Harry Barton, Chief Executive of Devon Wildlife Trust, said: ‘We are delighted by Natural England’s decision to grant us a licence to give these beavers a long term future on the River Otter. It’s the result of a great deal of effort by our charity, supported by partner organisations across the UK and, most importantly,…
Tag: FoE
Guest Blog by Andy Atkins – Seeing without looking: the joy of abundant nature
Andy Atkins, executive director, Friends of the Earth Andy has been a key player in campaigning and research for human rights and development NGOs including the Chile Committee for Human Rights, CAFOD and CIIR (now Progressio). While at CIIR Andy established a ground breaking programme of work on the developmental implications of the illegal drugs…
Plastic environmentalists
I attended many political party conferences in a former life and I got to grow to enjoy them. Moving from the LibDems to Labour to Conservative conferences became part of the autumn scene. There were individual members of every party with whom one could have sensible and constructive conversations about nature and the environment but…
Biofuels – a burning question
Please do this today: ask your MEP to vote for the lowest possible limit on the addition of biofuels to transport fuels by clicking here and supporting Action Aid’s campaign. There is a vote tomorrow where MEPs will be asked to decide whether to limit biofuels to 5.5% or 6.5% of transport fuel volumes. The…
Food for thought
I expect you have eaten well over the break and are probably, like me, a bit podgier than a couple of weeks ago – or maybe not? If there is anything that might put you off your food it is the sound of the President of the NFU going on about the need for greater…
Guest Blog – A Christmas Greeting for a Climate Sceptic Council Leader by Sarah Whitebread
Sarah Whitebread is an environmental campaigner and Lib Dem councillor from Cambridge. She has an Mphil in Environmental Policy and works for an MP in Westminster. Cambridgeshire is currently being run by a climate sceptic. Councillor Nick Clarke, leader of the County Council, declared on his blog a few months ago that “it is now clear…
Biomass – dirtier than coal?
Last week I pointed out that every form of energy production has snags – and suggested that we should give a higher priority to reducing our energy needs. Here’s another example, and it’s rather similar to the situation regarding biofuels (described in Chapter 13 of Fighting for Birds). Using biomass to fuel power stations looks…
NPPF – what do we want? And has Simon Jenkins shot the National Trust’s campaign in the foot?
This blog, prompted helpfully by reader Richard Wilson, attempted to spell out why the government’s proposed planning reforms are bad news for wildlife (click here but do read the comments as well as the blog). I don’t know how good a job I made of it but I haven’t found anything much better on the…
The tangled bank
This is quite a long blog – for you it’s a ‘cup of tea and two chocolate digestives’ blog, for me it was a ‘two glasses of Rioja’ blog. And I write of the subject covered by Peter Marren in his thought-provoking opinion piece in the Independent last week (and the news piece written by…
3.6 million reds under the bed!
I’m sure we all share the sentiments of Bob Neill, the CLG Minister, who attacked the National Trust for being a den of lefties. It has long been a worry to me that the National Trust has been such an anarchic and, frankly, revolutionary body, always championing underdogs, speaking out loudly on environmental issues and…