I’m interested to see that Natural England has issued licences for falconers to take 2 Peregrine chicks from the wild in order to establish a stud book of British Peregrines. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I would like to know what are the licence conditions and from where it is envisaged that…
Tag: Natural England
Guest blog – Conservation community hit hard by COVID-19 by Kristi Foster of Conservation Careers
Kristi Foster is Head of Engagement for Conservation Careers, a major careers advice centre for conservationists – helping over 200,000 conservationists across the globe achieve career success. Conservation Careers believes that all wildlife is beautiful and that it deserves great conservationists working to protect it. Conservation community hit hard by COVID-19: Why the planet’s guardians…
Guest blog – My Lockdown by Paul Irving
Paul Irving is a retired scientist and ecologist. Involved in raptors and raptor protection in Northern England for over 30 years, especially Hen Harriers and Merlins. A Bird Ringer since the early seventies, other interests include just about anything to do with wildlife, photography (of wildlife), fishing, reading and Native Americans. Worked and lived in…
Easter eggs?
This nest box, just outside our conservatory, had Blue Tits nesting in it in 2016, and Tree Bumblebees in 2017, and nothing in 2018 and 2019, but Blue Tits are back this year. They’ve been carrying huge beakfuls of moss and a few feathers into the nestbox for days. I guess the female has just…
Licensing by statutory agencies
SNH: Covid-19 Update SNH Licensing team are experiencing an extremely high work load. Due to the current situation with regards to Covid-19, we will be prioritising licence applications based on their purpose. As such, licence applications for preserving public health and safety and licence applications for preventing serious damage will be prioritised. Licence applications for other…
Guest blog – Heal, a new rewilding charity
Jan Stannard, @janstannard, is a Founder Trustee of Heal, @healrewilding, a new rewilding charity in the UK. She has a business background which comes in handy for wildlife campaigning. She is involved nationally in swift conservation, is co-founder of Wild Maidenhead, leading their Wild About Gardens Awards scheme, and she organised England’s largest amphibian ladder…
BTO news
Quite often BTO News is something that I have a quick flick through, tell myself I’ll read it properly later and then sometimes the next thing I do with it is recycle it. But other times I read it closely. This time I seem to have a little more time and motivation to read it…
A year ago
A year ago this very important paper looking at the fate of satellite-tagged Hen Harriers was published in Nature Communications. It’s open access and so you can read it but it does take quite a bit of reading. Here is my post from last year which explains what the paper found – several people have…
Two Hen Harrier arrests
Raptor Persecution UK does a fantastic job of keeping us all informed about raptor persecution, and their Twitter profile‘s words of ‘Think illegal raptor persecution is a thing of the past? Think again!‘ are just spot on. Last week and last night RPUK brought us all news of two alleged observed shootings of ‘protected’ Hen…
Guest blog – A happy Paddy’s Day by Mark Robins
Mark Robins – a more or less full working life in and around nature NGOs and agencies various – mostly in South West England and especially for the RSPB. Moved to Ireland in 2018 and for a year led the BirdWatch Ireland Conservation & Policy team and is now a freelance natural environment and sustainable…