17 Jan 2016

The Environment Agency is seeking views on proposed changes to charges for permitting for flood risk activities so they better reflect the costs to provide this service. The current £50 charge for a flood defence consent has been in place since 1991, but does not cover our costs to provide this service. The government expects […]

17 Jan 2016

This text is from the Catchment Based Approach website and it is interesting to note the range of material becoming available under the open access thinking. March 2015 update to the data & GIS package is now available including: – Landcover maps (LCM 2000 & 2007) – Risk of flooding from rivers and sea (NAFRA) […]

17 Jan 2016

Defra 17 January 2016 ‘Twenty-three new Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) will bring the total to 50 and cover more than a fifth of English waters. Twenty-three new areas along the UK coast were today announced as the latest Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) to be awarded environmental protection by the government, extending the country’s ‘Blue Belt’ […]

17 Jan 2016

The green light for North Yorkshire coastal path reinforces recent Government announcements   on their commitment to coastal path investment. Defra 15th Jan  ‘New coastal paths have been approved from Filey Brigg to Newport Bridge and Dunball Wharf to St Audries Bay. The longest single section of coastal path ever to be approved has been given […]

17 Jan 2016

Griffin Carpenter 12 January 2016 New Economics Foundation ‘With an In/Out referendum on the horizon, we take a look at one of the EU’s most maligned and misunderstood policies. (CFP), more commonly referred to as the EU’s “disastrous fishing policy”, the EU’s “most discredited and unpopular policy” or simply “the worst EU policy”, is without […]

17 Jan 2016

The main article was carried in Nature: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18573 ‘Organochlorine (OC) pesticides and the more persistent polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have well established does – dependent toxicities to birds, fish and mammals in experimental studies, but the actual impact of OC pollutants on European marine top predators remains unknown. Here we show that several cetacean species have […]

17 Jan 2016

The Capturing Our Coast project is taking off with the different regional hubs advertising the project and regional links.   http://capturingourcoast.co.uk/home The £1.7m Capturing Our Coast project, funded through the Heritage Lottery Fund, is designed to further our understanding of the abundance and distribution of marine life around the UK. Marine Conservation Society (MCS), is running […]

15 Jan 2016

            What’s so special     about this?  Believe     it or not, this is the     world’s oldest animal   Ocean quahogs (Artica islandica) are found in the North Atlantic. The oldest recorded specimen was 507 years old. Their rings can also tell us a lot about climate change. The proposed South […]