Slime Moulds…..Banned Books Week…...From ‘Wild Justice’……
by Bernie Bell - 08:45 on 26 September 2024
Slime Moulds…..
I’ve previously written about Slime Moulds….
https://frontiersmagazine.org/the-wonder-that-is-slime-mould/
In our neighbour’s garden, a Slime Mould appeared which neither of us had seen before….
Mike investigated through ispot….
And the result was that 'Amadan' suggested this….
https://identifier-les-champignons.com/.../leocarpus.../
….and we agree.
Also, some bright yellow spiky ones….
In our garden – a couple of Slime Moulds – one of which I think looks like a Poodle…
And…..there’s this…..
‘Oh and it makes me wonder…’
Banned Books Week….
Don’t Think about the Orange Elephant in the Reading Room
I'm not worried about the kid whose school library bans
a book they want to read. There's no better way to get
them to do something than to tell them they can't.
But I will miss the serendipity of wandering the stacks,
scent of old book dust in my nose, until I stumble
upon some curious volume of long forgotten lore,
like the word "serendipity", which was coined by Horace Walpole
in the 18th century from a Persian fairy tale, "The Three Princes
of Serendip" which is an old name for Sri Lanka.
But I digress, which tends to happen between the shelves
as fingertips caress worn leather bindings
until they run into the discovery of penicillin.
I'm not worried about learning what we want to learn.
I'm worried about not learning what we need to know.
(For Banned Books Week and this disturbing news.)
https://bartbarkerpoet.com/2024/09/24/dont-think-about-the-orange-elephant-in-the-reading-room/
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From ‘Wild Justice’…..
“Two items this morning - each about the behaviour of Natural England (NE), the statutory body with responsibility for wildlife in England.
Our challenge of Badger culling: Wild Justice is taking a legal challenge of NE's licensing of further Badger culling - a decision that was made against the advice of NE's Chief Scientist under what we regard as pressure from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) during the Conservative administration. This challenge is made by ourselves and Badger Trust.
NE has applied to the courts to increase the adverse costs cap normally paid by claimants (that would be us and Badger Trust) if they lose a legal challenge. The costs are usually capped at £10k for each claimant under the UK operation of the Aarhus Convention, one of whose aims is to protect access to justice for the public. At Wild Justice we would say that we are quintessentially an Aarhus-compliant organisation - one of the things we do is to take legal challenges for wildlife on behalf of the public - cases that an individual would find it very difficult to fund and very difficult to take for reasons of unfamiliarity with the law. NE wants Wild Justice to pay £20k and Badger Trust (a charity) to pay £30k. We have made legal arguments to the court that the cap should not be raised and that NE is attacking the Aarhus principles to which the UK is a signatory.
We thought you should know that the state nature conservation body is taking this approach and is rather keen on getting our money (all of which is your money originally). We'd like to see how NE would manage if it had to raise its own funds like we do rather than having an income of over £350m gifted to them by the taxpayer (that's you too).
It is ironic that the decision which NE is aggressively defending was made when, we say, Defra leant on NE under the Conservative administration. The new Labour government has announced that Badger culling will end in five years (should be sooner!) but NE is still defending its actions to license culling under a past administration.
More information in our blog - click here.
Ill-gotten gains?: we have been pressing NE for information about a disturbing event on Thursley Common since we first wrote to them on election day, 4 July. There are over 150 emails in our files on this relatively small but important issue - imagine how many a complex legal challenge generates! NE has been slow to respond to us and has not been as forthcoming with information as we feel they should have been.
NE was paid for allowing a film crew access to this highly protected site in the bird breeding season and when other vulnerable wildlife, eg reptiles, were present and active here.
Having seen the map of Nightjar territories for the site we find it inconceivable that filming in mid-late June would be disturbance free. But NE persuaded themselves that it was and took the cash - rumoured (we stress, rumoured) to be £30,000. That might be 30 large pieces of silver?
More information in our blog - click here.
That's it for now - we'll be back in touch soon with more!
Thank you,
Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).
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