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

sea fret (mist) across sand dunes in north Norfolk with shore larks on samphire, spoonbills in mud, curlew overhead and Chinese water deer everywhere

world rewilding day today, world forest day tomorrow, world food day every day… after curating a conversation at a literary festival, interviewing wildlife scientists and hosting a room of farmers, here's what I wrote on rewilding robyorke.co.uk/2018/07/rewi... #environmental #socialscience 🧪

UK land sparing-sharing in two headlines ‘we should seek to maintain high yields with fewer inputs’ ‘alongside regular farming, they’ll be paid for trees, plants and bees, to improve soil, reduce flooding, limit climate change, enhance beauty and safeguard traditional landscapes’ #farmland 🧪

farmers possess valuable ecological expertise that can significantly contribute to biodiversity conservation within agricultural landscapes <applies widely> link.springer.com/article/10.1... #farmland #ecology #socialscience 🧪

as beavers return to England, the UK learns the skills of pragmatic adaptive coexistence with industrious wildlife sharing the environment with humans #wildlife #socialscience 🧪

importing ash firewood? lookout for boring beetle pests hitching a ride [highlights UK‘s inability to plant trees, let alone manage existing woodlands for biodiversity, carbon, access, fire-based resources etc] besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #woodland #pests 🧪

a line of beech trees, once laid by hand as a hedge circa a hundred years ago, along a green lane in south east Wales

mixing-in native thorny shrubs improves the habitat of short rotation coppice within agroforestry systems for breeding birds www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #farmland #conservation 🧪

be aware of landscape-scale impact of pests on adjacent crops from netting crops at a ‘local’ scale besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #agriculture #research 🧪

peer reviewed evidence-based research, yep : but also a need for more critical thinking to help build resilient collaboratives for conservation #environmental #dialogue 🧪

be more judicious with pesticides www.nature.com/articles/s41... experts' reactions to the paper from the Science Media Centre www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-react... #pesticides #biodiversity 🧪

what do you get with a river-full of hydropower, anglers, citizen science, eNGOs, and govt scientists? a masterclass in co-production, adaptive management, deescalating conflict, skilled knowledge transfer #conservation #socialscience 🧪 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

pet's welfare ain't good for wildlife's health 'concerns about placing pet fur in gardens for birds especially when the animals have been treated with topical ectoparasitic treatments' www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... (funded by SongBird Survival) #wildlife #conservation 🧪

peat bog, charcoal wood, road lorry, footpath tyre, habitat designation evolving land use, continuously

England launches Land Use Framework consultation consult.defra.gov.uk/land-use-fra... [worth a dec at the Analytical Annex, i.e. page 36 for wider context] #Landuse #data #socialscience 🧪

‘Whoever makes two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot where only one grew before' Jonathan Swift (1726) 'Progress will depend on conservationists forging novel collaborations with the agriculture sector' (2025) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #farmland 🧪

a back-catalogue of broad-church environmental research robyorke.co.uk/rural-science/ 🧪

‘the challenge reconciling conflicting aims to offset yield reductions to improve biodiversity outcomes in agricultural grasslands’ since 1856, the world’s longest-running ecological experiment, Rothamsted, UK #farmland #research 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s44...