November was very warm on our planet – 0.97°C above the twentieth century average and the warmest November on record. In the UK the highest night-time temperature record was broken and it looks like we might be heading towards a record December too. A couple of nights ago the lowest recorded night-time temperatutre across recording…
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British Wildlife – December edition
I look forward to British Wildlife dropping through the letterbox every couple of months. The December issue is well-timed to be well-read over the Christmas break. Peter Marren writes about the threat to the NHM garden (you read it here first?) and I write about the twelve days of Christmas. There is a letter from…
State of UK butterflies
On Tuesday afternoon I attended the launch of the latest ‘State of the UK’s Butterflies report‘ – an excellent report authored by Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. This is the fourth in a series of reports which charts the status of our butterflies every few years. More species are declining than…
Not Idle at all
I spoke at the Idle Valley Nature Reserve on Friday – I wasn’t idle at all. It was fun for me – I hope the audience enjoyed it too. It seemed that they did. Arriving early I was shown around parts of this massive nature reserve which is based on former mineral workings and has…
A good week
I ended the week feeling optimistic. I’m usually optimistic but I had a few down moments in the middle of the week. I’m not sure what the climate deal adds up to yet There are some quite optimistic views about it, but these things are a bit like George Osborne speeches – it’s best to…
Defra drowning not waving
George Monbiot pretty much nailed it on Monday – the approach to flooding in this country is woeful and relies on treating symptoms not the underlying illness. There was a great rush of political comment about the floods in the north of England, not just in Cumbria, which seemed to focus on how much money…
Trust
My December Birdwatch column nudges the National Trust towards doing a bit more for nature – after all it is a massive land owner with a massive membership. My case is not that the National Trust does nothing, nor that it does nothing of any value, but that it could, and should , be doing…
Government attacks your right to environmental justice
This blog has made occasional attempts to highlight the attacks by this government on access to environmental justice (eg Guest blog by Carol Day Fifty shades of Grayling, 14 March 2014 but also UK fails to provide citizens with access to environmental rights, 12 June 2015). These matters are terribly dull but terribly important. They…
Two days last week
I drove to Rainham Marshes to meet a friend for lunch and birding – both were good. We saw a very attractive Marsh Harrier with a cream crown and there were Blackwits and Golden Plover, and Pintail and Shovelerand Cetti’s Warbler and Stonechat too. And we moaned about the government, and a little about the…
Just go back and read the comments…
…on this Guest Blog by Prof Sir John Lawton about the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s plans for a visitor centre at Spurn Point. What a lot of comments – and most of them are against the idea. But most of the Likes/Dislikes are ‘Likes’ for the blog. I wonder how many of the ‘Likes’ are from…