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…

Too nice?

You have one week to go before you can see the final results of the Nature of Harming ‘award’.  Cast your vote now and ask your friends (you do have friends?) to cast their’s too, please.  Nearly 1000 people have voted. Here, at this late stage – is some rationale to go behind it: We…

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…

A busy week

Congratulations to the re-elected NFU President, Peter Kendall, whose speech at the NFU Conference was described as ‘shocking and regressive‘ by one of his own members on this site on Wednesday.  That farmer said he voted for the NFU in the Nature of Harming ‘award’ and writes rather harshly that  ‘Peter Kendall is a PR…