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We can now add this week’s decision, by Peel Energy, to shelve their plans for an impoundment barrage across the Mersey to last year’s scrapping of plans to build the Cardiff –Weston barrage across the Severn. Coincidence or a developing trend? We have welcomed both decisions...

Sandsculpture marking the campaign to stop Hunterston power station (picture courtesy of blueriverstudios ) Looking back through the year’s posts it’s clear that there’s been a focus on estuaries and coastal wetlands. While I’m happy to admit a personal bias towards these particular...

OK, so I may be jumping the gun slightly – but experience is beginning to tell me that massive concrete walls built across estuaries are a seriously bad idea. Here's what we've said so far. As a nation, we’ve come to that conclusion twice on the Severn and two decades ago on the...

Here we are in the middle of one of the most significant weeks for the natural world and I’ve been absent from the blogwaves. The Severn barrage disappeared at the beginning of the week, but already news of a privately-funded proposal is emerging. The barrage is dead, long live the barrage seems...

Reports in the Sunday papers ( here in the Independent on Sunday) indicate that tomorrow will see the massively damaging Severn barrage dropped on cost grounds. The cycle of wild enthusiasm, appraisal of the true risks and costs followed by collapse of proposals under the weight of their massive cost...

We’ve followed proposals to build massive (and massively damaging) barrages across several of the UK’s estuaries – the Severn, The Thames, The Mersey and even the Wash. Some of these proposals have got further than others, but they all follow a familiar pattern, initial enthusiasm,...

It’s the Saving Special Places blog’s first birthday. We’ve covered a lot of ground in the last year – both from the UK and further afield, from the Severn to the Serengeti. Last September Lydd and Hunterston were already prominent cases, one post was entitled ‘Lydd Airport...

I recently wrote an article for Life Fellows News updating the story of our work to protect the Severn estuary from damaging barrage proposals while at the same time supporting the search for more sustainable options for harnessing the power of the tides. The newsletter has just been mailed –...

The Severn estuary (with help from it’s surfing community) has been covering the media with stunning images of one of its biggest tidal bores for years - getting a five star rating. The Severn bore is but one of the wonders of this special place – you can read more about them here. The...

Lots of posts on this blog have featured wetlands and, in particular, the UK’s coast and estuaries. This is no coincidence – this country’s coastal heritage really puts us on the world map of conservation issues. As we look forward to the end of winter hundreds of thousands of wildfowl...

I’m just back from a briefing we organised in London. The audience got to hear the details behind this story . We’ve had a bit of a blog-fest on this topic today so you can read more by visiting Mark Avery’s blog and our News blog . The pursuit of tidal power by the construction...

Like Mr Toad unable to resist squandering his inheritance on the latest must-have motor-car, poop poop – the siren-voices of massive tidal power generating barrage proposals dominate the thinking around how to harness the power of the tides. Philip Stafford, writing in the Financial Times ,...

Waiting to catch the Eurostar back from Brussels (I’ll come back to why I was there later), I caught up with this news item that highlights the importance of vegetated coastlines from mangroves to saltmarshes as part of the solution to tackling global warming. This UN Environment Programme, Food...