Conservation – Page 24 – Hoopoe

Author Interview with Charles Foster: The Screaming Sky

A summer visitor, the common swift appears suddenly with the change in season, swooping overhead with its unmistakeable call. From their travels to Africa, to their short breeding season in the UK, swifts appear to defy gravity with their extraordinary migratory feats, with some in flight for ten months of the year. In The Screaming Sky, Charles Foster follows the swifts across the world, recounting his travels and the lives of these remarkable creatures.

Charles Foster, author of the New York Times bestseller, Being a Beast, is a writer, barrister and a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. With publication of his latest book due soon, Charles has very kindly agreed to answer some of our questions.

Firstly, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to write The Screaming Sky?

I’m originally from Sheffield, and as a small boy I was obsessed with natural history. One summer I was sitting in a field watching and counting the house martins. Suddenly there was something else there: it was a completely different kind of creature, and it inhabited the air while other birds just visited it. I was immediately drunk on its power and its mastery and its swashbucklingness. It could have ended badly: it might have made me worship power. But (that’s another story) I was spared that fate, and instead started to wonder whether I could know anything at all about something as different from me as that. So I followed them in every way that I could: through books that taught me about their biology, through poems that taught me how impossible it is for human language to tie swifts down, by gazing up into summer skies, by playing recordings of their calls when I was missing them like crazy in the winter, and by travelling along their migration routes, hoping to catch up with them in Africa and everywhere en route. How could I not write about birds that have taught me so much about what it means to be alive?

During your travels, were there any encounters that particularly stood out for you?

Three:

Sitting at the foot of a tower in Greece with the swifts diving so near to my head that I could feel the air from their fluttering on my face, knowing that they were about to leave for Africa, and wondering what the bereavement would do to me.
Sitting at the top of a tree in Oxford amongst a group of swifts which were grazing on the aerial plankton being wafted up from the ground. And seeing the grey triangular tongue of a swift as it snapped at a ballooning spider near my ear.
Being asleep under a bush in Africa, and being suddenly awake, knowing that the swifts that I’d been searching for for so long were going to be there. And they were! It wasn’t that I’d heard them coming (swifts are generally thought to be silent in Africa). It wasn’t that I’d been told to expect them: I’d been told that we probably wouldn’t see them at all. So how did it happen? If I told you my speculations you’d think I was mad.

What were the major challenges you faced while writing your book?

I’m a fat, lumpen, middle-aged man. It’s hard to think of any organism that’s less like a swift. And, as I’ve said already, language (which is pretty inadequate at the best of times) fails particularly obviously when it comes to swifts. That’s bad news for a writer on swifts. And then there were snakes and elephants and rabid dogs and torrential diarrhoea and bush fires and soldiers and downright laziness and roads washed away and guilt at leaving the family behind.

Wildlife has suffered a substantial decline over the last few decades, and swifts have been no exception with a loss of over half of the breeding population. Has your recent experience writing The Screaming Sky left you more optimistic or more pessimistic regarding the future of the common swift?

They watched the continents shuffle to their present positions, and the mammals evolve. They’ll be screaming through the sky long after our own race has been and gone.

Do you have any new projects in the pipeline that you’d like to tell us about?

In August a book of mine called Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness will be published. It’s an attempt to imagine how it would have felt to be around at three pivotal moments in the history of human consciousness: the Upper Palaeolithic (when modern consciousness ignited), the Neolithic (when we first started to see ourselves as distinct from the wild world, and started to tame ourselves and other animals), and the Enlightenment (when the universe, which had always been seen as alive, was reconceived as a machine – with disastrous consequences). And at the moment I’m writing a book called The Siege – to be published in 2022 – which is a collection of stories illustrating the challenges of living alongside you and me if you’re a wild thing with all your senses switched on.

The Screaming Sky
By: Charles Foster

Author interview with Roy Dennis: Restoring the Wild

Reintroducing lost species has had a huge part to play in restoring natural processes and enriching biodiversity in Britain. In Restoring the Wild, Roy Dennis MBE documents the painstaking journey to reintroduce some of Britain’s lost apex predators, and the subsequent enormous benefits to our ecosystem.

Leading up to the book’s publication, Roy kindly agreed to answer some questions.

As is made clear from the title of your book, you have a long and amazing history of involvement with conservation projects. Could you begin by sharing what inspired you to pursue a career as a field ornithologist and wildlife consultant?

It really started as a youngster keen on wildlife and living in the Hampshire countryside. Becoming really good at birds and bird ringing which led to a summer job as an assistant warden at Lundy Bird Observatory, instead of going to work at Harwell Atomic Research Station. The following year I was a field ornithologist at the prestigious Fair Isle Bird Observatory, which was fantastic training. There I met George Waterston, the famous Scottish ornithologist, who persuaded me to join him the following year wardening the ospreys at Loch Garten. There I made so many friends in wildlife conservation and became totally convinced that my life was going to be about birds and conservation, restoring species and subsequently ecological restoration.

Of course the obvious aim of a reintroduction project is to bring back a species that has been lost. But in your experience what subsequent benefits are there to reintroductions?

I think in a very damaged world reintroduction projects show there is a chance to bring species back and give people hope. Some species are more important than others from an ecological point of view with beavers being the ecosystem engineer par excellence. My book explains the many advantages of restoring beavers. Other species such as red kites and white-tailed eagle are iconic species, which demonstrate that rare birds can live in the general countryside, not only in nature reserves. Then people can see and enjoy them on the way to work, school or the shops. My whole ethos has been to make rare birds more common and secure for the future.

According to the latest 2019 State of Nature report, about 162 species have thought to have become extinct since the 1500s. How is it decided what species should be prioritised for reintroduction?

It’s more a question of our ability to successfully restore a species, is there enough habitat and food, can we find birds to translocate and what is the likelihood of success. I think the most important action is to take action and not be bogged down by procedures.

You spoke in your book about the opposition to reintroduction projects – what would your response be to address these concerns and opposing views?

The opposition can come from many quarters but the most important thing is to listen to all the concerns and address them. It’s essential to know the species on its home patch and to be able to present a clear message. Usually people’s concerns can be allayed; for example I write in my book about making a special recce to the Netherlands to speak to the experts about white-tailed eagles and agriculture, so that we could give considered views before starting the Isle of Wight project. We have had complaints from some birders that the translocated ospreys at Rutland Water or the sea eagles are not ‘real’ birds and they cannot count them on their lists. But they forget capercaillies were brought back from Scandinavia long ago. But the recent sea eagles flying in southern England have shown that birders just love to know they are back, and hopefully will breed in England again.

In the final chapter of your book you look forward to focus on newer projects, such as White-tailed Eagle reintroductions on the Isle of Wight and the South Coast Osprey Project. But what else would you like to see reintroduced to Britain in the near future?

In my last chapter of the book I’m really talking about handing over the baton to others to take projects forward. I’m very fortunate that Tim Mackrill joined me a few years ago and I love working with our small team. We are always assessing possible projects but would rather do it in a quiet way, really get to know the species on mainland Europe and talk to all the people that are likely to be involved before we go public with an idea.

White-tailed Eagles, Ospreys, Red Kites and Goldeneyes are a few of the species you have helped to successfully restore to Britain. What has been your personal highlight and why?

“What is your favourite?” is a question I’ve been asked all my life. But I do not have one – or rather it is the one we are working with at the time. I can recall personal highlights like the first osprey breeding pair at Rutland Water, seeing the young white-tailed eagles fly free on the Isle of Wight was exciting just like when I released the first young sea eagle on Fair Isle in 1968. Seeing red kites, the length and breadth of Scotland and England has been special, made more so when you see them soaring over motorways. During lockdown it’s been marvellous to hear from so many people who have seen a sea eagle fly high over them as they sit in their garden. Bringing wonder back.

The Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation has achieved a great deal over the years since it was formed in 1995, not just in the UK but across Europe too. Can you share what the Foundation has planned for the future?

We want to carry on with our work with wildlife conservation, there are still many things to do and the return of the Lynx is high in my thoughts. We have others in mind for the future so keep an eye on our website and see what’s coming next. You will get a great insight to how these projects evolve and work in Restoring the Wild.

Restoring the Wild: Sixty Years of Rewilding Our Skies, Woods and Waterways
By: Roy Dennis
Hardback | Due April 2021 | £16.99 ~~£18.99~~

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

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust: Q&A with Dr Tony Gent

The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) Trust is a charity dedicated to conserving amphibians and reptiles and saving the disappearing habitats on which they depend.

Dr Tony Gent, CEO of the ARC Trust, recently took the time to talk to us about the challenges faced by amphibians and reptiles in the UK, some of the charity’s success stories, and ways in which you can get involved with amphibian and reptile conservation.

Firstly, could you give us a brief introduction to Amphibian and Reptile Conservation and the work that you do?

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) is a national conservation charity dedicated, as its name suggests, to conserving frogs, toads and newts, snakes and lizards. ARC manages a network of over 80 nature reserves in England and Wales that cover some 2,000 hectares. These include a significant suite of lowland heathland areas that are home to all six native reptile species. The trust is also custodian for nationally important habitats for natterjack toads and pool frogs, plus sites established specifically to support populations of great crested newts.

ARC leads on recovery programmes, especially for more threatened species, including managing reintroduction and captive breeding programmes, direct engagement through site management and running national monitoring schemes. We actively engage with advocacy in the UK and further afield, to ensure that amphibians and reptiles are considered via legislation, policy, and funding streams. We also support and undertake research and run education and training programmes to promote amphibian and reptile conservation. Though UK based, we also work with partner organisations across Europe and in the UK’s Overseas Territories.

Our team achieves this through a network of volunteers, partner organisations, Governmental agencies and engaging with the wider public.

As for most groups of animals in the current climate, the factors affecting their populations are obviously complex. However, what do you consider to be the greatest challenge faced by amphibians and reptiles in the UK?

A number of factors are impacting on our reptile and amphibian populations including disease, climate change, pollution, drought and wildfires. However I consider the biggest challenge is ensuring that there is enough suitable habitat available for these species to maintain their populations and distribution across the country, given the vast pressures for alternative land uses.

Of our seven species of amphibian, comprising of three newt, two frog and two toad species, some such as the common frog are widespread, while others such as the natterjack toad are found in a restricted number of habitats and endangered. Similarly, the three species of lizard and three species of snake that make up our reptile fauna include widespread species, such as the slow worm, and other species such as the smooth snake and sand lizard that have much more restricted ranges. All, however, need certain habitat features to survive; reptiles in particular need generally open habitats with a good ground cover, while amphibians need ponds for breeding.

Smooth Snake – by Chris Dresh

The loss and degradation of the habitats on which these rare amphibians and reptiles depend has been a major factor contributing to their decline. Pond numbers in England and Wales decreased dramatically from an estimated 800,000 in the late 19th century to around 200,000 in the 1980s; this in turn has impacted on amphibian populations. Heathland, the only habitat occupied by all six of our native reptile species, has declined by over 85% since the late 18th century. The heaths that remain are highly fragmented, meaning that some patches are too small to sustain characteristic native reptile species.

As well as ensuring that areas are not lost to competing land uses, such as development or intensive agriculture, it is important that these areas sustain the features within them that allow amphibians and reptiles to survive. Having comparatively low mobility, we also need to ensure there are linkages between these areas to prevent populations becoming isolated and to allow for recolonisation if for any reason they become locally extirpated.

Our work securing areas as protected nature reserves can help address this, but we need to see action over a much wider area. ARC both undertakes and provides advice on habitat management on behalf of landowners, who are often steered by government directives. We therefore also lobby for more robust land use policies and funding mechanisms that encourage sympathetic land management. Agri-environment schemes, for example, protect land from the impacts of development, or at least fully mitigate any unavoidable damage that will occur. Underpinning this is the need for a greater awareness and regard towards the conservation of these animals, so that they are considered positively in decision making.

Within the UK, reptiles and amphibians are notoriously elusive – do you think that this affects the extent to which people are aware of them and the conservation issues that they are facing?

The elusive nature of these species makes it difficult for people to see them and therefore often misunderstand them.

In appearance they are neither feathered nor furry and lack the inherent universal appeal of some other animals. This has contributed to their negative profile in tradition and folklore which are often associated with evil, witchcraft and common ailments such as warts. Indeed, even Carolus Linnaeus, the great biologist and ‘father of modern taxonomy’, described reptiles and amphibians in his book The System of Nature as ‘These foul and loathsome animals are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale colour, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom.’

This matters because people’s appreciation and negative perceptions of amphibians and reptiles are echoed in the low importance placed on their conservation, leading to their needs being often just not considered. This can range from direct persecution to simply over-looking their habitat needs, for example in tree planting programmes.

It is hard to appreciate something you cannot see; indeed many people are not aware that we even have reptiles in UK. However, once appreciated they then become important to preserve. That’s why at ARC we place great importance in getting people to see and to learn about the amphibians and reptiles in their area, and to learn how and when they can be seen.

The sight of frogspawn in the garden pond followed by tadpoles and the unmistakable sound of croaking frogs can offer a close-up experience of wildlife and, for some people, this has been the start of a lifelong interest in nature. We are also seeing an increasing fascination with our native ‘dragons’ and recognition of their cultural significance.

This past year has been unbelievably hard for charities. How has 2020 (and 2021 so far) differed for the ARC Trust and how have you dealt with the difficulties that Covid has created?

Covid shut the door on many of our activities, and especially face to face meetings with people including many educational training events and group activities. This has had a number of different impacts, including the amount of habitat managed, opportunities for us to show people reptiles and amphibians and our volunteer engagement. However we maintained work across all of the different areas of our activity – it just meant we had to do these in different ways and have gained from doing so.

As we saw home working and ‘Zoom meetings’ become the norm we were in a position to move many of our education and training events online swiftly. Over the year of restrictions we have developed free ‘bite sized training courses’ and have made some of our sites accessible virtually through virtual reserve walks, drone tours, Q and A panel sessions, quizzes, activities and classroom lessons for children. As lockdown continued, people became more aware of their immediate environments and we offered an opportunity for the public to undertake a home-based survey through our online Garden Dragon Watch survey in addition to our reserves remaining open throughout.

Our two major annual events, the scientific meeting that we co-host with the British Herpetological Society and the Herpetofauna Workers Meeting run jointly with ARG-UK, went online. We explored different platforms for these meetings and, while we couldn’t meet face to face, these meetings attracted larger audiences than we could have hosted through physical meetings, reduced costs and gave a voice to people who had not previously joined in before. This not only significantly reduced the carbon footprint of these events but actively engaged a wider range of delegates, networks and researchers. We will be looking at how we can integrate some of these positive outcomes into future outreach.

What would you consider to be your greatest success story so far?

Ultimately we aim to improve the conservation status of all 13 native species of amphibians and reptiles in the UK. Securing 80 sites into active conservation management, 25 of which we own, is something that we would not have imagined possible when the foundations for forming the charity were being laid in the late 1980s. In terms of conservation impact, our translocation work has truly brought species back from (and in one case beyond) the brink of extinction in Britain.

Sand lizards suffered significant declines across their range during the mid to late 20th Century, disappearing from Wales, seeing a huge reduction in the Merseyside populations and loss from huge swathes of Surrey, Hampshire and Kent. We have led conservation efforts for this species in Britain and in 2019 we released our 10,000th sand lizard as part of our long-term reintroduction programme which has restored sand lizards to 70 sites, restoring much of their former range. Similarly, the range of the natterjack toad dwindled over a similar time period and down to a single surviving heathland population south of the River Thames. We have been involved in reintroducing natterjack toads to 17 sites across the UK.

Perhaps our greatest species success story is the pool frog which was formerly considered to be non-native and went extinct from the UK in the 1990s. We worked in partnership to assemble evidence to indicate that they were in fact native and, through our reintroduction programme, we sourced pool frogs from Scandinavia and successfully reintroduced them to Norfolk, bringing the species back from extinction in the UK. Our latest Green Recovery Challenge government funded project will explore how we can restore the species range in East Anglia, by trailing outdoor enclosures.

Our greatest success overall is the combination of seeing the status of wildlife improve and the benefits that come to people because of what we do. In the course of working towards our primary mission of conserving amphibians and reptiles, we benefit many other species that share their habitats, such as birds, butterflies and dragonflies. We also provide benefits directly to our volunteers and the public who enjoy our reserves that tell us they benefit in terms of their physical and mental health, social lives, enjoyment, education and career development.

How can people get involved with amphibian and reptile conservation, particularly if they are inexperienced in terms of identification and/or field survey?

Reptiles and amphibians occur throughout the country, but the species that you may encounter will vary in different locations and habitats. There are a variety of ways you can get involved through ARC, and whatever your background, we welcome your support.

If you live close to one of our nature reserves or local projects you might like to join a habitat activity day. We run programmes of habitat management designed for teams of volunteers mainly through the winter months – It’s a great way to keep fit, make friends and get a personal insight into looking after your local nature reserve. ARC also offers opportunities to learn more about amphibians and reptiles through training, including online, field and class-based courses and events run in partnership with the Field Studies Council. We are keen to have more people joining in with our national programme of species and habitat surveys, which has various options for people with different levels of knowledge and available time. There is also an opportunity to take part in our Garden Dragon Watch (recording amphibians and reptiles in your garden), or if you have more time sign up to monitor species at a location near you, though the spring and summer months. The information volunteer surveyors supply is valuable in helping ARC to keep track of where amphibians and reptiles are found and how populations are faring.

ARC also runs a members’ scheme for people who wish to support the work we do, stay up to date with the ecology and conservation of amphibians and reptiles, gain discounts to events and conferences and claim a welcome pack containing an array of species identification resources.

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

Author Interview with Dave Goulson: Gardening for Bumblebees

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Garden Jungle and A Sting in the Tale comes the much anticipated Gardening for Bumblebees. Part identification guide, part instruction handbook, Gardening for Bumblebees is packed full of information and ideas on how to create pollinator-friendly spaces for all types of garden.

As well as an award-winning author, Dave is also a Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex and founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. We have recently had the opportunity to ask him some questions about his latest book.

Could you start by telling us how you came to write Gardening for Bumblebees, and how it differs from your previous book, The Garden Jungle?

Gardening for Bumblebees is a practical, full colour, nuts-and-bolts guide to encouraging bumblebees and other pollinators in the garden, including detailed sections on choosing the best flowers, creating meadow areas, building bee hotels, propagating plants yourself, organic pest control, and more. I hope that it will inspire people, and provide them with all the knowledge they need to turn their garden into a haven for wildlife.

In your book you mention several citizen science projects, such as BeeWatch and BeeWalk, both run by The Bumblebee Conservation Trust. What is the aim of these projects, and how are they beneficial?

If we are to effectively look after our bumblebees and other wild insects we need to know where they are, and how their populations are changing over time. Then we can target conservation efforts to the species and places that most need them, and see whether the things we are doing to help are actually working. Members of the public – “citizen scientists” – have an enormously important role to play here. The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme is a great long-running example, whereby the efforts of thousands of unpaid volunteers now provide a really accurate picture of how our butterfly populations have changed since the 1970s.

Your book is filled with fascinating facts about bees that I previously did not know. In your opinion, what have you found to be the most surprising discovery in regard to bees?

I first became hooked on studying bumblebees when I noticed how a bee in a patch of flowers will often fly up to a flower but then veer off without landing. I wondered what was wrong with these flowers. It took five years of research to find out that they were sniffing the flowers for the faint smelly footprint of a recent bee visitor – which would indicate that the flower is likely to be empty. Bees use lots of clever tricks like this to help them gather nectar and pollen efficiently. They are remarkably clever!

You mention in your book your fascination with bees from an early age. How do you think we can best encourage environmental awareness in young people?

We need to make sure that young people have regular opportunities to interact with nature, so they do not grow up regarding insects as alien, unfamiliar, and scary. I’d love to see every school having access to wild greenspace, and more support to help teachers themselves learn about nature so that they can enthuse the children. I’d also pair every school with a nature friendly farm, and provide support so that the children could visit the farm at least once or twice a year, to understand the connections between growing food and nature.

There has been much public concern regarding bees, pollination, and the future of our crops. With the increase in publicity and information on how we can make simple changes to help secure the bumblebee population, do you feel hopeful for the future?

It is great to see the growing public appetite for making gardens more wildlife friendly, and councils also reducing mowing and introducing meadow areas to parks. However, to really make a difference we need farming, which covers 70% of the UK, to move away from the current highly intensive approach, which is reliant on many pesticides. The new Agriculture Bill and Environmental Land Management Scheme might, if done properly, provide a mechanism for positive change.

Alongside the Buzz Club, a citizen science project that is focused on garden wildlife, do you have any other projects on the horizon you’d like to tell us about?

I have another book out in August 2021, Silent Earth. It is a blunt assessment of the dire plight of insects globally, but with suggestions as to how we could halt and reverse their declines. I hope it will help to persuade people that we are in a time of crisis, and that we need radical change.

Gardening for Bumblebees
By: Dave Goulson
Hardback | April 2021 | £13.99 ~~£16.99~~

An inspiring practical guide to creating pollinator-friendly spaces for all types of garden, no matter how large or small your patch is.

Discover other titles by Dave Goulson below.

The Garden Jungle

Paperback | £9.99

“An upbeat book about the wonders of the ecosystem in every garden.”
– The Times, summer reads of 2019

Bee Quest

Paperback | £7.99 ~~£9.99~~

“Dave Goulson […] has perfected the art of turning the entomologist’s technical expertise into easy-reading everyman’s prose. He also laces his stories with rich helpings of wit and humour.”
– Mark Cocker, Spectator

A Buzz in the Meadow

Paperback | £7.99 ~~£9.99~~

“Buy this book, give it as a present. It is required reading for being a human in the 21st century.”
– Matthew Cobb, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, New Scientist

A Sting in the Tale

Paperback | £7.99 ~~£9.99~~

“Goulson has plenty of wondrous biological stories to tell, as well as the tale of his own struggle to return the short-haired bumblebee to Britain.”
– Patrick Barkham, The Guardian

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

Author Interview with Andrew Painting: Regeneration

The Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms was acquired by the National Trust for Scotland in 1995, and has since experienced landscape-scale restoration with outstanding results. Discussing conservation, rewilding and land management, Regeneration is an honest account of both the progress made at Mar Lodge Estate and the challenges faced over the last 25 years.

After studying Environmental Anthropology at Aberdeen University, Regeneration author Andrew Painting moved to Scotland to volunteer with the RSPB. Since 2016, he has been Assistant Ecologist at the Mar Lodge Estate, and has documented its slow recovery. He has very kindly agreed to answer some questions about his book.

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

I’m a lifelong naturalist, but it took me quite a while to take the plunge into working professionally in conservation. My first degree was in English Literature, so I’m glad I’ve finally been able to put it to good use! I’ve been working in the ecology team at Mar Lodge since 2016, when the fruits of two decades of hard work were beginning to show, and I instantly fell in love with the place. By 2018, all the graphs and reports we were producing were looking very respectable, and I realised we were sitting on a story that deserved a larger audience than it was getting at the time. 2020 was the 25th anniversary of the National Trust for Scotland acquiring the site, and one eighth of the way into the Trusts’ 200 year management vision for the land, so it seemed like a good time for a stock-take.

Of course, it’s never as simple as that. Mar Lodge Estate is not perfect (nowhere is), and as I got down to writing the book I realised that the social and political complexities of the ‘Mar Lodge experience’ were just as important to discuss as the successes.

Though far more is needed to keep up with the increasing levels of environmental destruction, you write of much hope for the future. What do you think is the current biggest challenge conservationists are up against?

Often, the biggest challenge to solving any problem is getting people to accept that there is a problem in the first place. Thanks to decades of campaigning from people from all walks of life, I think we are now at the point where there is broad agreement about the scale of the twinned environmental and climate crises, and the necessity of social change to address them. Politicians across the political spectrum are waking up to the fact that environmental conservation is both a vote-winner and also extremely good value for money, while the private sector is realising that nature-based businesses can be both highly profitable and enjoy high levels of public support.

So now I think that the challenge is to be bold and ambitious, and to make the most of this ‘unfrozen moment’. We need nature, not just in our National Nature Reserves and SSSIs, but also in our farms and seas, along roadsides, in our urban areas, schools and places of business. We now need to lobby those increasingly receptive politicians to instigate progressive policies that incentivise returning nature to these places. To that end, for me, the real power of Mar Lodge Estate is not in the amount of wildlife or carbon it holds, but in the example of ecological restoration that it sets to other Highland estates.

Could you talk about a particular conservation success story over the course of the project?

With any luck, in the years to come the landscape-scale restoration of high altitude woodland across the Cairngorms will become a ‘textbook example’ of an effective, large-scale and long-term conservation project. This habitat, a mixture of cold and wind-stunted birch, juniper, pine and montane willow species, has been almost lost from the UK. But we are beginning to see it return at a landscape level at Mar Lodge and much more widely across the Cairngorms and Scotland. In the Cairngorms, this has been facilitated by a really nice mixture of traditional conservation work, high-tech genetics work and landscape-scale partnership working. This is still very much work-in-progress, but what’s really exciting about it for me personally is that we’re really only at the very beginning of a journey which will play out over decades. So every time I head out into the high hills I’m excited to see what I will come across.

Has documenting this project inspired you to get involved in any other long-term initiatives?

There’s a lot to choose from these days! I’m originally from the West Country, so have fond memories of the Avalon Marshes and Steart – both of which are hugely exciting projects. I’ll never forget seeing and hearing my first cranes on a very cold winter day in the Somerset Levels. But for sheer size and ambition, there are few projects more exciting than the ones currently underway in the Cairngorms.

You talk about the well-documented value of nature for our mental health, while also questioning how to facilitate the means for people to enjoy and benefit from nature without harming it in the process. Do you think eco-tourism is beneficial to conservation?

It certainly can be! There are projects across Scotland which are highlighting the benefits of eco-tourism to local economies, from the Borders to Mull to Cromarty to Sutherland. But eco-tourism isn’t a silver bullet – areas which are dependent on a single industry or land use are incredibly vulnerable to social, economic and ecological change, so it should really be seen as part of a larger solution to environmental problems, rather than a solution in and of itself. I do feel that potential impacts of eco-tourism on sensitive habitats and species can generally be mitigated through good land management practices, better education and more awareness of our own personal responsibilities towards nature. And of course, for nature to really thrive, we need to remember how to live alongside it everywhere. Why should people be content to see charismatic wildlife only on their holidays?

This is your first book, and it is a great achievement. Do you think it will be the first of many?

Right now I’m just looking forward to getting back out into the field! I’m not sure about ‘many’, but I think I’ve got a couple more books in me. And of course, I’ll have to do another Mar Lodge book in 25 years’ time to check in on progress!

Regeneration: The Rescue of a Wild Land
By: Andrew Painting
Hardback | March 2021 | £16.99 ~~£19.99~~

“Deftly weaving through the social and political complexities of nature conservation in Scotland the Regeneration of Mar Lodge is testimony to the miracles that can happen when disparate interests come together in common cause.”

Isabella Tree, author of Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm.

Browse our selection of conservation and biodiversity books

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

Conservation Land Management: Spring 2021

The magazine that went on to become Conservation Land Management (CLM) first went to print in the spring of 1993. At this time it was named enact, and was published by English Nature (the predecessor of Natural England). The aim then was to promote land management for nature conservation and provide easy-to-understand advice on useful techniques – an objective that CLM still stands by today, but now covering a much wider variety of conservation issues. Here, Assistant Editor Catherine Mitson highlights the key articles of the latest Spring 2021 issue.

The UK’s departure from the EU offers a number of opportunities for the environment, and in particular for the future of farming in the UK. And so, agricultural policy is undergoing a reform and a new payment scheme, the Environmental Land Management scheme (ELM), has been introduced to England.

ELM will pay farmers based on the public goods they provide, such as habitat restoration or flood management, as a means of contributing to the government’s 25 Year Environment Plan. But is ELM up to the task of delivering its aim? In this issue Alice Groom, RSPB’s senior policy officer, provides an up to date overview of what we know about ELM so far, the proposed timeline of the seven-year agricultural transition period, and, importantly, highlights the pitfalls and challenges that need to be addressed in order for ELM to be a success.

Staying within the theme of farming, exciting new approaches are being trialled in the The Great Fen, which stretches between Huntingdon and Peterborough, and is undergoing landscape-wide restoration to improve the sustainability of the fens for both people and wildlife. Within this vision, the Great Fen team are in the midst of the three-year Water Works project that is focused on a ‘wet farming’ approach. Wet farming is a type of agriculture on wetter soils, a much more suited approach for the natural conditions of the fens; this will help to protect peat, lock in carbon, support wildlife and provide local farmers with new economic opportunities.

Novel crops, such as gypsywort, bulrush, sphagnum moss and watercress, chosen for their potential uses for food, flavourings and medicine, are currently being trailed in specially prepared planting beds. Data is simultaneously being collected to measure the rate of carbon capture and loss in these trial plots – it is hoped that not only will carbon loss be reduced within the Great Fen, but also that these changes in fenland agriculture will help sequester carbon too.

Ribble Rivers Trust (RRT) also seeks to improve the condition of existing habitats, and uses an evidence-based approach to target land management where it will have the biggest benefits for wildlife, people, and the environment. Focused in the Ribble catchment in north-west England, Ellie Brown, GIS data and evidence officer at RRT, demonstrates how the use of mapping and data analysis has helped the charity to identify key areas for conservation projects.

One example of this has been along Bashall Brook. Using solar radiation maps RRT identified a particular stretch of the watercourse that was at risk of overheating. The main reason behind the increase in water temperature in this area was a lack of surrounding vegetation providing enough shade, and so it was decided to create a woodland running along either side of the bank. RRT is conscious to only ever plant trees where it is appropriate, and the resulting vegetation has helped to create much-needed shade along the brook.

In some circumstances all it takes is just a handful of people in a local community with a shared passion to come together to make a difference. In 1970 the Bristol section of the M5 motorway was opened and, during this work, a particular stretch of St George’s Hill had the topsoil removed from the roadside verge. Giles Morris, a conservation volunteer with St. George’s Flower Bank, describes how a dedicated team of volunteers from the local villages worked together to clear the encroaching scrub on this verge, and how this led to the establishment of a species-rich grassland. This on-going management project has been a huge success, and the site has since been declared a Local Nature Reserve.

Conservation success stories, such as that of St George’s Flower Bank, make for an inspirational read. And staying on a positive note, beavers are certainly grabbing the attention of many in recent years and have been reintroduced to a number of different sites across the UK. For our Introducing feature it was a delight to have 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.

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.

Phenology – the study of seasonal timing

Wild Daffodil by Charlie Jackson via Flickr

Although humans were undoubtedly more attuned to seasonal cycles in the pre-industrial era, the changing seasons and associated renewal and decay still exercise a powerful influence over us. Anyone who has ever smiled upon hearing the first swifts of the year screaming across the sky, or felt their spirits lift at the appearance of the first wild daffodils, is observing phenological events.

Phenology is the study of seasonal natural phenomena such as the budburst of trees, arrival and departure of summer migrants, first egg layings, emergence of hibernating animals and appearance of plankton blooms. Phenological records have greatly enhanced our understanding of ecological interactions, and have proven invaluable in demonstrating the effects of climate change on terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Our fascination with the rhythm of seasonal cycles persists even in our modernised world and many phenological records have been, and continue to be, provided by the public.

History of Phenology and Climate Change

Although strictly speaking the word ‘phenology’ refers to the study of seasonal events, its use has broadened to refer to the seasonal events themselves, i.e. when an event occurs during the year. Seasonal events such as budburst have been consistently recorded in the UK by generations of dedicated relatives of Robert Marsham (from 1736 until 1958), by English naturalists Gilbert White and William Markwick (from 1768 until 1793), by a network of 600 ‘Phenological Reports’ observers across the UK (from 1891 until 1948) and from 1949 by Jean Combes in Surrey.

Modern techniques to monitor phenology include vegetation indices and remote sensing from satellites and aerial surveys, rather than individual observations. These data have provided an essential record of key seasonal markers that have clearly shown a shift in the phenology of many species due to warming temperatures. The latest research indicates that oak budburst is now more than 11 days earlier than in the 19th Century. This has massive implications for the species that rely on oak trees and their associated invertebrate communities for food and shelter. Much of the research demonstrates that species such as Great Tits and Pied Flycatchers do not have the flexibility in their seasonal timing of egg laying and migrating to match the shift in tree and invertebrate emergence.

Phenological Interactions

In many ecosystems a seasonal abundance of a resource can drive natural selection, influencing which individuals of a species struggle or thrive. Individuals that can time their seasonal cycle to coincide with an abundance of food are usually more successful in terms of breeding or survival. For example, there is a very well researched phenological interaction between Great Tit nestling feeding and caterpillar abundance. The birds judge when to begin their breeding attempt so that the peak energetic demands of their chicks (around 12 days after hatching) matches a very brief peak in caterpillar numbers. The females that can do this more accurately and be more flexible to variation in timing between years (phenotypic plasticity), are more likely to have offspring that survive to breed themselves. There is an interaction between the caterpillars and the oak leaves they feed on too; the caterpillars need to emerge when the oak leaves are small, before the tannins in the leaves build up enough to stop them being eaten.

There are also less competitive and more mutually beneficial phenological interactions, such as between migrating hummingbirds and the flower species that rely on them for pollination, and between emerging insect pollinators and spring flowers. The intricacy and importance of phenological interactions between species has raised great concerns about the ability of entire ecosystems to adapt to warming temperatures. A phenological mismatch can occur when the timing between the interacting species or individuals does not change to the same degree.

Phenological Recording and Observing – How to Get Involved

The recording of phenological events has always relied on consistent, repeated observations by amateur naturalists and members of the public. By collating annual records of key phenological markers, extensive databases of seasonal records have been built up. Initiatives such as ‘Nature’s Calendar’ run by The Woodland Trust, gather data from thousands of volunteers and contribute long-term data to research projects. You can choose which species and events you record and know that you are contributing to an important project because these data are invaluable to researchers for tracking the effects of climate change on our seasonal ecology.

Nature’s Calendar also has a downloadable Phenological Calendar so that you can see where your records fit into national averages. This also gives you a fantastic insight into which seasonal events to look out for each year.

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

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.

Tag: Conservation

Author Interview with Charles Foster: The Screaming Sky

Author interview with Roy Dennis: Restoring the Wild

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust: Q&A with Dr Tony Gent

Author Interview with Dave Goulson: Gardening for Bumblebees

Author Interview with Andrew Painting: Regeneration

Conservation Land Management: Spring 2021

Phenology – the study of seasonal timing

History of Phenology and Climate Change

Phenological Interactions

Phenological Recording and Observing – How to Get Involved

Recommended Reading

Conservation Land Management magazine

Wilding for Conservation: new series in British Wildlife

Author Interview: Clive Chatters, Heathland