Labour has this right

The Shadow environment minister, Alex Cunningham, spoke well in the Westminster Hall debate last week saying ‘As a responsible society, recognising the inherent dangers, we have already taken action and regulated to cut lead from petrol, from paint and from water pipes. But, despite the evidence and our previous moves to regulate other sources of…

Taking lead off the map

There are two e-petitions relating to toxic lead ammunition. At the moment the one asking for a continuation of our birds being poisoned and our food being adulterated with lead has more signatures so please sign Rob Sheldon’s e-petition to replace toxic lead ammunition with non-toxic alternatives. I find the relatively new Westminster parliament website…

RSPB and WWT support Rob Sheldon’s e-petition

Yesterday the RSPB and WWT started to mobilise their memberships to support Rob Sheldon’s e-petition to ban lead ammunition. This is good to see. The main RSPB Twitter account, @natures_voice tweeted once yesterday (and again this morning) and this was backed up by rather more active support from @rspbcymru and @jazzyjeff, and @wwtconservation and @wwtworldwide…

I missed this – better late than never

It was just over a year ago, 9 November 2014, that the 11th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species (in Resolution 11.15) called on Parties to “Phase-out the use of lead ammunition across all habitats (wetland and terrestrial) with non-toxic alternatives within the next three years with Parties reporting to CMS…

Climate plus one

Global temperatures are set to reach 1°C above pre-industrial levels this year (Daily Mail, Independent, BBC) and world leaders are going to Paris in a few weeks time to sort it out. Today the RSPB released an important report and some very interesting polling information. Let’s deal with the polling first. The polling suggests that…

Guest Blog – An update on African and European Vultures by Chris Bowden

Chris Bowden is RSPB’s Globally Threatened Species Officer, and Programme Manager of the consortium of ‘SAVE’ partners – Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction. Chris has worked for RSPB on various threatened species, (after his Woodlark and Nightjar research days on Thetford Forest), notably the Northern Bald Ibis based in Morocco (for which he still has…

Guest blog – Puppet Sex and Stanley Johnson by Lyn Ebbs

By education and training I am a microbiologist and worked in the NHS and biotech sector. I finished my working career in clinical research and patient safety in the pharmaceutical industry, so am a firm believer in evidence-based science. I’ve been a member of the RSPB for many years and started volunteering for them when…

Inaction speaks louder than words

The most remarkable aspect of the preliminary results of the 2014 national Peregrine survey (organised by the BTO but I read about it here) is that the UK population of this species has hardly changed in 12 years – a 3% increase since 2002.  The last Peregrine I saw was a couple of weeks ago…

Two AGMs – RSPB

Ahead of today’s RSPB AGM, Martin Harper posted a very robust blog about the RSPB’s position on driven grouse shooting (click here). Just as I did yesterday, Martin asked the question whether there are any grouse moors out there that do all the right things. He clearly doesn’t know of any (which makes licensing a…

Guest Blog – The Asia vulture crisis, an update by Chris Bowden of RSPB

  Chris Bowden is RSPB’s Globally Threatened Species Officer, and Programme Manager of the consortium of ‘SAVE’ partners – Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction. Chris has worked for RSPB on various threatened species, (after his Woodlark and Nightjar research days on Thetford Forest), notably the Northern Bald Ibis based in Morocco (for which he still…