Well done to the RSPB, and the Wildlife Trusts, for launching an impressive e-action over the weekend to persuade the Prime Minister to back his Secretary of State and go ahead with a 15% transfer of funds from one part of the CAP (the rather useless part) to another part of the CAP (the rather…
Tag: RSPB
More on that 15%
Although the NFU says that it has written to every MP on the subject of CAP reform they don’t put that letter (or those letters) on their website as far as I can see. What they do say on their website is that they are ‘increasingly infuriated‘ with the government position. Only the farming industry…
Where will your £400 go?
As I was driving home from Cheltenham races yesterday I was switching through the radio channels and heard the Deputy President of the NFU and my former colleague Gareth Morgan on PM (click here – after 20 mins). Meurig Raymond clearly hasn’t been paying much attention to the silver-tongued Peter Kendall as his answers weren’t…
Naughtily nutty – the rspb
The rspb is following other farmers into the rapeseed oil business. I visited Ian Dillon at Hope Farm last week and had a chat about it with him. Regular readers of this blog might recall that the rspb bought Hope Farm when I was Conservation Director and so I have a quasi-proprietorial interest in it….
Minox challenge binoculars sell at £622!
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Following my review of them, seven Chief Executives writing Guest Blogs (Mike Clarke (rspb), Stephanie Hilborne (Wildlife Trusts), Martin Warren (Butterfly Conservation), Matt Shardlow (Buglife), Joanna Bromley (Plantlife), Andrew McLeish (MARINElife)), readers of this blog voting on the Guest Blog they favoured most – a pair of Minox 10x43HD binoculars were auctioned on eBay…
CAP consultation – here’s one I prepared earlier (and have updated slightly)
In each part of the UK, the governments are consulting on how the tweaked Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should be implemented. I have drafted my response to the Defra consultation and here it is for people to comment on. If you like it you can simply copy and paste it into the consultation and send…
Guest Blog – Guests at Nature’s Table by Findlay Wilde
My name is Findlay Wilde, you might remember me from the last guest blog I did for Mark about my concerns for the future of our fabulous, but endangered, wildlife and habitats. And now I am back to write my second blog. A lot has changed in a year and I have now started High…
Golden Eagle – Scotland’s National Bird? Aye!
Golden Eagles occur all over the place – the USA, Spain and much of southern Europe and Scandinavia. Now the RSPB has launched a petition asking the Scottish Government to make the Golden Eagle Scotland’s National Bird. Who could disagree with that? Surely not those who manage grouse moors in eastern and southern Scotland? Vote…
Bird Atlas – Farmland birds
Pictures can get messages across better than words sometimes. As one flicks through the pages of this Atlas one keeps seeing farmland species with shrinking distributions. But the key to truly appreciating the scale of what is happening to these familiar birds is to look at the maps of change of relative abundance. Time after…
New Networks for Nature
I attended the fifth New Networks for Nature meeting in Stamford on Friday and Saturday. It’s a different type of meeting – refreshingly different. Where else would you get organic food for lunch, haikus, a panel debate with leading thinkers on environmental matters, the President of the SWLA, three talks about non-native/introduced/alien species, some young…