Inglorious

Inglorious: conflict in the uplands will be available for Hen Harrier Day (9 August), the Inglorious 12th and thereafter. Published by Bloomsbury in late July – but you can order it now on World Book Day.    

Wuthering Moors 42

The scale of burning of English blanket bogs revealed by the latest RSPB work is scary. There are 127 separate consents (mostly through HLS agreements – ie we taxpayers are paying for it too) for burning on blanket bogs. These affect these seven  Special Areas of Conservation (SACs)(Border Mires, Kielder-Butterburn; Ingleborough Complex; Moor House –…

Who will be leading the NFU? and Dredging the depths

Two weeks tomorrow will see the election of a new NFU hierarchy of President, Vice President and Deputy President. The candidates for the NFU posts are as follows and you can see what they say about themselves by following the links (and their Twitter accounts).  Not much about the environment is there – from the…

Four tories

I was quite shocked by Owen Paterson’s performance on the Today programme on Tuesday in response to the Nature Check report (click here to listen, at 01:34 and 17 seconds).  That is, shocked in the sense of outraged rather than surprised. The gist of Paterson’s comments was that the views of the 41 organisations signing…

Shuffling two packs

The Government changes In Defra, out go Richard Benyon and David Heath and in come George Eustice (Con, Camborne and Redruth) and Dan Rogerson (LibDem, North Cornwall). I always feel sorry for those who are required to move on because their Prime Minister needs to adjust the left/right balance, the male/female balance, the north/south balance…