• Dear mouse-please leave the tomatoes alone

    I’ve been in Canada a month now spending much of my time exploring new pathways around hedgerows and traditional skills so thought it was about time I got back to some field ecology. Sarah has a problem in the upper field at Mount Wolfe Farm where the young tomato plants are being eaten, so I…

  • Another Dangerous Narrative In Conservation

    Originally posted on Thinking like a human: Emery Roe, an American policy scholar, first developed the idea that ‘narratives’ – stories about the world and how it works – are used in policy making processes to cut through complexity and justify a particular course of action. We are a storytelling species, and people find it…

  • #30DaysWild Welcome To Ontario

    #30DaysWild Welcome To Ontario

    In wildness is the preservation of the world- Henry David Thoreau, in  ‘Walking’ (1862) Its Sunday June 3rd and back in the UK my colleagues at Surrey Wildlife Trust have already been busy filling social media with their #30dayswild posts to encourage their friends, family and the public to take time each day through June…

  • Last Day

    My last day at SWT for a while, I’m heading out on sabbatical to Ontario next Friday to join the Hedgelaying in Ontario’s Greenbelt project as a Visiting Scientist at the University of Waterloo. Just some of the things I wont leave behind…

  • The Structural Wonder of a Hedge in Winter

      Even in winter, hedgerows are working in the landscape. Not only can they prevent snow drift on to roads (a feature or ‘ecosystem service’ I’m keen to explore more in work in Ontario, see 3 Go to Canada: Hedges, Novel Ecosystems and Damn Fine Donuts,HedgeCanada Revisited: healing the landscape and connecting communities with a new hedgerow…