Did you forget to make a resolution for 2023? Perhaps you simply felt this time you’d just not bother; only now nearly at the end of January when everyone else is failing in their earnest efforts to do better you feel you really should have one had one? Well, you could still have a few
As winter sets upon us all, we withdraw into our homes to seek shelter from the bitter cold. The wildlife outside our windows is also rarely fond of the cooling climb and seeks shelter of its own. While those that can (typically Birds) leave, those that can’t have to make do with the frosty season
As decades go, the 2020’s are not off to a good start. Between the pestilence of the pandemic and war in Ukraine, we’re not even a third of the way into the decade before we can scratch two horsemen off our apocalypse bingo card. Now, not even a day in 2023 and a third pale
COP 27 – What it is and why it matters COP 27 [1] stands for “Conference of Parties” with this occasion being the 27th time the event has occurred. The non-descriptive abbreviation aside, COP 27 is a climate summit organized by the United Nations to be attended by representatives from up to 200 countries around
The world is in dire need of more conservationists. Is it a well paid profession? No. Is it difficult to get paid work? Yes. Are those working in conservation or ecology some of the most experienced, highly qualified workforce out there? Yes. If you're reading this and you still get a little thrill of excitement
So far in this series, we have looked at the pesticides used today, the pesticides banned since World War II, and the first industrial chemical pesticides. In this final post, I want to tell a less well-known story: how pest control functioned before the modern period, especially in medieval and early modern Europe. Chemical pesticides
In previous posts, I told the story of today’s controversial pesticides, and then went back to describe the pesticides famously banned since World War II like DDT, dieldrin, the organophosphates and the neonics. In this post, I’m going to explain how the first modern European pesticides were discovered, marketed and produced on an industrial scale.
Introduction In the middle of the twentieth century the public view of pesticides was very positive (Mart, 2015, pp. 11–30). These chemicals were seen as holding the potential to cure world hunger and make agriculture more profitable. Efficient insecticides in particular were seen offering a revolution in agricultural practice, and could also be used to
Pesticides, herbicides and fungicides (generally considered together as ‘pesticides’ or informally as ‘chemicals’) have a long and controversial history. On the one hand, we need them to keep towns and streets pest-free to 21st century standards, and they also have an often-overlooked, vital environmental function in protecting our National Parks from invasive species like Rhododendron.
Rhododendron is a very popular genus of shrubs for gardens due to its clusters of flowers, which can cover the surface of the shrub, most often in spring. They are generally evergreen (except the deciduous Azaleas) and the individual flowers are concave (tubular, funnel, trumpet or saucer shaped) with long filaments (unlike flatter Hydrangeas). They
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