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Who cares about whales? Whales might be dying because of sonar surveying, but Greenpeace simply ignores the science that doesn’t suit it. So far last year, 71 whales have washed up dead on the shores of New England and neighbouring states. The rate seems to have risen in recent years along with a growth in […]

Two years ago I watched a red squirrel climbing a pine tree at my home in Northumberland. I fear it may be the last time I have that thrill. Twenty years ago they were everywhere in our woods and regular visitors to my bird table. Then in 2003 we saw the first grey squirrel. Almost […]

In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll brought the dodo back to life. The extinct, fat, flightless pigeon arranged a famous running race in which “all shall have prizes”.   Now an American tech entrepreneur, Ben Lamm, plans to bring the dodo back to life for real, along with some other extinct species like woolly mammoths, […]

If you are a bird, any kind of bird, the current pandemic of avian influenza rampaging through your kind is far more terrifying than anything the hairless apes on the ground below experienced in 2020 and 2021. Britain’s seabirds – guillemots, gannets, gulls, kittiwakes and skuas – have been hardest hit because they breed in […]

Last week my business demolished a derelict brick building used by glue sniffers and fornicators. It took several years to get planning permission to do so and predictably the last hurdle was bats. We had to wait till the summer to do two costly bat surveys, which as expected found no bats, let alone rare […]

An obsession with organic farming ‘in sync with nature’ triggered an unsustainable but predictable economic crisis My article for The Telegraph: Sri Lanka’s collapse, from one of the fastest growing Asian economies to a political, economic and humanitarian horror show, seems to have taken everybody by surprise. Five years ago, the World Bank was extolling […]

They despoil our glorious countryside, add £6 billion a year to our household bills and are arguably the most inefficient solution to our energy crisis. So why is the Government planning to make it even easier to build them? My article for The Daily Mail: Take a wild guess at how much of the UK’s […]

My article for The Sun: When Lorraine Allanson spoke up in favour of drilling for shale gas in her part of North Yorkshire, activists cut off her internet, called her a “whore” and linked her to a fake crime number. “Shouting, abuse, public defecation, intimidation, hijacking lorries to stop deliveries, blocking the village street, this […]

The Masai Mara has defied gloomy predictions of decline My article for The Critic: When I was ten years old, in 1968, my parents took me and two of my sisters on a safari through Kenya and Tanzania. Having lived there when they first married in the 1950s, they wanted us to see the wildlife […]

It’s madness not to frack My article for The Sun: The price of gas is through the roof thanks to Vladimir Putin, who has Europe’s energy market by the throat. Britain is on track to spend a staggering £2BILLION on imported liquefied natural gas from Russia this year as war rages in Ukraine. Household bills […]