The home straight

You only have two weeks to join over 700 others in voting in the Nature of Harming ‘award’ – the results will be announced on April Fools’ Day. Although there is a clear leader, one candidate made a strong bid for your vote this week and it seems that another is planning to get your…

That was the week that was

I had a great time at Cheltenham and you had a great time with the excellent guest blogs here. Thank you to Matt Williams, Andrew Lucas,  Sue Walker and Leo Fisher for four stimulating blogs.  And thank you all for your comments on the blogs.  I will come back to some of these subjects myself…

Well done RSPB, and the week ahead

Well  done RSPB! In my Birdwatch column, the political birder, for March I wrote about the e-petition started by Chrissie Harper which asks for the law in England to be brought into line with those in Scotland in respect of vicarious liability for wildlife offences. Vicarious liability is an unfamiliar phrase for those of us…

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…

Nature Improvement Areas

Nature Improvement Areas are a new idea that came out of the report by Prof Sir John Lawton‘s group in 2010. From its strapped resources Defra has found £7.5m to invest in a slightly different type of nature conservation initiative – an area based, Big Society approach. No that isn’t a typo – a paltry…