There is dancing in the streets of El Rocio this morning as news spreads of the reprimand given to the UK government (esp Defra) by the EU over the poor job done by the UK to protect blanket bogs from burning. Blanket bogs don’t prosper under a scorched earth strategy and all this crap about…
Tag: Natural England
Hoddlesden Moss wind farm proposal withdrawn
A proposal for a wind farm at Hoddlesden Moss has been withdrawn. I guess this is because the recommendation of council staff was to refuse it. And I don’t have to guess that that was partly because of the biological interest of the West Pennine Moors SSSI. And we know that pressure from locals over…
Press release from the Environmental Funders Network
Starts: Caroline Lucas and Sir David Attenborough top list of ‘Environmental Heroes’ for Earth Day London, 19th April 2017: Ahead of Earth Day 2017 (22 April), CEOs from the UK’s leading environmental charities have voted for their ‘Environmental Heroes’ as part of the Pulse Survey conducted by the Environmental Funders Network. Caroline Lucas,…
Guest blog – A GCSE in Natural History? by Chris Baker
Chris is a science teacher of nine years and a former country park ranger. He began his teaching career in London before taking up posts at British schools in Vietnam and China. He is a Biology specialist and currently Head of Science at the British School Bucharest. An online petition calling for the…
Still on the Brink
The news that the National Lottery is helping to fund the conservation of threatened species of animal and plant in England is very welcome – I almost wish I’d ever bought a lottery ticket. There’s a little bit of confusion about which species are in and out as there are 20 main species (and the…
Heather burning and health
I definitely wasn’t awake at this time so I am grateful to a reader of this blog for pointing me in this direction. On Radio 5 Up All Night on Thursday 30 March at 2hr 21min 19 secs into the programme, there was a discussion about the smoke from heather burning and its potential health…
North of the border
The National Trust for Scotland is a separate entity from the National Trust (England, Wales and NI) and therefore doesn’t impinge on my consciousness very much. But I was interested to see that it has been carrying out quite a dramatic down-size (see here, here, here). And even more interested to see that it’s Chief…
National Trust turns Natural Trust?
The National Trust has a poor reputation amongst wildlife conservation organisations. This stems from a couple of things. First, the National Trust could do so much more to help nature, given its massive membership, large landholding and rich resources. This has been the case for many years. Second, despite the low priority that the NT…
Feral Daffodils – don’t you just…?
I have a love-hate relationship with daffodils. Our wild daffodil Narcissus pseudonarcissus is a native species (although even that is somewhat doubtful and disputed) whose world range stretches south from Britain to Spain and Portugal and east to Germany. It is a woodland plant that occurs in carpets that add splashes of spring yellow to…
A curious strategy indeed
In a week’s time there will be a Westminster Hall debate on badger culling – it’s not the first debate and it probably won’t be the last. I would hope that MPs participating in the debate might read this essay by Anna Dale which I found very clear, very thorough and really quite shocking. It…