Articles List - Articles for Nature Recovery Network in Oxford, UK

Public Examination of Salt Cross Garden Village Area Action Plan

A Personal View by Nigel Pearce Sorry about the long title. I’ll get on to that in a minute. First this: We have spent so long prising ourselves out of nature and looking down on the rest of creation from an assumed height that we now find it hard to work our way back into a structure of thought which fits the structure of nature . . . These words were written over twenty years ago in a book called Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed, by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. I attended, via West Oxfordshire District Council’s equivalent of Zoom, every day of the Public Examination, in late June and early July. It seemed to me that it would be good to test the Council’s Area Action Plan (AAP) for Salt Cross against the quotation above. …

Released: July 14th, 2021 01:05 AM

Environment Bill 2021

Young blackthorns in blossom thicken a garden hedge, bringing pollen for insects in spring and fruit and more shelter for birds in autumn and winter. Photo, Nigel Pearce. Can the Environment Bill save our biodiversity – and us? A reflection by Nigel Pearce Over 30 years ago, in 1989, the Department of the Environment published an innovative series of booklets under the general title “Environment in Trust”. The introductory booklet opened with these words: The Government has the responsibility to protect the natural environment from any harmful effects of human activity. Everything we do as individuals – even such daily functions as eating, drinking and washing – has an effect on the natural environment. Nature is not inevitably damaged by our activities: in many respects it is very resilient. But we need to ensure that a sensible balance is struck …

Released: June 19th, 2021 06:39 AM

Mammal Watch

All the mammals – and some birds too... A couple of weeks ago, I was lent the trail camera by the Oxford Small Mammals group, in order to identify, once and for all, what has been eating my daily offering of hedgehog food. It’s easy to set up and takes a video or still photos when triggered by any movement. Young Male Hedgehog dining al fresco - socially-distanced, of course. Photo. Beverly Chandler Some four years ago, I realised that the only hedgehog I had seen in Eynsham was, sadly, flat as a pancake on the Witney Road. And then at coming-out-of-the-pub time on a balmy Saturday evening, I saw a live one, in sports mode, running down Acre End Street. If you have never seen a hedgehog running, trust me, they are surprisingly speedy and have …