The Guardian: Birds & Habitats Directive The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has been forced to abandon an overhaul of flagship nature laws after an unprecedented campaign that mobilised over half a million people in protest. The popular birds and habitats directives protect almost a fifth of Europe’s landmass, about 200 wetlands, meadows and marine habitats, and more than […]
Defra have launched a stakeholder consultation: We’d like your views on our proposed changes to the 2012 Fisheries Concordat. The Fisheries Concordat sets out arrangements for licensing fishing vessels and allocating fish quota received through the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. Our plans include changing when fishing vessel owners can move the management of vessels from […]
Christmas reading and watching. The Environmental Audit Committee get its MPA review underway. JNCC’s advice on offshore Marine Conservation Zones 2015-2017 Assessing progress towards an ecologically coherent network of MPAs in Secretary of State Waters In 2014 Defra commissioned JNCC to undertake a piece of work on ‘Assessing progress towards an ecologically coherent network of […]
A ‘magic pipe’ on the Caribbean Princess discharged huge quantities of oily bilge waste into the ocean. Princess Cruise Lines will pay a US$40m penalty after pleading guilty to seven federal charges in an illegal ocean pollution case that involved one ship’s use of a so-called magic pipe to divert oily waste into the waters. […]
NUTFA Statement Opportunities and Challenges Introduction: Under ten metre fleet & Brexit Whilst the only certainty with regard to the post Brexit landscape [seascape] for fisheries is that there is no certainty, it does however provide the opportunity to start from a clean sheet on which to design our future. The previous Fisheries Minister, Richard […]
Drones are a practical alternative to more traditional methods of counting seabirds for environmental assessments of offshore wind farms, a trial in the UK has proved. NIRAS has completed a successful trial using drones for a bird study on the east coast of England. The innovative study was funded by DONG Energy in order to […]
30 Years of Water – the Ebb & Flow of Change Future Water Association has three initiatives bringing ‘Past, Present & Future’ together Ebb & Flow Photography Competition – Celebrating the UK’s Water Sector Supported by PwC, Ebb & Flow aims to promote and reward excellence in photography across the water sector, with a past, […]
A new scientific review of the winter floods of 2015/2016 confirms that the event was one of the most extreme and severe hydrological events of the last century. The new hydrological appraisal – ‘The Winter Floods of 2015/2016 in the UK’, published on the first anniversary of Storm Desmond (December 5th), brings together both river […]