It's the party conference season and the RSPB will attend the Labour and Tory party conferences over the next three weeks but we are starting off in Bournemouth with the Liberal Democrats.
Yesterday evening we had dinner with Shadow Environment Ministers Simon Hughes and Martin Horwood and other influential thinkers in the Party.
A couple of years ago, green groups, including the RSPB (in fact I remember us being quite vocal on the subject!) criticised the LibDems for their lack of policies applying to the natural environment. At the time that stimulated a rather hurt response from the LibDems but they have responded well over the last two years by putting a lot of effort into developing their thinking and it is encapsulated in a document called Our Natural Heritage which will be discussed by the Conference tomorrow (Monday). Have a look at it and make up your own mind but we like policies such as: encourage the reintroduction of species that used to be native to the UK but that have been lost due to persecution or habitat degradation - bring on the white-tailed eagles?
The suggestion that the allocation of Highly Protected Marine Reserves should be based on scientific evidence sounds uncontroversial but the current Marine Bill will make their choice subject to socio-economic considerations too (unlike on land).
We also welcome a policy to properly enforce wildlife laws and make the penalties reflect the cost of restoration.
In fact there are so many good things in here that I will stop picking examples. They do go from the very local (provision of bat and swift boxes in new developments) to the global (make the World Trade Organisation rules subject to environmental criteria). Have a look and make up your own mind.
Let's hope that the other two major GB parties also refresh their environmental thinking and put it as clearly into single documents as the Lib Dems have done - then the choices between them will be made much clearer for the electorate. We will be asking the other Parties what are their responses to the Lib Dems' policy document.
Hi Mark yes lets hope all parties make a big effort for the environment in the right way for our country,unfortunately spending massive amount of money to cut emissions in this country will have hardly any effect while the worlds major polluters still pump it out willy nilly.Please don't get me wrong we do have to help but if UK emissions are only say 2% cutting it by 50% won't have a big effect.
Been on Mull for 2 weeks and while RSPB especially Dave Sexton doing fantastic job it is really slow progress.Look at total number in UK and I think they have been breeding for about 25 years also birds brought in from Norway.They are not very prolific producers of fledged chicks-ref Auntie a blogger on Dave Sextons blog(Debby's latest blog) tells us how many in Finland,a very small %.We desperately need stiffer sentences for crimes against Raptors.I felt the BBC Countryfile programme did Sea Eagles a disservice as what I saw could and probably was a Sea Eagle on a dead animal not one it had killed.We have to get correct evidence of what lambs Sea Eagles do take.I think it encourages WTSE to take lambs when sheep farmers leave dying animals in fields, they should be encouraged to kill them (I guess it is against the law somewhere)but not much difference between a writhing dying sheep and a new born lamb.I have gone on a bit,wonder what others think.Saw WTSE every day on Mull.