BY BERT BURNETT RSPB, We Warned You As the smoke continues to drift across the A9 and the acrid smell of scorched Caledonian pinewood lingers in the glens, we must take stock of the reality that has unfolded in the Cairngorms over the past week. Over 10 square kilometres of one of our most fragile and treasured habitats has been reduced to ash. More than … Continue reading Burning Questions
BY NICK PEARCE For those of us who have long cherished the British countryside, the past two decades have been a trial of patience. We have watched our rolling hills, ancient meadows, and quiet valleys gradually transformed into industrial landscapes dressed in green rhetoric. The wind turbines that now punctuate our skylines and the solar farms that blanket our fields are not, as we are … Continue reading A Sensible Case for Small Nuclear Reactors
BY BERT BURNETT Why Gamekeepers Are Refusing to Endorse the New Muirburn Code Scotland’s gamekeepers have issued a stark warning: they will not endorse the Scottish Government’s new Muirburn Code, a decision they claim is born not of defiance, but of a desperate need to prevent catastrophic wildfires. They argue that the new regulations, designed to protect peatlands, will ironically create a tinderbox, stripping them … Continue reading The Burning Question
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a moment, in the deep June of the West Country, when the sun ceases to be a mere astronomical body and becomes a benediction. It slants through the leaves of the apple trees, dappling the long grass with pennies of light, and warms the stone of old farm walls with a patience that cities have long forgotten. It is in … Continue reading The Patience of the Apple
BY ALEC SWAN There is a peculiar frustration known only to those who love the British countryside: the sight of three different conservationists offering three contradictory solutions to the same patch of land. You see it everywhere, from the Peaks to the Broads. But here, in a quiet corner of Norfolk, drawn from the pragmatic wisdom of a wildlife conservation trust, I have found a … Continue reading How Norfolk’s Sheep Are Saving the Heather
BY ALEXIA JAMES A Masterclass in Urban Ignorance, Donor Servitude, and Moral Inversion There is a special kind of foolishness that can only be achieved when metropolitan prejudice marries political cowardice. The Labour government’s proposed ban on trail hunting is that rare policy that manages to be simultaneously cruel, stupid, and dishonest. It punishes no one who harms animals. It harms no one who protects … Continue reading The Trail Hunting Ban
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN For more than 3,500 years, Dartmoor’s semi-wild ponies have roamed the moor, managed by commoners whose families have worked this land for generations. But now, under new proposals from Natural England and Defra, these endangered ponies face near-extinction, with potential culls of up to 93 per cent, as bureaucratic eco-rules count them alongside commercial livestock for the first time. Campaigners warn that … Continue reading The Moor Knows Best
BY ALEXIA JAMES A £550,000 Wake-Up Call on a Failed Crusade The atmosphere at the Dartmoor Tors Festival in Ashburton this past Sunday was one of cautious optimism. On the panel discussing nature recovery on the moor sat people with genuine skin in the game: Richard Drysdale from the National Park, commoner and Dartmoor Commoners’ Council Chair Tracy May, and Tony Whitehead from the Dartmoor … Continue reading The Wild Justice Dartmoor Fiasco
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The town thinks the British farmer was born to be ruled. They imagine him touching his forelock. They see him shuffling aside for the lord’s carriage. Nothing could be further from the truth. The British farmer did not inherit the land. He won it. And he has had to win it again in every century since the first plough bit the soil. … Continue reading The Farm
BY TOBIAS GRUB ‘Reginald’ – Straw-Stuffed Independent Takes 63% of Vote on Anti-Pigeon, Anti-Party Ticket LITTLE PIDDLECOMBE, DEVON – In what is being described as the most shocking upset in Devon politics for years, a scarecrow erected outside Piddlecombe Village Hall has been elected to the parish council. “Reginald” – a burlap-headed figure dressed in a moth-eaten tweed waistcoat and one broken welly – stood as … Continue reading Scarecrow Wins Election
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a particular species of academic for whom the English countryside exists only as a theoretical inconvenience. They view it through the steamed-up window of a train carriage hurtling from one metropolitan seminar to another, or perhaps through the carefully curated lens of a BBC costume drama they once dissected in a journal article. It is a landscape of the mind, … Continue reading The English Countryside Does Not Exist?
BY CHRISTIAN McKEEFE A recent investigation by the Guardian and its European partners has laid bare a uncomfortable truth about the British countryside: it is disappearing at an alarming rate, with the UK ranking fifth-worst in Europe for the loss of green space to development. For readers of Country Squire Magazine, who cherish the very landscapes now under threat, the findings of this cross-border journalism … Continue reading Britain’s Disappearing Countryside
Rural homes often include floor areas that remain bare and underused. Awkward alcoves, narrow hallways, and uneven corners can feel difficult to finish using standard carpet rolls. Carpet offcuts and remnants offer a practical way to bring warmth and comfort to these spaces without forcing unsuitable materials into challenging layouts. Country living often involves adapting older properties over time. Smaller carpet pieces allow homeowners to … Continue reading Breathing New Life into Forgotten Floor Spaces in Rural Homes
BY NICK PEARCE Farmers and landowners across the UK have been given a last-minute opportunity to take part in the national census of farmland birds, as the organisers extend the deadline due to adverse weather. The Big Farmland Bird Count (BFBC), an annual event coordinated by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), will now run until March 1st, 2026. The extension comes after the … Continue reading Big Farmland Bird Count
BY ALEXIA JAMES For decades, if you wanted to see the British countryside on screen, you had to sit through yet another dreary adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel, all doom and gloom and women in bonnets looking miserable in the rain. But something rather wonderful has happened. The boot is now on the other foot, and our green and pleasant land has become the … Continue reading Green and Pleasant Land
Dear Editor, Recent peer-reviewed research shared by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has cast new light on the mounting pressures facing some of the United Kingdom’s most cherished yet threatened ground-nesting birds. The study focuses particularly on lapwing and curlew, both of which now hold red-list status due to significant population declines that have alarmed conservationists across the country. The comprehensive investigation analysed camera-trap … Continue reading Predation, Evidence, Balance
BY PHILIP WALLING What the Lynx UK Trust couldn’t achieve by straightforward means it is now trying to get by lawfare. It is applying for judicial review of Natural England’s refusal to grant any licence, now or in the future, for the release of lynx into the wild in Britain. I’ve written about this organisation and its aims before under the heading ‘This insane move … Continue reading Lynx Fanatics Won’t Take No For An Answer
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN In the rolling paddocks of motoring, where sleek German thoroughbreds once pranced and pretentious 4x4s posed, there now stands a singular monument to humble triumph. It is not polished (except by downpours). It smells vaguely of hawk and less vaguely of fart. It is ex-gamekeeper turned falconer and CSM columnist, Gary Baxter’s Dacia Duster, which has just lolloped, unburdened by vanity, past … Continue reading The Hare and the Duster
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE The race is on to save our country. And it starts in the stables of possibility this Christmas. Boxing Day 2025 looks like becoming a mass demonstration. Families plan to mobilise in support of farming and hunting on the Feast of Stephen. Up and down the land Boxing Day meets are set to attract record crowds. It’s a picture to gladden the … Continue reading The Race of the Swift
BY ALEXIA JAMES A revolution is unfolding across England’s cherished Green Belt, but not the one ministers promised. When the government introduced the concept of ‘grey belt’ land in late 2024, the public was assured it would target the unsightly and unused: disused petrol stations, abandoned car parks, and ‘poor-quality scrubland’ on town fringes. The reality, as stark new research from the countryside charity CPRE … Continue reading The Grey Belt Mirage: A Greenfield Free-For-All
