BY BERT BURNETT A new report covered by the BBC projects Scotland’s wild boar population will rise by over 60% in fifty years, from a precise 1,472 to about 2,400. This startlingly specific number—1,472—raises an obvious question: how can anyone count these elusive, nocturnal animals so exactly? The answer is that it’s not a direct headcount. The figure is a scientific estimate derived from a population model. … Continue reading 1472 Wild Boar? How?
BY BERT BURNETT How much longer does the British Countryside have to put up with propaganda attacks from liars? It’s bad enough having weekly potshots from outliers like Chris Packham and George Monbiot. Now, having their former paymaster the BBC supporting the outlandish instead of checking facts, makes rural licence fee payers furious. Take a recent BBC Wildlife opinion piece by Mark Carwardine which paints … Continue reading Moor Misrepresentation
BY JAMIE FOSTER A Visionary Bridging Conservation, Human Rights, and Storytelling In a world where the delicate balance between humanity and nature is increasingly under threat, few individuals have managed to bridge the gap between conservation, human rights, and storytelling as pragmatically or effectively as Tom Opre. A film director, cinematographer, television producer, best-selling author, and passionate advocate, Opre has dedicated his life to shedding … Continue reading The Noble Mission of Tom Opre
BY ANTONIA FILMER At the end of June the Cherry families hosted their ninth Groundswell Festival on their mixed farm in North Hertfordshire, this is the only UK event that encompasses the soup to nuts of regenerative farming and conservation agriculture. The point is to aid farmers and those curious about regenerative agriculture to discover more, and to build relationships with likeminded people; it had … Continue reading A Festival Of Sustainable Farming in Hertfordshire
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine I trust that You are well and healthy. This week I would like You to consider rural families and pray for them. Farming is a noble profession. The farm home is in some ways a most suitable place for a Christian family. The good earth is the greatest material gift of God to man. We believe that in … Continue reading A Prayer for Rural Families
BY ROCHELLE BLAKEMAN Having lived in the heart of the sticks and the heart of London’s smog, and possessing the discerning female eye, I have observed a thing or two about the divergent quirks of male behaviour in their opposing natural habitats. Identifying the features and instincts of the opposite sex from both worlds is a practicable art: the country boys referred to being so … Continue reading Country V City Men
BY ROCHELLE BLAKEMAN “Toil mastered everything, relentless toil And the pressure of pinching poverty… Everything by nature’s law Tends to the worse, slips ever backward, backward.” Virgil, the Georgics As a farmer’s daughter, I was blessed with a bucolic childhood. With only 1% of the UK population being farmers, it is a lucky stroke to have lived my younger years with a closeness to the … Continue reading A Country Girl’s Reflections on Environmentalism
BY BEN EVERITT The scope of rural crime is changing, but if criminals think that they can hide in the countryside, they’re mistaken. Rural crime is costing around £50 million a year. This includes things like tractor theft (total cost £7.4m), quadbike theft (£2.6m) and livestock theft (£2.5m). Yes. You read that right. Sheep and cattle rustling is a multi-million-pound business nowadays. There have been reports … Continue reading The Changing Face of Rural Crime
BY PAUL NEWALL When I was a child, the countryside was front and centre in my life. There was Boston’s farm literally at the end of my street where I was despatched every morning with a little milk churn in hand to buy raw milk. This practice continued until my teens when my Mum got mastitis and blamed the milk (wrongly in my father’s opinion) … Continue reading Is the Countryside a Zoo?
Country Squire’s rural homelessness campaign continues with an interview by the magazine’s Dominic Wightman of a homeless lady who currently lives day to day and hand to mouth in a tent with her dog. She’s bright, she’s eloquent, she’s brave and really she shouldn’t be homeless in 21st Century Britain; in the sixth richest country on earth. But she is. Why? What is going wrong … Continue reading Rural Homelessness Interview
