Project Updates

There's been quite a few developments on the projects and trips planning recently:

1) We have exchanged on the Pagham harbour/Selsey Property and are due to complete in mid-May so hopefully will be moving to our new homestead in late May. Ed has joined me on to the Selsey birders whatsapp and I've been researching all the local birding spots (with the help of Ed and Matt's excellent new book HERE) and quite frankly can't wait to move in down there. We've got about an acre of land too (unfortunately less than the original plan, so will need to aim for scale on the Bulgaria project, ultimately we want enough land to generate biodiversity and carbon credits to offset/achieve net gain on our family footprint) so really looking forward to creating an epic wildlife garden/mini-nature reserve. The site is 5 min walks from the Ferry pool so pretty much a prime location to be based. 

2) We've booked the summer holiday in Australia to visit Holly's family while the new house gets renovated 

3) The new flat in Malta has been completed to shell form and should be completed by end of the summer. 

4) Still no water on the Bulgaria plot so can't book the pond completion work this spring. Also cant visit in late May as planned as now we need to move house that week. So not looking like will be visiting Bulgaria this Spring/Summer. So a bit of a set back there. Hopefully can do an autumn visit. 

5) Almost completed the first draft of the Azores Pelagic paper. 

6) Planning on visiting Azerbaijan in early May with Vince and Co to witness Caspian Sea spring migration and look for vagrants and a few targets such as Caspian Seal and Shikra.  

7) Valencia have submitted the full planning permission for Beddington Farmlands. We had a community meeting on Tuesday evening and plan to co-ordinate a community response over the next couple of weeks.

8) We completed several wildflower meadow projects this week including sowing a chalk grassland mix so will be interesting to see how that develops.

9) I've sold my crypto-positions. Bitcoin is at all time highs and I bought at the low point after FTX crashed so that will do but it could go even higher but I'm happy and out although Coinbase tried to prevent me from cashing out without explanation (these platforms are dodgy!)  but my brother helped me get round them. Despite the highs in the stock markets (including all time highs in S&P) I'm just keeping cash in high interest accounts as it's safer and the rates are relatively good. I sold all my natural capital stock as not performing well anyway and as usual will just invest in my own assets. Will wait for big downward movements in the stock market and crypto before bothering with any of this for a while as its all peaking. Hopefully any big downward movements in unsustainable markets might see an uptick in the value of green and natural capital stocks which could be pushed in global economic recovery programs, if climate and ecological risks are realised and result in downward trajectories, although it looks like war is the chosen solution to keep unsustainable markets going so the green transition seems to have slowed right down and may even be going backwards. The carbon price needs to be around £100 to £150 a tonne to do anything meaningful and its all stalled at the moment. 

More info on projects: LITTLE OAK GROUP