Camilla Swift is the supplements editor of The Spectator.
How can we encourage children to be closer to nature, when 80% of Britons live in urban areas? This is the question that Michael Gove attempts to answer in his contribution to a recent pamphlet entitled ‘What the Environment means to Conservatives’. He writes, ‘One way we all interact with the natural world is through
Is David Cameron’s new gameplan to look to the northern states for allies? Fraser Nelson is joined on the podcast by Stephen Booth of Open Europe, to discuss the influence that people such as the Dutch PM Mark Rutte – who has a clear and impressive reform plan – and Angela Merkel are having on our PM. Could Cameron
Gavin Grant, the CEO of the RSPCA, is stepping down from his role after just over two years in the job because there are ‘concerns about his health’, the charity announced today. The announcement will be met with a mixture of delight and dismay; delight from those who believed that his influence was shifting the
‘Kool-Aid conservationists’ are on the rise, and they’re part of the reason why Britain is still covered in water. So says Melissa Kite in this week’s Spectator, as she highlights all of the weird and wonderful creatures whose existence prevented the Environment Agency from improving flood defences. As Melissa puts it: ‘The river Thames was
The Winter Olympics have been going on for over a week now, and we’ve been treated to a good ten hours of winter sports per day by the BBC. But they have a very odd way of choosing what we’re allowed to watch; mainly, it seems, curling and skating. Brits have every reason to be
In 2010, Aidan Hartley, our ‘Wild Life’ columnist and Unreported World presenter, asked in his feature below: ‘Will China kill all Africa’s elephants?’ And, as I type, politicians from over 50 countries are discussing this very issue at the London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade. Meanwhile, David Beckham, Prince William, and the Chinese basketball player
All this talk about dredging is well and good; but could the humble beaver in fact be the solution to the nation’s floods? Well, as far as the Mammal Society are concerned, yes. The animal has been extinct in the UK since the sixteenth century, but in recent years people have been pushing for its
It is not surprising that the Environment Agency (EA) have come under attack for the flooding in South West England. What is surprising is how long it took people to catch on to the fact that if anyone was to blame, it was the EA, not Owen Paterson. As this week’s leading article in The Spectator
When it emerged that there was horsemeat in cheap burgers, some people thought it might spark a revolution in the British meat industry. Now that the public are more aware of the ins and outs of it all – the complicated and murky supply chains, the potential drug contamination, the images of badly-wrapped frozen meat
If the Faroe Islanders want to eat whale, let them. So says Tim Ecott in today’s Spectator. He argues that the Faroese – who live on dramatic and remote islands in the North Atlantic – shouldn’t be victimised for killing less than 0.1% of the pilot whale population annually for food. There are far more
Here’s a tip for the gamblers among you, albeit one that you’ll have to sit on for a while. Danedream, winner of the 2011 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, has given birth to a filly foal sired by Frankel, the legendary hero of flat racing. With lineage like that, the filly already has a fair
Would England be the same without the sight of sheep grazing on its ‘green and pleasant land’? Most likely not; but, then again, that might not be a bad thing. That is George Monbiot’s view. Spectator readers will already know what Monbiot thinks of the humble sheep. Last summer he wrote about how we ‘pay
16 and Pregnant is an MTV show – a show that, as the title suggests, follows the lives of American teenage girls who are ‘facing unplanned pregnancies’. The programme – and its spin off shows, Teen Mom (1,2 and 3) – is one of the channel’s most popular documentary series; but it has also been
Could legalising the trade in rhino horn – and allowing sport hunting – be the solution to Africa’s rhino poaching problem? Legalisation, it is argued, will make it easier to control the trade in animal products and negate the black market. It’s a similar argument to one often used about the legalisation of marijuana –
Once upon a time there was a horse whose job was to run as fast as he could. There was just one problem. Mad Moose didn’t always fancy running. It wasn’t a matter of ability – it’s just that most of the time, he didn’t really feel like it. When he was on form, he could
As horses and hounds gathered across the country on Boxing Day, more than a quarter of a million people turned out on foot and on horseback to support their local hunts. But this year, alongside the traditional images of red-coated huntsmen and their steeds, many of the national media quoted the statistic that 80 per
If you were in a bathtub for 25 years, don’t you think you’d get a little bit psychotic? Well, yes, probably. But this is how captive killer whales live. Tilikum is no different from many of these. A 31-year-old orca who was scooped out of the North Atlantic in 1983, aged two, he has spent
It has taken a while, but finally the world appears to be taking the illegal trade in ivory seriously. Why now? Reports of a ‘terror trail’ that links al-Shabaab and black-market ivory. The Elephant Action League investigated the ivory trail into Somalia, and found that ivory, or ‘white gold’, is ‘one of the lifelines of
Could creating a UK market for horsemeat be the solution to the increasing number of equine welfare cases? This was the question posed by Princess Anne yesterday at World Horse Welfare’s annual conference. The former Olympic eventer argued that creating a horsemeat market, and thereby adding a financial value to many horses, would most likely
A real-life Wind in the Willows war has broken out. Except this time, the war isn’t between the Weasels and Badger (he’s busy fighting another battle), and the story has relocated from a Berkshire riverbank to the Scottish Highlands. This battle is between the pine marten – a weasel-type animal – and the capercaillie, a turkey-sized
