I’ve recently returned from a trip to Scotland. On my way back down to Wiltshire, I decided to fulfil a longstanding ambition and visit the Farne islands. If you’re interested in wildlife, the Farnes have always beenone of those places that you need to visit at least once in your life. Nestling a few miles south of the holy island of Lindisfarne, and a couple of miles offshore from the Northumberland coast, “island” is perhaps too grandiose a word for …
Category: Environmental policy
“Biodiversity gain” is the latest buzzword in Government conservation policy. The new Environment Bill has the very laudable goal of trying to ensure that habitat loss is matched by habitat gain to excess elsewhere. It’s a clever idea, one that is aimed at helping to ensure the restoration of Britain’s deeply impoverished fauna and flora. But here’s the thing: it may not work. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the …
Snow was forecast for today, so when a hungry cat woke me at 4 AM I did what any sensible person would do: I pushed him off and tried to go back to sleep. When he tried again at 5 AM, and resorted to his usual ploy of jumping up on to the bedside table and progressively knocking things one by one to the floor to get some attention, I did what any sensible person would do, gave up, went …
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