#mark cocker

I wasn’t listening to the same starling that heard these original sounds. These copied sounds are usually passed on from parents or neighbouring birds so that a young bird absorbs and then duplicates them. The strange thing was that I was recording the sounds in what had been somebody’s living room, a place that had obviously been full of the conversations of family life over generations and which had passed into history. Yet the birds had returned and taken it back — claimed this space and these rocks — and were singing their own song. And they were singing the songs that were around when the people were here. »

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/17/our-place-review-mark-cocker-blistering-attack-britain-conservation-failures

Can poets help? Help we must. I’m writing about a worrying situation in Brighton where a local community is fighting a cynical money-raising exercise by a local college with plans to develop new housing on the edgeland of a playing field. It’s small scale in many ways but it reflects the ecological disease affecting the country. 

The ecological advice provided in the reports from specialist London consultancies (fees from all so far £45,000+) claims there is no threat to local wildlife or biodiversity. It’s total bollocks, to put it mildly. Dozens of birds, bats and small mammals thrive in the area, not to mention rare butterflies ("they can be moved”) and all the subterranean mini and micro creatures that nourish biodiversity. 

I’ve been trying since January to arrange a tree protection order for the trees on the site, conveniently left unprotected when the college protected many other trees on their estate. But the arboricultural officers have been "a bit busy". Their reaction when I promoted them was to discuss the trees in the context of the planned development, which the council claims to have had no hand in. Brighton is supposed to be the last remaining stronghold of English elms and the home of the National Elm Collection. Yet the arboricultural officers refused to consider an ancient elm hedgerow as worthy of protection. It’s a real problem that councils are in control of tree protection orders. It would be more sensible if they were handled by an independent body. No tree on Brighton streets is safe Just look at what’s happened in Sheffield. Brighton & Hove City Council has already taken down a row of beautiful flowering cherries in a street in Preston Park. No street tree can be granted a tree protection order since the council owns the street trees and cannot police itself. Yet it acts as poacher and gamekeeper where development is concerned because it is desperate for tax revenues from new homes. (And sod affordability.)

The scientific integrity of ecological consultancies has to be questioned. For an appropriate fee you can get whatever ecological advice you want. 

Brighton has a Green MP. Yet compared to all the other parties, the Greens have been extremely slow to support the grass roots campaign against the housing development.  

With what seems to be a deliberately mendacious policy, Varndean College has provided false information to parents and the local community, and has kept its own students in the dark about its plans. Such a policy, whether deliberate or not, has resulted in severe reputational damage to Varndean College, its governors and management. For them, as for our local wildlife and their ecology, the future hangs in the balance.

Pateley Bridge, population just over 2,000, is slap in the middle of Nidderdale, an AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) appreciated for its landscapes, its rich flora and fauna, and its now hard-to-spot industrial past.  But if you were there this last weekend, it might not have been to use the town as a base to explore the Yorkshire Dales.  You might instead have been coming to Niddfest, a…

I had to read this book (Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold by Mark Cocker) and then write a 3-4 paged essay on it. It has 370 pages, and I had to cram at least 50-60 pages into my head for each week that I had to read. Normally it takes me an hour to read that many pages, but this book! It had interesting facts, but ahh. Let's just say, it's no Harry Potter...my brain hurts D;

Sometimes, I question why I'm a history major haha.