There’s no doubting that Wild Justice has been the best crowdfunder that Natural England has had. NE is now recruiting 200 staff to do its job better. Although the recruitment advert is ghastly, and makes Natural England sound like a support group for tree huggers, whereas it is actually an environmental regulator and enforcer with…
Tag: Natural England
Guest blog – The Great Divide by Dominic Woodfield
Dominic Woodfield is the Managing Director of Bioscan, a long established and well respected consultancy specialising in applied ecology. He is a life-long birder, a specialist in botany, habitat restoration and creation and in protected fauna including bats, herpetofauna and other species. He is also a highly experienced practitioner in Environmental Impact Assessment and Habitats Regulations…
Latest Wild Justice challenge
Wild Justice is taking on the Badger cull – or at least the licensing of free shooting of Badgers by Natural England. A crowdfunder launched at 2pm has raised £9,000 by 6pm, which is pretty amazing and probably indicates the level of anger about this cull of one of our most charismatic native species. To…
BASC spoke with forked tongue?
BASC is doing this a lot. One day they say something quite sensible and almost moderate, and the next they say something utterly ridiculous (and keep saying it for ages). One day they seem quite reasonable, and then they switch back to ranting and rudeness. If BASC were a person you’d be beginning to doubt…
The fox that predated the wrong nest…
I miss You Forgot the Birds – remember them? They were set up by grouse shooters, notably old Harrovian city trader Crispin Odey (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), to have a go at the RSPB because the RSPB was occasionally mentioning the problems associated with driven grouse shooting. At least…
Guest blog – Hatfield Moors SSSI: Fetch a bucket of water boys? by Helen Kirk
Helen Kirk is passionate about environmental conservation and wildlife. She is a peatland campaigner and field naturalist. Growing up on a farm on the periphery of Hatfield Moors, and attending school in the 1970s where visits to Thorne Moors were frequent, saw Helen cut her teeth in terms of natural history interest and later campaigning…
Natural England not very open
Natural England are under fire from all sides it seems. On this blog last week Bob Berzins’s account of the failure of NE to release details of a licence which allowed widespread unlimited killing of several species of birds (see here and here) suggested that the organisation might have been deliberately witholding information which it…
Press release – 25,000 Green Jobs from RSPB for Wildlife Link
Twenty-five thousand jobs could be created through government investment in a green recovery Investment in nature recovery could provide a major boost in employment in England and help create a more resilient economy as part of a green economic recovery from Covid-19 according to new figures put together by conservation groups. In addition, it would…
Joke announcement from Moorland Association
The Moorland Association is trying to big up the Hen Harrier breeding season already – and it’s only late June! If you shouldn’t count your chickens before they’re hatched you certainly shouldn’t count your Hen Harriers before they are fledged (naturally, in the wild) and even then you shouldn’t count on them surviving. Here is…
Guest blog – Afterwards… by Louise Bacon
I used to be a biochemist studying human immune system malfunction whilst being a part-time naturalist and conservationist. Then I converted to being an environmental data geek, which is what I do part of the time in a vague attempt to pay the bills. I have been a birder since childhood, and am now the…