Natural England failing to protect valuable sites. Our report for @wildjustice.bsky.social shows that nearly 2/3 of sites waiting to be designated as SSSIs were under threat from development. One site in Thurrock will be directly destroyed. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Unprotected Nature: Natural England failing to designate most important sites for nature...
wildjustice.org.uk/unprotected-...
Last chance to apply to join BTO as a Senior Research Ecologist working on our #ClimateChange research portfolio! Apply online at www.bto.org/jobs
📆 Application deadline: Sunday 26 April.
📝 £44,637 per annum. #Ornithology
Mary Colwell and Prof Jenny Gill explore gender bias in fieldwork in our latest blog. Read it now:
www.curlewaction.org/the-joke-tha...
Creating green jobs!
#WalesPeatlandAction upscale creates more green jobs for contractors in Wales. Here the Wales Peatland Programme specialists are providing training to local contractors diversifying to work on peatland (Lot 3 in the Framework).
@natreswales.bsky.social @iucn-uk-peat.bsky.social
Zebra finches in Australia; one of the study organisms for the PhD
Dwarf mongoose staring at a camera in South Africa; one of the PhD study organisms
📢Fully-funded #PhD opportunity with us
❓Quantifying animal #movement patterns & behavioural #interactions in a changing world
👥Joint position in @bristolbiosci.bsky.social & #MacquarieUniversity
📆19th April deadline
tinyurl.com/343acaev
#maths #modelling #data #fieldwork #Australia
🙏PLEASE SHARE
How’s it doing?
If anyone from my Wales, peatland, ecology, research, science or nature conservation communities (or anyone else) would like to support, or help spread the word about this crowdfunder for the fantastic Glo I Natur CIC, please do. They’re so close to reaching their target
Sphagnum medium on Cors Fochno
Sphagnum austinii on Cors Fochno
A peat bund holding water on Cors Fochno
Saw some familiar friends (people & mosses) during my first week with @peatlandcymru.bsky.social as part of the NPAP survey team. Been a long time since I’ve been back to Cors Fochno and it was great to see the parts of the peatland I did my MSc on years ago still with Sphagnum austinii hummocks
Curlew nest site. Photo: Eleanor Rivers
Figure 9 from the article: a) Mean ± SE daily nest survival rate in dry heath, mire and wet heath, without a time component; (b)–(e) daily nest survival rate: (b) in the three habitats throughout the nesting period (day 1–67): mire = red, wet heath = blue and dry heath = black; (c) in relation to proportional area of mire in 500 m buffer round nests; (d) in relation to proportional area of scrub in 500 m buffer round nests; (e) in relation to distance from woodland (m).
🚨 Top-downloaded 2024/25: Eurasian curlews strongly avoid nesting near a major road passing through the study site, despite the habitat being suitable for breeding, underscoring how human-altered landscape features can override habitat suitability.
➡️ vist.ly/4tpkb
#ornithology #birds 🪶
🌎Check out our new #paper which analyses #AI-generated representations of #rewilding produced by different chatbots alongside visual and textual materials from UK rewilding advocacy organisations. #Rewilding #CriticalAIAnalysis #ConservationScience #NatureRecovery
Dipwell (actually stilling well) 1 in a ditch
Dipwell 23, a pipe in a Molinia bog
Looking back on photos from instrumenting the bog this last week, it’s become clear to me that somewhere in the four days of lone working between installing dipwell 1 and dipwell 23, i did in fact lose my mind
Excited to see the DigiBog model, in this case DigiBog_Boreal, used by other research groups:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A forest to bog site in south wales, the trees are about 400m away, shrouded by heavy rain and fog. The site is covered in tree stumps
A logging stilling well in a ditch on a forest to bog restoration site
A logging stilling well in a ditch on a forest to bog site. The yellow thread lock is actually Rimmel London quick dry nail varnish which works better and is much cheaper than the commercial alternative. Don’t tell anyone, trade secret
Absolutely shocking weather but still managed to get some logging dipwells and stilling wells into the bog today. Two sites down, three to go before the end of the week!
A dead or dying Sitka spruce on a mound of peat excavated for planting
A dead Sitka spruce on a mound of drying peat left from planting
A dead Sitka spruce on a mound of peat excavated for planting, next to the pit the peat was dug out from
Some VERY healthy and happy looking Sitka that were planted on deep peat on a site I work on. I’m of course devastated about it. Check out the cracking on that excavated peat dollop. Hard to even think about the carbon balance for planting on 1m+ of peat when the trees don’t even survive 18 months
Glad they are dying tbh. Can’t believe they were ever planted. I understand Natural resources wales have multiple pressures on them to deliver increased tree cover but this should never have made it past the assessment stage. Just confirms the assessment process is not fit for purpose.
EARLY VIEW in IBIS
Modelling the national breeding distribution and population size of an elusive forest bird, the Eurasian Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) | onlinelibrary.wiley....
James O'Neill, Paul Holloway, Jamie Darby, Andrew Hoodless, John L. Quinn | #ornithology 🪶
🚨Funded #PhD opp🚨 in my lab, co supervised by Vincent Maire at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
Linking above-and belowground plant #phenology to carbon cycling in #peatlands
You can see full advert (in english/french) here: wetlandresilienceresearchgroup.com/Opportunitie...
Please share!
⏰ DEADLINE APPROACHING
We have vacancies on 5 BOU committees, starting July 2026
Nominate yourself or someone you know now!
Not sure if it's for you? Why not try our NEW Committee Shadowing Scheme
bou.org.uk/about-the...
Deadline: 27 Feb
#ornithology 🪶
Data from long-term experiments in Finnish peatlands shows that warming induces a metabolic response in boreal Sphagnum peatlands that enhances accumulation of soil carbon, in contrast to the carbon losses in response to warming in boreal forests and tundra 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
We were very glad to welcome Country Focus for BBC Wales to our Llwyndewi Nature reserve in Carmarthenshire to show all the work we are doing to restore biodiversity onsite. You can listen here from about 14 minutes in: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Press release by @exeter.ac.uk on our new paper, published today in GCB: "Pan-Arctic Peatlands Have Expanded During Recent Warming".
See more: news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-e...
@rspb.bsky.social is also seeking a PeacePlus Nature Peatland Conservation Scientist. Fixed-term, until 31st July 2029, full-time, 37.5 hours per week. Location: Flexible in Northern Ireland @rspbni.bsky.social c-js.uk/4agNMwf
🚨 #PhD opportunity 🚨
Disturbance Impacts on swamp and forested peatlands in southern Québec
This project will quantify how disturbances affect carbon cycling and hydrology in swamp and forested peatlands of southern Québec
More info here: wetlandresilienceresearchgroup.com/Opportunitie...
🚨 Our new peatlands paper "Pan‐Arctic Peatlands Have Expanded During Recent Warming" published today in Global Change Biology, led by Josie Handley.
Open access and free to all: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
🚨Paper alert🚨
Very happy to see our paper published in @science.org #ScienceAdv.
Very greatful to have worked with such a great team @duncanobrien.bsky.social #tomJohnson @robinfreeman.bsky.social #ValentinaMarconi #LouiseMcRae @expecocons.bsky.social
👇Check the main findings below!
Sphagnum moss stained black
Sphagnum moss stained black
Very emo Sphagnum on site today. Must have heard the rumours of a new my chemical romance album this year and (as I’ve been considering) dyed its hair black like it’s 2008 again. Caused by deposition of organic C and humic acids when peaty water evaporates as far as I know #MireChemicalRomance
#peatland job environmentjob.co.uk/jobs/108978-...
#peatland job environmentjob.co.uk/jobs/108978-...