UKC

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/29/natural-world-disappe...

Anyone of my age or older should have noticed this.

When was the last time you walked through a field full of butterflies? That used to happen. Not in recent years.

He is so right about the human flaw in not noticing incremental changes. We are like the frog sitting in a pot of water slowing heating up. But its not just us in the pot.

Again, I find my own enjoyment of nature curtailed by a painful awareness of its disappearance. Even on a micro local level: local 'improvements' to the park mostly entailed anothet tarmaced path, another picnic table, rarely more trees, rarely more ponds or wild areas. 

Argh.

Recently returned to donating to Greenpeace looking for an effective campaigner to protect the seas. Recently objected to two developments, one another pointless golf club on a dune ecosystem. What are we doing, people?

 

In reply to Flinticus:

Thinking locally - normal gardening is very damaging - reduce total wild ares, plant a few selective plants not always aligned with local fauna, remove natural habitats (decaying wood, overgrown 'weeds').

In reply to Flinticus:

Yesterday, actually. In North Somerset where they were turning the hay they'd cut, although it's true that there appeared to be only a few species present. This reminds me of another thread here recently where some chap from London commented that England had very few areas of woodland and grass -- some people need to get out more.

 

In reply to wurzelinzummerset:

I get out a lot. 

The overwhelming evidence, despite your experience, is of calamitous decline in wild life populations. Are you actually disputing the decline in wild life and habitats? 

Just so I know whether there is any point in further engagement with you.

In reply to wurzelinzummerset:

England has a very small percentage of woodland compared to the rest of Europe, and I’ve noticed in my lifetime the drastic reduction in hedgerows 

 

In reply to Flinticus:

I was talking to two building engineers sometime ago about the impending 100 new houses being built near our house. They explained that the development would have green spaces. The irony of us standing in 19 acres of grass fields seem to be lost on them.

In reply to jethro kiernan:

True although it is high now as at any time since 1300!  Probably not very high quality in general for wildlife though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestry_in_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:Wo...

 

In reply to MG:

Quality is more important than quantity. These stats count 5 year old plantation as equivalent to ancient woodland, which is part of the reason developers can get away with new plantings as a sop to environmental destruction

In reply to Philip:

 

That’s why my lawn has lots of clover, dandelions and wild grass...

In reply to Flinticus:

I’ve let all the lawns grow long this year - clover pops up in abundance and then bees and all sorts move in.

Get people to stop spending energy and time slaving away for some stupid idea of lawn perfection and it’s not to late for things to bounce back.

Well, it’s not to late.... yet.

In reply to arch:

£10 on the developers calling it “‘Meadow View” without a hint of irony.

In reply to Flinticus:

Rather than donate to Greenpeace you're probably better off donating to causes which will hasten death famine pestilence and war. 

Only half joking... 

In reply to Flinticus:

I'm reporting what I saw yesterday. I regularly see lots of butterflies whilst out and about, it was just yesterday I was particularly struck by the numbers. In fact, I can look out and see some in my garden, now. I personally see no evidence of a "calamitous decline" within the areas I visit that aren't developed, but that's not to say someone with knowledge of species diversity etc. wouldn't. 

In reply to wintertree:

With apologies for the OT rant...

Immediately after the 2012 London Olympics, the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield was closed and abruptly demolished on account of an annual shortfall of approximately 0.001% of the money that had just been spunked on that event.

The patch of land on which the world-class athletics stadium once stood, which now consists of a car park, a bland office block and a building site that will at some point become an 'academy' school is called, without a hint of irony, the "Olympic Legacy Park".

Back on topic.. 

I was never fond of them, but I miss crane flies.  I'm sure I remember that as a kid I couldn't leave a door or window open for 5 minutes at night this time of year without a 'daddy longlegs' or several flapping around the room.  Very rarely see one now.

In reply to Flinticus:

It's fashionable to drone on about loss of habitats yet if you look at black and white photos of your area from the last century you will see that there were almost no trees because everything had been cut down for pit props and earlier, for shipbuilding. Look at early photos of railways: what do you see? Neat cuttings and embankments with no sign of trees. Look at early photos of motorways: what do you see? Neat motorways with clean embankments and no trees. Yet nowadays these features are covered in trees and vegetation to the extent that they have to be felled. Everybody has got the message about preserving meadows and hedges and the countryside is full of corridors of woodland, which allow animals to move around, so I just don't buy the story that the country is becoming denuded of trees. 

 

In reply to Flinticus:

IT's so bad around here that a bee in the garden is a object of wonder, they are obviously there, but they are so few and far between, it something worth commenting on.

We've grown attractor plants for the past few years too. We have a budlia, which a couple of years ago would have been covered with butterflies and moths, sadly not recently.

The only plus side is we can leave the doors and windows open at night time and we don't get a house full of moths.

I'd rather we couldn't though.

In reply to Rigid Raider:

Fashionable? If only it was so shallow and simply a matter of taste or opinion.

I dont give a damn about fashion.

 

In reply to jethro kiernan:

We do have less, but to put that in perspective we are a very small island with an awful lot of people crammed onto it. I don't think figures are that bad, quoting from 2010:

"The area of woodland in the UK at 31 March 2010 was estimated to be 3,079,000ha. This represents 13.0 per cent of the total land area in the UK, 9.9 per cent in England, 17.8 per cent in Scotland, 14.3 per cent in Wales and 6.5 per cent in Northern Ireland."

 

Also bear in mind that at the beginning of the last century (1900) it was below 5%, so we have been increasing rather than decreasing. Admittedly commercial forestry accounts for much of it. Out of interest I refer back to old photos of our village and valley from 100 years ago - it looked barren compared to today.

In reply to Flinticus:

My wife has recorded over 200 species of moths from our garden area, so I have some faith that all is not lost.  Not good for butterflies though.

 

In reply to Moley & Rigid Raider:

Quite.

In photos from the 70s, none of the giant ash trees, nor the cherries, rowan, laburnum and like that line the lane out of our village were there, just denuded verge.

FC commercial forestery is in places being replanted from pine to mixed broadleaf, although private forests generally aren’t.

The woodland trust is ever expanding its holdings.

I think a lot of the problems are more subtle than loss of habitat.  Pesticides, changing agricultural practices, plastics (look at a bird nest compared to 20 years ago), climate shifts.  

I think it helps I live in the north.  If anyone has a spare half million, there’s a nearby grouse more up for sale I want to buy and reforest.

In reply to Moley:

But it's not just that here, I used butterflies and bees, but there's next to no insect life at all. There's been a dramatic fall in the past couple of years. I haven't seen a ladybird this year, and even green fly are down.

 

In reply to wurzelinzummerset:

Recent report showing a 50% decline in total insect population across Northern Europe but you sawe a field of butterflies so everything is fine.

In reply to Flinticus:

In a few years you will be able to get enhanced reality glasses/retinal implants that will project a cloud of butterflies for you when looking at a field (a bland giant hedge free field of GM crops) or a herd of farting unicorns.

In reply to arch:

We have similar trouble here - planning laws recently changed with the result that greenfields are being built upon rather than brownfield sites. In the 'urban' areas pretty much all land is 'developable' - the nature of the development may be restricted (e.g. 5 houses instead of ten), but green land won't be green land anymore .

 

http://researchnews.plos.org/2017/10/18/fraught-future-for-flying-insects/

This major Dutch study shows a 79% (!) reduction in total insect biomass in 76 German nature reserves (!!!) in the last 25 years. The problem and its implications are for me literally unthinkable.

 

In reply to Toerag:

Some derelict land in the town a mile away from us was earmarked for one of the big supermarkets to build a new store.  The council did what councils do and took ages to make a decision. A rivel store put in an opposing bid on some land 400m along the same road. The council ummed and arred for ages, eventually coming down in favour of the second company, who then when permission was granted, promptly pulled out. 

So no new supermarket in the local town, still two derelict sites after 5/6 years of standing idle and now 3'500 houses on green belt land. 

 

You couldn't make it up.

In reply to Toerag:

Unfortunately most of the country are demanding more homes to be built and main political parties accuse each other of doing too little, "We must have X million new homes built by 20xx..." 

With little consideration of where the water comes from, how to drain it fast enough, where the sewage goes, why the homes flood and the many other problems associated with simply covering more of the countryside with concrete.

I have no idea what the answer is in long term, other than less people or less wildlife.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

This has good 'face validity', as they say. I've noticed a drastic decline in squished bugs on windscreens over recent years.

In reply to Flinticus:

We are the same age. I went to wearing contact lenses / glasses full-time a couple of years back after only really wearing them for driving before that. You might not be seeing what is there.

In reply to wurzelinzummerset:

Cornwall last month. But I take the point that generally numbers have dropped

In reply to Bob Kemp:

It has been said that modern car windscreen design has better airflow over it so bugs don't splat on it.

We look back on say 60s with rose tinted specs (well I do in many ways), easily forgetting the effects of DDT, dieldrin and God knows what other chemicals had on our wildlife.

In reply to Flinticus:

More people = less of everything else.

A modern western human being has a quite astounding environmental footprint. As everyone else catches up then there’s really little hope for the conservation of anything at all.

In reply to Moley:

That’s why your splats per number plate are a better sampling device. I’ve just been to look at the plate on my not super aerodynamic 15 year old Passat, which hasn’t been washed for about 9 months, there were about twenty insects attached but none longer than 5mm.

There are lots of variable in this sampling method of course but I think they were somehow normalised when that experiment went on. My own journey includes an evening trip up the Wye Valley from Chepstow. I really would expect a few bigger casualties on my registration plate.

Sobering.

In reply to Flinticus:

Good thread. I agree with all your sentiment. There are good things going on around Kendal but still not enough. The loss of wildflower meadows must have taken so much of the food source away from insects over the last 40 (?) years, on top of the pesticides. Fields of grass which are wind pollinated and of no interest to pollinators are still the norm for example.  

I went down to support the antifracking protest at Preston new Road this week. It did inspire me a lot, mostly as I was able to mix with a lot of like minded, normal people, interested in a greener world for our own good.  

     

In reply to Flinticus:

We have recently had success in turning an unofficial car park in the middle of the town into a green space.......ok, its just grass trees and some planters at the moment, but the council were able to push ahead against a lot of protest from car owners and get it done. They have also organised 3 meetings in the next month in different locations to give a presentation, and collect ideas about how to 'move on' with the issue of climate change. They are a liberal council.   

In reply to Phil1919:

Good effort but your post speaks volumes about how most people don’t give a f*ck, and how hard it is to push against the tide.

 

In reply to krikoman:earlier in the summer we had a real plague of greenfly. You couldn’t ride your bike without swallowing hundreds of the beggars. As for bees our lawn has been left to grow wild flowers and clover and ever day we get dozens of brown backed bees feasting. Again I too live in the far north  

 

In reply to wintertree:

Could you crowd fund the grouse moor?

In reply to Flinticus:

When I was fairly young (not too long ago!) I well remember the sound of Corncrakes on the edge of a village called Scone. That's about 45 miles north of Edinburgh. Now they're restricted to the Hebrides & Orkney. According to the RSPB the drastic decline is due to:  its population declined catastrophically during the 20th century due to the mechanisation of mowing and earlier mowing of grass crops. By the 1990s it bred only in the Hebrides and Orkney in Scotland.

Whether the loss of their habit has also resulted in the decline of butterflies I can't say but I did notice last year that Painted Lady butterflies were around where the ground was wild. Open moorland with thistles, rushes etc. Poor land even for the sheep.

Ah well there's still midgies and ticks aplenty.  

Maybe: https://butterfly-conservation.org/44/butterflies-and-moths.html

In reply to Alan Breck:

Yes, but not for much longer if we don't look after them,,,,,,,

In reply to Alan Breck:

I think the painted lady butterfly is a migrant to uk, so other variables in force - but that's irrelevant to the thread.

One of things that annoys me, is our 3 neighbours are all well educated, well off retired who moved to the country wanting land and "care for wildlife". There are over 2 acres of paddock that could be planted up as wild flower, natural meadows, but despite out "hints" to do so, all have ride on mowers and cut the grass to within an inch of it's life every week. They are not the only ones in the village.

These private owned bits of land can be an oasis for wildlife in farming country but all they want to do is sit on their mowers and play pretend farmers. 

Apologies, rant over!

In reply to Moley:

I had my last car for fifteen years, until early last year, and noticed the decline over that period, so although that may be true in itself it doesn’t apply to my personal observations.

 

In reply to Flinticus:

Wildlife is returning and pollution is far less than it was.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44647967

In reply to elsewhere:

A few seal pups in the Thames vs decimation of the Barrier Reef/ rain forests...

In reply to elsewhere:

Good news, the Thames was an open sewer even 40years ago. Perhaps it offended the tender noses of those sitting in a house in Westminster and has had disproportionate efforts made to clean it.

Do you need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows?

In reply to Moley:

You could be describing me and my current half acre project,  The reason I’m mowing it regularly and removing clippings however is to knock back the giant mess of hogweed and cow parsley.  A year or two of root pulling, mowing and grass removal might nudge it back to a state where wild flowers have a chance.  I’ve done that with the other half acre and - with the help of two spring cuts - it’s had a bloom of buttercups, is now awash with clover and the purple vetch is starting to rise up.

Its really hard to maintain a wildflower meadow “naturally” - having sheep graze helps but it’s a small plot (3-4 sheep max) and has a public footpath on it used by many dog walkers and a few people who think it’s a dog toilet.

If it makes you feel any better, I use a battery electric mower push recharged with my little solar system, and have put in a lot of mixed native hedging and a bunch of regionally appropriate trees.  

Before they became to old,  the previous owners kept the whole acre mowed to within an inch of its life with a ride on all year round for 35 years.  Within 3 years it was a jungle of common hogweed with the root infection that turns its sap phototoxic.  Let’s just say I now only pull it up at night...

As nice and biodiverse as wildflower meadows are, our land really wants to be broadleaf forest.    

In reply to wintertree:

Sounds like you are doing great and have a plan, the important start. I don't think it is too important whether you choose meadows, orchards, woodland, wetland, whatever is suitable. Think long term and don't waste the land to mowed grass forever.

We have ash die-back disease in our little wood and will lose all those mature trees in the next few years (it really is clobbering them), but have already plants replacements, we shall never see them mature but the next generation will.

In reply to wintertree:

I’m interested to know (roughly)where this plot is?

In reply to pasbury:

Rural north east not far from the heather wastelands.  

More specifically it’s on a slope with I think a natural spring running under it meaning it’s still a lush green oasis in a sea of dying yellow.

In reply to Moley:

No sign of the die back here, but there is a line of 40 year old ash trees along the adjacent public highway.  I’ve been thinking about popping some Rowan in between them in preparation.

A mighty elm across the road died last year - I was talking to the local tree council person about that, he said it’s total death in 2-3 weeks once the beetles get in to the xylem tubes.  Almost unbelievable.  I’m tempted to risk the expense and buy a couple of disease resistant saplings. Mind you elm is so vulunerable because it’s a non native species derived from a very small gene pool from the Roman era, giving it very little diversity against attack.  

In reply to Phil1919:

Perhaps.  

• £900 k for the circa 750 acres.  
• £15 k for legal fees???  (I’ve never done a million pound purchase or trust agreement)
• About 1,000,000 native broad-leafed saplings.
• About 400 man days of work for the planting
• About 2 km of deer proof fencing and labour to fit, estimated cost £20 k.
• A big bag of cash to buy the A-team to stop neighbouring grouse moors’ gamekeepers from killing all the trees - I bet foxes and badgers eat grouse eggs 
• Ongoing labour for maintenance.
• Call it £5 m total.

Honestly, if I didn’t have to work for a living and could afford to swan about raising funds I’d be up for it in a heart beat.  I think the trick would be to reforest a band around the border of the site, another one along the water course, and then to do a few islands of forest each year, joining them up with corridors.  The rest would soon fill in - I often see birch saplings in the older heather before it gets moronically burnt back for the bloody grouse.

I’m tempted to write to the woodland trust pledging some money if they buy the site.  If enough people do that it might make it happen; they bought a farm near my nearest city for £4m recently.  Seems insane to replace good arable land with trees and leave the moors as an ongoing ecological disaster, but it helps bring woods within easy reach of more people which I think is s big part of their aims.

In reply to wintertree:

So if about a 12th of the population donated £1 each, we could do it!

Is it likely to be on the market for a bit?

 

 

In reply to Flinticus:

I read this thread having my morning coffee and pondered it when walking the dog. I also saw a plethora of butterflies in the freshly cut hay fields, 3 litters of leverets, broods of partridge chicks (always a good indicator of insect availability) scuttling around in the unmown margins, red kites, sparrowhawk & a couple of kestrels (indicating plenty of small furry tasty things down below). 

Not all of this isle of ours is desolate, you just need to go early, go quiet & with your eyes open. 

In reply to Phil1919:

I think I’d be after < 100 donors otherwise the administration becomes a self serving use of funds....

I have no idea!  There are suddenly two on Rightmove within 100 miles of me, I’ve never seen any before.  I wondered if the Arabs are cashing in before Brexit, or if some wealthy local land owners are planning on shorting the pound.

In reply to wintertree:

Have you broached the general idea with e.g Woodland Trust or RSPB? Some interesting things going on in the peak along similar lines. E.g.

http://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/clough-woodland-project

If you are serious, I’d be interested in involvement (sadly I’m a little short of £5m, but could contribute!)

 

In reply to wintertree:

Ilkley Moor is your best bet now that the council have shot themselves in the foot and banned grouse shooting. I do wonder how they’ll afford to maintain it themselves, especially with regards to providing suitable breeding habitats for the waders that previously thrived on there. 

In reply to Fozzy:

We’ll see. The grouse  shootering fraternity have repeatedly shown themselves to be devious and mendacious, and often criminal. I doubt the council will be worse.

In reply to MG:

The grouse shoot owners actually had money to spend on managing the moor, unlike the council. Let’s just see how those ground nesting birds get on with no predator management. 

In reply to Flinticus:

Nobody's mentioned the declining hedgehog population yet. Connects to the decline in insect numbers amongst other things - 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/07/hedgehog-numbers-plumme...

This is about hedgehogs in the countryside but I've noticed our local urban hedgehogs seem to have disappeared in recent years. 

In reply to Bob Kemp:

And also linked to a huge rise in badger numbers (https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/health-welfare/livestock-diseases/bovine-tb...)  which are very partial to munching on hedgehogs. 

In reply to Fozzy:

It’s a complex set of interactions. Have a read of this review.

http://ww2.rspb.org.uk/Images/grant_mallord_stephen_thompson_2012_tcm9-3189...

In reply to Bob Kemp:

When I started work as an ambulance technician 12 years ago, it was quite common on night shifts to see hedgehogs scurrying around gardens when walking to and fro from the ambulance. By the time I stopped doing night shifts 2 years ago you no longer saw them and I can't remember the last time I saw a hedgehog on a night shift

In reply to Bob Kemp:

You're lucky if you have less dead bugs on your windscreen

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Sadly urban gardeners dislike slugs and show little restraint when they start scattering slug pellets around

 

In reply to Fozzy:

Could well be true in the country, but I haven't noticed many badgers in our street.

In reply to Flinticus:

 

Yesterday at the crag.

But admittedly not in the UK.  

 

In reply to Bob Kemp:

There’s bloody loads here, due to the idiocy of giving protected status to a voracious predator that has no predators if it’s own. Thankfully it’s nearly cull time again. 

In reply to Flinticus:

This insect story needs more examination, on a recent bike ride we rode into the evening sun straight ahead and the road was a mass of dancing insects. I remarked to my cycling buddy that insect-eating birds and bats must be having an absolute bonanza.   

In reply to Rigid Raider:

I've just got a feeling the variety isn't there anymore. Good that you saw loads however.

In reply to Rigid Raider:

Problem is that your experience, real as I'm sue it was, is just an anecdote. In contrast, there is real hard evidence of crashes in insect populations (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809) due to agriculture and development, and also steep declines in insect-feeding birds (https://app.bto.org/birdtrends/species.jsp?s=swift&year=2017). The UK is in particularly bad shape in terms of biodiversity (https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/stateofnature2016/).

Extrapolating from anecdote to the general is a common cognitive bias, and one that isn't serving humans too well right now. I know that the Guardian article is framed in terms of the author's personal experience, but thats just how such articles are commonly written. It doesn't mean that the concerns raised in it aren't real.

 

 

In reply to Fozzy:

I see a contradiction here...

 

In reply to Fozzy:

Either they're getting better at crossing the road or there's not that many of them any more too.

I regularly see dead one's by the side of the road, I've seen two this year.

In reply to Flinticus:

practically people could join a local Wildlife Trust or similar and volunteer. There's tonnes of donkeywork out there that needs doing, especially with INNS (Invasive non-native species) which are estimated to threaten 35% of the worlds biodiversity. There are an awful lot of habitat management jobs that won't get done without volunteers

In reply to krikoman:

Go out into the countryside & watch the edge of the woods at dusk/shine a lamp around after dark and you’ll see plenty. 

In reply to Fozzy:

"go our to the countryside", that's where we live, I cycle in the countryside most weekends. We live on the edge of town in north Oxfordshire.

It might not be happening where you are, which is great, but I'm a keen entomologist and nature lover and have always noticed the wildlife around where I live. Very often I travel on country roads to get to work, at least partially. There's been a dramatic change within the last 3 years.

We used to get badgers and foxes in our garden, I haven't seen a badger for two years, but I do still see foxes.

You seen to be saying there's nothing wrong and everything's tickety-boo, well it isn't. It's not because I'm not looking, it's because it isn't there, you telling me it all lovely, when you neither know where I live or what the difference there has been over the last few years doesn't make it not true, I'm afraid.

In reply to Fozzy:

Is that what you do when you’re killing badgers?

In reply to pasbury:

I’ve never shot one myself, that’s down to the cull boys to deal with (They all tend to use thermal scopes now btw, not lamps) I just see a lot of badgers when out lamping foxes at night or deer stalking at dusk.