp
I went racing at Cheltenham on Friday, on what is called ‘Countryside Day’. My drive across the Cotswolds, often very beautiful at this time of year, was so misty that the autumn colours weren’t showing well at all. As I passed over the railway at Adlestrop I remembered Edward Thomas’s poem but this was no…
Movember
Comments Off on Movember
A valued colleague and friend at the RSPB, Gwyn Williams, is raising money by looking foolish. Please give him some dosh for charity. It’s so good to see Gwyn looking fit and well after his treatment for prostate cancer last year.
Church leaders
Have you read the report of the St Pauls’s Institute on Value and values? I bet you haven’t, even though it has been in the news quite a lot. Archbisop Rowan Williams’s foreword contains the following words; An ethical approach to economics requires us to move away from the illusion that economics can be considered…
Are you S or D?
Martin Harper wrote an interesting blog last week about S-type conservationists and D-type conservationists. Which are you? The gist (you should read the original to check the details – and read some interesting comments) is that there are conservationists (S for supply) who act for nature in its own right through direct nature conservation action…