🔎 NEW Reform council that promised cuts has handed out a £30,000 contract to a company owned by a party supporter which was involved with 10 serious pollution incidents in 2024. Investigation by @ollyhaynes.bsky.social: https://goodlaw.social/kip5

Need a mid-week pick-me-up? Here's some positive nature news 📰 2025 was the year of the Marsh Fritillary, with numbers increasing in many places across the UK thanks to dedicated habitat management. Read the full story 👉 butterfly-conservation.org/news-and-blo... 📷: Mark Searle

A law firm is “gathering views” on the implications of the government rejecting all protected species recommendations from the UK’s wildlife agencies, in a move described by ecologists as “highly unusual” and “profoundly disrespectful” to scientists ⬇️

Outrageous. Ministers should be listening to scientists, frontline communities and those working towards a green transition – not hosting the interests of oil giants in their own offices. ✍🏼 - @adamramsay.bsky.social abolishwestminster.substack.com/p/revealed-o...

Who are the senior executives at the child sexual abuse imagery enablers X.com? Some excellent naming of names by the Financial Times. Hat tip to @emilswells.bsky.social.

I'm writing about the Palestine Action hunger strikers at the moment, any of whom could die at any moment, and the astonishing media and government silence surrounding them. The Establishment seems to have become even crueller than when Thatcher was PM.

Want to learn more about lichens in 2026 (and why wouldn't you??) Scottish Lichens are running a series of distance learning courses. The first is lichens on trees

Guest blog - Ban Bio-beads by @chriscorrigan3.bsky.social of @sussexwildlife.bsky.social Blog markavery.info/2026/01/06/g... #sussex #bio-beads #southernwater #hastings #rye #dollimore @the-wildlifetrusts.bsky.social @eastsussexcc.bsky.social @naturalengland.bsky.social @strandliners.bsky.social

This finding of "hidden" public support for green policies strongly echoes our work on pluralistic ignorance when it comes to non-car travel: most people support non-car travel more than car travel, but at the same time they believe this is a minority view

Closer alignment with EU regulations, you say? Well, hopefully that will scupper the Treasury's desire to gut the Habitats Regulations then. After all, doing so would *undermine* the growth that comes from a closer relationship with the EU. bsky.app/profile/jess...

This explains so much. People with psychopathic traits and low cognitive ability are over-represented in online political activity. If someone is being cruel, obnoxious and ridiculous, don't try to reason with them. Chances are you won't get anywhere. Just block. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

As we've been saying for a while: the "backlash" against climate policies has been wildly, absurdly overstated. This new survey shows how UK MPs badly understate support for climate policies www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The pardon for Hernandez makes an obvious & absolute mockery of each & every attempt to rationalise, or even justify, Trump's treatment of Maduro. I'm not sure this single, simple point can be stressed enough. Once again, he proves his critics right & reduces his supporters to epic moral corruption.

Checked on some more Lobaria pulmonaria lichen translocations today: the same mixture of some good ones, some OK and a few failed or near-as. #LichenGBI

Like reintroductions, reinforcements only work when the drivers of species declines have been eliminated. One populist rewilder claims of 50K Water Vole releases; unlikely to be successful if these are not associated with long-term Mink control/eradication.

Tell me we should trust AI to give us the facts. Tell me it's a future we can put our faith in. Come at me. I'm right here, waiting.

Whatever you might think of Maduro, the seizure and kidnapping of a head of state takes us to a very dark place. Vast, arbitrary, extra-legal power, which could be exercised almost anywhere, regardless of the character of the target government.

In early 2021 we did translocations of Lobaria pulmonaria lichen onto 80 trees in the Haweswater area from a donor tree at Naddle which had a bough break off in storms of early 2020. We're checking them all + removing mesh+staples. @britishlichensociety.org.uk #LichenGBI @wildhaweswater.bsky.social

The bombing of Venezuela is an act of aggression: unprovoked, unjustified and unjustifiable.

People experiencing homelessness were given £2,000 with no conditions through the Personal Grants Project. Early findings show the money went on rent deposits, furniture, courses and childcare. We’re proud to be funding this UK-first trial with CHI. Read more: https://loom.ly/ufqFIqg

We've been working with @metoffice.gov.uk to analyse 10 years of #NewYearPlantHunt data. The analysis provides the clearest evidence yet of how rising temperatures are impacting the British & Irish flora, with knock-on effects for all our wildlife. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A vulnerable child was groomed and trafficked and then subjected to the most shocking experiences imaginable including the deaths of her babies. Instead of taking responsibility the British establishment stripped her of her citizenship and dumped her like old rubbish. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Happy NY!!! Since 2014 we have pioneered the restoration of overgrown ponds & lost infilled #ghostponds in the UK. Our methods, learnt from a wonderful farmer (Richard Waddingham), are mega successful & lead to massive biodiversity gains for aquatic & terrestrial species. Please support us in 2026 🎉

Some of the 2025 lichen highlights for me. Lichenomphalia hudsoniana, Roydon Common (1st VC28); Placynthiella oligotropha, Roydon Common (1st VC28); Usnea esperantiana, Ling Common (1st Norfolk); and Bacidina caerulea, Hull Wood (1st Norfolk).

And now I'm remembering the late great Benjamin Zephaniah writing Bought And Sold, about how the state uses honours to tame influential radicals, and then him getting offered an OBE for services to poetry and asking "did you... not read my poem?"

Amazing interview attacking Polanski as a "fantasist" "selling unicorns". But Polanski has not said "squeezing a tiny elite of billionaires will pay for everything that we want and everything that we need.” He has simply argued, as many tax economists do, for a wealth tax. So who is the fantasist?

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

I knew Ben Goldsmith's politics were on the right, but didn't appreciate just how far to the right. Rewilding has always appealed to the far-right. Leading Nazi Hermann Goering wanted Bialowieza Forest as his private hunting land. So the Nazi's destroyed 26 forest villages, killing thousands.

So Boris Johnson, Prince Phillip, Andrew Bonar Law, Freddie Mercury, George I, George II, Richard E Grant, Douglas Carswell, Rudyard Kipling, Cliff Richard, Joanna Lumley and Spike Milligan weren't British? Interesting www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

✨ Golden-eye moment! 💛 Out in the Cynon Valley today, our team found Golden-eye Lichen (Teloschistes chrysophthalmos) on hawthorn at the former Aberaman Colliery. Once Critically Endangered, this Mediterranean species is now spreading - it was first recorded in Wales in 2015 on coal spoil.

The lichen Placynthium nigrum, the best I've ever seen. Found on limestone, both worked and natural. The blue colour is where the fungal hyphae have grown out without alga, making this an easy ID #lichen #lichenGBI

Is this a joke @washghost1 asks? Gaining 1million views, and a comments section full of FUMING right wingers frothing at the mouth! No, it’s not a joke It’s not a thing It is entirely made up to elicit exactly that reaction (This is a twitter thing but the moral of the story holds here!) 🧵 1/7

We are so close to the 10k signatures we need for the Government to respond to our @climatemajority.bsky.social petition calling for a funded National Climate Resilience Plan. Please sign now. It's a simple and easy thing you can do to make a difference. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/re...

My letter on the UK Government’s recently-published animal welfare strategy - in the @theguardian.com

Cladonia lichen with Polytrichum piliferum moss looking kinda like a giant cactus and palm trees. The lichen is approx 3cm high. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends #moss #bryophyte

The Express will keep doing this. Churning out anger and division. They don’t take a day off, even on Christmas Day. But this Christmas I’m inviting you to choose something different: Humanity. Kindness. Hope.

We asked comedian @michaelspicer.bsky.social to respond to the opinion "Working with organised crime to improve health: a modest proposal" from our #BMJChristmas Issue 2025. Read the opinion here: www.bmj.com/content/391/...

Dolphins and whales have ‘no place to hide’ from forever chemicals, warns new study. Scientists have sounded the alarm over toxic forever chemicals, after analysing 127 whales and dolphins. theconversation.com/forever-chem...

Cladonia floerkeana - you say they’re the Devil’s Matchsticks, I say they’re Santa’s. Cawston Heath today.

Cladonia gardens at Cawston Heath. Several species can grow in a very small area. So amazing!

Wonderful article, just lovely.

Remember Starmer's "urgent" review into foreign interference after Nathan Gill? Well, there's already two ex-UK ambassadors working in Westminster on behalf of a pro-Russian foreign government whose de facto leader is under UK sanctions... New on D4S: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/ex-uk-amba...

Another campaign to go peat free, it only takes a second, please sign (link in comment below). Such an easy step we could take to address both climate and biodiversity crises.

Greta Thunberg arrested for holding a sign opposing genocide. When peaceful protest is a crime, democracy is in deep trouble. Happening under a Labour Government.

Is the government going to sit and watch while the #PalestineAction hunger strikers die? Is most of the media going to carry on ignoring them? Just how callous has the Establishment become? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Cladonia piccys !!🙄

And finally just for Christmas , mother nature had made a Peltigera wreath for us!🤗

Yesterday 5 of us intrepid naturalists braved the fog and visited a very remote Larch stand on the edge of the NYMNP to look at the rare lichens there !We weren't disappointed !😃

“Lichens of Britain & Ireland” by Rebecca Yahr and Frances Stoakley is finally available for purchase. This has been a much needed ID guide for beginners to intermediates and the publication is finally here!! www.bloomsbury.com/uk/lichens-o... #bloomsbury #lichens