On a June evening I took a walk in Urquhart Bay Wood on the shores of Loch Ness. The main trail took me down to the confluence of two burns. Relaxing a while, I watched a chaffinch fluttering up from a shingle bank and snaping up aquatic flies that were congregation under overhanging foliage. As
Each spring half term I go camping with my family and we visit a different British Isle. Its a week when I meet young conservationists out in the field - putting the hours in protecting tern colonies, showing visitors nesting peregrines, doing vegetation transects and the many other time-consuming seasonal tasks that conserving our nature
Originally published in The Conversation on 1 Oct 2014 Full marks to colleagues at the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London for the Living Planet Report 2014 and its headline message which one hopes ought to shock the world out of its complacency: a 52% decline of wildlife populations in the past
