• Lydd Airport Public Inquiry – what risk posed by potential bird strike?

    Samantha Dawes
    Picture the scene – a cosy, circular council chamber occupied by lots of legal people dressed formally in suits, others busily tapping away on laptops and everywhere you look boxes and boxes of paper all containing vital information about each side’s views about the expansion of Lydd airport.
    And most encouragingly even though we are now immersed in the depths of opposing arguments and a huge amount of jargon…

  • England is a special place

    Simon Marsh
    As followers of this blog will know, the RSPB is busy right now saving many special places, from Dungeness to the Tana River Delta in Kenya.
    While colleagues are immersed in the Lydd public inquiry and other forthcoming inquiries and cases around the country, we’re fighting a battle on another front. This time it’s the whole of England (and no, I’m not forgetting the rest of the UK where other important battles are going…

  • The Month ahead

    Andre Farrar
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  • Stepping up for nature’s special places home and away

    Andre Farrar
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  • Lydd Public Inquiry packed to the rafters

    Sophie McCallum

    At last the Public Inquiry has properly opened in Folkestone to start hearing evidence that will decide the fate of wildlife and local people in the Dungeness area from a massively expanded airport at Lydd.

    It was fantastic to see local people turning up to show their feelings against the expansion that is likely to damage their local environment and quality of life. The public viewing area in the council chamber was…

  • Dungeness and the Dee in the news

    Andre Farrar
    Tomorrow sees the public inquiry into plans extend Lydd Airport and potentially boost passenger numbers to 2m a year (they are currently under 1000) really get under way.  We’re appearing at the inquiry giving evidence to back up our long-held objection to this proposal.  The inquiry opened last week and then adjourned so that the inspector, Mr Ken Barton, could go on a series of site visits.  Tomorrow the serious…

  • Peat bogs can’t wait twenty years

    Andre Farrar
    I mentioned the massive loss of lowland peatlands recently when telling you about our concerns abut the Isle of Axholme.  Over 94% of lowland raised bogs have been lost – gone, wrecked, destroyed.  This particular type of peat bog – lowland raised mire – has come as close as any habitat to disappearing completely.
    A whole habitat!
    Before I tell you the story, I do want to highlight that there’s something…

  • Peat, water and the choices we take

    Andre Farrar
    Peat is the waterlogged remains of plants that have built up over thousands of years.  Peat bogs and wetlands are treasure-troves of nature.  They are also vital landscape features that hold water in the landscape and, crucially lock up carbon.
    Pretty precious then?
    So not wise to drain them, opencast mine them for horticulture, plough them up and otherwise degrade then?
    For one type of peat bog known as lowland raised…

  • The Song of the Shingle

    Andre Farrar
    Dungeness is an other world; ridges of shingle have been built up by time and tide to form a vast triangle of land pointing into the English Channel.  The pebbles create a rare habitat for wildlife a habitat known as ‘vegetated shingle’ – and Dungeness is the biggest area in Europe for this habitat and makes up half of all there is in the UK. Here’s some more about this characteristic habitat.
    …

  • Reflections of the opening day of the Lydd Airport public inquiry

    Andre Farrar
    This day has been a long time coming. Even back when the old Lydd airport was bought up in 2001 with the expectation of future expansion, it looked like we would end up striving to safeguard one of this country's most remarkable wildlife sites - Dungeness.
    Racing down to Folkestone on High Speed 1, skirting the edge of our Rainham Marshes nature reserve, I can’t help thinking that Folkestone (where I’m heading for…

  • Forests and Wildlife

    Andre Farrar
    The song of the shingle
    Years of campaigning, meetings, letter-writing e-mailing, more meetings, press interest, talking to people and worry, have come down to this – the start of the Lydd airport extension public inquiry.
    From Tuesday 15 February, when the public inquiry opens (and then rapidly adjourns for site visits).  Alongside many others, we have campaigned long and hard for this public inquiry – to enable…

  • Forest futures

    Andre Farrar

    A week is a long time in forest politics - and the decisions taken over the last few days and in the next few weeks will influence the future of many special places.  The New Forest, for one rather extreme example is well protected by designations - it's future, we argue, is not one where it is run by charities - Mark Avery sets out our views here.

    The week ends with news that the Government is halting current sales…

  • Dee-light

    Andre Farrar

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  • England needs a plan – part 2

    Simon Marsh
    I mentioned on 21 January how surprising it is that England is the only country in the UK that doesn’t have any kind of strategic, spatial plan, and promised that we would shortly publish our own report on what a Natural Planning Framework for England should look like.
    Well, you can find the full text of A Natural Planning Framework: Putting the Natural Environment at the Heart of the National Planning Framework…

  • Protecting the Jewel of the Danube

    Andre Farrar
    The Danube Delta is undoubtedly a very special place – over the last couple of years, our BirdLife partner in Romania SOR, with support from colleagues here at the RSPB, has been fighting to protect this marvellous place from damaging developments – here’s the story from last year.
    We’ve recently had some good news from Marina Cazacu, Danube Delta Casework Officer for SOR; ‘We just had brilliant news…

  • Selling Special Places – or not?

    Andre Farrar
    I wrote about my family’s experience of just one Forestry Commission wood here. The close connection between forests and so many of our lives is one of the reasons the prospect of proposals for a sell off have mobilised such vigorous and effective campaign.
    I could have picked other personal links with the Forest estate, my first encounter with pied flycatchers in Cumbria’s Grizedale Forest, my first (and only…

  • Lydd Airport Public Inquiry - getting prepared

    Andre Farrar

    Here's just two boxes of the paperwork for the public inquiry - the culimation of weeks of work by the inquiry team.

    You can catch up on the background to the case here.  We'll be reporting regularly from the inquiry and for our Dungeness reserve during the weeks it runs.  It opens on the 15 Feb formally but the real business starts on 22 February.

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  • One story, three generations and one wood

    Andre Farrar
    Can you remember the first time you saw a deer?  I can.  The first proper time. I’d seen them briefly framed in the car’s headlights, but not properly.
    Draped over the North Downs near where I grew up is King’s Wood.  It was my deep, dark wood where the deer lived. It was here that I first saw them, properly – a movement through the trees and then framed on a ride, looking directly at me, a dark fallow…

  • Wetlands, are we winning?

    Andre Farrar
    Today it’s World Wetlands Day, an event that celebrates a landmark in wetland conservation.  The Ramsar Convention was agreed in the Iranian town of Ramsar on 2 February 1971.
    The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especial as Waterfowl Habitat (to give it its full name) has put wetland conservation on the global stage and brought commitments from Government’s around the world to protect wetlands…

  • Peak Performance

    Andre Farrar
    The Peak District National Park is a place where landscapes, wildlife and our relationship to the natural world entwine – perhaps more than anywhere else.  Our love of the moors and rocky edges, the open spaces and the call of the curlew carrying on the wild wind brings millions of us to ‘the Peak’ again and again (it’s one of the most visited national parks in the world).
    Curlew
    And, today…

  • Dakatcha – communities and conservation

    Andre Farrar
    Helen Byron’s trip to Kenya has moved on the Dakatacha woodlands – here’s her latest letter from Africa (which sounds so much better than email).
    First impressions of the Dakatcha woodlands
    I've spent quite a lot of time working with Nature Kenya over the last year on their campaign to defend this site from a huge (50,000 hectare) Jatropha project. This inedible crop produces oil which can be used…

  • Celebrating the importance of wetlands

    Andre Farrar

    Next Wednesday (2 February) is World Wetlands Day, it is 40 years since the seminal international conference held in Ramsar, Iran, established the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance.

    The early years of the 1970s saw a blossoming of environmental awareness of which the Ramsar conference was a significant part.  In many ways it marked the dawn of the modern era of nature conservation – it is a significant…

  • The path less travelled – discovering the Brecks

    Andre Farrar
    I was lucky – my parents took me to the Brecks as part of an East Anglian holiday back in the 60s.  We drove up the A11 in my father’s new ford Corsair and visited the flint mines at Grimes Graves.  So for me England’s semi-arid nearly-desert is part of the landscape of my life – but generally it’s a place that when mentioned gets a ‘where’s that?’
    So Jack Watkin’s …

  • Impressions of the Tana River Delta

    Andre Farrar

    The relentless rush to ‘grow’ biofuels in countries like Kenya is causing serious problems for local people and threatens to devastate the natural environment.  I’ve attempted to explain the ins and outs of the policy arguments in these posts before, here, for example.

    My colleague, Helen Byron, is currently in Kenya and she has sent me some of her initial impressions of life in the Tana River Delta…

  • If you go down to the woods today.

    Andre Farrar
    I doubt you would be in for much of surprise – the recent spate of campaigning should leave no one in any doubt that people love trees, and woods and forests, the wildlife they contain and the ability to get closer to nature amongst the trees.
    And that goes for us here at the RSPB too. The future of England's forest is centre-stage.
    The mix of effective grass-roots campaigning and the UN designating 2011 as…