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…
Tag: National Trust
Trusting in nature?
Last week I wrote a blog, mildly questioning the NT’s own claim to be one of Europe’s leading nature conservation organisations. That blog ruffled a few feathers but also seemed to strike a chord with quite a few readers of this blog. I was very grateful to David Bullock for his reply which was…
Guest blog from NT’s David Bullock
My blog on Monday, which questioned the claim of the National Trust to be one of Europe’s leading nature conservation organisations attracted many comments from you. I’m very pleased to post here a reply from David Bullock the Head ofNature Conservation at the National Trust. I’ll come back to this subject, myself, on Monday. …
The National Trust
Do you think that the National Trust, which operates in England, Northern Ireland and Wales is a nature conservation organisation or not? In its own words: Conserving nature, for the benefit of everyone, is at the heart of the National Trust’s work. We are one of Europe’s leading nature conservation organisations. The scale of our…
Badgers – slow Paice
On Wednesday, Defra announced their next slow pace towards a large amount of badger-bothering. What they said wasn’t very much and wasn’t very clear. It seems that some time in the autumn, that’s autumn 2012, there will be a six-week trial of farmer-led badger killing in two ‘pilot’ areas of southwest England which are yet…
The raptor haters? Robin Page.
Robin Page clearly is special. He has issues. When you read his own words it is difficult not to think that he has a lot of pent up anger that needs to spill out now and again (see here and here). And so it comes as no surprise that he is angry about birds of…
CAP
I’ve been thinking about the proposed CAP reform and chatting to a few people about it too. The attempt to move towards more equal payments across the EU cannot be other than fair – probably. This is the agricultural equivalent of the idea of contraction and convergence. If it were decided to do the same…
Planning for wildlife
It was good to see this story in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday. The RSPB have a legal opinion from Nathalie Lieven QC, the environmental barrister, who has “ no doubt the draft NPPF lessens the policy protection for SSSIs”. I wrote in comments on this blog on 9 September the following: ‘Although European designations…
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…