Eleanor is a wildlife conservationist and raptor enthusiast from Northumberland with an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation and Ecosystem Management from Newcastle University. She indulges her passion for wildlife through photography and writing. Twitter: @DaisyEleanorug We have all heard of the expression ‘to turn a blind eye’, meaning to pretend that a particular act…
Tag: Natural England
Guest blog – New Natural Areas by Steve Jones
Steve Jones has worked in conservation in the UK and overseas for two decades, promoting wildlife-friendly farming and designated site conservation in the UK, and large mammal conservation in the tropics. He writes on wildlife-friendly farming, land sparing and rewilding and wrote a guest blog, England’s Serengeti, for this blog, back in January. …
Reflections on the 2017 Bird Fair (3)
Here are some suggestions for how the Bird Fair could help nature conservation even more than it does at the moment. Some are my ideas and others are good ideas from other people. They come in two lists – the less contentious list and the more contentious list and, I’ll keep stressing this, they are…
Ah! I see…
I have spent quite a lot of time, some of it in pubs, talking about what would be the legal repercussions of walking through a grouse shoot which is in process. It seems that there aren’t any – at least that’s what I understand from this response from Natural England’s Open Access Contact Centre; …
OLDs at West Pennine Moors SSSI
The long story of protecting the West Pennine Moors as an SSSI has come to its administrative climax with the publication of the legal documents following an NE Board meeting in July. Because new SSSIs aren’t that common, and new upland ones certainly aren’t, I actually glanced through the document with some interest, when my…
Guest blog – Thunder in the Uplands by Findlay Wilde
There is a dark day looming. The Inglorious Twelfth is just a few sleeps away, and yet it is troubling the sleep of many people; people who care about the wildlife balance in the uplands, people who are angry about the on going illegal persecution of raptors, people who feel like their natural inheritance…
Guest blog – Are we simply farming our seas? by Jean-Luc Solandt
Jean-Luc Solandt is a marine biologist struggling to get out of a policy expert. He worked on coral reef ecology for 15 years, providing diving survey data for the creation of Marine Protected Areas. He’s been working in the UK at the Marine Conservation Society for over 15 years on developing networks of MPAs, making…
Dear Natural England
Dear Natural England I’m planning to do some walking over grouse moors during the grouse shooting season and I came across your very useful website as I was trying to plan my trips. Living in Northamptonshire, my nearest grouse moors are in the Peak District National Park so that’s where I started my search. Your…
Guest blog – Hen Harrier reintroduction by Ian Carter
Ian Carter has worked as an ornithologist for more than 25 years. He was involved with the Red Kite reintroduction programme in England and has a keen interest in the conservation of raptors, bird reintroductions and wildlife management more generally. He is particularly interested in human attitudes towards wildlife and the complex ways in which…
Questions must be asked of NE
The red arrow shows the location of the track which is just north of the public footpath and parallel. The surfacing starts just east of Highshaw Clough. This area is completely within the Special Area of Conservation as shown on the Magic system: Natural England, a few questions: did you receive an application for…