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@RobGMacfarlane
Book-lovers, book-believers, readers, writers: the @scottishbktrust is running a crucial new campaign to get books into the hands & homes of Scottish children who don't have easy access to them.
Please share on, consider a donation if you can & find out more below.
📚🪄 twitter.com/scottishbktrus…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Hot weather makes open water even more appealing, but swimming comes with risks.
The @outdoorswimming has put together a vital list of ten top tips for safe summer swimming.
Please do read & share if so inclined.
#BEWATERAWARE
outdoorswimmingsociety.com/10-tips-for-su…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Last year the "controlled burning" of peatland deeper than 40cm was banned in England.
@GreenpeaceUK & @Natures_Voice show illegal burning ongoing on shooting estates.
Blanket ban on burning all moorland peat needs to be introduced.
bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Thanks to my friend the legend @StanleyDonwood for letting me use a detail from his #WeStandWithUkraine-adapted linocut The Eraser as a new banner.
Follow him here/on Instagram: he’s about to sell a run of this print to raise funds to help refugees from the war. Gonna fly. 🇺🇦
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@RobGMacfarlane
This is an excellent decision on mountain-naming, which will help the Welsh language thrive within & without Cymru/Wales.
Really well explained in Peter’s thread.
“Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.” (Wade Davis) twitter.com/GillibrandPete…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Questioned for holding up a blank piece of paper; would be arrested for expressing polite public dissent from the (absurd, oppressive) principle of hereditary monarchy.
WTAF? There is *so* much wrong here. twitter.com/paulpowlesland…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Rare conservation #goodnewsstory: 119 hen harrier chicks have fledged this year in England.
In 2013, the figure was 0.
Fragile, hard-won progress for these beautiful, sky-dancing raptors. theguardian.com/environment/20…
133
@RobGMacfarlane
"Slime mold can solve mazes in pursuit of a single oat flake &, later, can recall the path it took to reach it. More remarkably still, slime mold...doesn't age & it doesn't die."
From this superb essay on the *astonishing* world of slime molds/myxomycetes: orionmagazine.org/article/what-s…
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@RobGMacfarlane
For those following this issue 👇 re. the planned destruction of a rare 'tunnel' of elms, to allow access to farmland: a petition has been launched against the planning decision–and it's flying.
8200 signatures & counting.
Please sign/share if so minded.
change.org/p/deparment-of… twitter.com/RobGMacfarlane…
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@RobGMacfarlane
RIP the great Ronald Blythe—author of Akenfield & one of the most gently luminous 20th-c writers of people & place.
Ronnie died last night aged 100.
A beautiful obituary by @patrick_barkham.
I visited Ronnie at Bottengoms; he gave me two prints I treasure.
theguardian.com/books/2023/jan…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Niche request: do any field-recordists/sound-recordists out there have good-quality recordings of the sound of moths' wings, or a moth's wings, fluttering?
Asking for a project.
(Told you it was niche).
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@RobGMacfarlane
"I can tell ministers from experience that hope is being destroyed in the places they never deign to visit and there is desperation in the faces they never see."
@GordonBrown coldly furious & clear on the imminent, "indefensible" £20 universal credit cut.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
138
@RobGMacfarlane
“We're deep in ‘salt-water syndrome’: the things we’re using to cure our hunger & thirst are making us hungrier & thirstier."
Richard Powers––writer of The Overstory & so much more––is fascinating as ever in this new interview with @india_bourke.
newstatesman.com/encounter/2022…
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@RobGMacfarlane
“On their journeys, these dragonflies make a multigenerational migration of 18,000 kilometres in a year, with a single individual flying over 6,000 kilometres.”
@Yuvan_aves, brilliant as ever, on the mysteries & wonders of migratory dragonflies. sustain.round.glass/species/wander…
140
@RobGMacfarlane
"We often admire trees for their steady rootedness, but right now, around the world, forests are on the move."
Beautiful, thought-provoking multi-media essay by @ChelseaScudder & Jeremy Seifert abt the "great tree migration" from the Pleistocene-Present.
emergencemagazine.org/feature/they-c…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Gorne Wood is a fragment of Ancient Woodland & a remnant of London’s Great North Wood.
But it’s in trouble.
Local community has *5 days to raise last 2% of funds* needed to secure & restore the site for wildlife & people.
Read more/give/RT to support this change on the ground.👇 twitter.com/FourthReserve/…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Happy that our film River won Best Documentary at the Australian Academy Awards yesterday.
Such a joy to work on this with director Jen Peedom, Willem Dafoe, Jonny Greenwood, Joseph Nizeti & the astonishing @didgefusion.
Rivers are beings—and our fate flows with theirs.
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@RobGMacfarlane
“Certainly it is in October that one may see the skeins of geese arrowing their way south…Primeval forces are there, made for a moment visible.”
(Nan Shepherd)
It’s bird migration time of year again; the skies are on the move.
Who’s arriving & who’s leaving where you are? twitter.com/jake_fiennes/s…
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@RobGMacfarlane
John Keats on finding happiness in the modest moment (from an 1817 letter to Benjamin Bailey).
"If a sparrow come before my Window, I take part in its existence & pick about the gravel..."
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@RobGMacfarlane
Five Goshawks.
Five of these magnificent, rare raptors, shot and dumped together.
I can’t even…
Contact @RuralPolicingSC with any info. twitter.com/RaptorPersUK/s…
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@RobGMacfarlane
"5 yrs later, the River Roding Trust has planted 100s of trees, removed 1000+ bags of rubbish & 75 shopping trolleys...the river's polluters are being exposed & challenged for the first time in decades."
This thread👇
So inspiring.
Real change on the ground, community-led.
YES! twitter.com/jm0ses/status/…
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@RobGMacfarlane
UK on its own has the political leverage to begin to bring this annual atrocity to an end, by moving to suspend the Faroe Islands Free Trade Agreement until cetacean slaughter ends.
The UK FTA is worth 20% of FI total global trade.
@trussliz? @RishiSunak? twitter.com/seashepherd_uk…
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@RobGMacfarlane
EO Wilson speaks of "The Eremocene"––the Age of Loneliness––entered as we degrade & erase the species we share this Earth.
New @NHM_London research finds UK *one of the world's most nature-depleted countries*, & the most nature-bereft in the G7.
bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
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@RobGMacfarlane
First blossom today on this apple tree, grown from a pip gathered by my friend Roger Deakin from Kazakhstan's ur-apple forests. He died 3 yrs later.
I always mark the day; think of Rog.
A memory-tree. You've probably got one yourself.
Story of the tree: emergencemagazine.org/essay/east-to-…
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@RobGMacfarlane
🔥 Well this is immense & breaking news🔥
The Labour Party has today announced it will pass a Right To Roam Act for England *&* reverse the Dartmoor ban if they come to power.
Such an act wd need be based on Free, Fair & Informed Access for all.
A big moment in access history. twitter.com/Right_2Roam/st…
@RobGMacfarlane
Books: Is A River Alive? (WIP) Underland, The Lost Words, The Old Ways, etc. | Films: River, Mountain, Upstream | Nature, climate, people | Prof @Cambridge_uni