Conservation – Page 21 – Hoopoe

Trees for Life: Q&A with Alan McDonnell

Alan McDonnell, Conservation Manager for Trees for Life, kindly took the time to answer some questions on the important work they do in the Scottish Highlands and their ambitious East West Wild project. The Caledonian Forest has been under threat for thousands of years and, by the 1950s, only 1% of the original forest remained. Since its creation in 1993, Trees for Life has worked tirelessly to restore this forest and its ecosystem.

In this captivating conversation, we discuss the importance of working in collaboration with landowners and local communities, how the Covid pandemic has affected them as a charity, and share different ways to get involved in helping Trees for Life achieve their goals.

Could you begin by introducing us to the goals of Trees for Life and the work that you do?

We are a rewilding charity working in the Scottish Highlands. For us, rewilding is about allowing natural processes to work on a large scale. It’s about creating potential for communities to thrive as a result of the health of the natural environment around them.

Our work has therefore increasingly focused on involving people close to where we operate. Our volunteering programme places an emphasis on nature connection. This includes practical action like planting trees, restoring peatlands, and working in the tree nursery at our Dundreggan conservation estate. In recent years, we’ve been increasing our partnerships with others interested in using nature to benefit people’s mental health. We find this hugely rewarding for everyone involved.

Our practical rewilding work includes restoring red squirrel populations to parts of their original range in north and west Scotland and communities play an important role in supporting that. We’ve also just completed an assessment of the health and resilience of Scotland’s ancient pinewoods, which we hope will be just the start of a journey to secure and expand these iconic woodlands in partnership with land managers. Finally, we continue the work Trees for Life started with, restoring native woodlands to appropriate parts of the landscape.

On your website, you state that you believe you can always achieve more through teamwork. Why do you think it is so important for Trees for Life to collaborate with landowners and local communities?

One way or another, we all have a stake in the land and an influence on its future, but people’s priorities are different. If we focus too much on our own interests in isolation, we end up in conflict. This tendency has dogged the land management debate for decades, to the detriment of everyone. We want to help change the focus to one where landowners, communities, and environmental interests look at what they have in common and what they can achieve together. We’ve already seen how this can create new possibilities for sustainable progress, and at a larger scale, for nature, people’s wellbeing, and the local economies that communities depend on.

You have several major projects in the works, including your very ambitious East West Wild project. This project aims to form a coalition of landowners and communities to create a nature-based economy, could you tell us a bit more about what this entails?

The initiative is founded on the precept that nature, communities, and the economy need each other – if one fails, sooner or later it will take the others with it. East West Wild looks at it the other way round: progress in restoring the health of nature in a large landscape can be a catalyst for both social and economic regeneration. We already know that given time and a little help, nature can surge back, so our focus now is how that could create opportunities for people and local businesses. A scoping study has identified nature-friendly forestry, farming, private investment in ecosystem services and small-scale renewable energy as some of the ways in which we can help nature to recover. Such an approach could also create jobs, and sequester carbon through sustainable land use. We’re under no illusions about the challenges involved in attracting the investment to turn these ideas into reality. But we’re also really excited about having the chance to go for such big gains as part of such a diverse partnership of interests.

Birch tree being planted © Trees for Life

The project area stretches from the west coast of Scotland to Loch Ness, encompassing multiple Glens including Glen Affric, Cannich, and Moriston. What was the process behind selecting this area for this project?

One of the earliest aspirations of Trees for Life was to realise the potential for Glen Affric to act as a coast-to-coast habitat corridor, noted I believe by George Peterken in the 1980s. However, as the idea grew in our minds, we knew we wanted to try for a big area to get the ecological multiplier effects that come from genuine landscape-scale change. We also know that the potential here is massive, with a diverse range of woodlands, peatlands, freshwater, montane, riparian, and coastal habitats all capable of restoring themselves. If we can increase the ecological connectivity at this scale, potentially 2000 sq km, the wildlife response that follows will be tremendous and importantly, resilient over the longer term.

Of course, all of that is little more than a daydream if we fail to bring the communities and landowners with us. Our key priority at this stage is to show people that a high level of ambition for the natural environment can positively impact their ways of life.

Trees for Life volunteers in Glen Affric © Trees for Life

Have you found the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the development of this project? How have you coped with the challenges of the current situation?

It’s been both good and bad. It has caused us problems as we’ve been trying to reach out and build new relationships without the spontaneity and informality of face-to-face conversations. However, as we all got our heads around online meetings, we’ve benefited from the speed at which we can meet people and reduced the need to spend time travelling. Hopefully, as we get to the point of starting the initiative in earnest this autumn, we’ll have the scope to meet people in person, which will undoubtedly help the partnership to become genuinely co-creative.

For anyone who is inspired by the vision of Trees for Life and wishes to help, how would you recommend they get involved?

You can learn more about Trees for Life and our vision for a rewilded Scotland by visiting our website.

We hope that our volunteer programme will restart in spring 2022. This includes our popular Conservation Weeks. People should keep an eye out for updates on our website and social media channels.

We have a Cycle for the Climate initiative, where people can raise money for rewilding through bike challenges – both big and small. And of course, we are forever grateful to people who choose to make regular and one-off donations to the charity. This is what we depend on to plan future projects and keep building towards a rewilded Highlands where people and nature enjoy a better relationship.

Trees for Life volunteers © Stephen Couling, Trees for Life

You can find out more about Trees for Life from their website and by following them on Facebook and Twitter.

Climate Challenges: What is COP26 and Why is it Important?

In the lead up to COP26 in November of this year, we are writing a series of articles looking at some of the toughest global climate crisis challenges that we are currently facing. But what exactly is COP26?

COP26 is the 26th annual summit of the United Nations climate change conference, taking place in Glasgow from 31st October to 12th November 2021. The Conference of Parties, known as COP, is responsible for monitoring and reviewing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its implementation. The UNFCCC is an international treaty acknowledging the existence of anthropogenic climate change and provides the framework for climate change negotiations.

Over 190 world leaders, along with thousands of government representatives, businesses, negotiators and citizens, will convene in Glasgow, Scotland, to update plans for reducing emissions. During these summits, countries set out Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to commit how much they will reduce their emissions. COP26 was delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but this year there will be updated plans for the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Suggested to be one of the most important climate crisis summits ever, COP26 must be divisive to limit global temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels ahead of the approaching 2030.

The history

The convention began in 1992 during the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro. The UNFCCC treaty was adopted two years later and has been ratified by 197 countries. The COP began meeting each year from 1995, to review the implementation of the UNFCCC and amend commitments and targets. This will be the first time the UK has hosted the COP.

In 2010, countries committed to limit the global average temperature increase to a threshold of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels by signing the Cancun Agreements. Further research and several reports from sources such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed that to avoid extreme impacts of climate change, the target should be 1.5°C. Thus, the Paris Agreement was created and entered into force in 2016. In 2018, the IPCC released its Special Report of Global Warming of 1.5°C, bringing together the findings of multiple climate scientists to present the steps needed to maintain global average temperature rise below 1.5°C.

The adoption of the Paris Agreement by UNclimatechange via Flickr

What does ‘1.5°C’ mean?

The 1.5°C pledge is the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to below 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels, with an upper limit of 2°C. This is an increase in the Earth’s average temperature, measured from a baseline average temperature between the mid-to-late nineteenth century, during the Industrial Revolution. The impacts of higher temperatures are already being felt, but it is thought that an increase above 1.5°C will be the tipping point for many natural systems.

An increase above 2°C could lead to:

Severe heatwaves at least every five years for around 1.7 billion more people
Several hundred million extra people exposed to poverty and other climate-related risks
An average sea rise of another 10cm
It could also cause coral reefs to decline as much as 99%
A decline in global fishery catches by another 1.5 million tonnes
18% of insect species could be lost, along with 16% of plants and 8% of vertebrates
More erratic rainfall, with more intense rain on days it does fall, leading to up to 79 million people being exposed to the risk of flooding
Water stress will increase, with more frequent and longer droughts. Certain countries will see a significant drop in groundwater, and therefore a drop in productivity in crop and livestock farming
There may be an expansion in the range of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, increasing malaria transmission by 120%

Lake Mead at 39% of its full capacity in April 2021, a drop of 5% compared to April 2020. This body of water supplies 25 million people across Arizona, California, Nevada, and Mexico. Image by Felton Davis via Flickr.

The process

There is a long road to COP26, which started in December 2020 with the Climate Ambition Summit, co-hosted by the UN, UK and France. 75 world leaders announced new commitments. The next stage was the Climate & Development Ministerial in March 2021, where the challenges and priorities of implementing the Paris Climate Agreement were discussed.

In April 2021, the Leaders Summit on Climate took place with 40 world leaders, convened by President Biden. Ambitious commitments were made by the US and Japan to reduce emissions by 2030. All members of the G7 were committed to net-zero by 2050.

In May and June 2021, five events took place:

Petersberg Climate Dialogue,
P4G Seoul Summit,
12th Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) – 6th Mission Innovation Ministerial,
the UN Climate Change Conference – Sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies,
and the G7 Leaders Summit.

These all involved working to accelerate negotiation progress, developing public-private partnerships, promoting policies, and uniting leading democracies, to promote a greener future ahead of COP26.

Between July 26th and 6th August, the Fifty-Fourth Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-54) and Working Group 1 Assessment Report 6 Approval Plenary takes place, providing key inputs from the Sixth Assessment Report into the negotiations at COP26.

In September 2021, four events will occur:

76th Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA)
Climate Week NYC
Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition
Pre-COP26

These involve the discussion of the challenges of recovering from COVID-19, a chance to showcase climate action, and allowing 400 young people (between 18-29) to discuss negotiations. The Pre-COP26 is mainly a preparatory meeting, involving the discussion of key political aspects of COP26 negotiations, and a chance to find solutions for any outstanding issues.

During October 2021, there will be:

UN Biodiversity Conference,
Global Investment Summit: Building A Green Future Together,
World Bank Group/International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings,
G20 Leaders’ Summit.

These final events discuss the action needed to reverse biodiversity loss, the investment opportunities of net-zero across the UK, and the representation of shareholders on the world economic outlook and other issues. Finally, shared challenges between G20 countries are addressed, focusing on recovering from the pandemic and addressing climate change.

COP26 begins immediately after the conclusion of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in November.

The G7 Leaders’ Summit 2021 by madison.beer via Flickr

General goals:

The general goals of COP26 are to:

Secure global net-zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach
Adapt to protect communities and natural habitats
Mobilise finance
Work together to deliver

To achieve these, countries must quickly phase out coal, reduce deforestation, increase the speed of the switch to electric vehicles, and encourage investment in renewables. To adapt better, counties must protect and restore their ecosystems, and increase defences, resilient infrastructure and effective warning systems to avoid loss of lives, homes and livelihoods. Developed countries must mobilise at least $100bn (£71.7bn) in climate finances per year, with international financial institutions playing their part. Finally, the Paris Rulebook (a set of rules to make the Paris Agreement operational) must be finalised and there must be an acceleration in action to tackle the climate crisis, especially through the collaboration of governments, civil society and businesses.

UK goals

The UK government announced in November 2020 a £12billion government investment towards a 10 point plan:

Advancing offshore wind
Driving the growth of low carbon hydrogen
Delivering new and advanced nuclear power
Accelerating the shift to zero-emission vehicles
Green public transport, cycling and walking
‘Jet zero’ and green ships
Greener buildings
Investing in carbon capture, usage and storage
Protecting our natural environment
Green finance and innovation

There are some success stories in the UK’s fight against climate change, with emissions down 49% since 1990, with the strongest record in reducing emissions over the last decade in the G20. We are the world leaders in offshore wind energy, with the power sector only accounting for 13% of all territorial emissions within the UK. Our Climate Change Act of 2008 was the first of its kind.

There has been little progress in cutting emissions outside of the energy sectors, however, stifling our process to achieving the ambitious targets of a 78% reduction by 2035. Further plans, such as airport and road expansions and new oil and gas exploration within the North Sea, undermine the UK’s position as one of the leaders in the fight against climate change.

One key pledge is to protect 30% of the UK for nature by 2030. When it comes to the number of species that have been lost, the UK ranks bottom among the G7 countries and is in the lowest 12% of 240 countries and territories. In 2019, it was reported that 41% of species within the UK were in decline and it is estimated that only 5% of the land is considered healthy habitat.

Summary

COP26 is a summit of the United Nations climate change conference, responsible for monitoring and reviewing the UNFCCC and its implementation.
The aim is to limit the increase in global average temperatures to below 1.5°C (with an upper limit of 2°C)
The road to COP26 involves 17 summits, conferences, and meetings over 11 months, leading up to the COP26 event hosted by the UK in November
The UK government has made advances and big promises to tackle climate change, but certain plans are undermining their efforts and may be setting the wrong example ahead of COP26.

Useful resources:

Hayhow D. B., et al., 2019. The State of Nature 2019. The State of Nature partnership.

RSPB. Biodiversity Loss: The UK’s global rank for levels of biodiversity. Retrieved from: https://www.rspb.org.uk/globalassets/downloads/projects/48398rspb-biodivesity-intactness-index-summary-report-v5-1-1.pdf

HM Government, 2020. The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. Retrieved from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/936567/10_POINT_PLAN_BOOKLET.pdf

Stroud, D. A., et al., 2021. International Treaties in Nature Conservation: A UK Perspective. Biodiversity Press

The official website of COP26: ukcop26.org

Q&A with Lynx Edicions

Lynx Edicions is a Barcelona-based publishing house, originally founded in 1989 to create the Handbook of the Birds of the World series. They are known for their fantastic ornithology titles, alongside a varied collection of general natural history. They have published over 150 titles, including field guides and bird checklists, and continually produce exciting works, such as their most recent publication Seabirds: The New Identification Guide, a full, 600-page treatment of all known seabird species.

Lynx Edicions are our Publisher of the Month for August and have taken the time to answer some questions about their background, motivations, and current major project.

Could you please tell us a little bit about Lynx Edicions and your mission as a publishing house?

Lynx Edicions is a publishing house committed to providing high-quality ornithology and natural history books. It was founded to create the 17-volume Handbook of the Birds of the World series, the first work ever to illustrate and describe in-depth each member of an entire Class of the Animal Kingdom: Class Aves. We then applied the same detailed treatment to Class Mammalia with the Handbook of the Mammals of the World. Our work has not stopped there, but rather it has grown from this strong foundation. Furthermore, we are proud to collaborate with many different organizations and professionals to publish a wide range of titles devoted to promoting understanding and appreciation of ornithology and nature, as well as its conservation.

What inspired you to create your flagship publication, the Handbook of the Birds of the World?

In 1980, Lynx Co-founder Josep del Hoyo took a 13-month trip to Africa to explore the wildlife with a special focus on birds. In preparation for the trip, he purchased several bird field guides to help identify the species that he would be seeing. On his trip, he soon discovered that the books were not as helpful as he had imagined – they lacked details and, in some cases, they even lacked species! The experience with the books was frustrating, but Josep just thought that he had purchased the wrong books and that certainly a definitive work covering all the birds existed. However, when he returned from the trip and searched for a comprehensive treatise dedicated to birds, he surprisingly found there was none. This inspired him to create one himself and he was fortunate to find two partners, Jordi Sargatal and Ramón Mascort, to join him in this monumental effort. Together they founded Lynx Edicions in 1989 and set to work on the Handbook of the Birds of the World project.

What is the process of creating handbooks of this scale? What are the challenges involved?

Creating handbooks of this large scale involve a huge amount of collaborative effort and intricate coordination of data, materials, processes and professionals. For example, the Handbook of the Birds of the World includes detailed texts and high-quality illustrations from 277 specialists and 33 illustrators from 40 countries. The impactful photographs are the contributions of more than 850 photographers from all over the world. Of course, behind the scenes is also the hard work of a carefully orchestrated team including editors, coordinators, and production staff, as well as those dedicated to the logistics of selling and distributing the books across the world.

In addition to the challenges inherent in producing such a vast work, there are also challenges related to the important focus of the handbooks – the birds and mammals themselves – with information on species sometimes hard to find. Luckily the international ornithological and mammalogical communities have been highly supportive of the Handbook projects and have come to our aid repeatedly with data, photographs and other help to treat all the world’s birds and mammals in detail. We hope that, in a small way, the Handbooks have also encouraged some professionals to investigate, photograph and even protect species that had formerly not received as much attention.

The Handbook of the Birds of the World includes sections on species known to be extinct; why was this information important to include?

Conservation has always been an important goal of our publications, and we believe that “you cannot protect what you do not know”. So, to start, we aim to explain and illustrate the wonders of the natural world, so that people can see its value and fight to protect it. Another aspect is showing the reality of extinction and those remarkable species that we have already lost, which will hopefully lead people to act to avoid more species crossing the line into extinction. In our Handbooks, Illustrated Checklists, Field Guides and most recently All the Birds of the World, we have included the IUCN/BirdLife International conservation status for every species to help call attention to these important data. We have been very fortunate to collaborate with BirdLife International, Conservation International, IUCN, Re:wild and other international organizations to pursue the important goals of conservation through our work.

One of the publishing house’s main areas of expertise is in ornithology, with publications including field guides, illustrated checklists, and guides to bird conservation. What, in your opinion, are the greatest threats to bird biodiversity?

Habitat loss is probably the greatest threat to biodiversity on Earth today and it is certainly a devastating threat to bird biodiversity. In turn, habitat loss is directly related to human action as we modify and reshape the Earth for our uses. For example, some of the top threats to birds are related to habitat destruction and degradation, like agriculture, logging, invasive species, and climate change. Action by humans has been especially detrimental to forests, grasslands, wetlands, and other freshwater habitats.

We feel it is important to educate people about the importance of birds and their natural habitats, so that they can be encouraged to protect them and to find ways to coexist harmoniously. This is what has also inspired us to pursue our Field Guide collection for birds, as well as our Illustrated Checklist collection for mammals, in order to give local communities and travellers the tools to discover and protect local species and their habitats.

A current, major project is the Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guide Collection. Can you tell us a little about the motivation behind this series and why it is so important?

Carrying on from the previous point, this project came to life after years of conversations motivated by a shared idea between Lynx and BirdLife International that the existence of country field guides is a basic element for the “emergence” and education of birdwatchers, ornithologists, bird guides and naturalists in any given country, which, in turn, has important repercussions on the conservation of nature and biodiversity, both locally and globally. The principal goal of this collection is to produce modern, standardized field guides, especially for countries without any recent or country-level guide. The main collection is produced in English, including local-language names for the species when an official list exists. But we also have a secondary goal of publishing several of the titles in their local languages to enhance the local effects of the work. We are delighted by the success of the collection so far, with a growing number of titles authored by top experts, and we look forward to producing more now that hopefully travel will increase again after the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NHBS Introduction to Habitats: Heathland and Moorland

In our new NHBS Introduction to Habitats series, we will be exploring the various habitats found in the UK. In this article, we will take a look at the first habitat of the series, heathland and moorland. Featuring prominently in famous novels such as Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, heathland is a unique habitat. Originally manmade, it is a product of agricultural grazing and tree clearing practices originating thousands of years ago. Unlike the heathland in countries such as Australia and South Africa, European heathland is relatively low in flora species variety. It is characterised by heather species (Family Ericaceae), but also other plant species such as gorse (Ulex spp.) and bracken (Pteridium spp.).

As this habitat is manmade, it requires management to be maintained. This usually involves a variety of methods such as using grazing animals, removing older species and trees, and controlling the encroachment of scrub. They can even be managed by controlled burning. If neglected, the heathland would be overtaken by successive species and become woodland.

There are several different types of heathland, depending on physical factors such as soil drainage, terrain, and altitude. These types include lowland, chalk, and wooded heath. Lowland heath can be further divided into wet, dry, and humid heath, and upland heath is more commonly known as moorland. The types of species found can vary between these habitats.

What species can you find here?

Flora:

While there may not be a large variety of flora, the species present all play important roles within the habitat. There are also some iconic species within the heathland.

Bell Heather (Erica cinerea)

Between June and September, bell heather blooms across the heathland, creating a blanket of purple. This species is an important nectar source for many invertebrate species, such as the buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) and the silver-studded blue butterfly (Plebejus argus).

It is similar to another heather species, cross-leaved heath, but the flowers of the bell heather are smaller and occur around the stem, rather than clustered on one side.

Common Gorse (Ulex europaeus)

Flowering from January to June, this bright yellow plant provides an early source of food for many invertebrates. As a large evergreen shrub, it also provides shelter for many species, including Dartford warblers (Curruca undata) and linnets (Linaria cannabina).

Common gorse is also very similar to two other gorse species, western (Ulex gallii) and dwarf (Ulex minor). The easiest way to identify the species is by the time of year that they flower and their height, as common gorse grows much taller and can reach up to 2.5 metres.

Common Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum)

The UK’s most common fern species, it grows in dense groups on heathland and moorland. A bright green during spring and summer months, this species dies back in winter, creating a sea of brown fronds. Bracken is poisonous to grazing livestock, therefore it needs to be cut back to maintain heathland habitats. If left to grow, it can dominate the habitat and out-compete other plant species, such as bell heather, for nutrients, light, and water.

Heath Bedstraw (Galium saxatile)

Heath bedstraw is a mat-forming herb found in heathland habitats. It is a fairly common species, found widespread across most of the UK. The white petalled flowers bloom between June and August. This species is a key food source for Britain’s only true alpine butterfly species: the small mountain ringlet (Erebia epiphron).

Key identifying features of heath bedstraw are its square, hairless stem and its white, four-petal flowers that give off a sickly, unpleasant smell.

Fauna:

Heathland supports a large variety of species, particularly invertebrates, but also birds, mammals and reptiles. Several rare species present here are hardly found in any other habitat.

Silver-Studded Blue Butterfly (Plebejus argus)

Silver-studded blue butterfly by gailhampshire via Flickr

This species is found mainly in heathland, chalk grassland, and sand dune habitats, and is almost entirely restricted to southern England. It is a rare species, with the adults appearing between July to September.

This species is sexually dimorphic, meaning the males and females look different. The males (pictured) are blue with a darker border, while the females are brown with red spots along their border. Both have the pale fringe to their wings.

Golden-Ringed Dragonfly (Cordulegaster boltonii)

Golden-ringed dragonfly by Paul Albertella via Flickr

This species, found in heathland, freshwater, and wetland habitats, is easy to identify, due to its distinctive yellow and black markings. Their larvae are aquatic, and so rely on streams or standing water within the heathland to breed. While voracious predators in their own right, they are also an important food source, along with other dragonfly species, for many nesting birds such as the hobby (Falco subbuteo).

Dartford Warbler (Silvia undata)

Dartford warbler by Steve Herring via Flickr

The Dartford warbler suffered a population crash in the 1960s but has since begun recovering. It is a ground-nesting bird, living on lowland heath and relies on gorse for a protective covering. Within the UK, this species is also mostly restricted to southern England. However, there are populations of this species within western Europe, particularly within the Iberian peninsula.

Stoat (Mustela erminea)

The stoat, also known as the short-tailed weasel or Eurasian ermine, is a small member of the mustelid family, related to otters (Lutra lutra) and the very visually similar weasel (Mustela nivalis). While stoats are slightly larger, the key to discerning this species from the weasel is the tail – stoats have a longer tail with a black tip.

Heathland can also support all six UK reptile species and several of our amphibian species. For more information on those, be sure to check out our NHBS Guide to UK Amphibian Identification and to UK Reptile Identification.

Heathland threats:

Lack of management is one of the main threats that heathland faces. This habitat needs variety, for example, dry heath, wetter areas such as bogs and ponds, patches of older vegetation, and areas of bare, sandy ground. This all improves the biodiversity of the area and helps to strengthen the ecosystem. Without management, these areas could all be taken over by scrub and tree cover.

Clearing for urban development, ploughing, and quarrying also threaten this habitat, and are some of the main causes of heathland loss over the last few decades. Further threats include the expansion and planting of forests, overgrazing, and uncontrolled fire.

More than 80% of heathland in the UK has been lost during the past 150 years, but widespread conservation efforts hope to reverse this. The UK Biodiversity Action Plan, for example, aims to restore 58,000 hectares of heathland, with further plans to recreate 6,000 hectares.

Areas of significance:

Upland heathland or moorland:
– Exmoor, Dartmoor, and Bodmin Moor
– Pennines
– Brecon Beacons
– Other areas such as Yorkshire, Northumberland, Greater Manchester, and the Peak District.

Lowland heathland
– The New Forest
– Ashdown Forest
– South Purbeck Heaths
– Other areas such as Cornwall, Devon, Surrey, and Pembrokeshire

Please note this is not an exhaustive list.

British Wildlife: highlights from the past year

The August issue of British Wildlife is now out, marking the completion of the magazine’s 32nd volume and – more notably – the first since its expansion. The increase from six to eight issues per year has allowed more space for articles on the usual eclectic mix of topics from natural history, conservation and environmental policy. With the selection below we hope to give a taste of the variety that readers have enjoyed in recent months – for a full list of previous articles, see the British Wildlife website.

Species: in-depth profiles of individual species or groups have been a mainstay of British Wildlife since its inception. Highlights from this latest volume have included an introduction to the remarkable life histories of cephalopods in British seas; work to unravel the distribution and habitat associations of truly Wild Apples; the myths and misconceptions surrounding pollinating insects; ecological insights from efforts to conserve the Ring Ouzel; and the surprising history of Water Voles in terrestrial habitats.

Places: the magazine continues to celebrate the most important wildlife sites in Britain through regional features and reserve profiles. Recent articles have described work to conserve the botanical treasures of the Lizard, in Cornwall, and the unexpectedly rich biodiversity of conifer plantations in south Wales, while, from East Anglia, we have seen accounts of Holkham NNR – an exemplar of the benefits of large-scale habitat creation and a flexible approach to management – and the contrasting fortunes of two broadland reserves, Sutton and Catfield Fens.

Conservation: British Wildlife aims to tackle current controversies in conservation and shed light on long-term and pervasive threats to the natural environment. Volume 32 has highlighted the potential to eradicate mink from East Anglia and, possibly, from Britain as a whole; the catastrophic impact of nitrogen pollution on bryophytes and lichens; and the environmental impacts of salmon farming in Scotland. On top of this, we have continued to explore the role of rewilding in Britain through the ‘Wilding for Conservation’ series, which most recently has considered the economics of rewilding and lessons from observations of woodland dynamics in European Strict Forest Reserves.

The August issue itself includes articles on the painstaking efforts to save the Pine Hoverfly, one of Britain’s rarest insects; the importance of long-term ecological studies; the potential for biological recording to influence – and help to defeat – planning applications; insights from studies of the Marsh Fritillary butterfly in Cornwall; and the amazing diversity of wildlife recorded at WWT London Wetland Centre during its first 20 years of existence.

And to give a hint of what is to come in volume 33, subscribers can look forward to articles on Humpback Whales in British seas, the significance of climate change in invertebrate declines, the restoration of dynamism to dune systems, and work to protect the critically rare Narrow-headed Ant, along with more from the Wilding for Conservation series, the usual selection of columns, news and features, and much more.

Subscriptions to British Wildlife start from £35 – for more information or to subscribe, visit the website. Individual back issues are available to purchase through the NHBS website.

Author Interview: The Handbook of Acoustic Bat Detection

Acoustic detection is a popular and widespread method of environmental assessment, and its use is increasing, driven by the development of increasingly accessible and sophisticated detection devices. The Handbook of Acoustic Bat Detection provides an in-depth understanding of the principles of acoustic detection, study planning, data handling, properties of bat calls, analysis of results, and the manual identification of species. It also includes information on quality assurance, the benefits and drawbacks of automatic species recognition, and the background physics of sound.

We are fortunate to have had the opportunity to ask the authors some questions.

The applications of data derived from acoustic bat detection are diverse and wide-ranging. What motivated you to write The Handbook of Acoustic Bat Detection and what impact do you hope the book has in this field?

In our daily work, we have seen a lot of improper use of acoustic data. Mainly driven by misconceptions regarding the interpretation of acoustic data and quite often due to missing basic knowledge on bioacoustics and signal analysis. With the easy availability of acoustic detectors and the relative simple usage, these problems became more common, especially in consulting activities. Many new “bat experts” appeared in the field basing their work on automatic detection and identification systems. We hope to help such users to gain a basic understanding of bioacoustics and give more experienced users new information to further improve their work. Thus overall we hope to improve the quality of projects based on acoustic data and increase the evidence level.

This book discusses some of the different methods for processing acoustic data, such as zero-crossing. What are the benefits of this method versus full-spectrum analysis?

The main benefit of zero-crossing is the much smaller amount of data produced and the possibility of listening to the recorded sounds directly. Full-spectrum detectors produce much larger amounts of data and do not allow direct listening to the bat calls. Yet, the benefits of zero-crossing are decreasing with cheaper data storage and higher processing power. Thus today one can nearly instantaneously listen to full-spectrum sound resampled to zero-crossing or heterodyne representation in real-time. In our opinion, the real-time data gives more insights into the calls on a much easier-to-understand level, yet we accept that experts can do powerful analysis with zero-crossing data as well.

You have all had many years of experience in this field; how has bat detection and acoustic analysis developed and changed since you first started?

We started working on bat acoustics in the field when only heterodyne or zero-crossing detectors were available. So in our early days, we walked through the field listening for bats. We were already interested in better and more reliable species ID back then. Then the time-expansion system was available as well as the Anabat system. We used time-expansion a lot, but both didn’t work well for our scientific research interests. So we developed with the batcorder a real-time detector that completely changed bat work in Germany within a few years. Back in the beginning, sound analysis of bat calls was something only a few were able to do. Now with fully automated systems, the whole process changed. Surveys can run for multiple months nearly everywhere – not only ground-based but also on wind turbines or off-shore. We collect billions of bat calls a year with these systems and thus are able to learn more about their calls and ecology. Yet this is not always the best, since a lack of bat knowledge often prevents optimal solutions for bat-related landscape changes.

Bat acoustic recording visualised through the Anabat Insight Software

In chapter 11, ‘Quality assurance of reports’, you provide criteria to improve the quality of specialist reports used in impact assessments, such as which information should be included and the procedures that should be followed. How do you think the previous lack of clear guidelines has impacted bat surveying and, consequently, conservation?

In Germany, quite often surveys were conducted and it was later not possible to understand the low or high results since important information was missing. Also for legal complaints in planning processes, it was quite often impossible to understand how the data was actually sampled. If surveys and methods are well documented, it is much easier to evaluate the planning process and even more to work out optimal sampling schemes for following surveys in the new planning processes.

Now that this book is complete, do you have any future projects you would like to tell us about?

There are many projects – especially since we now face a major green-green dilemma with climate conservation often acting against biodiversity conservation. This especially is visible in the renewable energy sector. So currently some of us are investigating chances to further identify the possibilities of improving bat conservation for planning wind parks and other sources of renewables.

Another project is the ongoing improvement of species identification based on bat calls. We are working on new solutions to give better results.

The Handbook of Acoustic Bat Detection

Available for pre-order: Due September 2021

Paperback | £39.99

All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.

Climate Challenges: 2. Forest Fires

In the lead up to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November of this year, we are writing a series of articles looking at some of the toughest global climate crisis challenges that we are currently facing. This post looks at the increase in the prevalence and intensity of forest fires, and how they can be both exacerbated by and contribute to climate change.

Forest fire in Lassen Volcanic Park, California. Image by Lukas Schlagenhauf via Flickr.

How and why do forest fires occur?

In many ecosystems forest fires are a natural event and, particularly in high-latitude forests, can help to maintain a healthy ecosystem, release nutrients into the soil and help with seed dispersal. Fossil charcoal remains suggest that natural fires have occurred since the appearance of terrestrial plants 420 million years ago and were caused by lightning or volcanic eruptions. While these factors are still responsible for a number of forest fires, human-ignited fires, such as those caused by discarded cigarettes, poorly controlled bonfires or cooking fires, sparks from electrical equipment and intentional arson, are now increasingly prevalent. Controlled fires are also used to manage farmland and pasture, and to clear natural vegetation. How quickly and efficiently a fire will spread depends largely on the amount and type of flammable material present, along with the local topography, moisture levels and weather conditions.

When and why are forest fires a problem?

A combination of climate change and poor land management mean that many areas are now much more prone to forest fires than they have been historically. In particular, hotter and dryer conditions, combined with ecosystems that are degraded by logging and disease means that fire seasons are becoming much more extreme and widespread. This is especially worrying in tropical rainforests, where forest fires would previously have been rare.

Increased occurrences of forest fires pose a number of environmental, social and economic problems. As well as damaging forest ecosystems, large-scale fires release copious amounts of CO₂ and pollutants into the atmosphere, which are problematic both from an environmental standpoint and as a significant human health concern. Over the past century, wildfires have accounted for 20-25% of global carbon emissions – a worrying statistic that illustrates the environmental significance of the problem. In addition to this, the economic impact of fires can be considerable, with damage to property and tourist attractions, pollution of water supplies and the cost of evacuating local residents being some of the main problems.

11-mile fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, Idaho. Image by Intermountain Forest Service via Flickr.

Are forest fires ever a good thing?

As mentioned previously, wildfires have occurred throughout the history of terrestrial life, and many species have evolved to cope with or thrive under the conditions that they produce. Particularly in areas such as the vegetated regions of Australia, the celd in southern Africa, the fynbos in South Africa and the forested areas of the US and Canada, forest fires are common and help to create what is known as ‘snag forest habitat’. These areas feature higher species richness and diversity when compared to unburned forest, and their soils are rich from the plant nutrients that the fires help to return. Furthermore, many of the native plants that thrive in these areas rely on fire for successful germination of their seeds. Some of these ecosystems, however, are now suffering from too much fire, which has upset natural cycles and altered the previously well-balanced plant communities.

What can be done to prevent and control forest fires?

1996 poster from Rotorua Forest Service. Image by Archives NZ via Flickr.

Forest fire prevention attempts to reduce the risk of fires, as well as minimising their intensity and spread. One of the key methods is to educate and raise public awareness of the human-involvement in forest fires. In Europe, more than 95% of fires are caused by humans, and so addressing this is considered to be the most effective means of reducing unplanned forest fires. Closely controlling the use of planned burning is also important, as fires that are conducted under less dangerous weather conditions are much more likely to be successfully contained. The intentional igniting of small areas of vegetation is also used to minimise the amount of flammable material available for future forest fires and, when conducted carefully, can also help to maintain high local species diversity. However, this method is often unpopular due to the economic losses associated with burning potentially usable timber. Another method, particularly popular in the US, involves a fuel reduction strategy that involves logging and thinning overstocked trees.

Summary

• Although forest fires have occurred naturally since the evolution of terrestrial vegetation, climate change and changes in land management have produced conditions that are much more favourable for long, intense fire seasons.
• Forest fires make a significant contribution to global carbon emissions, destroy important habitat and can cause local widespread desertification.
• Current methods of controlling and preventing forest fires include widespread education to minimise the unintentional starting of fires by the public, as well as controlled small-scale burning of vegetation and clearing overstocked trees.
• Despite this, forest fires continue to be a significant challenge. They contribute to the climate crisis and pose a significant risk to wildlife and human life and health.

Useful resources

• This global map, available on NASA’s Earth Observatory website, shows the location of active fires around the world on a monthly basis.
• Forest Fires – Sparking Firesmart Policies in the EU: This EU commissioned report is aimed at scientists, land-managers and policy-makers and offers a wide portfolio of solutions to prevent and combat forest fires.
• Watch incredible footage of forest fires and learn more about their impacts in this excellent episode of David Attenborough’s ‘Our Planet’.

Climate Challenges: 1. Insect Decline

In the lead up to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November of this year, we are writing a series of articles looking at some of the toughest global climate crisis challenges that we are currently facing. This post looks at the evidence for and challenges posed by a global decline in insects.

What is the evidence for a global insect armageddon?

One of the first meta-analyses of insect population decline was published in 2014 by Dirzo et al. in Science under the title ‘Defaunation in the Anthropocene’. This seminal paper reported that 67% of monitored invertebrate populations showed 45% mean abundance decline and warned that ‘such animal declines will cascade onto ecosystem functioning and human well-being’. Three years later, Hallmann et al. (2017) published the results from 27 years of malaise trap monitoring in 63 natural protection areas in Germany, and concluded that insect biomass had declined by more than 75% during this time. This paper in particular was widely reported in the media, creating widespread concern among the public of an impending insect armageddon, or ‘insectageddon’.

Since then, several other reports have continued to draw attention to declines in insect abundance, biomass and diversity around the world (for excellent reviews see Wagner (2020) and Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys (2019)). However, many of these studies have been restricted to well-populated areas of the US and Europe and there is little information available to assess how these patterns compare with other less well studied regions.

Despite the abundance of data suggesting a pattern of global insect decline, many studies show conflicting results, with datasets from a similar area often reporting different patterns. There is also evidence that some insects are faring well, particularly in temperate areas which are now experiencing milder winters. Species that benefit from an association with humans, such as the European honeybee, may also be experiencing an advantage, along with certain freshwater insects that have benefited from efforts to reduce pollution in inland water bodies.

What are the challenges in assessing and predicting insect population trends?

In comparison to vertebrate groups, comprehensive long-term datasets are rare for invertebrates. This is primarily down to the fact that invertebrates are incredibly species rich and so, even for those that have been formally identified and described, a considerable amount of skill and knowledge is required for reliable identification. In addition to this high level of expertise is the need for large amounts of field equipment, which means that long-term, comprehensive studies can be expensive and difficult to fund.

Both historical and current invertebrate monitoring data tends to come from a small number of wealthy and well-populated countries (usually the US and western Europe), and there are comparatively few datasets available from tropical and less developed areas. Unfortunately, these understudied countries and regions tend to be the areas where we might expect to find the most diverse and species rich populations of invertebrates.

Other challenges relate to the way that data is collected. Using total insect biomass as a measure provides a useful large-scale perspective and provides information relevant to ecosystem function. It also minimises the problems involved with taxonomy and identification. However, using this measure means that species-level trends are completely overlooked.

What are the main stressors affecting insect populations globally?

Studies suggest that the main stressors impacting invertebrates are changes in land-use (particularly deforestation), climate change, agriculture, introduced and invasive species, and increased nitrification and pollution. However, it is rare that a single factor is found to be responsible for monitored declines and the situation has been described as being akin to ‘death by a thousand cuts’.

In a recent special edition of PNAS, that looked in depth at the available research and literature on insect decline in the Anthropocene, climate change, habitat loss/degradation and agriculture emerged as the three most important stressors.

Where do we go from here?

Traditionally, conservation has focused on rare and endangered species. However, with mass extinctions and large scale invertebrate loss, which include declines in formerly abundant species, a different approach is required. Invertebrates form an important link between primary producers and the rest of the food chain, and play a key role in most ecosystems. They provide numerous ecosystem services such as pollination, weed and pest control, decomposition, soil formation and water purification, and so their fate is of both environmental and economic importance.

There are several things to be positive about within the realms of invertebrate conservation: over the past decade, funding to support insect conservation has been growing and, in many countries, there are now substantial grants allocated to monitoring and mitigation projects. The EU and US have seen widescale banning of certain pesticides following research demonstrating their impacts on both economically important pollinators and other fauna. Finally, citizen science projects to study invertebrate populations are becoming both numerous and successful, greatly increasing the amount of comprehensive, long-term data that is available to inform conservation decisions.

Despite this, much more long-term data on invertebrate populations is required, particularly from regions outside of Europe and the US, such as tropical areas of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Attention to factors such as the standardisation of survey techniques and improved data storage and accessibility are also important, as well as the utilisation of new methods including automated sampling/counting equipment and molecular techniques. Using the information available, evidence-based plans for mitigating and reversing declines are desperately required.

All of this takes time however, and we need to act now. Even without comprehensive species-level data, we know that a biodiversity crisis is occurring at a rate serious enough for it to have been termed the ‘6th Mass Extinction’. Individual, group, nationwide and global action will all be required to combat this. Widescale change in societal attitudes to insects will undoubtedly need to play a role in this process, alongside global efforts to slow climate change and develop insect-friendly methods of agriculture.

Large-scale intensive agriculture which relies heavily on the application of pesticides and fertilisers is a huge concern for insect populations. Image by Rab Lawrence via Flickr.

Summary

• Numerous studies have reported large-scale declines in insect populations, with several estimating a loss of approximately 1–2% of species each year.
• The availability of high-quality and long-term datasets is a limiting factor in assessing population trends. Furthermore, available data tends to be from well-populated and historically wealthy areas such as the US and western Europe, with the diverse and species-rich tropics severely under-researched.
• The main stressors thought to be impacting insect populations globally are climate change, habitat loss/degradation and agriculture. In most, if not all of these cases, a combination of these and other factors are likely to play a role.
• Although there are some aspects of insect conservation to be positive about, much work still needs to be done. Further monitoring and recording are required, particularly in poorly studies areas, in order to inform conservation decisions. Simultaneously, local and global efforts must be made to slow climate change, halt the destruction of ecologically important habitats and develop nature-compatible methods of agriculture.

References and further reading

• Jarvis, B. (2018) The Insect Apocalypse is Here. The New York Times
• Dirzo, R. et al. (2014) Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science 345: 401–406
• Hallmann, C. A. et al. (2017) More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. PLoS One 12: e0185809
• Wagner, D. L. (2020) Insect declines in the Anthropocene. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 65: 457–480
• Sánchez-Bayo, F. & Wyckhuys, K. A. G. (2019) Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers. Biol. Conserv. 232: 8–27
• Wagner, D. L. et al. (2021) Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 118(2): e2023989118

Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse

Eye-opening, inspiring and riveting, Silent Earth is part love letter to the insect world, part elegy, part rousing manifesto for a greener planet. It is a call to arms for profound change at every level – in government policy, agriculture, industry and in our own homes and gardens, to prevent insect decline. Read our extended review.

The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World

In a compelling global investigation, Milman speaks to those studying this catastrophe and asks why these extraordinary creatures are disappearing. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insects, The Insect Crisis highlights why we need to wake up to this impending environmental disaster.

Climate Change and British Wildlife

In this latest volume in the British Wildlife Collection, Trevor Beebee examines the story so far for our species and their ecosystems, and considers how they may respond in the future. Check out our interview with Beebee, where we discuss the background of this book, his thoughts on conservation and his hopes for the future.

Rebugging the Planet: The Remarkable Things that Insects (and Other Invertebrates) Do – Any Why We Need to Love Them More

Environmental campaigner Vicki Hird demonstrates how insects and other invertebrates, such as worms and spiders, are the cornerstone of our ecosystems and argues passionately that we must turn the tide on this dramatic bug decline.

The Last Butterflies: A Scientist’s Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature

Weaving a vivid and personal narrative, Haddad illustrates the race against time to reverse the decline of six butterfly species. A moving account of extinction, recovery, and hope, The Last Butterflies demonstrates the great value of these beautiful insects to science, conservation, and people.

Why Every Fly Counts: Values and Endangerment of Insects

Hans-Dietrich Reckhaus discusses the beneficial and harmful effects of insects and explains their development and significance for biodiversity. This second, fully reviewed and enlarged edition provides new insights into the value of species seen as pests, insect development and their decline in different regions in the world.

Thermal Imaging For Ecologists

In the new Summer 2021 issue of Conservation Land Management magazine (CLM) Dan Brown, ecologist and founder of Wild Discovery, provides an overview of thermal imaging technology and how it can be applied in wildlife surveys. Here you can read a summary of the article.

Thermal imaging was originally developed for military purposes but has since been deployed in a variety of fields, including increasingly so in conservation and ecology. It works by using medium- and long-wave infrared radiation to create a heat image called a thermogram – the varying temperatures can be displayed either as different colours, shades or as a monochromatic image. In light of its growing popularity in ecology, this article discusses how this technology can be used in wildlife surveys and what needs to be considered when doing so.

Field applications

One important benefit of using thermal imaging is that species that are usually difficult to survey, particularly cryptic or nocturnal species, can be readily detected. Ptarmigan, for example, can be tricky to spot in scree and boulder fields, and so the use of thermal imaging can be an efficient way to monitor an elusive species such as this with greater accuracy. Also, as this is a non-invasive surveying technique, the behaviour of wildlife can be observed with little disturbance.

Thermal-imaging technology has already been trialled in surveys of a number of different species. In the Forest of Dean, for example, the Forestry Commission uses thermal imaging to monitor wild boar, and the Mid Wales Squirrel Partnership uses it to monitor active red squirrel dreys. This technology can also complement acoustic monitoring for bat surveys – the species of bat can be determined using a bat detector, while thermal imaging can help to identify potential roost sites and enables the surveyor to count the number of individuals present.

Another advantage of thermal-imaging technology is that it works both during the day and at night. Studies of woodcock and nightjar have put this to good use – researchers have been able to locate day-roosting birds and also monitor their nocturnal activity, such as foraging behaviours and flight patterns, with minimal disturbance to the birds.

Night time image of a woodcock (5x magnification) by Simone Webber

Potential for other uses in the field

But what else can thermal imaging be used for in species monitoring? Elsewhere in the world, thermal-imaging systems have been fitted to farm machinery to help detect ground-nesting bird species, a method that could be applied in the UK to monitor curlew, lapwing and stone-curlew. Similarly, attaching thermal-imaging equipment to drones could provide an opportunity to survey inaccessible species and areas.

And it doesn’t have to be just warm-blooded animals either. There is huge variation in heat signatures across the landscape, even between different tree species, and so using thermal imaging could aid searches for potential locations for roosting owls, for example, or help to identify possible basking spots for invertebrates and reptiles. There is also potential for this technology to be used to search for insects that display a distinct heat signature in low ambient temperatures, such as queen wasps and bumblebees or larger moths.

Night time image of standing deer (5x magnification) by Simone Webber

Considerations and limitations

When planning and designing surveys and fieldwork, there are a number of factors that need to be considered when using thermal imaging. For instance, its effectiveness can differ depending on the season or weather – the heat signatures of birds and mammals can be masked on sunny days, whereas these signatures are more detectable during overcast days when the ambient temperature is lower. In order to use this equipment effectively, adequate practice and training is required and although there are some training courses available, there is not a huge amount of published guidance on using thermal imaging for wildlife surveys. And even before choosing a thermal imaging scope, it is important to consider its intended use, its detection distance (as this varies between different models), and cost.

In the full article Dan Brown describes how thermal technology works, provides more detail on how thermal imaging can be applied to wildlife surveys and the benefits of doing so, and describes the resources and training that are currently available for ecologists using thermal imaging. Other articles that featured in the Summer 2021 issue include:

River restoration in the Avon catchment of the Cairngorms National Park
The Pirbright Red Deer Project – Surrey’s last ‘wilderness’?
Bats in churches: a complex conservation challenge
Insecticide-free agriculture – a sustainable approach for nature and farming

In this and every issue you can expect to see Briefing, keeping you up to date on the latest training courses, events and publications, and On the ground which provides helpful tips or updates on products relevant to land management.

CLM is published four times a year in March, June, September and December, and is available by subscription only, delivered straight to your door. Subscriptions start from £22 per year. Previous back issues are also available to purchase individually (subject to availability).

If you are involved in a conservation project and think your experiences could be useful to other practitioners, we would love to hear from you. If you are interested in writing for CLM feel free to contact us – we will be happy to discuss your ideas with you.

Beaver Trust: Q&A with Eva Bishop

Eva Bishop, Communications Director for Beaver Trust, recently took the time to talk to us about the important work the charity is doing to help communities welcome beavers back to Britain.

In this thought-provoking conversation, we discuss some of Beaver Trust’s upcoming projects, how the Covid pandemic has affected them as a charity, and share different ways to get involved in beaver conservation within Britain.

1. Firstly, can you tell our readers a bit about the Beaver Trust and its main aims?

Our overall mission is to restore Britain’s rivers and wildlife with beavers. We were not in fact established as a single species charity, but as a small crew wanting to build climate resilience for people and wildlife – yet we see the potential for rapid and restorative action that beavers offer. If you take a look at a map of British waterways it depicts an expansive system of veins carrying the lifeblood of the country. Then imagine huge swathes of that being given greater space for nature, becoming living wetlands and water storage systems rather than drained, polluted, straightened ditches. Beavers are our ally here so we are working collaboratively with a range of organisations and of course landowners to support their return.

Beaver Trust’s core work involves convening real conversations in order to make good decisions on national beaver policy and a supporting management framework, finding engaging ways to achieve outreach and education on learning to co-exist with beavers again, and of course supporting many beaver projects on the ground. Our national aim must be to move beyond enclosed projects wherever possible so that beavers can once again become part of native wildlife fauna and work across whole catchments to reinstate biodiversity and healthy ecosystem function.

2. There is a lot of contention between some landowners and conservationists around the subject of beavers, particularly when it comes to reintroductions. Do you find that misinformation and prejudice are significant challenges in the case of this species?

Where misinformation and prejudice exist it’s always unhelpful. However, I think the existence of conflict can be overplayed with beavers and our experience has been one largely of cooperation and collaboration.

Beavers and their impacts aren’t always beneficial to the surrounding land use, we’re very clear about that. Where contention does arise it can often be overcome through better information and knowledge. Well practiced management techniques are being successfully used across Britain, with the right experience and resources there is no reason for these not to become second nature like tree protection against deer for example. Beavers are reestablishing already, but we have an opportunity to target areas for new wild releases that are less likely to cause conflict and instead achieve greater benefits for society and wildlife. That’s something we are collectively all working towards, to minimise conflict.

There is always room for misinformation – hence our core strand of work around communications and education – and there is still work to be done engaging a broad audience in key conversations around beavers (such as farming, angling, flood-banks and the appropriate use of lethal control), ensuring broad diversity in all conversations and that everyone is heard. There is a lot of good research available on the impacts and effects of beaver reintroduction across Europe, not to mention the research within Britain as well. Management is also well-established and now requires government resources to expand nationally alongside training and communications, so that we can offer a swift response to any anticipated, perceived or felt issue.

Prejudice is harder to tackle, as is human nature’s aversion to change, but we always aim to put forward a transparent view of beaver impacts including challenges and invite inclusive debate across our work. But as I said, Beaver Trust’s experience in England to date has been a pretty positive one with the landowning and farming community.

North American beaver on lodge by Ben Goldfarb

3. A core component of your work moving forward is set to focus on river buffer zones – allowing nature to recover and regenerate around river banks. Can you tell us more about this?

Yes, and it links directly to the previous question. If we want beavers to achieve all the good flood and drought mitigation, water filtering and biodiverse habitat restoration we anticipate, they will need space to operate. Their dams and canals can revert streams and smaller rivers into meandering wetlands, however, depending on the location this could quickly cause issues. In a sense, we need to make our rivers fit for beavers (and all other life that should exist there), without placing further burden on farmers trying to do the right thing and produce affordable food.

The key is space for nature. Stepping back from the margins and allowing the naturally high biodiversity that should exist there to thrive. Beaver Trust is therefore working in partnership with leading environmental NGOs on a programme for riparian buffer zones along whole catchments. We need a greater vision than a small strip of river bank, and are aiming for 10-20m+ zones, but it could even mean whole floodplains are set aside for natural processes.

Farmers will then be paid for nature’s recovery and we’d like to see farm clusters able to apply, allowing greater scope for whole catchment restoration and connected nature corridors. For the programme to succeed and feed into ELMs we need a simple payment mechanism and not just another layer to add to the farmer’s list of environmental expectations. We need a broad partnership, including Defra, to think systemically so that it becomes easier for land managers to make good environmental decisions without hidden costs to their operations.

If we allow rivers the space to find their natural course and re-establish meanders, scrub and woodland to naturally regenerate, beavers to bring back freshwater habitat and increase species abundance, then we will start to see real resilience along our river network ready to help us as climate pressures hit harder and stronger.

We hope to see a bold and ambitious government strategy for beavers, but given their catchment-scale impacts we should be thinking systemically with related policies. The great thing about river buffers is that it could take relatively little land out of production – but these edges are where all the great biodiversity happens. So it’s a win-win for conservation and farming if we make it easier and practical to sign up.

4. Are there any other big projects that the Trust is going to be working on in the near future?

Our main policy campaign this year will be river buffers, working in partnership with the National Trust, Rivers Trust and Woodland Trust. As part of this we are working on a follow-up documentary film to the award-winning ‘Beavers Without Borders’ (2020) that explores the challenges and opportunities for river buffers, interviewing experts on a variety of areas including farming, angling, public access and biodiversity. But we will also continue our core policy ambition convening broad stakeholder working groups on the English Beaver Strategy, which the government is set to consult on this summer.

In the restoration department we are supporting a groundbreaking community-led beaver project where a group of local landowners and residents are looking to reintroduce beavers as a flood mitigation strategy along the whole catchment.

Beaver Trust has also recently been awarded the call off contract for the beaver management framework in Scotland by NatureScot, so we’ll be gearing up for a busy season at the end of the year. Working alongside landowners experiencing conflicts particularly in prime agricultural areas and looking towards long-term mitigation strategies. This can range from ecological advice, tree protection, dam and burrowing mitigation, to translocation as a last resort. In collaboration with the animal care and veterinary team at Five Sisters Zoo, beavers are health screened and rehomed to licenced projects elsewhere in the country.

Our communications and outreach team is working hard across a number of projects, including The Lodge Cast podcast series, radio and other media. We also have several education initiatives under way but one particularly exciting partnership is for a new beaver enclosure and educational learning hub at a major tourist attraction in the South West. The key driver of this project is improving nature connection with children from socially and economically deprived backgrounds, and people with reduced mobility and sensory and cognitive disabilities. We have not yet secured funding for this project so cannot say further than that at present but it exemplifies Beaver Trust’s ambition to educate and connect people beyond wildlife enthusiasts with the joys that beaver wetlands offer.

5. The Covid pandemic has had a huge impact on individuals and organisations. How has the Beaver Trust been affected over the past year, and how have you dealt with these unforeseen challenges?

It’s been a genuinely interesting and challenging time to be part of a new charity: Lockdown arrived while Beaver Trust was really getting its roots down, there was no furlough option for us at the time as we were so new, plus we were a very small team and some of us had the challenge of home education to navigate (torturous for both teacher and pupil)!

But it has made us a really strong and resilient team, given our remote locations. I think one of the great strengths of Beaver Trust people is their wholehearted approach to work: Real conversations, emotional wellbeing and individual authenticity is encouraged and, for us, it works well. It also helped immensely to have a powerful passion for nature restoration and climate action shared within the team, enough to keep everyone motivated, and to have such incredible support for beavers from the public. They are already a much-loved animal and as such we’ve received reams of very humbling offers of voluntary support from all sorts of highly experienced individuals. We are grateful for every single one.

6. Thank you so much for your time in chatting to us. One final question: for anyone interested in getting involved in beaver conservation within Britain, how would you suggest that they go about this?

It’s a great question and I’d start by saying it’s time to break the system: forget career silos, land and wildlife needs ALL of us – it is everyone’s countryside, rivers are everyone’s source of freshwater and wildlife should be part of everyone’s mental health and wellbeing whether through paid employment, voluntary time or new cultural norms. To use a small example, how do we make litter picking fun? Anyone can care for their local patch and help conserve it. I recently saw a wine bottle used in the construction of a beaver dam, something we can avoid by everyone taking part.

But I also think the conservation sector can be quite intimidating and packed with such expertise it’s hard to infiltrate, so I’d encourage people to follow their interest and speak up, even if you’re not sure you tick every box. Within beaver restoration, specific roles will emerge within charities and across communities as wild populations expand, specific training programmes will be available (for example beaver management through CIEEM), keep an eye out for new job opportunities with Beaver Trust, Wildlife Trusts, Woodland Trusts and others.

Another idea would be to join in with some citizen science on collecting information on beavers and river impacts. This doesn’t need to be specific to Beaver Trust either – there’s the Freshwater Habitats Trust, or the Mammal Society which has a mammal tracker app, all of which could help support wider conservation work.

If you’re already in employment, why not talk to your company about funding nature’s restoration and helping scale the impact of nature restoration charities. One of the biggest challenges to conservation is the funding and resources to expand operations.

On a purely fun level, Beaver Trust also hosts regular outreach activities like May’s poetry competition, last year’s photography competition, the monthly podcast, online quizzes and various other celebrations, so please get in touch and join in. Write us a blog and we might be able to publish it on our website. The more these communications are shared, the more people will understand what a beaver is and be accepting of its arrival. Conserving nature as a whole will benefit all the species that rely on it, including humans.

You can find out more about the Beaver Trust from their website and by following them on Facebook and Twitter.

To learn more about the Beaver Trust’s conservation projects, you can read the Introducing: Beaver Trust article included in the Spring 2021 issue of Conservation Land Management magazine. In this article, Eva Bishop discuss how the Beaver Trust came to be, what it is trying to achieve, and the exciting projects it has been involved in.