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This:
* Europe has 600m fewer breeding birds than 40 yrs ago. 600 million.
* Skylarks, Yellow Wagtails, Starlings, & House Sparrows suffering immense losses.
Common birds becoming less & less common; slipping from eye, mind & sky.
They need protection too.theguardian.com/environment/20…
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The oldest story in world literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, tells of a ruler felling a sacred cedar wood.
Chaos follows.
4000 yrs on, @jjhorgan pursues the cutting of #FairyCreek's old-growth cedars.
Some of those trees are half as old as Gilgamesh.
Here: theguardian.com/environment/20…
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The long-established right to wild camp on Dartmoor is under threat:
theguardian.com/environment/20…
@Right_2Roam & I want to crowd-source memories, photos etc. from those who've camped up there (10 Tors, DofE...), to show what stands to be lost.
Pls RT––& share thoughts etc in replies.
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Silver winter light out there today & the trees round here are suddenly all flame, blaze & furnace.
This is the best infographic I know explaining the biochemistry of autumn/fall's fire-palette.
All hail anthocyanins!
By the excellent @compoundchem
Send me autumn colours...
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Hello parents, teachers, children—to mark #NationalPoetryDay there’s a Lost Words spell-poem writing competition launching today.🖋🪄
I’ll be judging the entries.
Open to 7-12 yos.
Enter! Spread the word! Write on!
Details here & below:
nationalpoetryday.co.uk/the-lost-words…
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“I don’t think the average consumer knows that half the stuff they buy at the supermarket contains palm oil, & most palm oil is from illegally deforested land…”: on crucial new international efforts to curb the abuses of the palm oil industry.
e360.yale.edu/features/the-t…
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“What the Government has proposed potentially tears up the most fundamental legal protections our remaining wildlife has.”
Please, please read & share this @RSPBEngland thread about the huge intensification of the war on nature that’s beginning under Truss. twitter.com/RSPBEngland/st…
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Hello—it’s Midwinter Eve & the 1st episode of our @bbcworldservice audio-drama adaptation of The Dark Is Rising is out today!
A year’s work.
An episode a day for 12 days.
Pls listen along, tell us how you’re finding it, tell others!
#TheDarkIsRising
Here: bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w… twitter.com/RobGMacfarlane…
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So: wealthy landowner takes case to High Court to exclude wild camping from his 4000-acre bloodsporty Dartmoor estate.
Wins case.
Now *sells* the right to camp back to the taxpayer, on a reduced area.
Sucks so much.
A massive step back—and a stitch-up.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
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This is extraordinary.
Stay the course.
Life! twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl…
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"More money is being spent destroying the UK environment than protecting it."
* UK most wildlife-depleted of G7 nations
* 25yr Environment Plan lacks robust monitoring/enforcement
* Public sector investment in conservation down 33% in 5 years.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
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Hello -- 5 years ago today, a book called The Lost Words by me & @JackieMorrisArt was published.
Here we are, nervous & young(er), on that day.
In our wildest dreams we couldn't have guessed what the planting of that acorn would cause to flourish.
Thread...🧵🪡
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Outstanding (breaking) news: the National Trust’s Board of Trustees has today confirmed the earlier members’ vote, & announced that it will no longer issue any "trail hunting" licences on @nationaltrust land.
👏 👏 keeptheban.uk/post/breaking-…
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Planning consent granted for the destruction of a tunnel of elms, at St Marks on the Isle of Man.
Elms are nationally scarce, elm tunnels drastically scarce across UK & Europe.
Does anyone know why this is happening, & whether anything can still be done? twitter.com/manxnature/sta…
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Wind In The Willows, as re-written by @SouthernWater.
Via @PrivateEyeNews
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The Minister for Access to Nature, Richard Benyon, owns a 12,000-acre private estate, & oversaw the quashing of the Agnew Review into increased access to green space.🤔
So today @Right_2Roam campaigners led a peaceful mass trespass onto his land...
theguardian.com/environment/20…
👇👇
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Fabulous!
First global attempt to map vast underground fungal networks.
Big step in bringing fungi within conservation frames (flora, fauna *&* fungi).
As a cartophile & mycophile who wrote a book on underworlds, this story is *right* in my wheelhouse.
theguardian.com/science/2021/n…
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Writing today about this ivory figurine.
It's c. 30,000 years old; found in the Hohle Fels cave in the Swabian Jura.
A tiny Ice Age bird, wings swept back tight to its body.
Such grace of being & making.
A Diver? Goose? Cormorant?
It knows where it's going.
[Photo @uni_tue]
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“It sticks in my craw. We are not accepting favours from our masters. We are not their serfs. It isn’t the 19th century. Dartmoor is not a private gentlemen’s shooting estate.” theguardian.com/environment/20…
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Well this utterly delights me.
A Dadaist re-write of The Old Ways by harvest mice.
Thank you to my avant-garde collaborators!
Book become a place of shelter, words as winter nest. Sometimes that’s what writing can feel like. twitter.com/paulpowlesland…
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New gov't policy is an #AttackOnNature, in an already acutely nature-depleted country.
@nationaltrust @WildlifeTrusts & @Natures_Voice (total membership 8m) are mobilising in resistance.
Pls share to show @ranil the no. of votes & depth of feeling at stake bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
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Here's a short round-up of ways to help welcome & settle Afghan refugees arriving in the UK, with particular focus on the work of @Care4Calais.
Do share and/or reply with other suggestions of organisations or ways to help; I know I'd be glad to hear them.
theguardian.com/world/2021/aug…
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