Michael McCarthy



Profile:
Full name: Michael McCarthy

Area of interest:

Journals/Organisation: The Independent

Email: [mailto:m.mccarthy@independent.co.uk m.mccarthy@independent.co.uk]

Personal website:

Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/nature_studies

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Networks: twitter.com/mjpmccarthy



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Current position/role: Environment Editor


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Awards/Honours: Has three times been Environment Journalist of the Year (1991, 2003 and 2006) and in 2001 was Specialist Writer of the Year in the British Press Awards. In 2007 he was awarded the medal of the RSPB for "Oustanding Services to Conservation" – the first time in the medal's 100-year history that it has been given to a journalist – and in 2009 he was given the Marsh Award for Lepidoptera Conservation.

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Books & Debate:


Latest work:

Speaking/Appearances:

Current debate:A cloud of nuclear mistrust spreads around the world, After decades of lies, nuclear reassurances now fall on deaf ears, 16th March 2011



The Independent:
Column name: Nature Studies

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Email: [mailto:m.mccarthy@independent.co.uk m.mccarthy@independent.co.uk]

Website: Independent.co.uk / Nature Studies

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Day published: Thursday

Regularity: Weekly

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Articles: 2012

 * If your wish is for the wild, St Kilda will fulfil it - It is the remotest part of the British Isles, 40 miles into the Atlantic - 9th August
 * Cuckoo-style decision-making is a thing of wonder - On his way to Africa, Indy did something astonishing - 1st August
 * A Western Isles idyll where wild flowers grow in profusion - I was bowled over by the machair. It is unparalleled in the British Isles - 26th July
 * Nature Studies: The unbearable lightness of dolphins - Their intelligence is obvious, and when they really turn on the playfulness, they spark a fellow-feeling in us - 12th July
 * Rain stopped play - why birds aren't breeding in the wet - There are reports of problems with tits and chats and pipits and larks - 5th July
 * Moths are just as worthy of our wonder as butterflies - Our human prejudices often lead us astray in looking at the natural world - 28th June
 * Good luck, Indy – the cuckoo that's carrying our name to Africa - I thought he was beautiful beyond description. And then I let him fly - 21st June
 * The shy woodcock, our most mysterious bird - Setting eyes on a mystery is always memorable, perhaps even more so at dusk - 7th June
 * Love that dare not speak its name – butterflies - Butterflies are back. For me the greatest blessing of the return of the warm weather this week, has been that they are once more on the wing and visible - 24th May
 * If the blackthorn is sugar, then the hawthorn is cream - I grew up with a whacking great hawthorn hedge at the end of the garden - 17th May
 * We've lost touch with the tiny, microscopic things - Ask your child what a tyrannosaurus is, or a velociraptor, and you'll probably get an intelligible answer. Movies have made dinosaurs familiar to millions. But ask them what a rotifer is, or a tardigrade, and you'll get a blank stare - 10th May
 * Cuckoo miracle - from Norfolk to Congo and back - Giving names to Clement and the other four birds was a masterstroke - 3rd May
 * From ants to birds to whales, there's a soundscape to be marvelled at - In nature's collective voice, we can locate the origins of human music, even language - 19th April
 * Prepare to be amazed - spring is nearly sprung - When exactly is spring? - 12th April
 * Bees, pesticides and Defra's weasel words - The coming together of a major problem and a leading problem-solver can be a significant moment - 5th April
 * Refusal to heed scientists' warnings is indefensible - It is 50 years since the American biologist Rachel Carson began the global environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring, her searing indictment of the US pesticide industry. In it she described the devastating effect on wildlife caused by the indiscriminate spraying of products such as DDT - 30th March
 * It's springtime for the swingers of suburbia - One of the most fascinating things we have learned about life in the past 50 years is that the principle purpose of all living things, in so far as they have a purpose at all, is to reproduce - 22nd March
 * Reason to be cheerful. It's rook-building time - It sometimes seems a pity that there are only four official seasons - 15th March
 * Sense and sensibility – birds have lots of both - You think you know the world, at least the general shape of it, the way it works, yet sometimes you are struck by just how far you are from truly comprehending it - 8th March
 * Ireland's corncrakes - no longer in every acre - Are we divided by the same language? There is no doubt that the British Isles – that is, Britain and Ireland combined – constitute a geographical entity - 1st March
 * Cherish these rivers - they may soon flow no more - The idea of a river dying is not a common one - 16th February
 * For the first time, we can see spring coming from 4,000 miles away - Over six months, the mystery of where cuckoos winter has revealed itself - 9th February
 * Huhne's departure will sadden all who care about the environment - His brilliant brain was never put to better use than when he saved the day at the Cancun talks - 4th February
 * Just because Nessie is a myth doesn't mean we can't dream - Nature has powers of persistence, even when all evidence points to a vanishing - 3rd February
 * We think swans are beautiful. So why not ducks? - Why do we laugh at ducks? Why do we find them funny? - 26th January
 * More badgers, fewer hedgehogs. Coincidence? I don't think so - A badger's powerful front claws can uncurl the hedghog's tight ball of spines - 19th January
 * It's been mild recently – but butterflies think it's spring - When you first become interested in butterflies, you naturally enjoy their vivid colours and concentrate on recognising them, but as you become more involved, you start to look at subtler things - 12th January
 * No sensible person would want this destruction. Yet it's worth it, to give rail a future - Parts of the economic case are dodgy, not least the cost-benefit analysis, plucking figures from air - 11th January
 * We all know what they look like, but have you ever really seen a mole? - It is the only mammal to spend most of its time underground - 6th January



Articles: 2011

 * The debt I owe to Dodder, Baldmoney and Sneezewort - Recently I was put in mind of the first story, the first proper book, with which I completely engaged - 23rd December
 * Another way to appreciate turkey - There are two ways of looking at turkeys, it dawned on me one day in the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico - 16th December
 * In a birder's paradise, I thrill to the sight of a myna - Mynah birds (then spelt with a final h) were once popular in Britain in the days when every other family had a budgie in a cage and antimacassars on the back of the sofa - 9th December
 * How a single paragraph caused a storm - Ridicule was heaped on the UN's climate science body, the IPCC, two years ago, when its latest report turned out to contain a forecast that all the glaciers in the Himalayas would probably have melted by 2035 - 7th December
 * What this pyramid says about us and climate change - Abraham Maslow was a scholar of human behaviour, generally known for one particular imaginative insight into how people behave: his hierarchy of needs - 2nd December
 * Climate change isn't a left-wing cause – the Iron Lady knew that - Why is Thatcher’s climate change legacy rejected by her successors? - 26th November
 * When one beast must die – to let another live - One of the attributes of young schoolboys is the impulse to gather round when a fight erupts in the playground - 25th November
 * Medical myth is dooming the rhino to extinction - Can nobody stop it? Can no major political leader or other public figure realise what is happening and have the guts or find a moment to speak out about the horrific, heartless, headlong slaughter of the world's rhinos which is now running out of control? - 18th November
 * Why extinctions should worry us as a species - You probably missed it on the news, three weeks ago, the item about the Vietnamese rhinoceros going extinct; it didn't make a lot of noise - 11th November
 * Exhausted, deforested landscapes show the truth about over-population - I imagine most people would be hard put to place Burkina Faso on a map; it neatly fits that cliché of a faraway country of which we know nothing - 4th November
 * Can we really manage all the fracking risks? - New energy bonanza or new energy nightmare? That's the swing in extreme opinions about shale gas, the "unconventional" fuel which has boomed in the US and now could be taking off in Britain - 3rd November
 * Coming to terms with winter is part of growing up - More's the pity we haven't evolved the ability, like bears, to snooze until the damn thing is over - 28th October
 * There's beauty, and mystery, in any river's flowing waters - I cannot see a river, any river, without a quickening of the spirit, and this is such an automatic reaction that I sometimes wonder if it is hardwired into the genes, from our previous existence as hunter-gatherers - 21st October
 * Are we just going to talk our way to oblivion? - At Durban in eight weeks' time, the world's gaping split over climate change will be clear - 14th October
 * In a city of falcons, it's worth looking up - City of royalty, city of riches; city of poverty, city of squalor. City of billionaire Russian oligarchs; city of hate-filled Islamist preachers; city of English gentlemen's clubs. City of 300 languages. City of black cabs, red buses, green parks. City of blue plaques, marking the homes of its famous inhabitants. City of endless variety. London's been called all of those - 7th October
 * A glorious burst of the warm south - It's an extraordinary event, is it not? This miniature summer granted us weeks after what was meant to be the summertime, but was a chilly washout, is over and gone - 30th September
 * Betrayed by an act of despotism - Why should a government set up and pay for an independent organisation that is likely to criticise it? In terms of realpolitik, of course, there is no reason whatsoever, which is why in tyrannies such bodies do not exist - 23rd September
 * Saving the Pole – not such a strange idea - A curious notion, is it not? Save The Pole. Certainly a much less tangible one than Save The Whale or Save The Planet - 16th September
 * Don't underestimate the power of tiny things - It is a strange fact, not often remarked upon and indeed, strongly counterintuitive, that among the wild beasts of Africa, herbivores are much more dangerous to humans than carnivores - 9th September
 * In search of another great moth snowstorm - One of the lousiest aspects of the lousy summer which ended yesterday, for me at least, was that for yet another year, there was no chance of witnessing the moth snowstorm. Not in England, anyway - 2nd September
 * red berries and a literary curse'' - Three years ago, in 2008, human history passed a significant milestone: the proportion of the world's population living in towns and cities, rather than the countryside, exceeded 50 per cent for the first time - 26th August
 * loveliest living creature'' - You may well not have heard of it - 19th August
 * best discoveries canbe entirely accidental'' - It seems to me a curious part of the human psyche that we more deeply enjoy special things seen casually and accidentally, than those which have been expressly sought out - 12th August
 * badgers and cuckoos that really matter'' - It is a curious sensation, to be working in the middle of a national newspaper newsroom convulsed with the noisiest scandal for years, involving public outrage, gross malpractice, a media group in meltdown, Scotland Yard in turmoil and the political system in ferment, and to be writing about badgers and cuckoos - 22nd July
 * estuaries we must protect'' - In the ugly litany of environmental crimes, perhaps the worst is the destruction of a whole ecosystem - 15th July
 * solutions in one to a string of problems the free market could not deal with'' - There are lots of things the market will do for you, like lowering consumer prices or making companies lean, mean and keen, but one thing no one pretends the market will do is give you a clean planet - 13th July
 * summers conceal a terrible surprise'' - Aerosol is a word most people associate with the bathroom, the kitchen or the garden shed: we tend to use it to mean a spray can, for deodorants, cleaners, weedkillers or whatever - 8th July
 * – the rare, refined beauties of the plant world'' - Might the day ever come when it would be thought inappropriate to express open and unqualified admiration for an orchid – I mean for its beauty, its elegance and its glamour? Well, stranger things have happened - 1st July
 * flower whose smell brings back boyhood'' - Curious that a plant should have two separate smells: few living things present two quite different versions of themselves to our senses - 24th June
 * being awake at 3am to hear this sound'' - 17th June
 * in the splendour that is the month of May'' - 29th April
 * birdsong that's like blossom in sound'' - 22nd April
 * is a destroyer but can fix things, too'' - 15th April
 * disasters that are fundamentally different'' - 13th April
 * world cannot allow these species to die out'' - 11th April
 * so magical as the song of the nightingale'' - 8th April 2011
 * overcoming a poisonous prejudice'' - 1st April
 * science cannot account for beauty'' - 25th March
 * quintessence of early spring'' - 18th March
 * bird that offers a clue to mankind's destiny'' - 11th March
 * do sparrows thrive in America but not here?'' - 4th March
 * small-leaved lime, lost tree of England'' - 25th February
 * time Man stopped to consider Earth's health'' - 18th February
 * winter is a time to savour small pleasures'' - 11th February
 * government ever – that's a sick joke'' - 4th February
 * 21st century bodes ill for non-human species'' - 28th January
 * all our conservation failures, this is the saddest'' - 21st January
 * the dingy footman, and other such creatures'' - 14th January
 * we learned nothing since 'Silent Spring'?'' - 7th January



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News & updates:

 * The green movement at 50: Can the world be saved? Population growth and climate change are the big problems facing the earth in the next 50 years. But are there any solutions? The Independent, 15th June 2012

