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…

Many bits and pieces

Last week this blog passed its 2000th comment – which seems pretty good going.  I am pleased to see that regular commenter Dennis Ames provided that 2000th comment alongside 137 others over the months.  I do enjoy seeing all your comments- whether I agree with them or not – do keep them coming please. I…

You are directly affected, but Defra has forgotten you

Defra has started a consultation on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy – don’t panic, you have until 5 March to respond.  But Defra only wants views from those who may be affected by these proposals.  And that appears to mean English farmers, environmental groups, rural communities, non-governmental organisations and other interested parties.  But there…

A butterfly’s wing

December isn’t a great month for butterflies (but then November wasn’t a great month for nature as a whole), although, of course, they are all (apart from the painted ladies and red admirals) still out there as eggs or pupae or some other clever way of getting through the winter if you really want to…

A slightly dull report

Yesterday’s blog considered an interesting report by gamekeepers about the state of the countryside and today’s blog is about a slightly dull report by the BTO, RSPB and the JNCC about the state of breeding bird populations in the countryside.  Yesterday’s report was based on a questionnaire survey whereas this one is based on tens…