Humane (adjective): Kind or considerate towards people or animals. The opposite is ‘beastly’. Introduction: The UK Government has decided to carry out a cull of badgers in an attempt to deal with bovine tuberculosis which infects some of the UK cattle herd. Over 100,000 of a protected species could be killed with little certainty about outcomes, and alternative solutions remain undeveloped. Such wildlife massacres have occurred throughout human existence, and we take full advantage of our technology to kill more efficiently where we should be using
Read more →Ancient woodland has been continually wooded since at least 1600AD, and some may even link back to the original wildwood that covered the UK around 10,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age. There are ancient beech woods in the Chiltern Hills which I explore at all times of the year. They are particularly lovely in the spring and autumn when the colours are vibrant with the changing season. Beech trees are very stately, their smooth grey trunks, like cathedral columns rising from the leafy forest
Read more →It is an August Sunday in Cuddington, in rural South Buckinghamshire. The air is a mild 20 degrees centigrade and an occasional breeze wafts the ripe wheat, and the sun has a pleasant intensity when it moves out from behind the broken cloud. I set off for a walk through the local countryside for exercise, enjoyment of the scenery and to try to get some good wildlife photographs. Down Spickett’s Lane there are several wild plum trees festooned with fruit and I stretch up, standing on
Read more →What connects a Pacific grey whale and you last visit to the shops? On your last visit to the shops, it is almost certain that you came home with some plastic that you hadn’t taken out with you: if you are really careless, then it would include the plastic carrier bags from the shops you visted, but it’s hard to avoid the odd polystyrene punnet in shrink wrap. Then there are the cardboard boxes with plastic wrappers on the food inside, and sometimes also on the
Read more →Gardens grow better with healthy soils, good husbandry and few, if any, chemicals. A rose can be completely healthy without any sprays or artificial feeds.
Read more →Yesterday I walked for about a mile through grassy fields, about half of them overgrown with grasses, nettles and other vagrant species. This was not in the middle of nowhere, but in prime Buckinghamshire farmland: some of the most fertile and longest farmed in England. These fields were completely vacant – no livestock, and certainly no crops. Were these fields to be left alone, apart from mowing, for long enough, they could become meadows, rich in wildflowers, with nesting places for skylarks and other birds, and
Read more →From one Sunday newspaper today, May 2nd 2009: Item 1: 33.8% of honey bees in the USA disappeared or died since last year. The picture is much the same in the UK, though figures aren’t all in yet and is a bad year in a continuing trend. The main, but not only cause, is ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ where whole colonies just die or disappear: what triggers it isn’t known, but taking into account chemical residues in wax, hives and honey, pesticides are a likely contributor. And
Read more →The originator of the Gaia theory says that environmentalists must stop ignoring population growth as a core issue in tackling our environmental problems. Population growth is bound to increase our damaging impacts but tackling our individual environmental footprints is easier and has a quicker effect than tackling population growth: both are needed, starting with ourselves.
Read more →One Environment, One Humanity, One Survival. With burning forests the effects of climate change are upon us. We have many excuses that let us dodge the the issues of our effect on the environment, but we can do something: Lobby politicians and think about our own lifestyles and choices and do something about it.
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