If there were a fan club for Walshaw Moor then I’d be a member, despite never having set foot on it. I have passed it on the roads, stopped and looked at it, been glared at by its gamekeepers and spoken about it in meetings in both Hebden Bridge and Haworth and even won a…
Tag: Ruth Tingay
A letter to my MP, Lee Barron
Dear Lee, I am writing to ask you to attend a Westminster Hall debate on the afternoon of 30 June where a parliamentary petition will be debated as the petition gained over 100,000 signatures. It is a petition close to my heart, indeed I was one of the three directors of the campaigning group, Wild…
Guest blog – The Great Beaver Betrayal by Tom Bowser
Tom Bowser is the owner of Argaty, a working farm based on the Braes of Doune in central Scotland, which aims to produce food in an environmentally sensitive manner and to make a home for nature. Tom is author of A Sky Full of Kites: a rewilding story (reviewed on this blog) and the forthcoming…
Sunday book review – Waters of Life by Tom Bowser
The European Beaver is a Marmite species – people do seem either to love it or hate it. And by ‘hate’ I am not exaggerating ‘mildly dislike’; some people really do hate it. Considering this is a species that has been absent from the UK for centuries and is still found only in relatively few…
English Hen Harrier population increase modelled – brood meddled nests not a factor
A recent BTO report – click here – comes to the unsurprising conclusion that brood meddling of Hen Harrier nests made little or no contribution to the recent rise and fall of the Hen Harrier breeding population. As was predicted in advance, brood meddling is a distraction and an irrelevance. The drivers of the steep…
RSPB makes big move at Geltsdale
The RSPB is extending its ownership of land at Geltsdale in Cumbria and appealing for donations to secure the deal – click here. This is very good news. The emphasis of the RSPB text is on habitat restoration and the graphic produced is excellent – although the day I ever see all those species at…
Letter to my new MP, Lee Barron
Dear Lee, May I offer my formal congratulations on your election as an MP. I’m not just being polite, I delivered lots of leaflets for your campaign and I am a Labour Party member. We have met briefly – I was one of the small group of Labour supporters who met you in Raunds library…
Guest blogs for this site – guidance
This blog has published over 400 guest posts since May 2011. Do you recognise any of these names; John Burton, Peter Cairns, Ian Carter, Andy Clements, Ian Coghill, Mary Colwell, Kerri ni Dochartaigh, David Fursdon, Derek Gow, Jeremy Greenwood, Miles King, John Lawton, Dara McAnulty, Lucy McRobert, Peter Marren, Stephen Moss, Andrew Painting, Alick Simmons,…
Dear Mr Reed, 1
Dear Steve Reed, just think, in a month’s time you may be in your second day in your new job as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. How will your first day in the job have gone? I’m a Labour Party member, living in the marginal seat of Corby in Northamptonshire, and…
The eve of the Inglorious 12th
Tomorrow is the Inglorious 12th – the start of the Red Grouse shooting season. Since the first Hen Harrier Day events on 10 August 2014 in Derbyshire, Northumberland, Dorset and Northern Ireland we have come a long way, together. Driven grouse shooting is on its knees and cannot survive long. That’s partly because of the…