Dartford Waffler

Bangkok is surrounded by wetlands, indeed it is built upon them, and unfortunately the city is rapidly spreading out further, obliterating many wetland areas that were inhabited by wetland birds. The result is that many species that were formerly abundant are becoming ever scarcer. However, the fishponds close to Muang Boran in Samut Prakarn province […]

On Sunday 16th March 2008, my wife and I went to Chatuchak Market in Bangkok to do some shopping. I took the opportunity to take a look at the animal section and was appalled to see large numbers of birds, mammals and reptiles being sold illegally. Squirrels were particularly numerous as were reptiles, but it […]

On Saturday morning (08/03/08) I finally got myself back to Muang Boran Fishponds in Samut Prakarn province - a place which used to be one of “local patches” in Thailand. Despite the slightly convoluted way in, I remembered how to get there and was on site by about 6.45am. It seemed little had changed here […]

Some worrying news has appeared on the Birdlife International website about the drug diclofenac being found for sale at a vets in Tanzania. This drug has been the driving force behind the population collapse of vulture species that were formerly common in Asia - resulting in them being critically endangered now. The drug has now […]

A few days ago I wrote a short book review on Al Gore’s book “Earth in the Balance” on bookreviewblog. For anyone who is interested in environmental ideas this is an excellent source of information. Gore does a great job of taking a holistic view of environmental problems and this book was published in 1992, […]

For those who are into carbon offsetting there is a new search engine on the web which donates all its profits to recognised carbon offsetting projects. Yamoogle.com 
Carbon offsetting is a dubious science and most certainly should not be a substitute to becoming less wasteful and less polluting at a personal level. However, if it helps […]

A few days ago I received an e-mail about the disasterous mud flat reclaimation project at Saemangeum in South Korea. For those that don’t know, this estuary is (was?) one of the most important sites for migratory shorebirds in the east Asian flyway with internationally important numbers of Spoon-billed Sandpiper and Nordmann’s Greenshank. Since the […]