if you want nature, engage with agriculture, honestly - a provocation from a set of old (90 yrs) and new (16 yrs) UK farming conferences in Oxford [ford of the oxen] #farming #food #nature

farmers / land managers - reclaim your ponds as places of water within the landscape #land #conservation #management

'the recognition of reality is the beginning of wisdom' a blog for 2026 on stuff learnt from a broad-church 'field intel' trip robyorke.co.uk/2025/12/norw... #environmental #dialogue

seasonal greetings and goodwill to all resilient rural communities, remote, close and beyond

closer scrutiny of woodland creation in relation to breeding wading birds of conservation concern within open landscapes besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #wildlife #conservation 🧪

pine marten prefer pine woodland, in the loosest of terms, though best connected to other suitable habitat besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #wildlife #conservation 🧪

30 sec snapshot of what I learn on my ‘field intel’ trips in off-beat places observing rural/environmental landscapes as they evolve #Environmental #Dialogue

on ‘field intel’ manoeuvres – finding out what people really think rather than what they say #Environmental #Dialogue

on swifts, insects, sparrows and nest sites my letter in The Times today with some backstory/context bills.parliament.uk/bills/3946/s... #ornithology #ecosystems 🧪

Retaining red grouse moor management at lower intensities could mean declines in moorland species [such as golden plover] would be weaker than predicted besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #moorland #ecology 🧪

if we want diversely structured woodlands, then we have to deal with Bambi (via carnivore or copper-tip) besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... @britishecologicalsociety.org #woodland #ecology 🧪

urban pressure and agriculture : based on the British beef cattle industry and including this quote “I do not want to see, and we will not have, U.S.-style farming in this country” from a past Defra Sec of State academic.oup.com/erae/advance... #agriculture #socialscience 🧪

forget honey: bears just want to dig out armies of calorific moths wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... (pity not open access, as sure to contain a breadth of splendidly obscure grizzly detail) #wildlife #biology 🧪

alpine swifts, flocking, on an October evening, in Kerkyra (Corfu Town) 📢 up #ornithology

cool birds / uncool birds : shaping human experiences of nature and attitudes toward nature www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #ornithology #SocialScience 🧪

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) – otherwise known as ‘wait-and-see’ policy rather than spending tons of ineffectual money for dealing with pest invasion of forests besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #Forest #Ecology 🧪

solar parks [farms] have the potential to combine biodiversity conservation on areas not covered by solar panels, but more insight is needed in design besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #solar #ecology #farmland 🧪

my latest letter published in The Times today on solar and nuclear power is really about continuing an ability to have these contested conversations, without fear or favour #environmental #dialogue plus a contextualising 90sec vlog youtu.be/9SY1uH5mCIE

check habitat suitability before reintroduction undertaken - with ref to pine martens in England and Wales (apply also to beavers) besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #wildlife #conservation 🧪

The underrated relationship of herbaceous cover on farmland with aerial-feeding birds www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #farmland #ornithology 🧪

Range of lethal and non-lethal practices by the National Trust to manage grey squirrels and roe deer to conserve trees via government case study www.gov.uk/government/c... #wildlife #management #woodland🧪

Nature (trail) cameras 'can greatly inflate nest predation rates' especially with canny curious corvids in open landscapes wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #wildlife #conservation #ornithology 🧪

wild bees diversity more important for pollinating productive fruit yields than managed honeybees (further management optimisation required for the latter) besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... #foodproduction #ecology #bees 🧪

‘rural Britain is changing faster than its cities’ - The Economist (free to view share) www.economist.com/britain/2025... my pics, with alt text #SocialSciences #Countryside 🧪

a blog of what I wrote in @thetimes.com 15 years ago trigger warning : may not be suitable viewing for nuance-free social media platforms robyorke.co.uk/2025/08/putt... #environmental #dialogue

Butterflies gain greater benefit from agri-enviro schemes at landscape-scale than from field-scale besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... OR if you want clouds of highly mobile butterflies, join or form a 'farmer cluster' > www.farmerclusters.com #farmland #biodiversity 🧪

"Transition to more sustainable farming systems needs to overcome these economic constraints with new policy interventions" besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... [really] plain English - incentivise farmers to go agroecological #farmland #socialscience #ecology 🧪

"Contrary to our expectations...." gotta love a counterintuitive research outcome "...we found higher bat activity in insecticide-treated plots than in untreated plots" besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... #pesticides #trees #wildlife 🧪

Innovation, legislation, changes in protein production, an evolving Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and social changes are all pathways to improving biodiversity within agricultural landscapes a plain language summary relationalthinkingblog.com/2025/07/16/p... #farmland #ecology 🧪

keep an eye on riparian buffer zones when harvesting forestry besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #forestry #ecosystems 🧪

a socially nuanced cautionary tale with reference to Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) #environmental #dialogue #socialscience 🧪

Cultural integration of invasive species (alternative framing: one person’s charismatic garden wildlife may be another person’s woodland-destroying pest) #Wildlife #Conservation #Invasives 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

benefits of heterogeneity within farmed arable landscapes with reference to oil seed rape besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... #farming #ecology 🧪

'landscape-scale lethal control of predators may be essential to reduce declines in ground-nesting birds of conservation concern pending further landscape-scale habitat creation' www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #wildlife #conservation 🧪

My letter in The Times last year on #bats and insects I wonder how #insects are doing this year?!

"the mundane challenge of meeting human food demands remains the pre-eminent threat to wild nature" royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #agriculture #food #nature 🧪

clear-fell forestry supports moths (but obv not same as semi-natural habitat) #forest #ecology 🧪 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

my latest blog is based on walking in the shoes of other [environmental] views indulge me on this foray, it’s my birthday robyorke.co.uk/2025/06/walk...

an ancient farmed landscape in west Ireland - all about cattle, limestone, orchids and noisy willow warblers #Farming #Ecosystem

the fringe effect… is all about managing shrub ‘ecotones’ (in Wales, it’s the ffridd) #wildlife #conservation 🧪 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

marsh harriers, soil microbes, and fruit trees my latest blog is based on a ‘field intel’ trip around the flatlands robyorke.co.uk/2025/05/mars...

climate-ready mixed species conifer forest with a wood warbler to boot #environmental #dialogue

my 137th letter published in The Times today a few more here robyorke.co.uk/letters-publ... #ornithology #nature

cuckoo calling and skylark singing on Sugar Loaf mountain in the hinterland of the Black Mountains, south Wales

Farmland biodiversity - is habitat heterogeneity the key? "if the environment is sufficiently heterogeneous at all spatial scales different taxa will find their own habitats" a 'classic' from April, 22 years ago robyorke.co.uk/wp-content/u... #farmland #ecology 🧪

what happens at the lowest point of the UK? peat soil disappears #farmland #food #ecology

the uncharted importance of 600,000km of ditches in the UK as a source/sink of greenhouse gases (GHG) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #farmland #ecology 🧪

mon brave! sharing nuanced opinions may be a social risk phys.org/news/2024-08... #conservation #socialscience 🧪

on a damp temperate island UK #wildfire #socialscience 🧪

a small wildfire in the Black Mountains, South Wales, UK reminds a damp island that the vegetation ‘fuel load’ in a dry spring must be managed