Devon Badger Group: Interview with Chair, Jenny Pike

Formed in 2010, the core aim of the Devon Badger Group is to protect badgers and their habitats. Funded by membership, donations and fundraising events around Devon, they run a free 24/7 helpline for sick or injured badgers and other badger-related issues.

We recently had the opportunity to chat with Jenny Pike, Chair of the Devon Badger Group, about the group’s important work, their successes and challenges, and how Covid-19 has affected their lives over the past year.


Firstly, can you give us a brief introduction to the Devon Badger Group and your role within the group?

My name is Jenny Pike and I am Chair of the Devon Badger Group (DBG). In a nutshell, the purpose of the DBG is to protect badgers and their habitat, record their activity, educate and further the public’s understanding of badgers, and to encourage tolerance, appreciation and respect for all wildlife. We also work with the police and RSPCA, and respond to any activities that could be detrimental to the welfare of badgers.

What do you consider to be the main threats to badgers in the UK?

Sadly there are many threats to badgers and, despite gaining legal protection in 1992, badger persecution is on the increase. In England, one of the biggest threats badgers face is the government licenced badger cull. Since the cull began in England in 2013, a total of 140,991 badgers have been killed, 30,345 of which have been in Devon.

Other serious threats are housing developments where, even if setts are protected with appropriate mitigation measures, a significant amount of foraging ground can be lost. New roads can also impact badgers if appropriate badger tunnels are not installed or are installed in the wrong place. Hunts sometimes block badger setts to prevent foxes escaping down them and, as already mentioned, illegal badger persecution is on the rise along with other forms of organised wildlife crime such as dog fighting.

I am sure everyone will have seen many badgers dead on the side of the road. No one knows exactly how many badgers are killed by vehicles each year – one estimate has it at 50,000.

What are your main goals as a group?

Our main aims are to protect badgers, their setts, and their habitats. But we feel that if we can increase the public’s understanding of badgers and dispel some of the myths, people will feel more encouraged to protect them. Sadly, most people we talk to have never seen a live badger. This is why, whenever we are contacted by members of the public who think they have badgers visiting their gardens, we offer to put up a trail camera so they can actually watch visiting badgers go about their business, which is usually looking for earthworms and other invertebrates. This often has a very positive effect and has changed people’s view of badgers.

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

In 2019, through some very generous grants and donations, the DBG was able to fund two members to train to become licenced lay vaccinators. I was lucky enough to be one of them. Since then, we have worked in collaboration with the Somerset Badger Group to vaccinate badgers in Devon and Somerset, which has allowed us to gain valuable experience. We hope this will continue and expand in the future. 

Covid-19 has caused difficulties and presented issues for all of us. How has the pandemic affected the work that the DBG does, and have there been any unforeseen positive effects?

On the positive side, it is possible that less cars on the road in the first lockdown resulted in fewer badgers being killed or injured. Spring is when cubs are still dependent on their mums and when most road casualties occur, and so this would have had a significant effect on badger cub survival rates if mum survived to successfully wean them.

On the negative side, although we were given permission by Devon and Cornwall Police to continue to rescue injured badgers on animal welfare grounds, we were not able to carry out sett surveys, monitor setts which had been targeted previously, or visit homeowners who had contacted us for advice on badger issues. We were also unable to carry out our regular fundraising activities which, in normal circumstances, not only provides much needed funds, but also gives us an important opportunity to engage with the public and answer their questions. This is something I personally have missed a great deal as there is no substitute for face-to-face communication.

Having said that, we have been able to continue our most important work by keeping in regular contact with our committee and members through electronic communication, Zoom and Teams meetings. This has had an unexpected benefit of not only reducing our carbon footprint, but also allowing us to engage with our members across the whole of the county (internet permitting!).

You mention that you sometimes use trail cameras in some of your work – could you tell us a bit more about this?

We use trail cameras extensively in the DBG and they have been invaluable in proving setts are active in cases of sett disturbance and sett blocking. They have also been used to great effect when showing school children the wonders of a shy nocturnal animal they would never usually see. I have been using a number of cameras recently on a beaver enclosure to ensure the badgers and other wildlife are able to move freely in and out (except the beavers of course!). I also have my own trail camera and I still maintain that it was the best Christmas present ever. I use it all the time for monitoring the wildlife in my own garden in Plymouth.

In May of last year, the government announced that they hope to shift away from culling and towards badger vaccination to help in the fight to eradicate bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in England. What does this mean for the group and will the DBG be involved with badger vaccination programmes?

The Devon Badger Group is opposed to the badger culls but, of course, recognises the distress and hardship bTB causes for farmers, their families and their animals. We sincerely hope that the government honours its commitment to progressing a vaccine which is much more likely to provide real benefits to farmers and their cattle than the current bTB strategy.

Controlling the spread of bTB is a complex issue that will need a raft of measures to tackle, but they must all be backed up by sound scientific evidence. The role badgers play in bTB transmission is still not fully understood: what limited studies have been carried out to determine the prevalence of bTB in badgers have concluded that approximately 4.5% of badgers tested are infected with bTB. It is now accepted that the vast majority of bTB transmission to cattle is from other cattle, but this was previously unclear due to the poor accuracy of the routinely used skin test. This skin test has been found to be around 50-80% accurate, resulting in up to 1 in 5 infected cattle remaining undetected in the herd to pass on the infection.

With this in mind, and the fact that bTB can live in soil and slurry for many months, there is enough doubt on the role badgers play in disease transmission to compel the government to re-evaluate their bTB strategy for the benefit of farmers and the whole farming industry.

We welcome the government’s commitment to replace badger culling with the more humane badger vaccination and we hope to be involved in any future badger vaccination initiatives. We would be very happy to work with and support Defra and other organisations in delivering on this new initiative until a more effective cattle vaccine can be deployed.

It is obvious that you are very passionate about badgers and love them dearly. What is your favourite fact about badgers?     

As large as they are, their main food source is earthworms and they have to delicately pull them out of the ground without snapping them!

How can people help protect badgers and get involved in their local area?

Please keep an eye on your local area, especially if you have any setts near you. If you would like help on identifying signs of badgers, we would be more than happy to help (Covid-19 permitting).

Report any suspicious activity around badger setts to the police and do also let us know. Please also report dead badgers to us – in spring this is important if it is a lactating female with dependent cubs below ground.

Please consider joining the Devon Badger Group. We are a small but active group but have one of the largest and most rural counties in England to cover.

We can be contacted at devonbadgergroup@gmail.com and on our 24/7 helpline number 07710 971988 or I can be contacted direct on 07791 490572.

 

Nurture for Nature: Interview with Dr. Amir Khan

Dr. Amir Khan is a GP, well-known for his regular appearances on Lorraine and Good Morning Britain. As a lifelong lover of wildlife, he is also ambassador for the Wildlife Trusts and Butterfly Conservation. He is passionate about connection with the natural world as a mutually beneficial practice which can not only improve our mental and physical health, but is also necessary to ensure the conservation and biodiversity of local areas.

From April this year, Dr. Khan is fronting Butterfly Conservation’s Nurture for Nature campaign which aims to get people involved with the wildlife in their gardens and local wild spaces. We recently chatted with him about the campaign as well as his love of the natural world.


Your incredibly popular Instagram and Twitter accounts are full of beautiful images and descriptions of your local wildlife encounters. Have wildlife and conservation always been passions of yours?

I have been a lover of wildlife from an early age, my dad and I used to watch nature documentaries together. He wasn’t well enough to get out of the house so I would tell him about what I had seen in the woods or local park. As I got older, I learned about wildlife gardening and the importance of nature on our health. I am passionate about everyone, from all walks of life, having access to nature and that means conserving it. It has such important wellbeing effects that everyone should get to experience. I experienced the benefits of nature on my mental health during the pandemic, when I would come home from the surgery after visiting my patients in nursing homes; nature helped me during these difficult times.

As an ambassador for Butterfly Conservation you are also going to be fronting their new Nurture for Nature campaign. Can you tell us a bit more about this and what it hopes to achieve?

Butterflies and insects are vital pollinators and we need them in our lives to keep us alive! By understanding that by helping nature we are actually helping ourselves, I am hoping people will see the wider benefit of doing simple things that can encourage some of these wonderful creatures to visit them. We have to remember that, at this time of year, many insects are emerging from a long winter and need areas where they can feed to get them going for the spring and summer months. They will then get the mental and physical benefits that being close to nature provides and our insects get more areas to feed, drink and rest.

Hopefully lots more people will be inspired to get into their gardens this year as a result of the campaign. Do you have plans for your own garden this year?

I am really excited about my garden this year. After what feels like a very long winter, I want my garden to feel like a haven for both myself and the wildlife that visit or live there. I am making sure every corner has something in it to entice wildlife. There is nothing better than a summer’s day in the garden, simply watching the insects going about their business whilst you potter about. And knowing they are feeding off the plants and flowers you planted is a lovely feeling.

We’ve also heard that you’re hoping to get into moth trapping! What is it about moths that interests you?

I absolutely love moths! I think they are the most underrated insects in our gardens. They are vital pollinators but have a bit of a bad reputation, probably down to the fact that many of them are nocturnal so we are just not as familiar with them. I want to show people that moths are just as amazing as butterflies and just as beautiful. By doing some moth trapping this summer I am hoping to catch and showcase some of the gorgeous moths that live right under our noses!

It’s fascinating to read about the link between lifestyle choices and their impacts on mental and physical health. How do you feel that a connection with wildlife and an appreciation for nature fit into this picture?

There is so much proven science behind the wellbeing effects of nature. When we are amongst natural spaces, listening to bird song or spending time immersed in nature, our bodies produce chemicals that make us feel content and happy – we produce less stress hormones which can help reduce blood pressure and heart rate, having an overall calming feeling on our minds and bodies. We need to embrace and encourage this as part of our every day lifestyles. This is why we need to conserve green spaces so that everyone can benefit from them.


Find out more about the Nurture for Nature campaign and sign up for your free gardening and wellness guide on the Butterfly Conservation website.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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

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.

Natterjack – by Chris Dresh

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.

6th International Berlin Bat Conference – Interview with Christian Voigt

The 6th International Berlin Bat Meeting is due to be held online from 22nd–24th March 2021 and will consist of a series of live lectures delivered via video link. To make it possible for people to attend from around the world, the lectures will also be available to watch on demand. At NHBS, we’ve always loved being involved with the Berlin Bat Meeting and hope that soon we can attend again in person!

In the build up to this exciting event, organiser Dr. Christian Voigt kindly took the time to answer some questions about this year’s meeting. Dr Voigt is Head of the Department of Evolutionary Ecology at Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin and Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Centre for Stable Isotope Ecology.


Organiser Christian Voigt

The theme of this year’s International Berlin Bat Meeting is ‘The Human Perspective on Bats’. Can you tell us why you decided to choose this particular theme?

We decided on this topic because we became aware of the necessity to address bat conservation from a more holistic approach. Conservationists often have the saying ‘wildlife management is the management of humans’ and this is very much true. We need to better understand the emotions and attitudes of humans towards wildlife in general and bats in particular, in order to protect wildlife and bats respectively. Ultimately, this will make conservation more efficient. The Covid-19 pandemic told us that we were right because many aspects of bat conservation have turned more difficult when some people changed their attitude towards bats. It is important to remember that bat conservation does not only mean dealing with the protection of bat populations but also with their ecosystem function. In many cases, bats are very helpful for humans, e.g. by consuming large numbers of pest insects or because they pollinate flowers or disperse seeds. Becoming aware of these ecosystem services might change people’s minds about why they should care for bats. Lastly, zoonotic diseases such as Covid-19 emerge because the way we treat wildlife is wrong. Poaching, wet markets, our whole interaction with wildlife has to be reconsidered and we will be talking about this during the International Berlin Bat Meeting. The topic of the upcoming IBBM `’The human perspective on bats’ is more relevant and timely than ever.

What do you think are the key conservation challenges currently faced by bats?

The major challenge is now to re-establish a good reputation for bats. Bats are key players in ecosystems, they are important indicator species, and many species are rare or even threatened. We need to care for them.

How do you hope that this meeting will contribute to the work required to address these challenges?

Our hope is that we come up with ideas about how to approach bat conservation and human-bat interactions from a different angle. This conference will bring together people from various geographic backgrounds and from a variety of disciplines. It is this exchange of ideas and perspective that make the IBBM quite unique among bat conferences.

Meetings such as these provide an unrivalled chance for attendees to share ideas and network. Do you know of any key projects or collaborations that have arisen from previous International Berlin Bat Meetings?

The networking that happens during these meetings is huge. The very first IBBM on bat migration brought this topic to the attention of many people and lots of papers have been published since then. Specifically, our meeting on bat diseases, right when white-nose syndrome hit North American bats, stimulated a lot of excellent research on both continents. I remember that we sat together during the IBBM and discussed what should be done and what to expect.

Organising an online meeting must be very different in comparison to organising an ‘in person’ event. How have you found the process? And have you noticed that there are benefits to this format, as well as challenges?

Organizing an online meeting is overall not difficult, it was the postponing of the conference, not knowing when to reschedule it and not knowing how people would respond to an online instead of a presence conference that caused us sleepless nights. Now that we have already organized a few online events, the task seems doable. Overall, the benefits are that people from many more places on our globe can participate in this event without having to pay the travel costs. The challenge for these kinds of conferences is to maintain a format in which people feel encouraged to discuss and to interact. This can be better achieved when you meet in person, e.g. during coffee breaks. It is my hope that we have a very lively discussion and a very stimulating event.


For more information and to register for the 6th International Berlin Bat Meeting, visit the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research website.

Author interview with Dean R. Lomax: Locked in Time

Dean Lomax digging up dinosaurs at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center.

Dean R. Lomax is an internationally recognized palaeontologist, author, television presenter, and science communicator. He is currently a visiting scientist at the University of Manchester and is a leading authority on ichthyosaurs. He is due to publish a remarkable popular science book, Locked in Time, that looks at what the fossil record can tell us about behaviours of extinct animals by way of fifty remarkable examples. Leading up to publication, we reached out to Dean and asked him some questions.

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

My passion for palaeontology stems from my childhood fascination with everything dinosaur. In high school, I was not very gifted academically and my grades were not good enough to attend university so at the age of 18 I ended up selling my possessions – including my cherished Star Wars collection(!) – to help fund a trip to excavate dinosaurs at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in the USA. That trip changed my life and formed the backbone of my career. Not only did it provide me with the necessary experience I needed to help build a career in palaeontology, but it is where the idea for Locked in Time originated. Whilst looking at the museum displays, one particularly outstanding fossil caught my eye. A trackway with its maker preserved at the very end – an animal that had literally been caught dead in its tracks. I had never seen anything like this fossil before, in books, in museums or in documentaries. This prehistoric story was preserved in time for all to see. I was hooked. It gave me that spark to discover more about prehistoric animals and their behaviours and I even ended up describing this particular fossil in the scientific literature.

In your introduction, you mention the field of palaeoethology (the study of fossils to infer behaviour). How big of a subfield is this in palaeontology? Are there specialised palaeoethologists, or is it more a case of palaeontologists contributing to this field whenever someone finds something?

Palaeoethology is a fascinating subject that allows us to explore the study of behaviours of extinct species through the evidence preserved in fossils. It is a small subfield of palaeontology, due mostly to the rarity of fossils with direct and reliable evidence of behaviours preserved. There aren’t necessarily any specialised palaeoethologists, but rather those palaeontologists who contribute to the field when something is found and described; however, palaeontologists may often be entirely unaware that they are actively contributing to the field because the idea of ethology/behaviour in the fossil record can easily be overlooked. Having said that, there are some palaeontologists that could easily add ‘palaeoethologist’ to their CVs, most notably those who work with amber which often preserve snapshots of behaviours in action. A real pioneer in the field of palaeoethology was Dr Arthur Boucot. He spent years searching for evidence of behaviours in prehistoric animals, writing numerous papers and academic monographs, and even introduced the term “frozen behaviour” for those instances where an extinct organism was preserved in the midst of some type of behaviour. Delving into his history and research was genuinely inspiring. As I have researched and published on multiple specimens and have written this book, I guess this probably qualifies me as a palaeoethologist too.

Ideas about behaviour are important to those who produce artwork depicting prehistoric lifeforms, i.e. palaeoartists. Do you find there is much of an exchange between palaeontologists and palaeoartists to try and depict behaviour in artwork according to the latest science?

The field of palaeoart has grown immensely over the last twenty years. In fact, several palaeoartists have become excellent scientists in their own right, including Bob Nicholls (the artist for this book), who has co-authored multiple scientific studies. Good palaeoartists stay informed of the latest scientific research and discoveries, with several often working very closely with palaeontologists to ensure their reconstructions are scientifically accurate. Subsequently, when based on the latest science, thoroughly researched palaeoart reconstructions are anatomically plausible. However, that said, practically all aspects of behaviour depicted in palaeoart are not based on direct evidence but assumptions. Usually, the best a palaeoartist can do is look at an extinct animal’s anatomy and environment and speculate about its lifestyle and behaviours. This is why fossilised evidence of behaviours, like those contained inside this book, are so precious and important to study and understand. These remarkable fossils tell us that prehistoric creatures were not movie monsters (prehistoric life, especially dinosaurs, are too often portrayed as roaring monsters!) but real animals that behaved in a variety of familiar and surprising ways.

What have technological advancements contributed to this line of inquiry? Are palaeontologists going back to old fossil material to reexamine them with new tools and finding new evidence of fossilised behaviour?

The use of flashy, high-tech computers, scanners and the like have helped to unlock an entirely new world of information contained in fossils. As a result, not only are newly discovered fossils subjected to this technology but much older fossil discoveries, where none of these technologies were previously available, can now be reanalysed with a fresh approach, breathing new life into old fossils as it were. This has led to some exciting discoveries of fossilised behaviours in specimens that have otherwise been deemed as having little to no research value.

Whether dinosaurs or early mammals, prehistoric organisms were faced with many of the same basic challenges as animals alive today. Has the fossil record revealed any examples of behaviours that were unique and now effectively extinct?

These types of questions are what get me excited about unravelling the mysteries of prehistoric behaviour. In many cases, “the present is the key to the past”, as geologist Charles Lyell famously introduced in the 1800s, and this definitely holds true with understanding behaviour. For example, on a basic level, we know that some groups of mammals live in herds today and that some extinct mammals also lived in herds millions of years ago (we have good fossil evidence for this). However, the natural world is filled with so many incredible acts of behaviour that you might expect the fossil record would reveal something unique. As such, perhaps one of the most unusual and apparently unique behaviours was recorded in an ancient roughly 430 million-year-old arthropod nicknamed the ‘kite runner’. The young of this arthropod were literally tethered to the parents via long spines. It appears to be the only known occurrence of this type of brooding behaviour known among fossil or living arthropods.

Rather than body fossils, past behaviour is often deduced from so-called trace fossils or ichnofossils. Nests, fossilised footprints, and trackways must be fairly easy to recognize. But what about the harder-to-identify traces? Do palaeontologists frequently encounter suspected ichnofossils where they don’t know who made them, how they were made, or perhaps even what they represent?

Yes, palaeontologists (or palaeoichnologists) frequently encounter mysterious trace fossils that are difficult or near impossible to identify or decipher. By their very definition, trace fossils represent evidence of behaviour, so we can say with confidence that an ancient animal made a nest, left its tracks or created a burrow, but they generally do not provide all of the tell-tale signs that allow us to identify what organism made it, how it was made or even what the trace might really represent. To find definite answers, we have to go a step further. In much rarer circumstances some trace fossils provide more than a ‘simple’ track or burrow and may be directly related with its maker, such that the body fossil is present inside the burrow or at the end of the track. In other examples, a track might show where the animal walked, stopped, sat down and then walked away, or a burrow might preserve evidence of scratch marks that could indicate how the burrow may have been constructed and by whom. These types of fossils provide much more information about specific moments (and behaviours) in deep time.

Were there any examples of fossilised behaviour that did not make the cut for this book but that you would have loved to include, or any noteworthy recent discoveries?

Having spent a substantial amount of time combing through hundreds of scientific papers and books, and examining specimens in museum collections, my initial plan was to tell the story of prehistoric behaviour through 100 fossils, rather than 50. It was incredibly tough selecting 100 fossils, so cutting this in half was much harder! I had to rank each of the fossils against one another, in terms of the type of behaviour, type of animal and so forth. This meant some really unusual specimens, like the aforementioned ‘kite runner’, did not make the final cut. One fossil that I would have really liked to include, and which has received worldwide media attention recently, is the so-called ‘Dueling Dinosaurs’ fossil, which appears to preserve a Tyrannosaurs and Triceratops locked in combat. I opted not to include the specimen as it has yet to be formally described, although I do make some subtle references to it. I’m very excited to see what research is revealed from this fossil, especially as only one fighting dinosaur fossil has been described, which inspired the book’s cover.

Finally, what are some of the biggest unanswered questions when it comes to fossilised behaviour? What would you love to find?

There are so many ancient groups and species that it would be easy for me to rattle off a list of some of the biggest unanswered questions about fossilised behaviour, but the reality is that we have only really scratched the surface. We have so much to learn when it comes to fossilised behaviour. After all, inferring and attempting to understand behaviour in long-extinct organisms is incredibly hard and is made even more challenging when evidence of behaviours are not preserved. It is also vitally important to remember that, by its very nature, the process of fossilisation is already an incredibly rare event, so to have any form of evidence for ancient fossilised behaviour preserved is genuinely astonishing.

Ooh, what would I love to find! I’m torn between several imaginary fossils, but if I was forced to choose one then it would have to be finding a dinosaur dead in its tracks. The thrill of following in the footsteps of a dinosaur only to find its skeleton lying at the very end of the track would be the ultimate dinosaur detective story.

Locked in TimeLocked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Extraordinary Fossils
By: Dean R. Lomax
Hardback | May 2021

 

 

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.

 

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.