Today's the Chinese new year, the first day of the Year of the Dragon. But the recent vogue for marking this and other events with flying lanterns has caused concern that is spreading across Europe. The UK Government remains under pressure to ban so-called 'Chinese' lanterns, or sky lanterns after the products were prohibited from sale or use in Spain.

Lantern waste? An abandoned sky lantern on a golf course.

The Spanish authorities said the flying lanterns, a signal of good luck and hope, posed a risk of burns and fire because, after launching, they fly through the air without control.

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Perhaps there's hope. The Ranger spends an uncomfortable amount of time these days delving into the murky depths of the planning process - and the rights and wrongs of Permitted Development, Unitary Development Plans, and Strategic Environmental Assessment fill more of his working hours than do roaming the fields and looking vaguely at spiders.

So he was much comforted to discover, via the worthy medium of The Honest Hypocrite, (thank you Richard) a great tale of how a planning application in Scotland was quite genuinely rejected by the fairies. See the original story here, and an unexpected followup tells how the property developer thinks the fairies have brought him luck!

It's nice to think that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must be smiling down on St Fillans, Perthshire.

A Planning Inspector yesterday

(This article was first published in 2006, but has been updated with a new link)

The first time the Virtual Ranger met Nick Baker he was presenting prizes at the British Wildlife Photography Awards. Stricken with a streaming cold, he manfully posed for photos and shook hands with sponsors before pulling out of his hat a masterful extemporised address to the assembled photographic dignitaries.

And whereas the government minister and the CEO of a big environmental body had both slipped away to their taxis almost before the flashbulbs had cooled, it was Nick Baker who stayed to sign autographs and chat with passing bloggers, and indeed was still standing animatedly discussing the details of moth physiology with one of the photographers as the gallery was being closed up.

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We heard you like to see pictures of large invertebrates. Well, so do we, but this isn't one of them. Join us for a dramatic photographic journey that's not very long, but is guaranteed to make your eyes water.

The album comes from Reddit, where commenters suggest the snake is a non-venomous Black-Headed Python.

Oh, it's been a while since I wrote about this, but the issue of balloon releases seems to have raised its head in a particularly bizarre and upsetting way recently.

Readers who've read this blog for any length of time won't have missed my thoughts about this issue - but if you did, have a quick refresher by reading Balloons - how they kill wildlife, and what to do about it. Or smirk at the slightly more tongue in cheek Smoking for Turtles on the same subject.

The bottom line is that I'm worried about the damage balloons cause to the environment, and I wish people wouldn't release them or encourage others to do so. Yes, even when it's for a really good cause. And that's the difficult bit, because some dreadfully worthy causes seem to adopt balloon releases as their chosen method of fund-raising or commemoration or whatever. Then it becomes quite hard to criticise the medium without being seen to be criticising the message itself. The latest person to face up to this particular Gordian knot is well-known Midland bird-watcher and seasoned internet debater Andy Mabbett, who's one of the few people in the UK licensed to wear a Father-of-the-Internet beard without irony.

Andy Mabbett has been approaching various bodies that are undertaking balloon releases and asking them not to do so. I won't go into the debate for or against balloons - I've covered it exhaustively elsewhere. But I do want to examine an aspect of this that's caused me some concern. Recently Mabbett approached Life After Loss, a Northern Ireland-based organisation for bereaved parents. The results were unexpected.

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