Last year the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) published a report called Wild Bird Populations in the UK, 1970 to 2018. We published this post at the time but feel it bears repeating: the coronavirus crisis may be at the top of our list of concerns but the environmental crisis has not gone away.
Continue reading “Bird populations in crisis”
An important message from Sir David Attenborough.
Header picture by DKG
This is a water flea (Daphnia magna), not even a distant cousin to the fleas on your dog, but very close to the bottom of the freshwater food chain that is being disrupted by your dog’s flea treatment.
Continue reading “Flea circus part 2”
Research has recently found that the highly toxic insecticides used on cats and dogs to kill fleas are poisoning England’s rivers. Scientists believe that significant environmental damage is being done to important water insect populations, down at the bottom of the freshwater food chain.
Continue reading “Flea circus”
At the end of 2020, the protection afforded to the UK’s wildlife by the UK Post 2010 Biodiversity Framework will end. The Environment Bill 2020 does not make clear exactly what will replace it.
Continue reading “Protecting the park”
The Wildlife Trusts has stepped into the controversy surrounding the government’s proposed changes to planning regulations; they have concluded that the changes will damage nature, increase air pollution and leave local people with no say on protecting urban wildlife corridors.
Continue reading “Wild belt land”
The latest research has found that microplastic in the soil is damaging populations of the tiny creatures that maintain its fertility.
Continue reading “Microplastics”
It is now two years since the Friends of Southwick Country Park took issue with Wiltshire’s Housing Site Allocation Plan. Despite our best efforts the sites surrounding the park and Lambrok Stream, at Church Lane (H2.4), Upper Studley (H2.5) and Southwick Court (H2.6) were selected, last year, for future development.
Continue reading “Newt-counting”
This winter has been the hottest ever recorded in Europe.
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This is a screenshot taken from the Environment Agency’s Flood Map; it shows the risk of Lambrok Stream flooding. We have dropped a yellow marker at the place where the access road to the planned development of 180 houses (planning application 20/00379/OUT) is intended to cross the Lambrok.
Continue reading “Flood Map”
The public consultation on planning application 20/00379/OUT has been extended.
Continue reading “20/00379/OUT public consultation extended”
The Ecological Survey and Report that was submitted with Planning Application 20/00379/OUT says this:
Continue reading “More about 20/00379/OUT”
Most of the Friends of Southwick Country Park are retirees, all of us inclined to begin sentences with: When I was a child….
Continue reading “Splatometer”
Here’s an interesting data set from the British Trust for Ornithology.
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Planning application 20/00379/OUT’s Ecology Survey and Assessment Report has been arbitrarily divided into six separate documents. This makes it very difficult to read, particularly as the contents page is in the first document and thereafter there are no page numbers. Stick at it, though; we have found it as interesting for its omissions as it is for its findings
Continue reading “More on Application 20/00379/OUT”
How to comment on a planning application
Yesterday, more than a thousand people read our posts about planning application 20/00379/OUT.
Continue reading “Comment on 20/00379/OUT.”
Birds of Conservation Concern Red List
According to the RSPB, there are 67 species of British birds now on the Birds of Conservation Concern Red List, more than ever before. The Red List are those birds that need urgent conservation action if their falling populations are to survive our environmental emergency.
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by Suzanne Humphries
Last year, 2019, was the 11th warmest year on record in the UK, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that all the other ten have occurred since 2002.
Continue reading “Record temperatures in 2019”
Tomorrow will be the second Wednesday of the month and FoSCP’s first work party of the year. Come and join us; come and help us look after the park and its wildlife.
The Met Office says it will be cold, there is always a chance of rain and we know it will be muddy but the company is good, the conversation enlightening and there will be coffee and biscuits at half time. We meet at 9.30am in the car park, wellied and waterproofed, and we work until midday. New volunteers will be very welcome.
We pick up plastic trash around the park almost every day. Plastic is an environmental problem that we must take seriously; here is a video made by the UN that clearly explains the extent of the problem.
Christmas crackers spill plastic trinkets onto your Christmas table every year. Nobody keeps them; who even remembers what fell out of their Christmas cracker last year?
It all ends up in landfill with the paper hats. The hats will biodegrade in a matter of weeks but nobody knows how long the cheap petrochemical-derived plastic dinosaurs and whistles will remain in the ground. The best estimates of the time it will take such plastics to biodegrade are anywhere between 5,000 years and never.
Here is Friends of the Earth’s thought provoking video about Christmas crackers.
A lot of people are buying artificial Christmas trees in the belief that it benefits the environment, but environmentalists and energy analysts would beg to disagree. We need only look at a single element of the hundreds of thousands of artificial trees that will be put up and decorated this Christmas: they are all made of plastic.
Continue reading “Real or fake?”
Scientist are beginning to understand that light pollution is a very significant factor in the recent rapid decline of insect populations.
Continue reading “Light pollution”
Scientists from across Europe have concluded that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy should be urgently reviewed to stop the intensification of farming practices that are leading to a catastrophic decline in wildlife.
Continue reading “Intensive farming”
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 