Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

LightNews

Eben Muse

@ebenmyrddin.bsky.social

1.4K followers 1.7K following 1.2K posts

Access and nature campaigner, physicist, researcher who writes. Keen climber/runner. Views are my own! https://open.substack.com/pub/ebenmuse?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=jl6lw

open.substack.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · Sep 13

The Guardian didn't end up using some of the most interesting photos for the article, but I'll share them here with credit to Rupert Allen.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 2h

Yes, Callaghan square is going to be TERRIBLE but it'll be for the greater good... 😅

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 5h

I'll believe that timeline when I see it! We are also supposed to be getting a tramline in Splot...

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 8h

Britain is the vanguard of this kind of crackdown.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 9h

This is the third blocked off pedestrian way to the bay 😁 🤦‍♂️

Cool! I love being late

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 10h

Once again pointing out how insane it is that it takes the same amount of time to walk to walk to Cardiff Bay as it does to take public transport.

It's a joke!

And it's not like there's secure bike locking there.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Big Caerphilly Survation poll coming out on Thursday.

I'm predicting a significant Reform lead, unfortunately.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

I'd invite Mark to have a chat to the real people who campaign for access reform and to ask their actual feelings towards nature, because they're often the same people fighting the hardest to protect it.

If helpful I can find a broader selection of birdwatchers to consult. 👍 🐦

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

So forgive me if this opinion piece "doesn't give the impression" of anything but a strange bitterness and a desire to keep nature for me, but not for thee.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

I'd also raise the fact that currently our most important protected areas are also the areas are accessible under the CRoW act. This is a resolvable conflict, and the obvious way is to provide access elsewhere.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Nature is a priority, and restrictions are absolutely necessary.

But they should be supported by evidence and not some strange aversion to the 'wrong' sort of people in the countryside (perhaps people who haven't passed Mark's weird bird exam?).

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Here is (access org) BMC's network of restrictions, most of them due to sensitivities linked to nature sites, SSSIs and nesting birds.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

To anybody remotely involved in access, be that PRoWs, wild camping, outdoor recreation, cyclists, nature reserves, ramblers, right to roam, BMC, whatever it may be, the blithe suggestion that 'restrictions should be in the mix' stings, because restrictions were always a part of the conversation.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Another thing - to nostalgically reminisce about COVID-19 or foot-and-mouth as if they represent some sort of important lesson for society in terms of interacting with the environment seems myopic beyond belief. And I know for a fact that to people traumatised by these events it is offensive.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Disturbance isn't unimportant, nor should it ever be overlooked. But nor should it be oversimplified, nor idealised or viewed through a prism of misanthropy.

Far from nature being an afterthought, it is the raison d'être for the existence of the access movement.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

In our anthropogenic world, access and the protection of nature are necessarily intertwined. You'd have thought that someone so experienced in the conservation world would have been able to observe that at some point in a 25-year career with his wages paid by access to nature.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

I'd like to know whether the ultimately inadequate provision that the RSPB delivered to that bird in the Cairngorms for so long have been possible without the public access that they've so effectively financialised for so long? I sincerely doubt it.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Other factors include predation, nitrogen deposition, habitat degradation, and yes, disturbance (this includes overgrazing by the way). So why focus on access, which seems to have become a pet hate?

How anti-access do you have to be that 9 new river walks go too far?

markavery.info/2025/07/30/a...

A daft quote from Defra – and an August challenge for anyone who fancies it. – Mark Avery

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

That's not to engage in whataboutism. Access does have an impact on wildlife - but this isn't coherent. There's plenty of evidence, for example, that the driving factor behind the decline of the dotterel is climate change and the alteration of snow patterns.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32350939/

Clinging on to alpine life: Investigating factors driving the uphill range contraction and population decline of a mountain breeding bird - PubMed

Climate change and anthropogenic nitrogen deposition are widely regarded as important drivers of environmental change in alpine habitats. However, due to the difficulties working in high-elevation mou...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Now, in this moment of weakening protections, threats of mass destruction of key habitats, erosion of BNG, and the mooted dissolution of landscape protections.

But sure, take aim at the people who are fighting for a country where nature is known and valued.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Plans to weaken protections for national parks will have ‘disastrous consequences’ say green groups

Exclusive: Letter from 170-plus organisations calls on government to drop proposed changes to planning law

www.theguardian.com

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Regardless of whether a green paper will appear in the spring (there are certainly rumours but nothing confirmed), it seems so inane to take aim at the access movement now.

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

Oh dear. What purpose does an opinion piece like this serve?

Heavily anecdotal (if he's met people who happen to agree with him, he must be right, surely!), it's the straw man of it that frustrates me.

LARGE THREAD/ 🧵

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

I don't think they actually are sentimental either, they just see it as an easy bit of propaganda!

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

First they came for the XL Bullies and I said nothing

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

🤷‍♂️

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

🤷‍♂️

Eben Muse @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social · 1d

I really dislike this kind of infantile comms. Jo Stevens is awful for it.