Conservation – Page 24 – Hoopoe

Conservation Land Management magazine

Conservation Land Management (CLM), a quarterly magazine published by NHBS since 2016, is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation in Britain. Here, CLM’s Assistant Editor Catherine Mitson introduces the magazine and describes how CLM came to be.

The magazine that went on to become CLM first went to print in the spring of 1993. At this time it was named enact, and was published by English Nature (the forerunner of Natural England). Enact aimed to promote land management for nature conservation and provide easy-to-understand advice on useful techniques; the magazine featured a wide variety of topical articles written by those working in the field, as is still the case today.

English Nature went on to publish enact for a further ten years, but in 1995 production of the magazine was handed to British Wildlife Publishing (BWP). BWP was established in 1989 by Andrew and Anne Branson, and by 1995 had gained a reputation as a well-respected small publishing house specialising in natural history, already well known for publishing British Wildlife magazine (also now published by NHBS).

The cover of CLM 15.3 (Autumn 2017), before its redesign in 2018.

Fast forward to the spring of 2003 and enact was relaunched as Conservation Land Management and received a complete makeover. The themes and topics covered remained the same, but new features such as Briefing (listings of relevant events and publications) and On the ground (updates and advice on the latest products) made their first appearances. Conservation has changed greatly over the past 28 years, and CLM today covers a wider variety of practical conservation issues than did enact. It continues to be an invaluable source of information about good conservation land management practice.

NHBS acquired CLM in 2016, and it was decided in 2018 that the time was ripe for the magazine to be updated once more. CLM was given a complete redesign and volume 16.1, published in spring 2018, was the first to display the new look. But despite the change of appearance, the core aim of CLM is still the same: to continue to serve those people on the ground working to conserve nature in the British countryside.

The articles in CLM focus on a wide range of topics, using up-to-date case studies to support practical solutions. Some places and themes covered by CLM in recent issues have included: considerations for lichens and bryophytes in the management of riparian woodlands; moorland grazing in the heart of Galloway; the options for wildflower seed harvesting; evidence-based decision making in conservation and land management; the development of the ‘amphibian ladder’; raising the standards of veteran tree management in Europe; wilding hedgerows in modern landscapes; conservation of native black poplar using seeds; and many more!

Even just this small selection of previous articles demonstrates the core purpose of CLM, to provide our readers with practical advice. CLM’s readership is diverse – encompassing staff working for statutory agencies and government departments, local authorities, charities, universities and research institutes, as well as ecological consultants, university and other higher education students and lecturers, volunteers, farmers and other private landowners, and individuals with an interest in how best to care for Britain’s wildlife and habitats.

Our upcoming Spring 2021 issue marks the beginning of volume 19 and the selection of articles cover a wide variety of topics and techniques. Here is a sneak peek of what is included:

The new Environmental Land Management scheme: what do we know so far?
Introducing… Beaver Trust
Using location-based evidence to prioritise catchment-wide land management
St George’s flower bank Local Nature Reserve: thirty years of road verge management by a local community
Wet farming in the Great Fen

In every issue you can expect to see Briefing and On the ground, but other features that regularly appear include Viewpoint, a similar length to our main articles, but here authors can voice their own views on various conservation issues; Introducing, a feature focused on organisations involved in conservation, and here they can discuss their aim and describe specific conservation projects they are involved in; and Review, which can include letters from readers or updates from our authors.

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.

Wilding for Conservation: new series in British Wildlife

In a short space of time rewilding has grown to become a powerful force in conservation. The idea of giving nature the freedom and space to forge its own path is not just inspiring, but also raises deeper questions about our relationship with the natural world and how we best serve wildlife and ecosystems through a period of enormous challenge for conservation. To explore these and other aspects relating to rewilding, British Wildlife is launching a new series: Wilding for Conservation. The series started with two articles in the February issue, along with an editorial in which Series Editor Rob Fuller and BW Editor Guy Freeman explain how they hope to contribute to the discussion on rewilding and its role in conservation in Britain. An abridged and edited version of the editorial is included below.

Letting nature take back control

Deceptively simple in essence, rewilding resonates with something latent in many of us – a longing for a wilder world. It has captured the imaginations not only of conservationists, but also of landowners, policy-makers and, especially heartening, many young people too. Enthusiasm abounds for the idea that natural processes can be harnessed as solutions to some of our biggest environmental challenges, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Rewilding has rapidly become a central element in this ‘new’ thinking, with many believing that it offers a fresh start for what they see as an ineffective conservation movement presiding over catastrophic declines in nature. But what exactly is rewilding, and what is it not?

Rewilding emerged in the 1990s as a predominantly North American movement, but became strongly embedded in British conservation consciousness somewhat later, partly aided by the publicity surrounding several pioneering projects, such as Oostvaardersplassen, Ennerdale and Knepp. The publication of Feral by George Monbiot in 2013 undoubtedly also helped to fuel interest. In a remarkably short period of time, rewilding has spawned several conferences, bewildering numbers of papers and articles, several influential books and new organisations, notably Rewilding Europe and Rewilding Britain, founded in 2011 and 2015, respectively.

Interpretations of exactly what rewilding means have proliferated and often ranged far from the original concept. Most advocates, however, would seem to argue that it embraces natural processes without defined outcomes, and ideally operates over large tracts of land. In Britain at least, the enthusiasm for rewilding has met with some scepticism, even among conservationists, which may reflect disquiet about the absence of targets, a perceived threat to what has been achieved in the past, or simply confusion over what all the noise is about. One can legitimately ask whether the ideas are actually new or novel. Approaches guided by natural processes were being promoted long before rewilding became mainstream, while the merits of non-intervention versus habitat management have been discussed for decades in British conservation circles. What distinguishes the rewilding ideas that emerged in North America, however, is their focus on wild land on a grand scale, allowing the unhindered movement of animals, including large predators and their prey.

Discussions of rewilding in more heavily modified European landscapes quickly become entwined with questions of what can be classed as ‘natural’, the extent to which we should attempt to re-create historic environments, and the desirability and ethics of using species introductions to try to replicate processes that existed in the past as opposed to allowing ecosystems to develop a new kind of naturalness. Working to create wilder places for both people and nature is an admirable direction for conservation in Britain, but, given the constraints and small scale of many initiatives, ‘wilding’ perhaps captures their essence better than rewilding could.

Existing conservation approaches have not been able to prevent widespread declines in biodiversity over recent decades, although without them things could have been far worse. Some argue that rewilding (or wilding) is a way to set nature on a better course in our islands, but how can we be sure of this? There are severe limitations on land availability for conservation, especially in the lowlands, and the benefits from rewilding may not become apparent for many years. Are we approaching a point at which we need to rethink what kind of nature and wildlife we want?

British Wildlife has effectively been contributing to the ‘wilding debate’ through articles going back to a time when the ‘R word’ was unheard of on this side of the Atlantic. Notable early contributions include two from 1995, one vigorously challenging priorities in British conservation and arguing that greater attention be paid to more natural vegetation, and a second far-sighted article which echoes this from a different perspective and reads like a blueprint for much contemporary wilding. A special issue in 2009 was something of a milestone, containing a set of articles on naturalistic grazing and rewilding, stimulated by Frans Vera’s ideas about how large herbivores shaped pre-Neolithic landscapes. Topics tackled more recently include the nature of past landscapes, the definition of naturalness itself, reintroductions, natural regeneration of woodland and wilding in farmland landscapes.

Over the coming months, British Wildlife will be exploring the many facets of rewilding as they relate to conservation in Britain through a new series, ‘Wilding for Conservation’, a title which, we hope, captures the wide range of approaches to letting nature take back control. We start things off in the February issue with two pieces, one expounding a pure approach to rewilding , the other looking at relationships between traditional conservation management and rewilding . The series will examine some of the questions about rewilding raised in this editorial and bring ideas contained within the expanding scientific and cultural literature to a wider audience, while providing examples of what is happening on the ground in the UK and elsewhere. We hope that readers find the series to be thought-provoking and inspiring.

Articles in the Wilding for Conservation series will appear intermittently through 2021 and beyond. Individual copies of the February issue of British Wildlife are available to buy through the NHBS website, while annual subscriptions start from just £35 – sign up online here.

Author Interview: Clive Chatters, Heathland

Heathlands are so much more than simply purple carpets of heather. They are ancient landscapes found throughout Britain that support a complex network of inter-related species and an immense diversity of habitats. They also possess a unique human history defined by the struggle between pastoralism and the competing demands of those who seek exclusive use of the land.

Clive Chatters, signing bookplates for Heathland — Photo by Catherine Chatters

In this latest addition to the British Wildlife Collection, Clive Chatters introduces us to Britain’s heathlands and has kindly taken some time to answer some questions concerning this important habitat.

Heathland might mean different things to different people; how did you go about defining ‘heathland’?

Heathlands defy ready definition. The diverse places that we call heaths are cultural landscapes which are overlain with the language of ecology. It is unnecessary to reconcile these different perspectives as both traditions offer a path to understanding what makes our heathlands special.

Heathlands are one of a handful of British landscapes that have been recognised by English- speaking people for as long as we have had a written history. Sadly, many of the places that early ecologists were describing had already been depleted of much of their diversity and wonder.

This book seeks to challenge those narrow definitions and to promote an understanding of heathland that would be familiar to our forebears, as well as respecting the experience of modern people whose livelihoods are bound up with the heath.

Literature and historical accounts have addressed heaths: these landscapes can also be found in literary works, in poems and romanticised histories. When did their ecological value start to be recognised?

There is a remarkable body of literature surviving from medieval England, with many references to heathlands. Narrative poems that pre-date the Norman conquest give us an indication of how heaths were viewed by Anglo-Scandinavian story-tellers.

Heathlands at the end of the Tudor period were places where people could gather on the margins of settled society and by the seventeenth century there are the beginnings of natural histories that go beyond the enumeration of commonable livestock or illusory wild beasts. The antiquarian John Aubrey gives an account of a lichen heath in his Natural History of Wiltshire. Herbalist, Thomas Johnson published two accounts of the flora of Hampstead Heath, which include over 120 flowering plants. By tabulating a sample of these records, and ordering them by habitat association, we can gain an insight into the character of a Southern Heath in the early seventeenth century.

Throughout history there has been people who have valued heaths as a source of their livelihood. It was not until the early twentieth century that ecologists started to describe heaths and then it took many more decades before their importance to nature conservation has been expressed by conservationists. In the meantime, we have lost so much of the diversity and wonder in British heaths. What my book sets out to do is explore those riches and consider what has sustained them, where they persist.

What are your primary hopes and fears for the long-term future of Britain’s Heathland?

It is not inevitable that the catastrophic losses of the recent past are the destiny of our remaining heaths. Whilst there are still significant challenges to overcome, we know enough about these habitats to secure their place in the countryside of the future, as an integral part of British culture and home to a wealth of species that occupy ecosystems of immense richness.

If we are to rejuvenate heathland as a commonplace element in the British countryside, then we need to be comfortable with knowing what successful rehabilitation looks like. The wildlife of our richest heaths is the fortuitous by-product of millennia of pastoral farming. Over the span of human history, it has been pastoralism that has provided continuity for ecological processes pre-dating agriculture and reaching back into evolutionary time.

If we are to have working heathland landscapes, with all the advantages they bring, then the pastoralists will need to be properly funded and rewarded.

A successful heathland needs to have scale. Heathlands are landscapes that can be remarkably robust in delivering the multiple objectives that we ask of them, but they must be measured in multiples of square kilometres rather than in tens of hectares. We need not be shy about seeking to create a new generation of heaths that are large enough to serve the needs of nature alongside the ambitions of the modern age.

Heathlands are so much more than ‘just’ heathers: could you summarise their importance for a diverse range of fauna and flora?

Heathlands are a great deal more than just carpets of heathers. A heathland landscape can embrace habitats as diverse as rocks and lakes and bogs, even temporary stands of arable and wartime concrete. The component habitats of a large functioning heathland are naturally dynamic, with species dependant on all sorts of habitat formations, from bare ground to the decaying of cowpats. The great antiquity of heathland ecosystems is reflected in the network of interdependent species, many of which are associated with large herbivores, fire and occasional gross disturbance of the soil. Whilst charismatic birds and reptiles have traditionally claimed the limelight, the biological wealth of the heath is better expressed through its invertebrates, lichen and wildflowers.

Until recently, the State implemented conservation initiatives; this is no longer the case and the withdrawal of central government from practical conservation management has placed greater demands on the work of local government. Has this had a significant impact for heathland?

Heathlands are not capable of sustaining ever-intensifying levels of recreational use, no matter how benignly intended. There are numerous examples of habitats that have been degraded and species that have been lost through the complex interactions of wildlife and informal recreation. Our affection for heathlands is no safeguard against them being loved to death.

Dogs, for example, are ecological proxies to natural predators but are present at much higher densities than would occur in the wild. And large heathland ponds are frequently developed for recreation with dire consequence for wildlife.

It is reasonable for people to expect a choice as to where they can go in the countryside; regrettably, in some heathland regions, the heaths are not used for recreation as a matter of choice but because they are the only greenspaces that are available.

This is your second book in the excellent British Wildlife Collection series; the other being Saltmarsh. After all the work researching and writing that and now Heathland what is next for you? Are there plans for further books, or maybe a well-earned rest?

There are germs of ideas for future writing which I hope will take shape in the next few years. Books are daunting ventures; ‘Heathland’ summarises forty years of study and took three years to write, maybe next time I’ll look at something a little simpler.

Heathland
By: Clive Chatters
Hardback | March 2021 | £27.99 ~~£34.99~~

In this latest addition to the British Wildlife Collection, Clive Chatters introduces us to Britain’s heathlands and their anatomy.

Most of our heaths are pale shadows of their former selves. However, Chatters argues, it is not inevitable that the catastrophic losses of the recent past are the destiny of our remaining heaths. Should we wish, their place in the countryside as an integral part of British culture can be secured.

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

Author Interview with Jeff Ollerton: Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society

Professor Jeff Ollerton is a researcher, educator, consultant and author, specialising in mutualistic ecological relationships – in particular, those between plants and their pollinators. Now one of the world’s leading experts on pollinators and pollination, he has conducted field research in the UK, Australia, Africa, and Tenerife, and published a huge body of ground-breaking research which is highly-cited and used at both national and international levels to inform conservation efforts. Jeff currently holds Visiting Professor positions at the University of Northampton in the UK and Kunming Institute of Botany in China.

His recent book, Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society, provides a hugely informative yet accessible look at the ecology and evolution of pollinators around the globe, and discusses their conservation in a world that seems to be stacked against them.

In this article we chat with Jeff about his background, the book and the future of pollinators in an increasingly changing climate.

Firstly, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to write Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society?

Where to begin? Like lots of ecologists my interest started with natural history as a kid: poking around in rock pools, looking under stones, keeping tadpoles in jars, collecting fossils, the usual stuff that most people grow out of. I was born in Sunderland, close to the shipyards and coal mines that provided employment for most of my family. The grasslands and scrubby areas that developed on bombsites and after slum clearance were where I ranged free: my wildlife playground was the result of industrial development and decline. I also learned a lot from my dad who was a keen gardener, and plants have always been a passion. At school I didn’t do well – “easily distracted” said my reports – and only passed one A level (Biology). That was enough to get me into an HND in Applied Biology at Sunderland Polytechnic, then onto the second year of a BSc Environmental Biology degree at Oxford Polytechnic. My dissertation supervisor was Andrew Lack and he convinced me that I should apply for a PhD with him, looking at the pollination ecology, flowering phenology, and reproductive output of grassland plants in colonising and established grasslands. That was completed in 1993 (by which time the institution was Oxford Brookes University) and I went off to do some travelling and field work in Australia, funded by some small grants. When I got back I applied for numerous postdoctoral positions but the first job I was offered was a lectureship at Nene College of Higher Education in Northampton. At the time it was predominantly a teaching institution but they were keen to develop their ecological research. I originally planned to be there for a couple of years and ended up staying for 25! By that time it had transitioned into the University of Northampton. Throughout all of this the main focus of my research has been the ecology, evolution and conservation of plant-pollinator interactions, with field work in the UK, Africa, South America, and Asia. That’s a huge field of study, ranging in scope from molecular ecology to animal behaviour to agriculture and government environmental policy. A few years ago it struck me that there was a need to bring together these different strands into a single, coherent book that presented a state of the art account of why all of this was important, how the different topics fitted together, what we had learned so far after a couple of hundred years of research, and where the gaps and scientific disagreements lay. The result was Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society.

While it’s evident that habitat destruction and fragmentation have a huge role to play in the decline of pollinator species, you also state that rising temperatures may be a more significant factor, particularly for species such as bumblebees. Given the continual, and some may say unstoppable, rise in global temperatures, are you hopeful in any way for the future of pollinators?

Well, first of all, I certainly don’t think that climate change is unstoppable. We know what needs to be done and we know how to do it, though it’s not easy of course. But, yes, we are already seeing the effects of climate change on pollinators, particularly in relation to range shifts as insects move northwards in the northern hemisphere. Bumblebees are a particular concern because on the whole they are adapted to colder temperatures. However most other bees are adapted to warmer, drier conditions, and they may benefit from moderate climate change. The problem is that we simply don’t know enough about the natural histories of most of the 20,000 or so species of bees to say. Our knowledge of most of the hundreds of thousands of other species of pollinators is even less well developed. But I do have some optimism that pollination services to most plant species will be maintained under moderate climate change because we know from experimental work that we’ve carried out that the majority of interactions are relatively generalised and interchangeable: a range of pollinators can pollinate most plants, and vice versa. It’s the more specialised interactions that are likely to be less robust to climate change, especially in places like South Africa where I have been fortunate to work. The key to conserving pollinators, as it is for all biodiversity, is creation, restoration, linking-up, and protection, of natural habitats. As I argue in the book, we have to go far beyond “planting for pollinators” and putting up a few bee hotels if we are serious about conserving pollinators in our rapidly changing world.

While professional scientific research, alongside informed policy change, will obviously be key in directing the future of pollinators around the world, you also mention the importance of amateur naturalists and citizen scientists in collecting data and providing some of the legwork behind sustained long-term studies. What advice would you give to a non-professional individual who wishes to get involved with pollinator conservation? (eg. volunteering, donating to charities/organisations, lobbying for policy change etc.)

Yes, all of what you list there is important, and I would add that individuals can do a lot by thinking carefully about what they plant in their gardens and how they manage them (i.e. not using pesticides) and lobbying local councils about how parks and road verges are managed. They could also get involved in initiatives such as the UK Pollinators Monitoring Scheme. Similar schemes have been set up in other countries. Adding observations to iRecord is also important.

When hearing about the decline of pollinators, many people (fuelled by frequent media stories) will immediately be fearful about the future and security of our food production. Is there a valid reason for concern, and are there any precautionary steps that you believe the agricultural industry should be taking to deal with a potential collapse in pollinators?

First of all, I don’t think that pollinators are going to disappear from agricultural landscapes completely, that’s hugely unlikely. But there are a couple of things that should concern farmers and governments. There’s growing evidence that the yields of some crops, in some places, are limited by availability of pollinators, and that’s likely to get worse if pollinator populations decline. We also know that there are crops which, although they can self-pollinate, produce a higher quality of fruit or seeds if they are outcrossed by pollinators. So there’s a clear financial benefit for farmers to take pollinator declines seriously. Globally, most of the staple crops are either wind pollinated grasses (rice, wheat, etc.) or are propagated by tubers (potatoes, yams) so food security in terms of populations starving is unlikely to be a consequence of pollinator decline. However most of the fruit and vegetables that provide the essential vitamins and minerals in our diets need pollinators either for the consumed crop or, as in the case of onions, for the seeds that produce the crop. So food security in the sense of having a healthy diet is definitely something that we should take seriously. Things that farmers and the agricultural industry should be doing include the obvious such as restoring and creating natural habitat on their farms, not over-managing grasslands and hedgerows, and reducing the amount of biocides that they are using.

I discovered lots of interesting things from your book that I previously didn’t know – such as the fact that there are pollinating lizards! In all of your years of study, what is the most fascinating fact that you have learned about pollinators?

Oh, wow, that’s a tough one! Every research project that I’ve undertaken has turned up new information and observations that have intrigued and excited me, and even blown my mind. That’s one of the reasons why I do what I do, there’s so much still to discover. I estimate that we’ve got some kind of information about the pollinators of only about 10% of the 352,000 species of flowering plants that there are in the world. Even in Britain and Ireland the reproductive ecologies of most of the plants have hardly been studied. So there are always new things to discover. Citing a single fascinating fact is difficult, but if I had to choose one it would be the calculation that I made for a review article in 2017 when I worked out that as many as 1 in 10 insect and vertebrate species may visit flowers as pollinators. That did astound me and I had to double check my maths!

2020 was a year that was largely dominated by the Covid-19 crisis, a fact that you touch on briefly in your book. How has the pandemic affected your working life and, as a researcher who relies on time spent in the field, how have you dealt with the challenges of lockdown and restricted movement?

Ughh, yes, it’s been difficult. I was supposed to take a group of students to Tenerife in April for our annual field course and that had to be cancelled. It’s the first year since 2003 that I’ve not made the trip and it curtailed some long-term data collection that I’ve been undertaking. Perhaps the universe is telling me that it’s time to publish the data….? But on the plus side, once we knew that we’d be in lockdown for some months, I sent out an email to my network of pollination ecologists to suggest that we use the time to collect data on flower-pollinator interactions in our gardens. The response was phenomenal! It’s generated over 20,000 observations from all over the world. We’re writing up a paper describing the data set at the moment and we will make it freely available to PhD and early career researchers who were not able to collect data last year and whose funding and time are limited.

Finally, what are you working on currently, and do you have plans for further books?

So back in October I stepped down from my full-time professorship to work independently as a consultant ecological scientist and author – my new website has just gone live in fact: www.jeffollerton.co.uk. Although I will miss teaching students, I really needed some new challenges and wanted to work more closely at the conservation and advisory end of the field, and start to make more of a difference on the ground. I still have a Visiting Professorship at Northampton where I’m completing some externally funded projects and supervising a couple of PhD researchers. And I’ve recently been appointed Visiting Professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany in China where, vaccines willing, I will be spending part of the summer on a climate change and pollinators project. As for further books, yes, there are another three that I want to complete in the next few years. I’m talking with Pelagic at the moment about the next one and they are interested, but I’d like to keep the topic hush-hush for now – I’m referring to it as “Project B”! But it does deal with pollination, I can tell you that.

Species Recovery Trust: Q&A with Dominic Price

The Species Recovery Trust is devoted to preventing the loss of some of the rarest plant, insect and animal species in the UK, with their primary aim being to remove 50 species from the edge of extinction by 2050. With a team of highly skilled conservationists and passionate volunteers, the Species Recovery Trust has been doing targeted recovery work for the past 10 years, and many species are now showing an increase in their population numbers for the first time in decades.

We spoke to Dominic Price at the Species Recovery Trust about how the trust is working to save some of the most endangered species in the UK, some of their success stories, the challenges they face as a charity with COVID-19 and how you can get involved and support their work.

Could you introduce the Species Recovery Trust to us and summarise your main goals as a charity?

The Species Recovery Trust was founded in 2012 with the goal of saving some of the UK’s most endangered species. We cover a small number of species but base our work on a 30-year workplan, allowing us to plan work decades ahead, and start these species on the long and often slow road to full recovery. Our broader goal has been to develop the most cost effective way of doing this long term work, generating as much of our funds as possible through our own commercial activities (training and consultancy) which would allow us to de-couple from the larger funding streams and sustain the work, however bleak the funding climate may become.

One of your main aims is to remove 50 species from the edge of extinction in the UK by the year 2050. How did you choose which of the 900+ UK species that are currently under threat were the most critical to focus on?

With some difficulty! In essence we started with the IUCN red list and worked our way down from the top. It soon became clear that with certain species, like Atlantic Halibut, we were unlikely to be able to do much from our bases in the English countryside, so we started to focus in on terrestrial species with a limited distribution, and by researching the ecology for those we could see which species were likely to respond well to the sort of onsite habitat restoration work we specialise in. There was obviously a fairly significant political element, in not wanting to tread on any toes of people who were already carrying out established work. So there was much dialogue with other small NGOs and from there discovering the main species that have fallen through the gaps of others work. We currently work on 22 species and have three in development, so still have vacancies for another 25!

There were times when it can be deeply depressing looking at the Red List, with the sheer amount on there, but we knew we would always be a small player and it was just a case of picking a handful and then making sure we did the best possible job to save them, while trying not to feel too despondent about the current mass extinction and the number of species likely to be caught up in that.

What key environmental policy changes do you think would have the biggest impact on preventing species extinctions in the UK?

After 20 years of working in the sector I’m not the biggest fan on policy changes. When I started, the Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) was the big driver. Borne out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit it was an ambitious and hugely exciting bit of work to be involved in. It then started to become clear that the vast majority of targets would be missed, but instead of examining why this happened and putting more resources into it, it was left to quietly die a death, and over the years has been replaced by a whole new raft of policies and goals. I know there’s people doing amazing work in Whitehall to keep lobbying and campaigning for better policies, but I feel for us as a charity the most meaningful work we do tends to be out in the field, with either a quadrat or a pair of loppers. It’s important to keep your eye on the bigger picture, but sometimes the best place to be is very much on the coalface in the exact location where these species are dying out. This has been also been a personal decision for the members of the team, as we all feel we’re at our best doing fieldwork and not stuck behind a computer!

The work of the Species Recovery Trust is obviously ongoing, but what would you consider to be your biggest success story so far?

When we started working on Starved Wood-sedge there were just 32 plants at two sites left in the wild. I had previously been involved with this species through Plantlife’s Back from the Brink programme and knew how perilously close we were to losing this plant from the UK (it went extinct in Ireland in the 1990s and is not faring too well in Europe). After eight years we now have four sites, and over 330 plants – it is still not ‘saved’ but it’s well away from the brink of extinction. Another great moment was when we took on the management of the last known site in Hampshire for Heath Lobelia. We spent three days with work groups clearing scrub off the site, thinking the most likely scenario was to repair the habitat with a view of one day re-introducing plants, and the following summer 660 plants came up where the seedbank had been regenerated. Sadly, following this disturbance the population has dropped back down to 40, reminding us that a species conservationist’s work is rarely done!

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected individuals, communities and organisations in a myriad of unforeseen ways. How have you been challenged this year and how have you coped with these challenges?

One of our strengths as a charity has been that we draw over half our funding from running training courses. It’s the best money as we can spend it on what we want when we want with no deadlines or funding reports, and if you book onto one of our courses your booking fee could be put to use within a week hiring contractors to manage a site, or paying the mileage for a volunteer to monitor a network of sites. We did have a contingency fund in case one year we couldn’t run as many courses, but never predicated a scenario where we had to cancel every single one of them, so this has obviously hit us hard. However, we are extremely lucky in that when we set the charity up we always tried to keep our running costs to virtually zero; we already all work from home and all of us do other jobs alongside our work for the trust, so in 2020 we were able to effectively batten down the hatches and with the additional help of the amazing furlough scheme we have managed to stay afloat. We’ve also had some incredible support from charitable trusts like the Halpin Trust and Hennock Law Trust, which has been a lifeline in these difficult times. But at this time no one is sure if training courses will be able to happen in 2021, and there are now so many charities desperately competing for the remaining funding sources, so uncertain times lie ahead.

Are there different ways that people can get involved with and support the Species Recovery Trust? (e.g. options for those with spare money but little time and vice versa).

We are always looking for species monitors – people who take on a site, preferably close to where they live or go on holiday and can do species counts for us each year, and lots of people gain a huge amount of satisfaction of being the person to keep these sites going. If you purchase a copy of the Field Guide to Grasses, Sedges and Rushes (and the hopefully forthcoming Field Guide to Bryophytes) 100% of the profit goes directly to our work. Alternatively, if you’re feeling generous you can sign up as a paid supporter (there’s a free option too) and you’ll get updates of all our work, as well as knowing your money is going straight to saving some of our rarest plants and animals.

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

Buglife Q&A with Paul Hetherington

Buglife is the only organisation in Europe devoted to the conservation of all invertebrates. Invertebrates are currently facing an extinction crisis.
Today, thousands of invertebrate species are declining and many are heading towards extinction. Worldwide 150,000 species could be gone by 2050 if we do nothing. We spoke to Paul Hetherington at Buglife about the work they are doing to stop the extinction of invertebrates.

Can you tell us a little bit about the history of Buglife and what you consider to be your main goals?

The conservation movement grew during the 1990s, but there was no organisation specialising in invertebrates. This was brought sharply into focus by the creation of the UK Biodiversity Action Plan in 1994, when no organisation existed to fly the flag for invertebrates – to make sure their conservation needs were being looked after. A Feasibility Committee was established to look at the details of setting up an invertebrate conservation body, and ‘A Statement of Need for a New Organisation’ was produced. Twenty of the leading conservation organisations (including the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts) acknowledged that the conservation movement lacked a major spokesman for invertebrate conservation, and welcomed the establishment of one. The result was the foundation of Buglife in 2000, the only organisation in Europe devoted to the conservation of all invertebrates.

Buglife’s aim is to halt the extinction of invertebrate species and to achieve sustainable populations of invertebrates.

We are working hard to achieve this through:

– Promoting the environmental importance of invertebrates and raising awareness about the challenges to their survival.

– Assisting in the development of legislation and policy that will ensure the conservation of invertebrates.

– Developing and disseminating knowledge about how to conserve invertebrates.

– Encouraging and supporting invertebrate conservation initiatives by other organisations in the UK, Europe and worldwide.

– Undertaking practical conservation projects that will contribute to achieving our aim.

In an ideal world where funding for conservation was limitless, what would be your top priorities for ensuring the survival of invertebrates and rectifying the damage that has been done to their populations and habitats?

Putting connectivity back into the landscape. Invertebrates are suffering from a plethora of issues: habitat loss, pesticides and herbicides, climate change, isolation of habitat. Connecting up the remaining good habitat is the single most important change for invertebrates as they can escape natural or human made disaster where they live and can migrate to avoid extreme climate change. This is the principle behind Buglife’s B-Lines project that has plotted a route for connectivity between the best remaining invertebrate habitats across the UK.

On your website you feature the famous quote by David Attenborough that concludes with the terrifying line: “…if the invertebrates were to disappear, the world’s ecosystems would collapse.” Do you think that in general we still place too much emphasis on saving what is often referred to as the ‘charismatic megafauna’ and do not value the smaller animals and plants that are the backbone and life support of our world?

A look at how money is invested in saving species reveals that larger mammals are by far the biggest beneficiaries at over £60 per species whilst invertebrates the worst funded at under 6 pence per species. A sad reflection on how humans fail to understand that if we don’t look after the small creatures the big ones will disappear too, bottom-up conservation has far more likelihood of long term sustainability. Yes, tigers and similar have cute cuddly eyes but without invertebrates the food chains that they depend on would collapse and with them the megafauna would go too. Too often we take the invertebrates for granted as something that is just there, small and ‘insignificant’ forgetting that in reality they are small but irreplaceable foundations for the whole web of life that supports the megafauna and people too.

2020 has been an extremely challenging year for most individuals and organisations. How has the pandemic affected Buglife and the work that you are doing?

The Covid pandemic has had a massive impact upon all of us and Buglife have had to be extremely careful with project organisation and financial controls, to ensure that vital conservation work has been delivered safely and that our staff resource has been retained in gainful employment. Ways of working have changed with the closure of offices and a shift to home working for all made possible through recent investment in new IT systems. Most engagement activities have shifted from face to face to online platforms as have meetings to influence policy and media. Some of these enforced changes are likely to have a long term beneficial outcome in reducing our organisational carbon footprint and finding new ways of delivering training and engagement that can reach larger audiences. A few of the impacts have meant works being delayed a year such as surveys for specific invertebrates that are only around for short periods. It should also be recognised that new ways of working can place extra burden on staffing resources as meetings flow on without breaks so we have also looked to bring in external supports for staff when needed. The biggest negative impact has been the closure of most project funders to new applications over the pandemic, making it impossible to establish all the new projects hoped for in 2021.

What would you consider to be your greatest success as a charity?

This is a really tough question as over the last 20 years Buglife has achieved saving many sites for invertebrates from developments, banning extremely harmful chemicals, persuading governments to adopt pollinator strategies, but for sheer scale, B-Lines mapping completed across the entire UK has got to be the number one achievement, as there is now a route map for future interventions to ensure the long term survival of the small things that run the planet.

Finally, for anyone inspired to get involved in invertebrate conservation, how would you recommend that they do this?

Practical experience of conservation work is as important as qualifications, a sound knowledge of a few groups of invertebrates is a great extra to have but equally important is experience of public engagement, volunteer leadership and above all else an ability to multitask.

You can find out more about Buglife and the work they do from their website and by following them on Facebook and on Twitter

NHBS In the Field – Mammal Footprint Tunnel

Footprint tunnels are a useful, cost-effective, non-invasive tool for presence/absence surveying of small mammals. Food left in the centre of the tunnel encourages passing animals to walk over the ink pads, leaving their footprints on the tracking paper. With the use of a guide, the mammal in question can then be identified from the footprints left behind.

There are a number of benefits of using footprint tunnels. As they are non-invasive, the tunnel can be set up and left without fear of harming animals and are a good way to assess a site prior to in-depth species studies. They are also quick to check compared to other methods. For example, although camera traps are also useful for presence/absence studies, it can be time consuming to sift through captured images and videos.

As is useful for any piece of equipment, footprint tunnels (and their replacement materials) are very light (55g), and so are easy to take out into the field. However, as they are quite long (119.5cm) they can be cumbersome to transport. Despite this, transportation is made easier due to their ability to be flat packed – their plastic construction allows for them to be folded easily.

The NHBS Mammal Footprint Tunnel comes flat packed with helpful assembly instructions. When assembled, the tunnel is wide enough to fit a full sheet of A4, saving you the trouble of cutting paper to size to use in the tunnel, and is large enough to allow access to animals such as hedgehogs but not larger mammals, such as foxes or badgers.

In addition to the kit you will need eight paperclips per trap, masking tape, some vegetable oil to mix with the included charcoal to make the ink, and some bait (chopped unsalted peanuts or dog/cat food is recommended).

Our work building is situated alongside the river Dart, only separated from the riverbank by a small wall and we wanted to find out what mammal species we have in the vicinity of our building. So we field tested a single NHBS Mammal Footprint Tunnel and here we share what we found and our thoughts on the tunnel.

How We Tested

The above image shows the kit contents: to the left is the tracking plate and on the right is the flattened prism that forms the tunnel. In the top right corner are the pins that secure the tunnel to the ground, charcoal, paper and masking tape (please note, paper, masking tape and vegetable oil are not included in the kit).

To set up the tracking plate, a sheet of A4 paper is placed at each end and secured with tape (ordinarily the paper would be secured with paper clips as is suggested in the instructions). Then we put several strips of masking tape across the centre of the tracking plate to create a large area of tape. The ink (a mixture of charcoal and oil) was painted on the two grey strips across the centre and bait was placed in the central area between the two ink pads.

Pictured is the tracking plate with the paper and masking tape attached.

We first set up the trap next to a bird feeding station – we already knew that the feeder is visited by voles and squirrels, and so would be an ideal place for us to put the footprint tunnel to the test! Although the feeder is raised, we opted to put the tunnel on the floor so that it was accessible to small mammals. As the tunnel was not placed on soft ground, bricks were used to secure the tunnel in place rather than the metal pins included in the kit. For bait we used bird seed as this is what the animals are used to eating at this particular location. The trap was left here for one (wet) night.

The first location that the tunnel was set was next to a bird feeder known to be visited by squirrels and voles.

The first tunnel set up, secured by bricks.

The second set up was just outside of our office alongside the wall that bordered the river. We hoped that this area would be patrolled by a number of small mammals, particularly hedgehogs as they have been seen here before. We baited the tunnel with cat food and the trap was left for three nights over the weekend – being outside office hours, we hoped disturbance would be minimal during this time.

The second placement of the tunnel

What We Found

The inner tracking plate was slightly fiddly to insert into the assembled prism tunnel, and we found that it was much easier to assemble the (pre-bent) prism round the tracking plate rather than sliding the tracking plate in. We used masking tape to secure the paper rather than paper clips as is suggested; this was beneficial when trying to get the tracking plate inside the tunnel as it was more secure than using paper clips.

In order for the bait to stay in place in the centre of the tracking plate the bait needed to be inserted after the tunnel was assembled. And so, because of the length of the tunnel, placing the bait into the tunnel was a little awkward. We found using a trowel to insert the bait made access easier, especially when trying not to disturb the ink.

In the first set up we were pleased to see that a vole had visited our tunnel and that the recording paper had stayed relatively dry despite the very wet weather. Sadly for our second attempt our bait of cat food was eaten by a cat!

Vole footprint tracks from first sighting. The photo is taken to scale of an A4 paper (the page filled the photo).

Our Opinion

The Mammal Footprint Tunnel is an easy-to-use, lightweight monitoring device and a great tool for many small mammal presence/absence studies. Due to its simplicity and low cost, it is ideal for students or for those involved in public engagement.

Despite its light weight, its size makes it a bit of an awkward shape to carry, both when assembled and when flat packed. However, its ability to be flat packed allows for multiple tunnels to be transported without any additional difficulties. Placing ink on the outer edges of the paper may result in more footprints- in our experience something seemed to enjoy munching on the paper before getting to the actual bait. Getting the ink to the right consistency takes some trial and error, but we would recommend using less oil to achieve a thicker ink so that any footprints left behind are as dark as possible so that they are easier to identify.

The pins were sufficient in securing the tunnel and saved it from being blown away by the wind, but a medium-sized mammal (a cat in our case!) could move the trap when secured in soft soil, so this is something to bear in mind when situating your trap.

Overall this is a very easy-to-use, affordable tool and we would highly recommend it as an effective presence/absence surveying method for small mammals.

The Mammal Footprint Tunnel is available through the NHBS website.

To view our full range of mammal surveying equipment, visit nhbs.com. If you have any questions about our range or would like some advice on the right product for you then please contact us via email at customer.services@nhbs.com or phone on 01803 865913.

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust Friends’ Day 2020

British Wildlife’s Assistant Editor Catherine Mitson joins the supporters of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (ARC) for their annual Friends’ Day. With exclusive site visits and Q&A sessions on the agenda, this year’s Friends’ Day was set to be a great event. Here, Catherine shares with us some of the highlights.

Thankfully, with the existence of Zoom, the ARC Friends’ Day 2020 could go ahead, albeit not its usual format. The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust planned a jam-packed Saturday afternoon to give their supporters the opportunity to see what ARC has been up to and to learn more about Britain’s native reptile and amphibian species.

Woolmer Forest is one of the most extensive and diverse lowland heathlands in Hampshire and home to 12 out of our 13 native reptile and amphibian species, including the rare Smooth Snake and Sand Lizard. Excitingly Blackmoor Heath, a 20ha site in Woolmer Forest, has become ARC’s newest nature reserve after a year-long fundraising appeal. Once introduced to the ARC team (most of whom were sporting fun animal-themed virtual backgrounds) the first video began, and we were taken on a virtual tour of the new reserve.

A priority at Blackmoor Heath is to reintroduce the Natterjack Toad, extending its range in Hampshire. Reducing tree cover and creating ponds are a few examples of the work being undertaken here to support a reintroduced population of Natterjacks. Not only is this vital management for Natterjacks and many other heathland species, this has also led to the exposure of bronze age barrows, or burial mounds – Blackmoor Heath is not only important for wildlife, but historically too.

Blackmoor – by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust

Next, Field Officers Ralph and Bryony took us to Crooksbury Common in Surrey, an important breeding site for Natterjack Toads. Bordered by a pine plantation, one of the major tasks here is to prevent the encroachment of pine trees, which if left unmanaged, would soon smother valuable heathland habitat. In the hope to restore good numbers of Natterjack Toads, the ARC team are also busy creating and maintaining large shallow ponds, critical for Natterjack breeding and egg-laying, as well as providing shelter for Natterjack adults during the cold winter months. We were also shown key Natterjack identification features, such as the distinctive yellow stripe that runs down the middle of their back.

Moving away from heathlands, we suddenly found ourselves on the dunes of Aberdovey, Wales to discover all about the Connecting the Dragons project. ARC staff and volunteers have been working hard to create exposed sand patches on the dunes here (socially distanced of course) to provide the reintroduced population of Sand Lizards with basking spots and egg-laying sites, as well as making next year’s surveying much easier!

Perhaps not common knowledge to many, there are actually two races of Sand Lizard: the Northern dune race and the Southern heathland race. The morphological differences between the two races were described, highlighting the distinctive identification features. For instance, the males of the Northern dune race tend to be much lighter when they first emerge from hibernation compared to those of the Southern heathland race.

Image by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust

The final site visit video took us to Dorset. Designated as a Special Area for Conservation and a SSSI, Great Ovens, an ARC nature reserve in Wareham Forest since 1996, is a truly special site. Similarly to Crooksbury Common, a surrounding pine plantation and the threat of scrub invasion means that a sensitive management programme is necessary to maintain the important mix of wet and dry heathland. This is not only beneficial for the amphibians and reptiles on the site, including Adders, Smooth Snakes and Sand Lizards, but also for other species such as Dartford Warbler, Silver-studded Blue, and Scarce Chaser. This was a common theme – habitat management for reptiles and amphibians will have a positive knock-on effect for other species, particularly in declining heathland habitats.

Great Ovens – by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust

Finally, Public Engagement Officer Owain took us out to find the rare Smooth Snake. Owain was successful in his search, and was able to show us a male Smooth Snake curled up safely underneath refugia (note that a license is required to monitor or handle this species). Owain went on to describe ARC’s ambitious four-year long Snake in the Heather project. Working in partnership with landowners, site managers and wildlife conservation charities, Snakes in the Heather endeavours to conserve the Smooth Snake across its range in southern England, as well as the lowland heathland habitat on which it, and many other species, depends.

Smooth Snake – by Chris Dresh

Throughout the Friends’ Day there were many opportunities for questions during the Q&A panel sessions; we learnt even more about ongoing ARC projects, the management of ARC’s nature reserves and the ecology of UK reptile and amphibian species. Many of the attendees were keen to know what they could do to help Britain’s reptiles and amphibian species and the ARC team enthusiastically provided us with information on how to get involved.

If you’re interested in becoming an ARC volunteer, or would like to become an ARC Friend to support their fantastic conservation work, you can find out more on their website.

An interview with Derek Gow: Bringing Back the Beaver

Derek Gow has written an inspirational and often riotously funny firsthand account of how the movement to rewild the British landscape with beavers has arguably become the single most dramatic and subversive nature conservation act of the modern era.

Derek has taken time to answer a few questions about his new book and the role beavers can have in restoring nature.

Could you tell us a little about your background and where the motivation for this book comes from?

I was born in Dundee in a council house. My grandfather’s generation had been farmers but my parents were not. I have always had a huge interest in nature which developed as I grew older. In time I began a career in farming and while aspects of this life were appealing, I became less enamoured with the impact of farming on the natural world and the savage repercussions of its consequence. I read all Gerald Durrell’s books when small, attended his field course on Jersey in 2000 and from that point on, initially as a manger for several wildlife centres focused on native wildlife and then ultimately, on my own farm, began to pioneer opportunities for wildlife restoration.

You have a clear affection for beavers; will a more emotive dialogue help spread the idea of restoring nature to a broader base, or do you think the science will win hearts and minds?

I think it’s a combination of both. You need science to back a case for their sentient restoration on the back of all the credible good they do, but you also need people to feel emotionally linked. They are the most wonderful of creature’s – creators of landscapes which are brim-full of life. They are caring for their offspring and while savagely territorial with other beavers, are commonly as individuals, largely benign. We did appalling things to them in the past and in effort to forge a better future I see no harm in explaining to people just how critical it is that we consider other species as individuals of worth and importance with characters as well.

There are so many organisations involved; some still going, some now inoperative: DEFRA, IUCN, SNH, EN, NCC, CLA etc. How do you manage to reach a consensus across all those organisations, and do you think the voice for restoring nature needs streamlining?

Yes it needs streamlining, but we need to be much bolder and much less deferential. In the commercial world if individuals or organisations perform poorly then they are dismissed or they disappear as entities. In nature conservation we are way too good at ignoring duffers and making excuses for their mistakes. This situation however uncomfortable is simply no good and at a time of ecological crisis potentially fatal. We must be bullish in our approach to progress while still retaining what reasonable allies there are. The pace of restoration should be swift rather than slow. There is no reason whatsoever for delay.

The activities of beavers such as: felling trees and potentially flooding arable land sound quite alarming to a lot of people. How are those issues addressed when proposing to reintroduce beavers?

Simple. We published a management handbook in 2016 which you chaps help sell and promote. Beavers are a very well understood species in both continental Europe and North America all we need to do is co-opt the sensible programmes of management and understanding which have been applied there to here, stop gibbering and making up excuses and move on. There is nothing they do which we can’t counteract if we wish to do so. A wider programme of education to promote better understanding is an essential first step.

Beavers seem to be a benchmark to define our future relationship with wild creatures. Does your campaign stop at beavers, or would you like to see other ‘lost’ species reintroduced to Britain?

I think that lynx should be restored with reasonable haste if living space which is suitably large with an adequate abundance of prey sufficient to maintain a viable population exists. I think wildcats must be restored in England and in Wales. Other candidates would be species like the great bustard, wild boar, golden, white tailed eagles and common crane; in a wider range, the burbot, black stork/more whites, vultures and many other amphibians, reptiles and insects. I think a dialogue should begin about learning to relive with the wolf now. If we want to have future forests which the deer can’t destroy we will need this predator very much.

Does Brexit and the eventual demise of the Common Agricultural Policy offer any hope for a more nature sensitive approach to farming in the UK?

Yes it does. We can do it our way now but we must recognise that very much good has come from the EU habitats directive and that our way should seek to exceed and surmount this legislation and not just become a tawdry box ticking exercise in excuse manufacturing and prevarication.

With beavers now established in Devon on the River Otter, how do you see that project developing in the next five years?

The beaver population there will expand for sure to number many 100’s over time. Many other rivers should become the focus of further reintroductions as a result of the excellent field work and research carried out on the Otter by a broad range of partnership bodies. The project and its results demonstrate quite graphically that beavers are entirely tolerable in a modern cultural English landscape with a degree of low level intervention and that their engineering activities enable an abundance of other wildlife to flourish.

Have you any projects you are currently involved in, or planning that you can tell us about?

Together with a range of other organisations I am working to form a wood cat project which will culminate in the reintroduction of the wildcat in Devon. The old English name was the wood cat and those of us involved think therefore that this is a more appropriate escutcheon. Next year I will be releasing white storks on my farm and rewilding over 150 acres of land which I own. In March 2021 I will complete work on a new book for Chelsea Green titled The Hunt for the Iron Wolf which will detail the history of this species in the UK.

Bringing Back the Beaver: The Story of One Man’s Quest to Rewild Britain’s Waterways
By: Derek Gow
Paperback | January 2022

Derek Gow’s inspirational first-hand account of beaver reintroduction across England and Scotland.

Derek Gow is a farmer and nature conservationist. Born in Dundee in 1965, he left school when he was 17 and worked in agriculture for five years. Inspired by the writing of Gerald Durrell, all of whose books he has read – thoroughly – he jumped at the chance to manage a European wildlife park in central Scotland in the late 1990s before moving on to develop two nature centres in England. He now lives with his children, Maysie and Kyle, on a 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border which he is in the process of rewilding. Derek has played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole and the white stork in England. He is currently working on a reintroduction project for the wildcat.

Browse more books about this keystone species

Sharpham Wild for People: an Interview with Jack Skuse

The beautiful and historic Sharpham Estate runs alongside the River Dart just outside Totnes in South Devon. Beginning this year, a three-year project called Wild for People, run by the Sharpham Trust under a National Lottery Heritage Fund project, will begin to enhance the biodiversity of this 550-acre area, aided by a passionate team of conservation trainees. Working with Ambios Ltd, who are based on the Estate, this project aims to turn more of the Sharpham Estate organic, re-wild significant parts of the landscape and encourage more people to interact with the nature there.

Jack Skuse, director of Ambios, recently took the time to chat with us about the Sharpham Wild for People project. In this inspiring conversation we talk about the practicalities of rewilding working alongside food production, how the Covid pandemic has affected the first year of the project, and his tips for people wanting to get into a career in conservation.

Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the Sharpham Estate and how the land is currently used?

Sharpham is an ancient landscape. People are known to have lived here from at least 1260. The landscape as we currently see it was designed this way during a period when the estate was owned by Philamon Pownell. He was a sea captain who captured a Spanish galleon laden with treasure from South America. With his wealth he set about transforming Sharpham, building the Palladian villa (designed by famous architect Robert Taylor) and creating the Sharpham Parkland – sweeping away hedgerows to open up vistas from the main carriage drives across the estate and into Totnes, and planting trees to accentuate and frame the views. Since his death the estate has had different owners, however, the parkland has remained largely intact, with the vineyard being the main alteration to this landscape in more recent times. Today Ambios rent and manage part of the estate (80 acres) and have recently signed the lease for a further 50 acres for rewilding and nature conservation training, and in partnership with United Response provide a care day service for adults with learning difficulties and disabilities.

What are your current trainees busy with at the moment?

Ambios offer three-month traineeships for people looking for a career in nature conservation, alongside other nature training opportunities in the UK and EU. Our current crop of trainees have been here since early July, having been through an early Covid-19 quarantine period. The first part of the traineeship is about building confidence in nature, often supporting the academic education many would have had at university with practical skills and applied knowledge – the skills the sector demands. This includes species ID (birds, plants, bats, etc), technical language training, practical skills including basic carpentry and land-based work, as well as engaging with the public through online platforms. Now that they have developed some of these skills, the central part of the placement is about taking ownership of a project that relates to rewilding. As this is our first year rewilding, there are many baseline surveys the trainees are carrying out with our team of trainers supporting their work. Surveys include grasslands, crickets and grasshoppers, river birds, butterflies. One of our trainees has also taken on the task of producing content for our website around rewilding and linking with other projects/information so that people looking at our site can network into the world of rewilding – a learning resource. This is in collaboration with Rewilding Britain.

How has the Covid pandemic affected the project this year?

It is impossible to imagine a year like this one and, as with all businesses, we have been significantly affected. The day service in partnership with United Response closed, and only now we are beginning to reopen. This meant much of the day-to-day work of the farm had to be reappointed to our long term volunteer team – right in the middle of our lambing and calving period! Many of our trainees come from the EU, and our traineeships saw reduced numbers. Our risk assessment put in place some strict measures to ensure everyone was safe and followed protocol. Some of our staff were furloughed meaning our work had to simplify and streamline, and some of our training content moved online (our Effective Camera Trapping Course for instance). Meanwhile, we have been working to enter into a comprehensive agri-environment scheme for our new land to rewild (50 acres) to subsidise our farming practice and allow us to prioritise wildlife. Given the land is listed historic parkland this is not without its complexity – see below!

One of the aims of the Wild for People project is to help more people engage with nature on the estate. Is the area open to the public and/or do you host events that local people can get involved with?

In partnership with Sharpham Trust we have been awarded £177,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to run a comprehensive public programme of education and events alongside our rewilding. This naturally has had a slower start than originally planned due to the pandemic but the funding has allowed us to offer fully subsidised placements on our traineeship. Alongside this we will start up a new volunteer day later this year to allow hands on engagement with rewilding. The process over the next three years – the duration of the Lottery project and the first three years (of five) of our tenancy and agri-environment countryside stewardship programme – will be to reinstate the historic parkland at Sharpham, which is in a degraded state, and convert the land to organic status. This will involve planting 140 trees in their original location from over 200 years ago, repairing the bridge over the Sharpham Marsh and allowing permissive access to the historic viewpoint with the installation of kissing gates. It will also allow us to fence the perimeter of the holding to allow stock to freely roam across the full 50 acres, choosing where to forage, dung and rest uninterrupted, passing between the two parcels of land either side of the public access farm track with the aid of gates. This work programme will sit with our public invitation volunteer days, our nature conservation traineeship and the work programme for the people United Response support. Sharpham Trust will also run a series of public events and school visits, culminating in an annual Bioblitz where we can study the impact of our rewilding over an intensive 24-hour wildlife survey period.

In terms of rewilding, do you feel it is important to strike a balance between the land being ‘productive/useful’ and leaving it to nature?

In terms of the balance of farming and wildlife, my feeling is that we need to view the role of the countryside through a very different lens to the one we have been viewing it through. The countryside provides many different things to us; from the food we eat and the employment we gain to our recreation and wellbeing, to other ‘ecosystem services’ including flood defence, carbon capture and of course for wildlife. We have become very efficient at food production, but this has been to the detriment of wildlife, where we have seen the catastrophic decline in species number and diversity since the industrial revolution. In order to halt this decline we need a fundamentally different set of priorities and management approaches for the countryside, that encourage and importantly fund wildlife friendly initiatives. Rewilding is, I believe, the best, most sustainable, most captivating and acceptable approach to wholescale land management for wildlife.

Productive agricultural land should, in my view, have food production as its main objective. However, I believe that marginal land, under a skewed farm subsidy model that pays for land to be farmed regardless of its productivity, should have a different value placed upon it, and should be (un)managed accordingly. A great example is our land at Sharpham. Many of the uplands, steep sided valleys and unproductive farmland could see a regeneration in wildlife that should be supported by a different farm subsidy model and diversified economies that would provide employment, bring people back to the countryside and connect people in a deeper way with nature. And whereby the cumulative benefit would be seen not just in increased wildlife, but in our collective effort to become carbon neutral with thriving ecosystems and connected communities. Our small project is part of this and with a public engagement agenda we hope to share these values with as wide an audience as we can so people can see the true, intrinsic value of nature and the role the countryside has on all our lives.

What is the greatest challenge of the project?

There are many challenges to our project, aside from the obvious and immediate Covid-19. Brexit will see a different relationship with the EU, and the ability of European trainees to study with us to share good practice and learn about rewilding across the continent may be compromised. The values I mentioned above should be supported under the new, post-Brexit ELMS farm subsidy scheme that will replace countryside stewardship in the coming years. However, as we enter a recession the budget available to support these initiatives may be reduced and turn landowners away from wildlife-friendly practices towards more intensive agriculture. These economic factors are very relevant to our long term aspirations and in inspiring and motivating other local landowners in joining the wildlife resistance.

The landscape at Sharpham that is being rewilded has a significant cultural and historic value already – it is an iconic landscape, set within the South Devon AONB and has a grade 2* listing for its historic importance, as well as a national cycle route passing through it. The changes we will see under the new rewilding regime will change the way this landscape will look and feel. Our initial work to restore the historic parkland aims to honour its heritage; our ongoing rewilding will give it a new and relevant role long into the future, and will be part of its story. We hope to be able to share this story so that people can see the value of it, and balance these different values.

We have learnt from the Knepp Estate (a large rewilding project in the east of the UK set on a lowland farm) some of the challenges that rewilding sites face. Indeed, in running our existing holding we have seen dog attacks on our livestock and littering, with livestock eating waste left by people enjoying the dramatic walks and views of the Dart Valley. Our mixed stocking will bring their own challenges when interacting with people, but we have measures in place to manage this risk. Newborn calves for example are very cute to look at, but their mothers can be very protective and feel any proximity to their offspring as a threat. We are definitely not taking these challenges lightly, however, we know that the majority of the public are aware of and respect the countryside.

The training scheme offers the trainees a great range of practical field skills and conservation experience. What advice would you give to a young (or not so young!) person who is wanting to get into conservation as a career?

Most of the employers we engage with say that that experience is key. This is however the challenge that prospective employees face – employers requiring experience and employees finding it increasingly difficult to gain valuable experience. I’d say keep going! Find creative ways to gain experience, whether it’s practicing your ID skills in your garden or out on walks. When you get the chance to apply or make it through to interview show enthusiasm, be genuine and authentic – the people interviewing you are human too – and try to use good, relevant examples to prove your passion. Also try to be true to yourself – if the job you are applying for isn’t necessarily the one you would hope to do long term, be honest with yourself about it, and don’t give up!!!

In the meantime, keep linked with job advertisers like Countryside Jobs Service and environmentjob and build your network on professional/social media platforms (like LinkedIn) with employers – nature conservation is a small world. Aim to use relevant examples related to the job advertised; even if the experience you’ve had is small, don’t big it up; be honest and, most importantly, detailed – tell employers exactly what you have done, when, where, for how long and who with. Also, don’t be afraid to ask employers what training they offer – they don’t need you to be the finished article but they want evidence of your awareness of the world and the role you’ve applied for and that you have adaptable skills and are willing to learn. Its become a cliché to an extent, but whereas your education will prove a level of understanding of your subject, what employers also want to know is how good you are at some of the softer skills like teamwork, flexibility, creativity, application and dedication, and having good examples of these to hand will be invaluable.

The post-Covid employment landscape will make job hunting even more challenging, so keep an eye on current government initiatives and any opportunities that may pop up over the next 12-18 months. The government has promised to invest in a green economic recovery and this may well see new training opportunities that could be the key to you gaining relevant experience.

Finally, have a look at our blog page. Here, members of the Ambios team offer more advice, support and top tips on how to get a career within the conservation sector.

Find out more about the Wild for People project on The Sharpham Trust website or connect with them on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

For more information about Ambios Ltd, visit their website. They can also be found on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Enjoy a wonderful birdseye view of the Sharpham Estate as it currently exists today in the video below: