Thank you Andrew

Thank you to the chair of Natural England for putting Inglorious in his list of books to which he turned for inspiration this year. The other four books are all excellent and it is rather nice to be snuggling up to them on the page in Country Life. I’m glad to see Inglorious on the…

A good week

I ended the week feeling optimistic. I’m usually optimistic but I had a few down moments in the middle of the week. I’m not sure what the climate deal adds up to yet  There are some quite optimistic views about it, but these things are a bit like George Osborne speeches – it’s best to…

Legal clarification from Natural England

I’m grateful to Natural England for getting in touch today over the issue of medication of Red Grouse raised in Ruth Tingay’s Guest Blog of Monday. Here is what NE wrote: ‘In the recent guest contribution to your Blog, Dr Ruth Tingay asked for clarification from Natural England and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) regarding the…

Defra drowning not waving

George Monbiot pretty much nailed it on Monday – the approach to flooding in this country is woeful and relies on treating symptoms not the underlying illness. There was a great rush of political comment about the floods in the north of England, not just in Cumbria, which seemed to focus on how much money…

Guest blog – GWCT confused by Dr Ruth Tingay

Dr Ruth Tingay is a raptor conservationist with field experience from North & Central America, Europe, Africa, Central and SE Asia. She studied the critically endangered Madagascar Fish Eagle for a PhD at Nottingham University and is a past president of the Raptor Research Foundation. She’s currently researching the illegal persecution of raptors & its…

Sunday book review – Yorkshire Dales by John Lee

Sometimes I have a book for a while and I keep putting it down and the voice in my head says ‘I’ll settle down and read it a bit later’ and when that happens it’s a pretty good bet that I’m not going to be gripped by the book.  This was one of those books…

Ask your MP to do something

By chance, the three main MPs in the Peak District are from three different political parties: Andrew Bingham, High Peak, Con; Nick Clegg, Sheffield Hallam, Lib Dem; and Angela Smith, Penistone and Stockbridge, Lab. If one of these is your MP then why not write and tell them how upset you are about the lack…

Peak trough

The Peak District National Park is failing badly in being a refuge for protected birds of prey. Our National Parks are wildlife crime hotspots because we allow game shooting to dominate the ecology of so many of them. After five years of ‘co-operation’, when ‘everyone’ was working collaboratively to increase bird of prey numbers, the…

Guest blog – Spurn developments by John Lawton

Prof Sir John Lawton FRS is a distinguished ecologist and is the chair of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989, awarded a CBE in 1997 and knighted in 2005  for his contributions to ecological science. He has been awarded numerous other national and international science prizes. John…