Standing up for Nature
I spent Wednesday mostly thinking about ponds. This wasn’t just a reverie – I am a trustee of the excellent small conservation charity ‘Pond Conservation’. They certainly didn’t choose me because of my great knowledge of ponds, but I said ‘yes’ to Pond Conservation because I admire what they are doing, and at their AGM…
I recently received in the post my tickets for the CLA Game Fair. This year it is at Blenheim at the end of next week. The last time the Game Fair was at Blenheim the queues into the car park were horrendous so if you come next week, my advice is to set off early –…
The furthest you can get away from the sea in the UK is about 70 miles and it is up a hill in Derbyshire. I wonder what is the furthest place away from the countryside? I am guessing that it will be some point in central London – maybe the House of Commons itself? –…
The recent killing of a male hiker by a grizzly bear is the first such death in Yellowstone National Park for 25 years and seems to be a highly unfortunate case where walkers accidentally disturb a bear with young and the mother bear defends her cubs. A month ago I had my own close encounter…
The raptor haters is an occasional series of articles on people who slag off birds of prey. Sir Simon Jenkins is an amazingly gifted writer and obviously a very clever man. I love the way he writes and I read his articles for pleasure as well as for education. Back in May 2008, when the…
The worst drought in East Africa for 60 years is causing famine in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. Heart-rending images cross our TV screens as they have in previous years – do we react with action or by switching channels? The easier, but important, way to react is to send money to cope with the current…
Yesterday I paid a late morning visit to Fermyn Woods in east Northants. Mine was the 21st car parked on the grass verge on a small quiet road. Clearly others had the same idea, and a bit of time to spare. The stickers on the parked cars showed that there were plenty of birders there…
The raptor haters is an occasional series of articles on people who slag off birds of prey. Richard Ingrams finds red kites ‘menacing‘, ‘savage‘ and ‘unlikeable‘ and is ‘pleased to see a picture of a dead one‘. Every three years or so he dips his pen in poison and is really nasty about these magnificent…
It’s not simple to understand, it’s not a riveting read , but it is very important – it’s the EU Budget announcement! The overall budget goes up but CAP funding goes down. Fears, which were absolutely justified according to insiders, that the ‘good’ bits of the CAP, Pillar 2, would be hacked into, disproportionately hard,…
Rumours abound as to the outcome of the EU budget discussions. I’ve heard that all is lost, and that Pillar 2 funding has been successfully defended – they can’t both be true. We’ll see! I attended the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee meeting hearing evidence on the Natural Environment White Paper yesterday. Sign up…