The latest British Wildlife magazine has come through the letterbox too, Volume 27, Number 4, February 2026.
By coincidence in terms of the content of much of the rest of this post, it opens with Alexa Culver’s ‘A confluence of crises in English nature laws’. The Bio Diversity Net Gain legislation of 2024 was far from perfect and allowed many developers to claim exemptions. Then we got our current government and its multi-pronged attacks on nature. Habitats Regulations were effectively repealed, allowing developers to buy their way our of their obligations, BNG rules were altered, exempting as many as 92% of planning applications from biodiversity requirements and the National Planning Policy Framework “removed any real incentive for developers or planning authorities to prioritise biodiversity enhancements”. The ecosystem was demonised as a block to prosperity and progress. Alexa Culver exposes the elephant in the room. Why is it all about developers, why is the agricultural sector pretty much ignored in this context? As she says, we have witnessed “the epic, and tragic, ineffectiveness of decades of nature protection”.
To sidetrack to another governmental issue, I watched Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel interview the trade secretary on their The News Agents yesterday. I had never heard of Peter Kyle, but he has been learning the art of slippery evasion from his master. Over and over again he was asked if Trump had been at the very least erratic and unpredictable. Over and over again he refused to criticise him in any way, saying that we should not listen to what he says but see what he actually does. There really is no point questioning these people at all. His interviewers looked at him in appalled disbelief. Emily Maitlis went as far as to say that Trump was clearly suffering from degenerative mental illness, but Kyle would not even acknowledge that he had behaved erratically. At the time of writing we don’t know if Trump has entirely invented the alleged talks with Iran, but we do know that he invented his conversation with a former president. All Kyle was willing to talk about was deals and money, a sale of beef to America for example. Why on earth are we sending beef abroad? What must the carbon footprint be? Kyle was also a Mandelson supporter but here he denied it. I half expected him to say that he doesn’t and cannot sweat.
In ‘Natural reflections’ Bret Westwood says that he will be sticking to scientific names for flies, bees and beetles in spite of the plethora of new common names, although he likes the inventiveness of some of them. They are rather wonderful: Mitten Blackcock, Giant Sabre Comb-horn, Eurasian Pocota, various Bumbleflies, Grey-spotted/Northern Broadband/Shiny-backed Sedgesitters, Pale-shouldered Sapeater, Smudge-faced Bristleside, Logjammer, Pantaloon Bee, Grey Longhorn, Horrid Ground Weaver Spider …
Keith Hiscock writes about the Common Octopus, featured on the cover, and the Curled Octopus, which saw an explosion in numbers in British waters last year. That is far from a new phenomenon. We learn that females can lay between 100,000 and 500,00 eggs in one go but that the males are likely to die after mating. Population surges affect in particular the lobster, crab, oyster and scallop industries. Octopuses (I had to check, ‘Octopi’ is incorrect since the word is Greek, not Latin, as per rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses) use biotoxins to paralyse and kill their prey. Hiscock speculates that an increase in sea temperature may be partly responsible for the ‘outburst’.
‘Birds in English place-names: signposts to the old ecologies of place’ by Michael J. Warren is very much up my street. Developers know that buyers like such names but they are horribly ironic in the context. It is old place-names which are meaningful and genuinely demonstrate a connection with nature and can also serve as a guide to resources: “Cranbrook (crane’s brook), Ackton (oak estate), Snailwell, Nettlecombe, Ulgham (nook of owls), Birch, Musbury (mouse-infested fort), Troutbeck, Midgley (midge clearing), Hawkridge, Rockbeare (rook wood), Ramsey (island where wild garlic grows).” There are Inuit examples too: Itirviluk (bay that looks like a butt crack) and Suluraugaq (beach and nearby hill shaped like the end of a whip when seen from the ocean). And from Old English there is Purbeck which may suggest a ridge of land shaped like the beak of a Bittern. Other avian inspired names are Finchampstead, Spexhll (woodpeckers), Swallowliffe and Dunnockshaw. The author concludes on the Right to Roam, quoting activists Nick Hayes (passim) and Jon Moses, seeing place-names as a step “towards restoring communities to the beating heart of the natural world.” “If our aim is reconnection to the land, then let us begin with the signposts from our medieval past.”
Legal matters
I have recently subscribed to receive e-mail news from Lawyers for Animals. There have been three so far.
The first notes the formal legal challenge to the government’s decision to define animal testing as key national infrastructure. The legislation passed through both houses of parliament but not without some dissent. Baroness Miller described the measure as the clearest abuse of legislative powers that in her memory of 27 years in the House of Lords and calling it “an absolute affront to the parliamentary process.” It was also pointed out that there is no clarity about what constitutes interfering with the business of, for example, beagle breeding facility MBR Acres where two peaceful protesters have already been arrested. Interference could mean standing outside such a place holding a placard or calling for an online boycott.
Another peer, John Kerr, asked why animal testing? Why not also then food production for example? The vague wording has the potential for terrifying consequences. The challenge specifically suggests that the government has exceeded its powers. We have seen far too much restriction of the fundamental democratic right to protest.
The second e-mail relates to the 2026 Cheltenham Festival where four horses were killed. Another horse, Constitution Hill, was withdrawn after Lawyers for Animals wrote to his owner and trainer reminding them of their duties under the Animal Welfare Act – the poor horse had previously suffered a number of falls. It may not have been a direct consequence but at least one horse was spared. There is scarcely any criticism of horse racing in the press because journalists do not dare to upset the relationship they have with it. If they speak out they are likely to be excluded.
There is precedent. In 2008 a journalist photographed a horse at Newton Abbot Racecourse being shot in the head, three times, unsuccessfully, before being given a lethal injection. He has never been able to publish the story but he was told he would regret it if he did.
The British Horseracing Authority is not independent. It is run and funded by the industry.
The third e-mail goes into detail about the significance of the two not guilty and two guilty verdicts given to those who rescued beagles from MBR Acres. Eighteen people were charged. They had either cut through the fence or used ladders to gain entry. The charge was burglary. The defendants claimed a moral and in some cases legal right to rescue the dogs. Their actions were not dishonest, they were born of integrity. The different verdicts for the same offence does make one question the reliability of the jury system. Still better than no juries, which is what would happen in these cases if the government’s proposed legal reforms go through.
Wild Justice solicitors Leigh Day (not forgetting the barristers) could be described as Lawyers for the Environment – and badgers. They are also leading legal actions against South West Water and Welsh Water over sewage pollution.
I would like to see legislation which holds those who breed and import pheasants (and partridges) for the shooting industry responsible for the road accidents they cause. For the first time, thanks to Gemini AI, I have found some statistics. They are estimates only and just for pheasants. And they do not of course include near misses of which I reckon I have at least a dozen a year.
Between 3.5 and 5 million pheasants are killed on the roads per annum. About 7% of the total population. Accidents involving human injury? 65 per year. About 6% of those leading to human deaths or serious injury. Deer cause many more accidents but they are not put on the roads on purpose. Because they are battery farmed, pheasants do not learn survival skills from their parents and so are ill-equipped to fear or react to moving vehicles.
Although it did not take place in a corporate court to which I referred in my previous post, there is also the very dark story of the lawsuit brought against Greenpeace by Energy Transfer. This took place in North Dakota state court and the energy company was awarded $345 million in damages, a sum Greenpeace cannot possibly afford. The charge was defamation, that is it was claimed that Greenpeace had deliberately and maliciously made false statements and incited acts of violence and property damage. So, did Energy Transfer have a point or is it an attempt by the fossil fuel industry not only to silence Greenpeace but to shut them down for good? Greenpeace are counter-suing for ‘abusive litigation’.
The local economy where the trial took place is heavily tied in to the energy industry and several jurors had direct links to it. To cut a long story short Greenpeace said that the company depended on ‘dirty money’, by which they meant money from fossil fuels, that the crude oil pipeline around which the 2016 protests centred would inevitably leak and poison the Missouri river, which does not seem terribly unlikely at least at some point, and that Standing Rock Sioux tribal burial grounds and sacred sites were damaged during construction. Tribal leaders argue that they were the prime movers behind the protests, not Greenpeace and there are documents and photographs showing culturally significant land being bulldozed. To be clear, the construction of the pipeline was never stopped for good and it is now in place and in operation. We can only hope that Greenpeace are successful in their counter-suit. I have been a member and supporter since the early 1980s.
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