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Michael McCarthy

Author Biography

Michael McCarthy

Michael McCarthy, formerly the Independent’s longstanding Environment Editor, now its Environment Columnist, is one of Britain’s leading writers on the environment and the natural world. He has won a string of awards for his work, including Environment Journalist of the Year (three times) and Specialist Writer of the Year in the British Press Awards in 2001. In 2007 he was awarded the Medal of the RSPB for “Outstanding Services to Conservation,” in 2010 he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London, and in 2011 the Dilys Breeze Medal of the British Trust for Ornithology. In 2009 McCarthy published Say Goodbye To The Cuckoo (John Murray), a study of Britain’s declining migrant birds.

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A broad region covering Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, west Norfolk and parts of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire is seriously water-stressed, with springs, rivers and wells drying up.

In North Norfolk, springs at an RSPB nature reserve have run dry, leaving less marshland for wading birds to feed on; domestic wells are drying up on the South Lincolnshire limestone with groundwater users being unable to abstract water; and the rivers Glen in Lincolnshire, Chess in Buckinghamshire and Coln in Gloucestershire have run dry in places.

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