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Return of the native
Guardian, 30 December 2005
Wildlife and conservation groups are increasingly buying farmland to
return it to vanished wilderness. The enthusiasm for conservancy
schemes is being financed by mass-membership organisations and grants
from the lottery and other funding bodies. Private reserves established
by people quitting city life have added to the accumulation of wildlife
sanctuaries. The metamorphosis is becoming increasingly visible as
nature charities buy land next to reserves in the belief that larger
uncultivated tracts generate greater biodiversity. The clustering is
most visible in places such as the Purbeck peninsula in Dorset, where
tended fields are becoming heath and moorland.
The 47
local county wildlife trusts have extended their own reserves from
55,000 hectares in 1994 to 82,000 this year. Their membership has also
ballooned, more than doubling to 600,000 paying supporters in 10 years.
The trusts' combined annual income is now £100m. The RSPB, with more
than a million members, has been one of the largest purchasers of land.
It owns or manages 129,000 hectares, turning farmland into more
diversified habitats.
This
year the Wilderness Foundation, the charity founded by Laurens van der
Post, revealed a proposal to gradually replace 800,000 hectares of
traditional farmland with reserves, possibly inhabited by vanished
species such as elk, moose, beaver and wild horse.
Toby
Aykroyd, vice-chairman of the foundation, says piecemeal accumulation of
land is laying the foundation for large-scale reclamation. He believes
conservationists have lost faith in the government's classification of
sites of special scientific interest. "One of the problems of
agro-environmental subsidies is that they are short-lived," he says.
"What happens to farms once these financial incentives cease?
"Large-area conservation is relatively new but it's catching on rapidly.
This is the best opportunity since the iron age - when large-scale
tree-felling began for smelting - to transform the landscape. There are
so many benefits: tourism income, flood mitigation in valleys, carbon
sequestration, water purification. Marginal land will become uneconomic
under a reformed Common Agricultural Policy. It's one of the rare
situations where conservation and economics are working in the same
direction."
In the
US, "re-wilding" means returning land to its state before settlement by
Europeans, but in Britain the landscape has been formed by thousands of
years of human occupation. Managed grazing prevents most sites reverting
to wild forest. Rare birds, such as the red kite and bustard, have been
reintroduced but the emphasis has been less on safari-style tourism.
However, plans to reintroduce bears, lynx, wild boar and wolves are
under consideration on several Scottish estates.
The
loss of cultivated land is becoming more common, the National Farmers'
Union says. "With reform of the CAP even more is likely to go up for
sale," says Fiona Howie, the union's countryside adviser. "Some farmers
are deciding it's just not viable to continue; the average age of a
farmer in the UK is now 58. The countryside will be messier, with more
scrubland. It will be changing."
www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,1675287,00.html
Opening to all, England’s
coast trail
The Observer, 18 December
2005
Martin Doughty, Natural
England’s chairperson in waiting, described some of the initiatives of
the new agency in an interview with The Observer.
After the success of
coastal paths in Pembrokeshire and the West Country, plans are being
made for an all-England coast path, which would draw attention to the
role of the agency in encouraging countryside access. The round-England
coast path is being developed with the support of Defra, as an extension
of public access given by the CROW Act.
The coastal path would be
accompanied by a biodiversity corridor, part of a wider vision to work
on a big scale to counter the danger that small, protected habitats are
increasingly seen as too small to contain species forced to change their
behaviour because of climate change.
The corridor strategy
would need to recruit large areas of farmland that has been transformed
to make it more attractive to species to migrate to or move through on
their way to safer areas.
Cattle not helped by UK
badger cull
The
Scientist, 15 December 2005
Research
published this week in Nature, provides strong evidence that
culling badgers -- which can carry the agent that causes bovine TB --
actually exacerbates the problem by raising the incidence of TB in
cattle living nearby. The results help to clarify contradictory results
on whether culling badgers can control bovine TB, but the Department for
Environmental Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) announced today that they
are opening the possibility of large-scale cull to public opinion.
"We found
that a single culling policy -- that of widespread and repeated culling
of badgers -- yielded both a reduction of 19% in TB incidence in cattle
within the culled area and an increase of 29% in TB incidence in cattle
in the surrounding area," Christl Donnelly, lead author of the Nature
paper, told The Scientist. She is based at the Department of
Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, UK.
These
findings demonstrate that badger culling has an overall negative effect
on TB rates in cattle, according to Rosie Woodroffe at the University of
California, Davis, lead author of an accompanying paper in the
Journal of Applied Ecology. Woodroffe said the findings should
signal a new direction in TB control policy. "I would imagine that
future studies will be likely to focus on other approaches to TB
control, rather than culling," she said.
Badgers
were implicated in the spread of bovine TB during the 1970s.These latest
findings result from the Krebs report, a series of government sponsored
experiments during which more than 30,000 badgers were culled despite
their legally-protected status. The scale of the operation has angered
conservationists, who have called for a better understanding of badger
behavior rather than their wholesale destruction. "Only a fraction –
less than 1% – of badgers are infectious," a spokesman for the Badger
Trust told The Scientist. The current UK population is estimated
to number approximately 250,000 animals.
According
to Woodroffe, the findings suggest "highly complex transmission
dynamics." In areas where culling took place, badgers ranged over
greater distances. Culling appears to disrupt social groups, and the
increased mobility potentially leads to greater contact – and hence
disease transmission – with cattle, she said. These findings also help
explain why previous research showed that TB rates in cattle fell after
researchers practically eradicated badgers, but increased after local
culling. "Small-scale culling, such as that which might be advocated as
a compromise between conservation and farming concerns, or by farmers
acting illegally, is actually the worst possible approach in terms of
controlling infection in cattle," Woodroffe told The Scientist.
www.the-scientist.com/news/20051215/01
C.A. Donnelly
et al., "Positive and negative effects of widespread badger culling on
tuberculosis in cattle," Nature, December 14, 2005.
http://www.nature.com/
R. Woodroffe
et al., "Effects of culling on badger Meles meles spatial
organization: implications for the control of bovine tuberculosis,"
Journal of Applied Ecology, December 14, 2005
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-8901
DEFRA
announces new measures to tackle bovine tb in England
Defra News
Release 587/05, 15
December 2005
New measures to
tackle bovine TB in cattle in England, including the pre-movement
testing of cattle and a 12-week consultation on badger culling, were
announced by Defra today.
Bovine TB is a
serious infectious disease of cattle, which also affects wildlife and
has potential human health risks. It has been increasing at a rate of
18% a year. In 1986, 599 cattle were compulsorily slaughtered because of
TB. By 2004, this had increased to 22,570.1 The disease cost
the taxpayer £90.5 million last year.
The measures
consist of:
-
A public
consultation on the principle and method of a badger culling policy in
areas of high TB incidence in cattle.
-
The
introduction of a requirement for pre-movement testing to reduce the
spread of bovine TB through movement of cattle. This requirement will
apply to cattle over 15 months of age moving out of 1 and 2 year
tested herds.
-
The
introduction of a new compensation scheme to bring into line payments
for bovine TB and three other cattle diseases. This follows the
findings of a number of independent reports showing serious
overpayments under the current bovine TB compensation system.
Today’s
announcement follows the publication yesterday of interim findings from
the Government’s badger culling trials. It also follows a cost benefit
analysis by DEFRA of a number of badger culling options drawing on all
the available science up to and including the recent trials conducted in
the Republic of Ireland.
The consultation
paper seeks views on three potential options that could be used should
badger culling be introduced:
In addition to these measures, the Government
continues to pursue the development of vaccines for cattle and badgers.
The use of the gamma interferon test will be extended as an adjunct to the
skin test in order to improve diagnosis of the disease.
Biodiversity grant scheme launched "working to
halt the loss of biological diversity"
Defra News
Release 592/05,
15 December 2005
English Nature
has launched the new Countdown 2010 Biodiversity Action Fund. This fund
will support projects that help achieve the UK government’s commitment
to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010, through delivering the
objectives of the England Biodiversity Strategy and Biodiversity Action
Plan targets.
The Countdown
2010 Biodiversity Action Fund is the new name for the Environmental
Action Fund (EAF) biodiversity stream which was previously administered
by Defra.
Only voluntary
conservation sector organisations are eligible to apply for this fund.
Grants will be made for two years (2006/07 and 2007/08) and the value of
awards will be between £25,000 and £250,000 per year.
Application form
and guidance notes can be downloaded from
www.english-nature.org.uk/about/countdown.htm.
The closing date
for applications is 19 January 2006. For more information contact
Trudie Mills on 01733 455185 or email
countdown2010@english-nature.org.uk.
Strutting black grouse
still in the red
RSPB News Release, 15
December 2005
Black grouse numbers
are continuing to tumble despite efforts to halt their decline. While
conservation work is turning the bird’s fortunes around in Wales and
north England, populations in Scotland are still in steep decline.
A new
survey shows that numbers of this spectacular bird, best known for its
spectacular, dawn mating display or ‘lek’, have dropped by 22 per cent
in Britain and in Scotland alone, by 29 per cent in ten years. In
northern England, populations are stable. Black grouse have been most
successful in Wales, where intensive habitat management has helped the
small population increase by 39 per cent. The survey is a partnership
project between the RSPB, The Forestry Commission Scotland, The Game
Conservancy Trust, DEFRA and the Countryside Council for Wales (on
behalf of statutory conservation agencies).
The
bird’s needs are complex because the habitats and food it seeks change
with the seasons and it will not travel far to find them. Reversing
declines is made more difficult because black grouse use different
habitats in different locations; in England, the bird uses open moorland
but in Wales and Scotland, it is associated with forests.
It needs
a mosaic of land features including dense vegetation cover for nesting
and protection from predators, mature woodland for winter food -
particularly berries - areas of young, widely spaced trees with a
well-developed under storey and herb-rich boggy areas that host
invertebrate food on which chicks are fed.
Dr Steve
Gregory, Research Purchasing Manager for The Forestry Commission said:
“We are working with Biodiversity Action Plan partners throughout Great
Britain, including the RSPB, to try to ensure that this charismatic
species recovers and thrives.
“Our
grant schemes offer generous funds to encourage landowners to undertake
work to improve biodiversity and may be used to create or improve black
grouse habitats. We are also working at a number of sites on our own
landholdings to restore and improve black grouse habitats.”
www.rspb.org.uk
50
Wild Boar Are In Forest -
first press
coverage for a WN meeting - see the
meeting report
The Citizen newspaper (Gloucester) 8 December
2005
How to manage the growing wild boar population
was the subject of a workshop held near Gloucester.
Defra is holding the consultation period until January 6 to garner
opinion on what steps should be taken, if any, to manage the population.
And the workshop, at Nature in Art in
Twigworth, was organised by the British Association of Nature
Conservationists and the Wildland Network.
Senior wildlife management advisor from Defra,
Charlie Wilson, said he believed there were around 50 animals living in
the Forest of Dean. And he explained there were a range of proposals,
ranging from managing the species, to eradicating them from the
countryside completely.
"Wild boar is a former native species that
went extinct, perhaps as long ago as the 13th Century," he explained. "It
has been suggested that they are a species that could be reintroduced.
"But they are a large,
pretty formidable and potentially damaging species that we're not used to
having in the British countryside."
It is believed there are two main populations of wild boar in the Forest
of Dean - one close to Ross-on-Wye, which is of true wild boar, and a
second, cross-breed, around Staunton.
Mr Wilson said the population had been on the
increase due to animals escaping from farms or estates and breeding in
wild woodlands in areas including the Forest of Dean.
"The biggest concern
from the agricultural industry is the potential risk of disease," he said.
Responses to the consultation period will be
analysed after January 6. To take part in the survey obtain the
consultation document by calling Defra on 01904 462062, or by logging on
to
www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/wild-boar/index.htm
Wildlife
Trusts launch Wetland Restoration Manual
The Wildlife Trusts, 8 December 2005
Developed by The Wildlife Trusts with partners
across the UK, the manual gives guidance based on expert advice, using
real-life case studies to demonstrate good practice. This 16-chapter,
660-page, ring-bound manual contains guidance
for the conservation professional
on: the background to wetland issues;
water-level control; physical works; the main UK wetland habitat types,
their protection and restoration; post-industrial land opportunities for
wetlands; invasive species; survey and monitoring; and canals.
Copies of the Wetland Restoration Manual,
priced at £45, are being distributed by NHBS Tel: 01803 805913, email
customer.services@nhbs.co.uk,
web site: www.nhbs.com
For further information contact Chris Rostron,
Water for Wildlife Manager, The Wildlife Trusts,
Tel: 01773 881176, email:
CRostron@derbyshirewt.co.uk
England’s biodiversity plans to benefit from £13.5m funding programme
SITA Trust press release, 1 December
2005
A new Landfill Tax Credit Scheme programme,
called Enriching Nature, is being launched by SITA Trust and will have
£13.5m to dispense on application.
Enriching Nature will provide funding to
support species and habitats that have been identified as a national
priority by Biodiversity Action Plans. Species such as greater horseshoe
bats, rare butterflies and birds as well as specialised habitat such as
wetlands and ancient woods will all receive support. The funding should
normally be used to improve the environment within ten miles of a landfill
site in England.
Each region in England will receive £500,000
for the next three years. SITA Trust, in partnership with the Regional
Biodiversity Partnership in each region has established panels of regional
biodiversity experts, which will assess every application and make
recommendations to the SITA Trust Board about which ones should be
supported.
For more information about how to apply for
funding through the Enriching Nature Programme please call SITA Trust on
(01454) 262910 or visit
www.sitatrust.org.uk
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