Five short jobs, since it’s quite likely to be raining

1.  Support Plantlife’s campaign to make verge-cutting ecologically literate.  Have a look at these photographs from Nigel and Lois Harbron of a small patch of what is essentially a flower meadow which poses no threat to road safety and is bureaucratically scalped every year. 2. Spend two minutes to get a bank to give $5…

This cut is a deep one

Today Plantlife launch a campaign to stop councils destroying the wild flowers of roadside verges through inappropriate cutting.  The wild plant charity says that they have been inundated by complaints from the public about verges being cut this year just as the flowers appear – giving them no chance to set seed. Plantlife Chief Executive,…

And the winners and losers are…

The two polls for your favourite and least favourite UK wildlife NGOs are now closed.  Thank you for voting. Across the two polls, over 2400 votes were cast: 1330 in the poll for the favourite organisation and 1085 in the poll for the least favourite.  This seems to show that despite a few voices saying…

Marmite poll

You have 10 days to vote in this poll of which wildlife NGO you like the most – and which (out of those listed of course) you like the least. The interim results are fascinating with the RSPB leading the ‘likes’ but also third in the ‘loathes’.  BASC is leading in the ‘loathed’ stakes. There…

Love ’em or hate ’em

Yesterday I launched a new poll – or actually two of them – on this website through my (free) monthly newsblast. These two polls give you the opportunity to vote for your favourite and least favourite UK nature conservation organisation. Are wildlife NGOs like Marmite – you either love ’em or hate ’em? We’ll see….

A butterfly’s wing

December isn’t a great month for butterflies (but then November wasn’t a great month for nature as a whole), although, of course, they are all (apart from the painted ladies and red admirals) still out there as eggs or pupae or some other clever way of getting through the winter if you really want to…

Wood for the trees?

Yesterday Plantlife published a report on the future of British woodland.  Rather than focus primarily on who owns ‘our’ woods Plantlife put a spotlight on woodland management. ‘More trees do not equal more wildlife‘ says Andy Byfield, Plantlife’s Landscape Conservation Manager. ‘From the point of view of our woodland wildlife, it is what we do…

A tonic for gin bush

As a kid in the mid 1960s, Sunday mornings would consist of going to church and then coming home to a roast lunch whose delicious smells filled the house while Desert Island Discs, with its originator Roy Plumley, played on the wireless before we sat down to eat.  My father would have on his suit,…

The tangled bank

This is quite a long blog – for you it’s a ‘cup of tea and two chocolate digestives’ blog, for me it was a ‘two glasses of Rioja’ blog. And I write of the subject covered by Peter Marren in his thought-provoking opinion piece in the Independent last week (and the news piece written by…

What’s happening in the NGO family?

Everybody seems to be talking about NGOs this week – last week government was shouting at them! Greenpeace is 40 this week . WWF is 50 this week. The late, great, Sir Peter Scott who founded the Wildfowl Trust, now Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, and had a lot to do with setting up the WWF…