Bitterly disappointed, hugely disappointed, shameful, pitiful, appalling, lamentable… That’s how the Wildlife Trusts, Marine Conservation Society and RSPB described Defra’s announcement that it was consulting on designating just 31 of 127 marine sites selected by a lengthy, inclusive and costly process involving hundreds of people. Further progress might be made next year. Defra described this…
Tag: RSPB
Lancashire’s ‘Bowland Betty’ bites the Yorkshire dust
A female hen harrier raised in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, last year, and fitted with a satellite tag, was found dead on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales in June this year. I hadn’t realised the trans-Pennine rivalry was so strong that the War of the Roses included shooting each other’s hen harriers….
Bankrupt policies from Defra
Last week George (Gideon) Osborne had to do something different because it was clear that his economic policies weren’t working (he did the wrong thing, but he did have to do something) whereas there is no sign that Defra is going to do anything different even though their policies aren’t working either. The differences between…
Biomass – dirtier than coal?
Last week I pointed out that every form of energy production has snags – and suggested that we should give a higher priority to reducing our energy needs. Here’s another example, and it’s rather similar to the situation regarding biofuels (described in Chapter 13 of Fighting for Birds). Using biomass to fuel power stations looks…
In a days – I mean a daze.
Sunday’s was the 600th Standing up for Nature blog since I started writing them 571 days ago. The day passed almost without me noticing the landmark. In those 571 days this blog has grown from an audience of zero to well over 7000 unique visitors a month according to the statistics provided by Google analytics….