Peter Smith

I run a zoo, the Wildwood Trust, not a normal zoo to be sure, but a zoo. We do great work in education, conservation and promote rewilding. Nearly all the people I know support the work we do however rabidly anti zoo  they are & I was rabidly anti zoo until I wanted to reintroduce beavers - then I need one. So wildwood Trust was born to help conservationists with rewilding projects. Many of our animals are rescued and we try very hard to give them the best of care. On social media a commentator posed me the Question that the  Green Party & Labour Party would ban zoos  and this would somehow lessen my distress at the election outcome. My response: Animals should only be in captivity if they are well looked after and serve a legitimate purpose for conservation & education. And there is nothing wrong with good regulation of zoos (as a Zoo manager & Green party supporter myself) Sure there are people who would ban them and they have a right to hold...

A commentator on this blog was very worried that LVT will destroy gardens and the wildlife that lives there. This is an interesting question - my response is below: There are many gardens that are rubbish for wildlife so we have to be able to distinguish between the two and incentivise biodiversity in gardens and areas of land that are designated as gardens and recreation spaces within cities. Our current system does not do this and this would not change under a 'pure' LVT system - the incentives would not change. LVT does value nature as land that no one can pay the LVT on will go back to nature as we only need so much land. At present all the economic incentives push us to use every bit of land we have however inefficiently and destroy the wild on it to pursue whatever use, however uneconomic, or useless to society. LVT is a very efficient, and 'holistic'  system but is not perfect which is why we should have externality taxes (taxes on things that damage th...