Burning of moorland, particularly the newly-invented ‘restoration burning’ of blanket bogs will feature on Countryfile this evening. The observations of burning of blanket bogs featured on this blog formed part of the dossier that was used by Guy Shrubsole and others and which will, I’m guessing, feature in the programme. The blurb for the programme…
Category: Climate
Warm words on burning
Natural England has issued a position statement on burning of blanket bogs – the position is basically ‘Don’t!’. We understand that the serial blanket bog burners in the uplands are less than chuffed by actually being told what they can and can’t do. We can’t see any comment from the Moorland Association on this subject…
You support the youth climate ‘strike’.
Hardly surprising for readers of this blog but an overwhelming majority of you support those young people who walked out of school to protest over climate inaction; of 341 respondents, 95.6% (326) support the ‘strike’ and 4.4% (15) do not. The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson was reported as saying, rather unwisely I thought; Everybody wants…
School strike over climate
I have great admiration for those young people walking out of school today to protest about inaction on climate change. I wish I could go back to school to walk out with them! The hashtags #climatestrike #YouthForClimate #FridaysForFuture and #schoolstrike4climate will get you to posts about it on social media. Our schools must, these days, promote…
Deep peat burning
Conder Head back in October 2018 This fire on the Abbeystead Estate’s Conder Head back in October has interested me. Is it on blanket bog? Apparently not. Is it on deep peat? Apparently so – see below a reply I received today. Well, we got there in the end. Natural England/Defra appear to be happy…
Smoke and mirrors from Defra/NE
This post exposes the worthlessness of Defra’s/NE’s formal agreements with grouse moor managers in the matter of burning of vegetation of blanket bogs. Introduction: Grouse moor managers want to burn our uplands to blazes in order to maximise the habitat quality for Red Grouse – the shooting of which can be sold at high prices…
Sunday book review – Climate Change and British Wildlife by Trevor Beebee
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This is an appropriately weighty book on a portentous subject. It is very attractively produced with many photographs of wildlife, habitats and people and a fine looking jacket by Carry Akroyd (although the jacket on my copy is slightly ill-fitting). The index is very good but the reference list is rather shorter than I expected….
Wuthering Moors 76 – more moor burning
Michael Gove has asked moorland owners to be good boys (and girls – although all the landowners in the room at the time were actually men) and to stop damaging blanket bogs through burning them. Burning is carried out so that men (and a few women) can shoot lots of Red Grouse for fun as…
Climate change and birds revisited
Last week I was thinking a bit about climate change and birds and thought I’d had a good idea. And I had had a good idea – it’s just that others had had it too and published a paper on it two years ago! The good idea was to look at the ‘envisaged potential’ bird…
Climate and UK birds
The focus on climate change in the SUKB report published today is a very useful stock-check. It has prompted me to go back and look at one of my ‘favourite’ books, published 10 years ago, A Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds by Rhys Green of the RSPB and Brian Huntley, Yvonne Collingham and Stephen…