Bob Berzins is a campaigner and activist. His previous guests blogs here all focus on the management, or mismanagement, of upland areas such as the Peak District, Walshaw Moor and the North York Moors. See also his novel Snared. In 2014 and 2015 two surfaced tracks were constructed on the grouse moors of the north…
Tag: Natural England
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 34 by Christopher Goddard
Christopher Goddard is a cartographer and writer whose hand-drawn guidebooks and maps cover the West Yorkshire landscape in intimate detail. Born in Sheffield, he has lived in Hebden Bridge for nearly 20 years and explored most corners of the area’s moors and woods. There is more information at christophergoddard.net . Turbine 34: White Swamp…
Guest blog – Biodiversity Net Gain: for good or ill, 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…
Guest blog – Short-eared Owls need your help by Jimmi Hill
Based on the Cheshire/Flintshire border. Founding trustee and Chair of Raptor Aid CIO a UK based charity with a focus on birds of prey and their conservation. A licensed ringer and field worker covering birds of prey as an active member of several raptor study groups across the UK. Twitter: @raptor_jimmi “You’re Joking – Not…
Guest blog – Creating Shrike Shrublands by Steve Jones
Steve Jones (stevecjones.uk) has worked in UK and international conservation for nearing three decades. He’s unusually fond of shrikes. In fact, he’s written a short book about how to create ’Shrike Shrublands’ in the UK (click here). Here, he summarises how we might go about creating species-rich grassland-shrubland mosaics. Twitter: @SteveCJJones ‘Scrub’ has…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 11 by Nick MacKinnon
Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won…
Book review – Local by Alastair Humphreys
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I very much enjoyed this book, and when it is published on Thursday I think many readers of this blog will like it too. Alastair Humphreys is a traveller and adventurer who has travelled the world but in this book he still has mini-adventures and is always travelling, it’s just that he chooses about 50…
Guest blog – Lead ammunition, the way forward by John Swift
Mark writes: John Swift is the former boss of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and from 2010 chaired the Lead Ammunition Group set up by the last Labour government which reported to government in 2015 and which was treated so shabbily by the outgoing Secretary of State for Environment, a certain Liz Truss,…
Sunday book review – The Return of the Grey Partridge by Roger Morgan-Grenville and Edward Norfolk
This is the story of the recovery of Grey Partridge on the Duke of Norfolk’s land at Peppering on the South Downs (that’s Arundel Castle on the cover). It is a beautifully written tale (by Roger Morgan-Grenville) of a successful species recovery project based on the landowner’s enthusiasm for having a wild partridge shoot for…
Sunday book review – Call of the Kingfisher by Nick Penny
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This book is set a few miles from where I live – down the River Nene a few miles – around Oundle. The author makes regular walks, through the calendar year, and covers quite a lot of ground beside the river near his home. He sees much of the local Kingfishers, but much more besides….