Birds and Conservationists

 

Telling the story of the world’s rarest duck with Peter Cranswick (January 2020)

The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust’s Peter Cranswick is a highly experienced waterfowl conservationist who has worked on a range of threatened species from Red-breasted and Lesser White-fronted Geese to the world’s rarest duck – the Madagascar Pochard.

In an earlier article on this site we looked at the history of the Madagascar Pochard and the reasons for its near-terminal decline. For this accompanying podcast Charlie Moores went to Slimbridge, WWT’s HQ, to talk with Peter about his work on the ground in northern Madagascar (with a team including his colleague, the renowned aviculturist Nigel Jarrett), and how the project changed from what he once described as “a hastily implemented rescue mission focused solely on a duck…into a genuinely holistic programme for wildlife and people“.

A Birdwatcher in Parliament with Sir John Randall (October 2019)

Sir John Randall was elected the Member of Parliament for Uxbridge in 1997. During his political career he firmly opposed the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War worked to tackle modern slavery, was a champion of marine conservation, fought to end the wild bird trade, and sat on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee and its Environment Sub-Committee. He was – and still is – strongly against the expansion of Heathrow Airport. John stood down from the government after a reshuffle in 2013 and announced in 2014 that he would not stand for re-election.

Charlie Moores had the opportunity to chat with John in October 2019. It’s often difficult to work out exactly where to start a conversation with someone who has achieved so much in so many roles, but he remembered a far-sighted speech that John had given in 2015 asking Parliament for leave to introduce a Bill “to set biodiversity and other targets for 2040; to establish a Natural Capital Committee; to require local authorities to maintain local ecological network strategies; to identify species threatened with extinction; to make provision for access to high quality natural green space; and to include education about the natural environment in the curriculum for maintained schools.”

They covered a range of topics from whether lobbyists have too much power and seeing Kirtland’s Warbler as a conservation model to starting a new ‘Wild Party’, but that speech seemed a pretty good place to start….