Here is the full response which I have received from Natural England in response to my request for information about the ‘Walshaw Moor Affair’ (see 15 previous blogs, all tagged with ‘wuthering’, the first of which is listed here). I will comment on this later in the week. But there are some very interesting passages…
Tag: agri-environment schemes
Fair enough Minister
On Monday I did an interview for the BBC Farming Today programme, with the NFU’s Guy Smith. If you want to listen to that interview you can but you won’t learn anything new from it as the NFU is still in denial over the loss of farmland wildlife and the role that farming has played…
Guest blog – It isn’t easy being a wildlife-friendly farmer by David Fursdon
David Fursdon is a farmer and landowner in Devon. He chairs the newly formed SW Rural and Farming Network and the established SW Chamber of Rural Enterprise. He is a Commissioner of both English Heritage and the Crown Estate and a former President of the CLA. Experiencing wildlife is one of the privileges of living…
A farmer writes
Last week I received this letter from a farmer and I’m grateful to him for permission to publish it here along with my reply to him. Dear Dr Avery I have read articles and letters from you from time to time particularly in Farmers Weekly. We have a small farm of about 150 acres of…
Between a rock bunting and a hard place
I had a short piece in the Farmers Weekly this week and you can read it here. But have a look at the image that FW has chosen to go with the article – a nice bunting. But wait a minute – that’s not a yellowhammer or a reed bunting, and it’s certainly not a…
Wuthering moors 6
I am very grateful to Natural England (that’s @NaturalEngland for those of you on Twitter, where you can find me as @MarkAvery) for sending me details of the Walshaw Moor management agreement. They were clearly eager that I read it, so I have, and so can you here. What do you think of it? I’d…
Wuthering moors 2
Last Wednesday all Natural England staff received an email entitled Natural England’s work in the uplands. It tried to explain why NE’s Chair, Poul Christensen, had been reported as saying that NE’s Vital Uplands document had ‘let his organisation down badly’. Because not everyone agreed with the NE vision, which you may have noticed was…
NIAs again
Nature is everywhere, it’s all around us and it is in trouble in many places around us. When government was looking for areas to qualify as Nature Improvement Areas it had plenty of places from which to choose – 76 proposals came forward for the £7.5m funding that was available for just 12 sites. Those…
Letter from Defra
I am grateful to Defra Minister Richard Benyon for this reply to a letter which my MP, Louise Mensch, sent to him on 15 December concerning implementation of the EU Birds Directive. The letter asked about farmland birds, hen harriers and marine protected areas. The Minister’s civil servants have written him quite a detailed reply…
It’s mad!
Yesterday’s blog suggested a different way of paying by results for success in agri-environment schemes – regional top-ups for participating farmers if the regional farmland bird index rises. It’s a tricky thing to administer, perhaps, but it is essentially a good idea (in my humble opinion). This month’s copy of The Field – with an…