Dominic Woodfield is the Managing Director of Bioscan, a long established and well-respected consultancy specialising in applied ecology. He is not a wildcat specialist, but has significant experience of working with rare and protected species and is currently instructed by Wildcat Haven to advise on regulatory and ecological matters, including on the methodology for their…
Tag: Natural England
Sunday book review – Wild Farming by Robin Page
It would be fair to ask what this book is about: and that is a question to which there is no easy answer. The first part of the answer is that it is not the book pictured above envisaged by booksellers (eg see here, here, here), and indeed Quiller (the intended publisher) who claimed Wild…
Thoughts on 2020 (6) – this blog
2020 was a record year for readership (pageviews) on this blog. Here are the previous five years (1 Jan – 31 Dec) and this year: 2020, 1,331k pageviews (with a few hours still to go) 2019, 1,139k pageviews. 2018, 898k pageviews 2017, 876k pageviews 2016, 1,254k pageviews 2015, 808k pageviews But what of the content?…
Thoughts on 2020 (1) – Driven Grouse Shooting
You have to feel sorry for the grouse shooters, don’t you? Well maybe not. 2020 was another awful year for those involved in grouse shooting, and one which brought the end of driven grouse shooting closer. For those of us determined to see an end to this damaging hobby, it represented a great leap forward….
Guest blog – Swift Bricks by Dick Newell
Lifetime bird watcher and over 60 years an RSPB member, Dick Newell, retired from the software industry, now devotes time to devising ways to help Swifts, which led recently to the BTO giving a Marsh Award for Innovative Ornithology to Action for Swifts. actionforswifts.com documents a large number of case studies, designs and ideas. Swift Bricks…
Brood meddling appeal – four weeks away
Four weeks today (and tomorrow) the Court of Appeal will be hearing my, and the RSPB’s, appeals against Natural England issuing licences to allow brood meddling of Hen Harriers ie Tuesday 26 and Wednesday 27 January. This process started as far as I was concerned in January 2018 and we went to court in December…
Guest blog – Digging Holes by Alick Simmons
Alick Simmons is a veterinarian, naturalist and photographer. He lives in Somerset. He has written six previous guest blogs here – click here. His Twitter handle: @alicksimmons I’m a conservation newbie, an ingenu trying to compensate for a terrifying lack of experience. Although I’ve been a wildlife nut since my early teens (and a proud…
HS2 massive climbdown (or up?) and chance for NE to do its job properly.
Here is a press release from the Woodland Trust: In November, the Woodland Trust and a group of independent ecologists raised concerns about the potential for unlawful felling of ancient woodlands by HS2 Ltd. This was because there are a number of ancient woodlands on the Phase Route 1 of HS2 (between London and Birmingham)…
State of the UK’s birds
New report reveals declines in UK’s woodland birds New data show long-term declines of woodland bird species Some specialist woodland species have declined dramatically, including willow tit, which has shown the second biggest decline of any widespread UK bird. Numbers of native birds overall are down, with 19 million fewer pairs of breeding birds in…
The Favourite River Lugg
The River Lugg has been in the news a lot recently due to the management of the river and of some of the surrounding farmland by a local farmer (see here, here and here). More recently the farmer’s account of events has emerged (click here, here) and we’ll have to wait and see how this…