If you live in an urban environment, you probably have a house, legal or illegal, on a street with neighbours in a certain part of town. You know where you’re allowed to go and where you’re not within the highly structured urban geography – pavements for people, roads for cars. Particular buildings and places are [...]
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Whale.fm
Two crowd-sourcing projects today, both very different in aims, but similar in their online community-based approach. First up, Whale FM is a marine research project dedicated to deciphering whale song. Orcas, or killer whales, appear to be able to communicate with each other in a fairly sophisticated fashion. If you’ve seen the BBC’s Frozen Planet [...]
Bernard the Gurnard says: support marine reserves
In 2009 the Marine Bill set the foundations in place for a series of marine reserves around Britain, but it didn’t create the reserves themselves. That work is ongoing, and it’s not progressing very fast. This week environment minister Richard Benyon announced that the decision on the 127 proposed sites has been delayed by six [...]
How is the government doing on its green commitments?
“The greenest government ever” was what David Cameron promised as he formed his coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. The precise policy plans were laid out in the coalition agreement. So, 18 months in, how are those measures going? The Wildlife and Countryside link is an umbrella group of many of Britain’s [...]
What’s a tree worth?
As Tom Hodgkinson says, the first thing you should do when you move to a new house is plant a tree. This we did two years ago, two apple trees and a cherry tree, and over the last couple of weeks I’ve picked the first apples off our little cordon apple in the back garden. [...]
Where does your supermarket shop?
We all get to choose where we do our shopping, and for most of us that basically means choosing from one of the big supermarket chains. But supermarkets have to go shopping too, filling those shelves in the first place. Suppliers in turn need to buy in their ingredients, and so on back through processors [...]
Europe runs out of fish tomorrow
Okay, Europe doesn’t actually run out of fish tomorrow. But if the EU depended entirely on its own waters, it would have completely depleted its fish stocks by tomorrow, the 2nd of July. At that point, any further fish dinners would have to be sourced elsewhere and imported. The EU has been disastrous at managing [...]
Madagascar: a new species a week
I had the immense privilege of growing up in Madagascar. It’s one of the world’s most fascinating countries, from an anthropological and biological point of view. A vast island, it separated from the African mainland so long ago that its wildlife evolved more or less independently. As a result, the majority of its plants and [...]
Anthill, a novel by E O Wilson
My brother introduced me to E O Wilson, whose book The Diversity of Life was required reading on his biodiversity and conservation degree. I borrowed the book and loved it. Wilson’s latest book is a novel, and now that we’ve both read it, I thought it might be interesting to write a joint review… Paul: E.O. [...]
How the cuts are affecting the environment sector
Last year, I spent the best part of 9 months looking for work in the UK’s Environment sector. During that time, I came to realise that as a result of the new Government initiatives and budget cuts, the people, businesses and organisations which are working to sustain and protect our natural environments are in dire [...]
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