Gordon McGlone

Raptors of Delight

2010-08-25T10:47:00.009+01:00

Sparrowhawk recently spotted at Coombe Hill Nature Reserve by Zsuzsanna Bird

Being an ecologist can result in one taking an opinion that is diametrically opposed to that of simple logic. A classic example is that of the bird of prey populations that have made a spectacular recovery over the past 30 years. Surely more raptors must mean less songbirds? Not according to my understanding!

Studies of predator-prey dynamics have shown that there are often two characteristics of population curves; predator numbers are determined by the abundance of food and they reach a peak later than the prey species. In other words the more that there is to eat the more predators there may be! The total amount of prey in an area will be an important factor in determining the number of predators, but there is a time delay.

The British Trust for Ornithology has presented some important new information that contributes understanding to this model in its BTO News May-June 2010. In a piece entitled Are Predators to Blame? Stuart Newson and Stephen Baillie summarise their research that is published in full in the Journal of Applied Ecology 47.

‘In summary, for the majority of the songbird species examined, there was little evidence that increases in common avian predators and grey squirrels were associated with large-scale depression of prey abundance or population declines. For the majority of declining songbird species with unfavourable conservation status, population declines appear to be due to factors other than predation’.

In Gloucestershire, the numbers of many of our birds of prey have increased dramatically since I have lived in the county. Whilst it is true that species like the house sparrow, yellow hammer, nightingale, turtle dove and many others have achieved the undesirable red or amber status (in trouble), it would seem that the causes are often more complex than their immediate natural enemies. Habitat loss in the UK and overseas for migrant species, combined with disease and climate change may play a far more important role in determining population size.

So don’t worry about your local sparrowhawk, buzzard or kestrel, just marvel at their aerial grace and their subtle role in local ecology.

Welcoming New Supporters

2010-08-23T12:27:00.003+01:00

Standing in a wonderful piece of flower rich limestone grassland, I could have been anywhere in Cotswolds rather than only three miles from Stroud. The valleys and coombs around Chalford are a precious hidden landscape which only the curious or those lost because of a confused SatNav are likely to experience. The effort that Margaret and I had put in (SatNav notwithstanding) was well worth it. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trusts’s nature reserves at Strawberry Banks and Three Groves Wood are absolute gems.

Strawberry Banks, which is managed in cooperation with the very committed owners, the Shorts, was the most fascinating on the night as dozens of common blue butterflies were flitting around our feet. This is not any exaggeration; I counted 12 butterflies within a few feet of me, remarkable!

I was actually working, although it was more pleasure than pain. The Trust has started to hold meetings with its newer members to help them to learn more about our work and to enjoy the wonderful nature reserves that their subscriptions support. Last week, through the hard work of Membership Development Manager, Alice and her team, over 50 members were greeted and shown around by a bunch of our hard working staff.

Two walking groups set off down through Far Oakridge towards the reserves. Each group had an expert guide; Jeremy Doe or Pete Bradshaw. I was in Pete’s group and I learned a lot, nature reserve management is more sophisticated than it used to be! After our 90 minute ramble we reassembled at the Butcher’s Arms for excellent refreshment and a short talk. All very pleasant.

The Trust has over 24500 members, making it one of the largest in the country. It is its members that have shaped and supported its strategies and actions over the last five decades. Last night it was clear why the Trust is still so well supported; effective local action for local wildlife by a local organisation. David Cameron could learn a lot from the Wildlife Trusts!

Back to blogging... and badgers

2010-06-02T16:34:00.004+01:00

My blog rate has been very low since the election. Politics affects charities quite significantly and I found myself becoming ultra careful over my choice of subject matter. Whilst I write as me, my words could be associated with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust policy.

Charities are not allowed to campaign politically and I could not risk the Trust being damaged by association with my opinons. 16 charities have found themselves subject to investigation because of accusations of political bias.

Bovine TB became a political issue during the election because the two parties that now form the government chose to take a significantly different line over badger culling than the Labour party.

My view remains that the culling of badgers is not a means of controlling and reducing Bovine TB in cattle. Culling is difficult, expensive and scientifically unproven. Even in culling trial areas where it has been shown to have a transient local impact (and no overall benefit); its effect has been merely to slow the rate of increase in cattle infection. This is not a solution to a chronic problem.

The vaccine for badgers is at the stage of field trials and I am told that there is very encouraging news about its effectiveness. However, even at best, vaccine is only part of disease control which needs a necessary mix of cattle testing, biosecurity measures and transport restrictions. A vaccine for cattle is not likely to be ready for testing until 2015.

I very much hope that government decisions about bovine TB are sensible and balanced. It would be bad for all concerned if hasty action led to greater cost, confusion of policy and muddled outcomes.

Walking 4 Wildlife

2010-05-21T15:23:00.005+01:00

Pete Bradshaw, Mike Dilger, and me.

Working for wildlife brings me into contact with many special people; staff, volunteers and the general public. I have had the pleasure of meeting some famous conservation personalities and of doing silly things for the press (standing in a London pond with Michael Palin comes to mind). The Trust’s Walk 4 Wildlife, held in the lovely Sapperton Valley on Sunday, managed to combine most of the above.

Over 400 Trust supporters and 40 dogs gathered in The Daneway Inn garden to register for the 5 mile amble through some of the loveliest countryside in the England. This is not an exaggeration and the reaction of most walkers, many of whom had never seen the five nature reserves on show (Daneway Banks, Siccaridge Wood, Strawberry Banks, Three Groves Wood and Sapperton Canal) was of pure pleasure.

TV personality Mike Dilger, The One Show presenter and an all-round nice guy, added an extra layer of fun to the event. Mike is a very knowledgeable and passionate naturalist who bubbled with fun and enthusiasm for the four very generous hours that he spent with us.

Mike managed to discuss ancient woodland indicators, his new-found love of beetles and the rigours of TV filming schedules without flagging. He is a genuinely interested person and everyone who met him came away with their own version of his warm smile.

Jan Ryder and Pete Bradshaw were the two Trust staff who had spent the most time on planning and organising the event. However, another 15 staff and Trustees contributed to the smooth running of the day. Much fun, information and love of the natural world was shared on this inaugural Walk for Wildlife. I had a great time and saw my first dipper of the year (thanks to Mike’s keen eyesight). Richard Goodfellow of The Daneway Inn was also kept busy. Our hungry walkers made a significant dent in his larder and I believed his claim that he had never cooked so many chips in one day!

…. and no, I did not ask anything about Christine Blakeley!

Train spotting

2010-04-26T12:47:00.005+01:00

I have lost my youthful enthusiasm for exotic travel and fabulous wildlife. The more I see of the British Isles, the more captivated I become. Why spend hours stuck on airport floors waiting for volcano-proof planes when there is so much to see here?

For once, I decided that I would not spend my train journey to London poring over papers and this laptop, but to watch the natural world instead. My laziness was rewarded by a terrific view of a large (probably dog) Red Fox sitting at the side of the track on the outskirts of Swindon station. Taking this as a challenge, I decided what else the London up line would provide.

Following the colour theme, my next mammal was the first of two Brown Hares that I saw lolloping through young wheat crops. The Mad March phase seemed to have given way to a leisurely amble. I failed to see any Roe Deer, possibly because bad habits broke through, and I tried and failed to speak to several colleagues by mobile phone instead of watching properly. However, at the edge of Didcot station a lovely Muntjac was enjoying a feast of trackside vegetation.

The Didcot to Reading stretch is becoming a great Red Kite zone and I saw four birds, one only feet above the railway bank, on this stretch. The Red Kite reintroduction programme has been a great success and the Chiltern colony is growing stronger every year.

The Thames beyond Maidenhead revealed two glorious Mute Swans that looked to me as if they were an ornithological item. Without straying into the dubious realms occupied by some political parties, these lovely native birds had a bigger wow factor than the raft of Canada Geese that were drifting along the Thames a few hundred yards downstream.

The irony of my morning wildlife "wows" is of course that I have spent the journey back from London typing sundry blogs about badgers, kite and muntjac! Not much to grumble about really, more a special privilege. But that is the joy of working for wildlife every day, especially in a county as beautiful as Gloucestershire.

In Memory of Nature

2010-04-26T12:45:00.000+01:00

Ketford Banks by Peter WakleyNatural England

Over the past weeks I have found myself celebrating the achievements of four people who, in different ways, have made an impact on nature conservation. Each of them has left a different legacy that will benefit us all in subtle ways.

The most public ceremony was the memorial service for Lady Scott held at Berkeley Church. A congregation of conservation figures and modest volunteers remembered Phillipa’s enormous contributions to the Wildlfowl and Wetlands Trust and many other bodies. Lady Scott was a warm, vibrant and engaging ambassador for the natural world. Her late husband, Sir Peter Scott could not have had a better soul mate to continue his pioneering work. Phillipa was the Patron of Gloucestershire WIldife Trust and will be missed.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s latest nature reserve became a place of commemoration for two ardent naturalists, Sonia Holland and John Hughes. Sonia had purchased the Ketford daffodil bank to safeguard its future. John Hughes was the first Farming with Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) advisor and he used to visit sites with Sonia. They both loved Ketford and it was doubly fitting that FWAG had passed the site to the Trust for its future safekeeping. Both Sonia and John were ardent members of the Gloucestershire Naturalists' Society. All three organisations were present at the official opening. Ketford will act as a public reminded that people like John and Sonia have made a lasting impression on the farmed landscape of Glocuestershire.

Margaret and I travelled straight from Ketford to the beautiful village of Duntisbourne Abbots to attend a ceremony celebrating the life of Bill Darling. Bill was a modest man who had also dedicated his life to promoting wildlife and farming. He had won the top FWAG award for his farm in Hertfordshire before retiring. In Gloucestershire, Bill was Secretary and Treasurer of the local Royal Forestry Society branch and a dedicated Friend of Westonbirt. Bill was also Chairman of Gloucesterhire Wildlife Trust’s Daneway Banks Nature Reserve Management Committee.

These four people, whom I had the pleasure to know, work with and learn from, represent the essence of wildlife conservation. Each person was pragmatic, knowledgeable, hugely enthusiastic and very modest. Their legacy has been a nature that is richer and more enjoyable as a result of their dedication.

The natural world is all around us, and we can all make a lasting impact in our own way. Legacies for nature are long lasting and give value beyond any financial figure that could be placed on them.

A Long Road

2010-04-23T11:32:00.001+01:00

The elusive prize for both farmers and badger lovers is the prevention of bovine TB (bTB) in cattle and badgers. The current policy of improved bTB cattle testing, tighter cattle movement regulation, on farm bio-security (separating badgers and cattle) and some farmer compensation for infected cattle is showing results. However, the development of a vaccine for badgers and cattle would make a real and lasting difference.

That prospect is beginning to become real with the Badger Vaccine Deployment Programme that DEFRA is commencing this year. Two study areas in Gloucestershire will see the first field trials of an injected vaccine for badgers. Subsequently, another four areas will be receiving badger vaccines. A skilled group of badger innoculators will be trained during the trials.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has been involved with the testing phase of the badger vaccine by permitting its usage on badgers within one of its nature reserves. The Trust is now registered as part of the vaccine trials and will actively support the vaccination of badgers on selected nature reserves. Full details of this programme are still becoming available (more information on this subject is available here) but the eventual outcome should be badger social groups that have significant immunity to bTB following five consecutive years of vaccination. The fully developed vaccine will not be cheap, for farmers or wildlife conservation groups, but the results should be worthy of the outlay.

Eventually the badger vaccine may become available as an oral treatment; badgers find peanuts an irresistible treat! The development of an injectable vaccine for cattle will take longer but the first trials might be possible by 2016. This is a very big prize at the end of a long and difficult path; not quite the yellow brick road, but equally mysterious.

Badger by Wildstock

The Golden Hoof

2010-04-08T15:22:00.002+01:00

Fluffy lambs are one of the popular images of spring and I saw some very cuddly examples on my visit to the Trust’s Daneway Banks Nature Reserve. The importance of lambs to wildlife is that grassland is not the natural vegetation for most of England and without efficient munching machines flower-rich sites like Daneway rapidly turn from grassland to scrub to woodland.

Sheep are very fine graziers, referred to by my mum-in-law as the ‘golden hoof’. Daneway Banks is a very important site for orchids and butterflies and our new lamb recruits will bring the flock up to 40. By grazing carefully at the right times of year we will be able to sustain the wildlife interest without loosing the wildflowers.

We are particularly lucky to have a partner for our Daneway flock. Grazing livestock is expensive and needs constant attention. Richard Goodfellow, the landlord of the wonderful Daneway Inn, is our perfect ally. He lives next door to the nature reserve, owns and cares for the rare Norfolk Horn sheep and keeps a very fine beer cellar.

Richard has made all the difference to helping us achieve our ovine ambitions. The reserve is already looking much better for the attention that it has received and providing we have a warm and sunny summer, the rare and exquisite Large Blue Butterfly will benefit enormously from the short sweet Cotswold turf that Richard’s sheep are maintaining.

I heartily recommend a visit to the Daneway Inn. Great food, good ales, safe parking and three of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves all within safe walking distance. May and June are the best times for the flowers and butterflies. But at any time of year this has to be one of Gloucestershire’s gems.

Sleepy natives and waking aliens

2010-04-06T13:52:00.007+01:00

The allotment that Margaret and I have looked after in Cam for the last 18 years is beginning to look very promising after the long cold winter. Our broad beans are just showing their heads and promise a good crop, voles and pigeons permitting. Margaret’s narcissi are blooming profusely, and a particularly early rhubarb given to us by neighbor Roy Chinn is threatening numerous crumbles.

However, it is the emergence of my ‘big fat female’ which has given me my biggest thrill. Each year one particular carpet proves to be the sun lounger of choice for our slow worm matriarch and for a couple of weeks she can be found hiding beneath this cover every day, warming gently in the spring sun. She has been there now for 10 days and it will not be long before her fabulous brazen babies spread quietly across our plots. Sheer magic!

Not quite so magical are the forty or more harlequin ladybirds that I have just seen basking in the sun here at Robinswood Hill. It was only in 2006 that Margaret saw the first adult ever recorded in Gloucestershire in our garden (her picture is above). Now they are widespread and the colony that I have been watching has passed the winter sheltering beneath an information sign.

Harlequins are attractive, but they are not native and are as partial to dining on our native ladybirds as they are on any other insect of the right size. The spread of this insect is a text book example of an animal invader and is a frightening indicator of what might be in store for our native wildlife beset by climate change and isolated on shrinking habitats.

The systematic recording of this alien is extremely well recorded in www.harlequin-survey.org I recommend this site as an example of how just how good species recording can be when the power of the web is properly utilized.

Read last year's slow worm post here.

Selling the story of a Living Landscape

2010-03-31T11:25:00.006+01:00

The Cotswold Water Park is a constructed landscape created from the gravel digging that has steadily gathered economic importance since World War 2. The result is the largest aggregation of gravel pits in England; a significantly larger body of water than the nationally famous Norfolk Broads.

However, like the Broads, these manmade wetlands have become so important for wildlife that there are now of international Interest.The water park is economically vibrant and is in essence, an example of the Living Landscape vision that the wildlife trusts are promoting; a holistic ecosystem approach that melds environment, economy and peoiple.

The choice of the Four Pillars Hotel, located at the centre of the park, was a very appropriate location for The Wildlife Trusts national Marketing conference. Staff and volunteers, including the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s chair Hugh Tollemache, spent two very busy days working together on the important communication challenge of selling Living Landscapes in a clear and understandable way.

The 47 Wildlife Trusts achieve a tremendous amount. No other wildlife conservation charities achieve more at a local level. Our national work is equally impressive. The recent Marine and Coastal Access Act resulted from the well informed and well supported campaigns the trusts ran. It is just that our combined strength of almost 800,000 members and UK level work is not well enough known.

Effective marketing and clear communications are critical to the future success of the trusts. Gloucestershire is very fortunate in having a Wildlife Trust with a very effective marketing team. The conference benefited from their expertise too.

Cotswold Water Park Key Wildlife Statistics

Aquatic macrophytes: European importance
Wintering waterbirds: National & internation importance
Breeding waterbirds: National importance
10 SSSI lakes & 6 SSSI Grasslands (including 2 SACs/1NNR)

Signs of Spring

2010-03-30T16:54:00.005+01:00

Spring has many messengers, but for me the chiffchaff is the most powerful both aurally and symbolically. This small LBJ (little brown job to quote birder jargon) makes a huge journey for such a tiny creature. Chiffchaffs winter in southern and western Europe and North Africa. In common with other spring migrants, their arrival is timed to coincide with the rapid increase in their insect food that occurs as temperatures rise and days lengthen.

My chiffchaff gave only a few experimental calls this morning and was definitely out of practice when compared to the robins, wrens and dunnock that were in full song. But perhaps I might be a bit off key if I had just made the same journey using just my own energy and determination. Wikipedia provides a good explanation of the ways of this little warbler.

However, no matter how much I might be thrilled by my chiffchaff, it falls into second place as an unusual experience compared to that relayed to me by my wife last week. Sitting behind my desk, churning through emails and papers, I was amazed to hear from Margaret that she had seen a water rail foraging on the ground under our bird feeders!

From Encyclopedia Britannica:

The water rail (Rallus aquaticus) is a slender marsh bird of the family Rallidae (order Gruiformes), native to most of Europe and Asia. Its length is about 28 cm (11 inches), and it has a moderately long beak. The sides of the bird have black and white bands. The name water rail also is used as a general term for the larger group, or tribe, to which R. aquaticus belongs. Rallus aquaticus can be distinguished from the tribe Rallini by its relatively long beak.

Working for a Wildlife Trust, the proud manager of four fantastic square miles of Gloucestershire, does not mean that I either have the time to visit these 60 nature reserves or be successful in spotting the shy or rare residents. My local patch is where I get the most pleasure from wildlife sightings. Margaret’s water rail was only 100 meters from my chiffchaff. The area is an overgrown field with brambles, hedgerow trees, two fantatstic oaks and the clean and sparkling River Cam. This emphasises the real value of green sites in towns and villages. Nature reserves are important but they are part of the rich mosaic of sites that are critical if wildlife is to survive and people are to benefit spiritually from experiencing it.

Oh and I am still envious of Margaret’s bird – I have never seen one!

Women in Work - Lantra Learner of the Year

2010-03-16T09:00:00.001Z

Baroness Prosser, vice chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, spoke passionately as keynote speaker at the celebratory dinner held by Lantra to mark the third year of its Women in Work programme. She stressed the historic inequalities that still persist within our society that make career fulfilment more difficult for women employees than men.

It is ironic that women still do not fit well with conventional employment patterns when they have such potential to improve the UK’s performance as a mature economy. My experience as the Chief Executive with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust is that women are excellent team workers and communicate well in busy work places. Our workforce of 40, full and part time, is predominately female, talented, energetic and committed. Employers miss out on huge potential by not modifying work roles to make them women friendly where this is possible.

The Government funded Women in Work sector pathway has enabled Lantra to support over 880 women to access training and mentoring is support of their jobs. Two of my team in Gloucestershire benefited from the support and were very grateful for the support that they received.

The overall winner of Lantra’s Women In Work award was Tracy Guiller who found that training as a forester lifted her depression and resulted in her finding a new job. Tracey’s experience is a great reminder of the importance of mentoring and the value that can accrue when opportunity is fully supported.

"Learning how to fell these massive trees really did something to me. It was as if my depression was felled too. I think the hard physical work in a peaceful woodland and the achievement of passing a difficult course lifted me mentally, emotionally and spiritually."

Tracey Guiller

Too Great a Price?

2010-03-15T16:00:00.003Z

The River Room of the House of Lords is an extremely pleasant venue and an excellent location for the launch of The Wildlife Trusts report Energy at Any Price. The event had been organised to coincide with a very high tidal bore - a likely casualty of a full barrage across the river Severn. The event was hosted by Baroness Young of Old Scone, and Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer.

I was most struck when Stephanie Hilborne, CEO of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, mentioned in her speech that half her lifetime ago the subject of the barrage had been discussed in detail by staff at the University of Bristol where she was then an undergraduate. It struck me forcibly because 21 years ago I was one of the audience at Bristol University listening to Sir Hermann Bondi reporting on issues relating to a proposed barrage. Bondi had been asked by the then government to investigate the implication of building and running a structure designed to extract tidal energy from the Severn, the river with the world’s second highest tidal range.

The essence of the Bondi Report, and the issues that still remain unresolved 21 years later are simple. A huge concrete structure with electricity generating tidal turbines is old technology and not necessarily the most appropriate for the job, and the impact of such a gigantic structure on an estuary that is of local, national, European and Global environmental importance is simply not understood.

The Wildlife Trusts report argues very persuasively that if the UK is to spend 10s of billions of pounds, irreversibly changing one of its greatest environmental assets irreversibly, it must do so wisely and on the basis of accurate scientific data. We are all aware that climate change is forcing us to move to energy production that does not involve burning fossilised sunlight (coal, gas, tar sands or oil). However, this change must not be at any price and tidal power generation from the Severn must make the best use of a precious environmental asset. The Severn Estuary deserves our full respect, much more research is needed before an over hasty decision is made on political grounds,

Energy at Any Price can be downloaded by clicking here.

Too Tweet?

2010-03-12T09:00:00.001Z

Garden birds are a great source of joy to most people. For a modest sum, it is possible to increase the frequency of visits and the range of avian visitors by providing quality food in bird feeders. In terms of value for money, there are few better shows than finches, tits, thrushes and dunnock.

Wild bird food is available widely from garden centres, pet shops and even supermarkets. But the best value is to be found from the specialist suppliers who retail via their catalogues and online sites. Vine House Farm has gone one further than most companies by supporting The Wildlife Trusts with 5% of sales.

I purchased my Mother's Day gift - 56kg of premium finch mix and 'Ultimate Energy' for ground feeders - from them. I was very impressed with the speed of delivery and the pleasant telephone manner of the patient approach of their sales staff (you have to be when I am a customer). Free delivery of the three bags of food that I ordered occurred two days later. I am hoping the birds are as impressed as I was.

Vine House farm may be contacted on 01775 630208 or online at:

www.vinehousefarm.co.uk

Pictured here with my Mother's Day gift!

Fired with Enthusiasm

2010-03-11T14:51:00.014Z

Wildlife Trusts have two great assets: their nature reserves and their people. Our recent staff day out at Greystones Farm Nature Reserve combined these impressively.

If I had written a list of objectives for the day, I doubt that I would have aimed as high as what actually happened. Not least because the weather on the high Cotswolds can be unpredictable. How lucky we were!

The task that 30 staff attended to was to help with clearing the huge piles of hedgerow thinnings that have been built by visiting volunteer groups. Because the site is a nationally important Site of Special Scientific Interest, we had to work carefully in line with our English Nature licence. This meant that our bonfires had to be contained within limited areas and built onto protective galvanised sheeting.

Despite the enthusiastic work put in by the staff, half of whom are primarily office based, we still left much work for Reserve Manager, Amy and her volunteers to finish by the end of March. What we did achieve however, was:

Great team work
Activity and exercise
Increased understanding of nature reserve management
Fun
Enthusiasm for our sandwich lunch

I had a great time, and it reinforced to me why I still love working in Gloucestershire and why The Wildlife Trusts are so good at involving people with wildlife.

The Environment Cannot be Taken for Granted

2010-03-10T14:57:00.005Z

I have been a lapsed blogger for too many months. The downside of being busy and doing lots of interesting things is not finding the time to share the experiences and (occasional) thoughts.

To get things going again, here is a piece that is featured in the current Lantra Connect magazine, available here.

The environment can not be taken for granted

warns Dr Gordon McGlone OBE, Chairman of Lantra

Having worked as an ecologist/conservationist for over 30 years, I sometimes feel as if I am part of the PR team for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Messages describing the increasing pressures and strains placed on our environment are not welcome, especially when there might be a perception that farming is part of the problem. But it underlines why this is such a priority sector for us all.

Today, the dark riders of population growth, urbanisation, increasing energy demand and climate change are reflected in daily media stories and represent a huge challenge to the health and well-being of our society and environment. This means there is a much greater awareness that the environment is not to be taken for granted.

In all good tales, there is always a talisman of hope and here the good news is skills. Lantra, as one of the most effective of the Sector Skills Councils, is working increasingly closely with the UK’s environmental and land-based industries to support the development of skills and business practice that will be essential for them to adapt to and benefit from future change.

Global population has now reached seven billion, an increase of three billion in the last 50 years and by 2050 there will be another three billion consumers. Most of us now live in towns and cities, and urban consumers expect a more protein-rich diet than subsistence rural communities. The result is an increasing demand for crop production that is growing even faster than the number of people.

The UK’s farmers are being asked to contribute to the nation’s food and fuel security by aiming to double their productivity in future – a difficult task requiring great skill to boost production without increasing pressure on fragile and fragmented land, freshwater and marine wildlife communities. Lantra is uniquely placed to maintain a UK overview of the many integrated industries that are responsible for managing our crops, biofuels, forestry, game and biodiversity.

Potentially the darkest of today’s horsemen is climate change. Despite our recent winter weather the underlying global climate continues to warm inexorably. Worryingly, the lack of progress at the Copenhagen summit means that the UK may have a temperature rise of 3ºc by 2050. This is perilously close to the point at which Southern Europe begins to see its agriculture and horticulture decline significantly, making food security an even greater need.

These four negative forces mean that Lantra has a critically important role in this changing nation. We must all learn to develop and deploy new skills to enable our environment and land-based industries to adapt, and Lantra is uniquely placed to ensure that the right skills are developed in the right way. The prize for future investment in skills and business practice is to maintain our fertile islands and their inshore marine ecosystems as the world class assets we sometimes take for granted.

Literally London

2009-09-25T10:04:00.002+01:00

One of the rewards of being a speaker are the questions that interested listeners ask at the end of a talk or workshop. The church group that I met recently was especially well informed and their questions were perceptive and probing. My statement that I would be travelling to London after the lunchtime session to attend the launch of the Cheltenham Literature festival prompted the response – Why London and why the festival? Good questions, thoughtfully placed by a polite sceptic.

I met my colleague Emma, who had the bright idea of linking with the festival, at the launch party. She was already deep in conversation with a member of the festival launch team. The reason that the Cheltenham Literature Festival was launched at the London Library in St James’ Square was quite simple. The majority of literary folk and media promoters are based in London and a reception there is much better attended than one at the Pump Rooms. Writers, publishers and publicists are all happy to visit Cheltenham for their respective events, but not for canapés and speeches.

The trip was well worth it for us. We did not go just to mix with Barry Norman, Claire Short, June Bakewell or Kate Aidey, we particularly wanted to meet the managing team and speak with them about our Manty Don event in October.

The Chairman of the festival, Sir Michael McWilliam KCMG, was particularly interesting and interested. He understood very well that one of the big challenges for nature conservation charities like the Trust is to explain its work to the widest audience. He fully understood that our interest in the Literature Festival is that nature has been a theme within the Arts for millennia. Art lovers are a natural audience for the message and by supporting Monty Don, a passionate enthusiastic for plants and wildlife, the Trust will benefit from his personal commitment and networks.

Train services from London to Gloucestershire in the evenings are poor and Emma and I had to leave the event early for Paddington station. Always the good leader, Emma made sure that her support team back at the office did not miss out on one of the goody bags. Frankie and Alice, who will be working with Monty Don at his talk on October 17th were very happy not to have been forgotten Cinderellas!

Electric Blue

2009-09-23T12:46:00.002+01:00

The electric-blue flash of a Kingfisher on the River Cam this morning made my walk with Millie the Labrador special and suggested that this might be a special day.

It is not yet 3:00pm but things are going well. I have finished a successful talk to the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network at our centre at Robinswood Hill and I am waiting to make a journey to the official opening of the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

My first meeting of the day was a really pleasant catch-up session with Richard Skeehens, MD of Grundon Waste, and Ruth Roll of RR Environmental Communications Ltd. We have not met for a number of months and an update on the biodiversity work that the Trust has been able to compete with Landfill Community Fund donations from Grundon was very timely.

Grants and donations are the route by which the Trust is able to supplement the generous contributions that our members make to run the Trust and enable it to carry our novel conservation work in the county. Grundon have been extremely generous since the inception of the Landfill Tax scheme in around 1993.

The current total that Grundon has given the Trust to spend on its work is a massive £1.3 million! These donations have transformed the Trust’s ambition and capacity and enabled it to plan further ahead, in reasonable confidence of success.

Planning for 2010 is well underway and the continuing support of Grundon is enabling us to design a major new conservation campaign. The electric blue Kingfisher is a good symbol of the new work that will be started next April. I am not a believer in synchronicity, but sometimes I wonder if chance is more than a statistical function.

Kingfisher (c) Kenny Crook

Arvicola terrestris – The Water Vole

2009-09-18T15:34:00.008+01:00

An important part of ensuring that the Wildlife Trust runs smoothly is the care that is taken of the staff and volunteers who drive our business of conservation.

Each month a simple questionnaire is whizzed around on email so that individuals can comment on how things are going. This time my colleague Elaine asked us all to give any reasons we have for enjoying working with the Trust. My two most important statements (excluding the strong birthday cake culture that we have!) are those of ‘enjoying the work’ and ‘achieving conservation results’.

Our current focus for conservation programmes is the lovely little Water Vole. This creature is an icon of what conservation is all about. It is harmless, does not damage river banks or nearby crops, does not carry any serious diseases and the chance of this small vegetarian harming livestock is remote.

But the Water Vole is in big trouble. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust surveys, completed periodically across the past thirty years, have revealed a massive decline in water vole numbers.

On the Cotswold Rivers, those small populations that still survive are all too small and isolated for long term survival. If no action is taken, this harmless and attractive creature will become extinct here as it has done already in Cornwall and is perilously close to in Devon.

As much as we like Stephen Fry, we would not want him puffing along the River Churn in twenty years time looking for our last remaining vole! But the case is frighteningly close. Gloucestershire people can not expect rhinos, dolphins, manatee and other exotic creatures to be conserved if we do not look after our own native wildlife.

The great news is that there are good value solutions and they are already working in another part of the county. My colleague John Field has been busy for the last 18 months turning conservation theory into new voles. Working with landowners, who are the single most important people in water vole conservation, he has been successful in achieving measurable results (more voles!) along lengths of watercourse in the Vale of Berkeley. The techniques are simple and straightforward, but their application takes time, patience and careful riverside management. These factors are not cheap but the results are very encouraging.

Water voles need plenty of riverside cover, toothsome grasses and sedges, and no Mink. To achieve this mixture, cattle and other large creatures must be kept well back from the waterside with fencing and overhanging trees thinned or pollarded. Predatory Mink are the critical ingredient in the water vole recipe. Careful and continuous control of this efficient non-native predator is critical. American Mink ‘hoover up’ Water Voles, the two animals just don’t get along together!

In the course of designing the next phases of the Trust’s vole programme we have enjoyed much amusement whilst planning and budgeting furiously. The vole-word has become part of a continuous stream of odd jokes, much in the vein of Radio 4 ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue’. Puns about Voleunteers, Voletmeters and Revoleution give fun to the working day. However, the cleverest joke of all was made by the photographer from Cotswold Life who came to take photographs for their October edition in which I'm interviewed. Her instant response to one of our dodgy vole jokes was to respond with "Volegarians"!

Water Vole (c) Steven Dorey

Raising Funds

2009-09-11T01:48:00.004+01:00

I am proud to be a Rotarian, albeit a serial underachiever due to work time restricting my freedom to attend meetings. Rotarians raise enormous sums of money both at the local level, such as my Dursley Rotary Club and through Rotary International. The Jessie May Trust, GL11 Community Project, Acorns, Yercombe Lodge and Cotswold Care Hospice are all currently benefiting from the Dursley club’s activities.

Amateur fundraising is impressive but as charities grow, the need for a professional approach becomes essential. The Wildlife Trust needs £800,000 a year to carry out its core work protecting Gloucestershire’s wildlife for Gloucestershire people. This is no minor challenge and needs a very organised and hard working team to keep the funds flowing.

When we want to carry out ambitious, cutting edge work, the costs are quite scary. My current challenge with the team is to safeguard the future of the water vole in the Cotswolds. To employ expert staff to do this for the next five years will cost over £0.5M! If we take no action we could end up like Cornwall, which has lost its whole water vole population.

I recently met the creative minds of Square Peg with my team. This specialist agency is advising us how to explain the mysteries of isolated water voles populations, habitat fragmentation and predation by unwanted foreign mustelids, into plain English. We know what we want to do and how it will prevent the water vole becoming extinct along entire reaches of the Rivers Leach, Evenlode, Windrush and more. If we take no action the future for the friendly and harmless little Ratty, the character from Wind in the Willows, is bleak.

If a rich and prosperous county like Gloucestershire does not take action to protect a rapidly declining mammal, we do not have any right to expect third world citizens to defend the Tiger, Rhinoceros or Panda. Creativity and professional fund raising can make all the difference between success and failure. But we all share a responsibility for keeping the county the wonderful place that makes it such a joy to inhabit.

Water vole (c) Paul Gregory

Living with Change

2009-08-28T16:47:00.002+01:00

The Parliamentary year of 2009 will go down in the memory of professional politicians as not their finest period. Sub-let flats, houses for ducks and the odd moat clearance have created in public mind the appearance of a culture based on the self interest of members, rather than the discharge of democratic and party duties.

I am not a political animal, (although my wife says I should be one when I start up on one of my heartfelt rants about environmental issues). I do, however, value the hard work and commitment that MPs apply to their constituency duties. I have worked alongside many Gloucestershire parliamentarians and I have found them all to be dutiful and cooperative. Our very biased family favourite would be the late Charles Irvine MP who not only hosted a Wildlife Appeal event at his home in Cheltenham, but also reduced my daughters to beaming happiness with large tins of House of Commons butterscotch (he chaired the House catering committee)!

The Trust’s cruise along the Gloucester-Sharpness canal featured a large group of distinguished and most welcome guests. David Drew, MP for Stroud, and his wife were particularly welcome and I was very pleased that they had been able to make space in their diaries for our four hour excursion. Indeed, David was typical of the majority of our guests as he had not before been able to justify the trip. Like me he was struck by the totally different view of the Severn Vale that is given from the perspective of this functional canal.

I emailed David on a business matter following our trip and last Thursday I spent a full hour talking about a wide range of matters with him. The theme of our discussion, although not the issue that I had raised originally, became that of the general failure of Gloucestershire folk to show off the wonders of their county. Indeed, I have never quite understood how one of England’s most diverse historic, cultural and ecological landscapes is so poorly promoted. Even worse is a general belief that the countryside is to be taken for granted, that the people who live there are overly fortunate and have no social problems, and that there no real jobs or prosperity in rural industries.

The environmental and land-based industries generate almost 6% of Gross National Product. Across the UK almost 1 million people are paid workers in these industries and another 0.5M give their time voluntarily. The upshot of this is the quality of life that Gloucestershire people (and the South West RDA) take for granted. Gloucester City and Cheltenham Town both benefit from their settings within the Severn Vale, framed by the hills of the Forest of Dean and the Cotswolds. Neither location would be nearly so fine without these backdrops or the wonderful green spaces and street trees that set off their buildings and urban features.

The Trust’s Living Landscape programmes exist to show the importance of the environment as the key component within a healthy society that has an economy growing within environmental limits. The Severn Vale project that David Drew saw is the stage one of the first of these. In October, the Trust will be announcing its next visionary programme. Over the next decades of climate-driven change, without fully joined-up policies, programmes and investment decisions, our county will not continue to be the Living Gloucestershire that we all currently take for granted. The Trust intends to set the pace to support Gloucestershire living with change.

Licensed to Practise

2009-08-24T17:01:00.004+01:00

My work with the Trust and Lantra give me the enjoyable combination of practical outcomes at county level and influencing strategy and policy at UK level. This work also gives me insight into the advantages and drawbacks of trying to work with Government.

The Wildlife Trust is a registered charity that is not at all restricted in its activities, other than to fulfil its members’ wishes whilst observing legal and regulatory obligations. That means that it is free to focus on its Vision of a Living Gloucestershire, rich in wildlife, valued by everyone. The Trust spends the monies that it raises through membership subscriptions and other fundraising on the county’s wildlife as it pleases, unrestricted by Government policy.

Lantra is also a charity that must observe rules and regulations at UK and Scottish level. But its special status is that, being licensed by all four Governments as a Sector Skills Council (SSC); it receives special funding to carry out specific qualifications and business development work. The downside to being the only body that represents all 17 of the industries that make up the environmental and land based sector, is the very thing that gives Lantra is status – its license to practise.

In 2006 Lord Leitch published a report commissioned on the future skills needs of the UK. In implementing most of the Leitch recommendations a decision was made by the UK Government both to set up a new regulatory body, the UKCES, and to carry out a review of all 25 SSCs.

Relicensing is now almost complete with the last group of five SSCs reaching the assessment stage. The principal source of evidence for the UKCES on Lantra’s performance is a detailed report drawn up by the National Audit Office. With Peter Martin, Lantra’s CEO, I will be interviewed by commissioners Sir Charlie Mayfield (Chairman of John Lewis Partnership) and Grahame Smith (General Secretary of the STUC) on Wednesday. I am confident that Lantra’s licence will be approved, but working with government means that this is not the end of the story.

Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Industry and Skills, is currently contemplating restructuring the skills framework for England. My worry is that one of the options under consideration could end the SSC network in favour of regional skills strategies drafted and overseen by the Regional Development Agencies. Whilst this might seem sensible, the damage for the 17 industries currently covered by Lantra would be that they do not rank highly alongside the usual suspects when measured in terms of GDP, employment footprint and urban relevance. In regional skills strategies environmental conservation, like forestry, horticulture and agriculture are very likely to be invisible, ignored and unsupported.

The excellent work that Lantra has carried out over the years would be wasted within a regional structure and organisations in the sector would not have a skills champion with vision, expert knowledge and a holistic industry view. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has benefited from several of Lantra’s skills initiatives. The environmental and land based industries would be damaged by the loss of the SSC network. The next few months will be critical in resolving the future of the skills framework for England.

Trust in Charity

2009-08-24T16:58:00.003+01:00

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has been very successful over the years because of a not so secret ingredient. The success of a charity depends on the quality of its people, staff and volunteers. The most important group of unpaid workers are the Trustees, who carry a heavy burden of legal and regulatory responsibilities for no reward other than a sense of achievement.

Trustees are literally the heart and head of the Trust. They protect the values and vision of the organisation; ensure that the charity’s money is spent properly and within budget and look ahead to where the Trust might be headed. These are the same tests as commercial company directors but without any financial rewards.

I have had the pleasure of spending time with some of my Trustees over the past few days. Three sharp minds, experienced in a wide range of fields, have given critical insight into their views of the Trust’s challenges. Anthony Hird, Mike Martin and Gill Richards each share a passion for nature and believe that the Wildlife Trust is making a difference. They continue to give their time and energy in the knowledge that the next few decades will see the county’s climate changing more rapidly than at any time in recent history. This will add serious new pressures to plant and animal communities that are already restricted in range and abundance through human activity.

The Trust is reviewing its future strategy over the next few months and this is the most important contribution that trustees can make to a charity’s future. One of my favourite management sayings is that for every problem there is an obvious solution – that is almost certainly the wrong one. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s board will be questioning its future direction and the major problems that it will be facing.

A Trustee's job is to ask all those simple but infuriatingly hard questions that start with the letter W. What are we going to do, why will we be doing it and what will be the benefit? In heading up the staff team, my W words are to suggest the Way forward and how we will find the Wherewithal to pay for it! Wildlife will be the beneficiary if we get the mixture right!

We always welcome new applications to become a Trustee or a member of one of our advisory committees. See our AGM notice for more information.

Photography by Philip Precey

CARRY ON CRUISING

2009-08-20T14:55:00.011+01:00

I don’t work in a profession where corporate entertainments are the norm but most years, one or two pleasant opportunities arise. I have had several invitations for trips from Gloucester to go south along the canal towards Sharpness but have been unable to accept previous invitations because of work or other commitments. How pleasant then to have finally taken the trip on a sunny afternoon yesterday.

I did not even have to wrestle with my conscience this time as the boat was paid for by one of the Trust’s own projects. It was in fact my job to host the party of over 40 partners and supporters for the afternoon. The aim of the expedition was to explain the workings of the Trust’s Severn Vale Living Landscape Project and to show off some of the achievements of the past 12 months.

We were extremely fortunate that so many of our invitees found time to come along for the short cruise. Indeed, many of those on board had worked together for years and a great deal of intense Gloucestershire networking was taking place, some of it actually relating to the wildlife of the Severn and its adjoining countryside.

The canal itself is the forerunner of the M5 motorway. Opened in 1827, it acted as an enormously important waterway between the estuary at Sharpness and inland river access to the Midlands. I can well remember in the 1980s when significant vessels still carried timber and oil up to the Gloucester. Now it is just a pleasure routeway enjoyed by resident canal folk and holiday makers. Apart from the historic tall ships that berth in the city, there is no significant trade activity.

The Trust’s Severn Vale project is working with the farmers and landowners of the vale to assist them with integrating wildlife into farm management plans. The biggest success in the first year has been the enthusiastic involvement of the Clifford family who have entered their entire estate into a high level management scheme.

The Cliffords have lived in Frampton for almost 1000 years. It seems entirely natural that a modern approach to wildlife conservation should be so thoroughly understood by land managers who are such an integral part of this historic county.

Photographs by Margaret McGlone and Emma Bradshaw

BACK TO THE BLOG

2009-08-17T14:48:00.003+01:00

It’s good to be back in action after a rather disrupted June and July. John Lennon is quoted as saying: “Life is what messes up your plans”. Indeed, I had not planned for the event that occurred and disrupted a recent trip to Antrim, and had certainly not planned for four weeks signed off as medically unfit to drive a car!

Television advertisements do not generally hold my attention but I am very glad that Margaret and I both remembered FAST. The early signs of a stroke can usually be detected by looking for Facial changes, Arms that don’t move freely, Speech that is slurred – Telephone for help! I awoke in our hotel, immobile and unable to coordinate my arm movements. Mags called for an ambulance and Antrim Area Hospital was extremely caring, but it wasn’t quite like the trip to the Giant’s Causeway that we had planned for that weekend.

I am now fully recovered from what was technically a mini-stroke or Transient Ischaemic Attack; a temporary loss of blood flow to the brain, resulting in symptoms that clear within 24 hours. The cause of this impediment has not yet been found but as a result of very high-tech medical scanning, I now have documentary proof that I am the owner of both a heart and brain. Clearly, on the day of the TIA, they were not getting on together as well as I had become accustomed!

My knowledge of strokes before my TIA was minimal, but I had remembered that TV Gardener Monty Don had vanished from our screens following a similar experience. I found his description of events reassuring from the perspective of having been a similarly busy person who suddenly found that life was unexpectedly different.

However, like Monty, I am extremely fortunate in having made a full recovery with no side effects. The main challenge now is not to recreate the level of work and commitment that I had become used too. Not because this had been part of the cause, merely that life is surprisingly short and deserves full appreciation. Clement Freud’s funniest comment is literally entombed with him, I just want any ‘best before date’ on my headstone to be some way in the future yet!

This leads on to the announcement that Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust will be proudly sponsoring Monty Don's talk on wildlife gardening at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Saturday 17th October 2009. Tickets are £9 and available from the box office on 08445 767979. See the Trust website for more information.

30 years at The Trust

2009-05-14T14:56:00.003+01:00

If one is measured by the company one keeps then I must once have been a curious individual. At least that is my analysis of a short speech made by my boss, Trust Chairman Hugh Tollemache on Monday.

Once a month we have an all-staff meeting at our Conservation Centre in Gloucester. On Monday I was particularly impressed by the number of staff attending; one or two absentees due to previous appointments, but an almost 100% turnout. What I failed to spot was a very pleasant ambush that had been planned at the end of the formal business. I had forgotten that this week marks my 30th anniversary of working with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust.

The curious company reference is not related to my excellent colleagues. The link was in fact 1979 when two other people also began new jobs. Margaret Thatcher and Saddam Hussein took over their new respective roles and I began work as the ‘Executive and Conservation Officer of the Gloucestershire Trust for Nature Conservation’. The other two members of the class of '79 have now left office but I am still batting on!

The reason that I am still in Gloucestershire is that I have never seen another job that would offer as many opportunities or as much reward as working for The Trust. Since 1979 we have achieved a good deal for the county’s wildlife and are well placed to do even more over the next 30. The Board of Trustees said a very gracious 'thank you' at their Board meeting on Monday evening. It is great to part of a brilliant group of volunteers and staff, supported by 23,000 members, all committed to Gloucestershire’s future.

It would be very easy to get carried away with thoughts of a devoted fan club after such a lovely surprise. To be thanked at all, after merely doing my job, is wonderful. However, there is usually a reality check inbuilt within any surprise. In this case, my colleagues have clubbed together to have me towed to a height of 3,000ft above Nympsfield and cast adrift in an unpowered aircraft.

I have never flown a glider. However, the great Sir Peter Scott set a world gliding altitude record from the same airfield. Perhaps Sir Peter is the real company with which to be compared. He helped found The Trust in 1961 and is one of the leaders of the conservation movement. It certainly is great to be even a small part of such an important movement.

Photogaph (c) Paul Nicholls

Dipping out

2009-05-13T10:33:00.004+01:00

I am always enthusiastic that exciting and interesting records of wildlife are passed on to specialists or to the Gloucestershire Environmental Records Centre. But sometimes it is impossible not to become a little bit envious when told of a particularly good record. That is what happened this afternoon when I was phoned by Margaret, who had just enjoyed a particularly fine walk with Milli the dog.

Travelling around the UK is a good way of seeing the richness of the countryside. But the downside of travel is the dull time spent in comfortable but characterless hotel rooms. My temporary accommodation in Antrim has given me views of the local Swallows, Greenfinches and the occasional ‘hoodie’. What it does not have is a cheerful little river burbling along outside.

The redevelopment of the old Listers site in Dursley has now generated some wildlife wins. The River Cam, which was for many years imprisoned for over a mile within a dirty, polluted pipeline, has once again been opened to the air. Now much more free flowing, the river has cleaned itself of the silt and dirt that it had accumulated. It is clear and should support a greater range of invertebrates.

That has been supported by Margaret’s unexpected sighting of a young Dipper and one of its parents not 100 metres from our house. The Dipper’s disappearance from many of England’s rivers has been an indication that water quality had declined worryingly.

The Dipper is a fascinating bird with the amazing skill of being able to walk along the bottom of even fast flowing watercourses whilst searching for insect food. It looks a little like an oversized Wren with a distinctive white bib. Now, I have never seen a Dipper on the Cam and I don’t see or hear the Kingfisher as frequently as Margaret. Despite being a conservation professional, I have no confidence in beating her to the double that she is now looking forward to. To see a Dipper and a Kingfisher in one view really would be something and put the Cam firmly on the wildlife map.

Photograph (c) Richard Carter on Flickr

Reading the landscape

2009-05-12T15:43:00.009+01:00

I am not a great fan of air travel, but the journey from Gloucestershire to Belfast is significantly quicker and faster by air from Bristol rather than a mixture of road and ferry trips.

However, one of the benefits of a clear aerial view such as the one I enjoyed this morning whilst being circulated over Lough Neagh, is the opportunity to study the patterns of fields set out in a patchwork below.

The shapes and distribution of field boundaries, combined with other clues such as ridge and furrow patterns and odd circles and stripes, can give a historic view of the past. Writers such as Pennington, Hoskins and Rackham are good sources to begin time travelling. But what really matters is creative imagination.

The landscape is like a giant child’s magic writing board. Each generation leaves traces that are in turn partially overwritten by the next. I have heard a posher description of this as a palimpsest. Whatever the description, the result is a fascinating mixture of agriculture, forestry, wild places and hard features such as roads.

The secret of reading the countryside is simple. Irregular outlines tend to be ancient, straight lines and square corners more modern. The countryside around Belfast is mostly regular, revealing the field shapes established by planned boundaries. However, there are intriguing irregularities.

A small island close to Lough Neagh’s shorelines suggested an Ulster version of an artificial Iron Age island, known in Scotland as aacrannog. I am probably wrong, but the possibility filled my imagination until touch down at Belfast International.

Image (c) Amy Groark on Flickr

2009-05-12T09:55:00.007+01:00

The distribution of slow worms in Gloucestershire

Data courtesy of Gloucestershire Centre for Environmental Records

In my excitement over the allotment slowworms, I forgot to ask my colleagues at the Gloucestershire Environmental Records Centre (GCER) just how common this legless lizard is in Cam. I was offered a trade by Holly York at GCER to provide a 6 figure grid reference in exchange for a distribution map of slowworm records and I was shocked to find that there has only ever been one previous record for the parish and that was made 25 years ago.

It seems that not only are our colony still supporting breeding slowworms, it is the only current record of them. But does that mean that this is a very rare creature? Possibly not, it is more likely that records of this enigmatic little reptile are simply not being provided for the parish.

Species recording is generally patchy and for many creatures, the availability of quality data is very poor. This is odd as the UK has the best studied flora and fauna of any country in the world. So why do we apparently know so little? I believe that there are three reasons:

Firstly, the value of wildlife recordings is not understood. Without good information, conservation strategy is hard to design properly. Secondly, there is a worrying shortage of active recorders and there are very few younger people becoming experts in identification. Thirdly, the system for recording and storing important information is not well known.

In Gloucestershire, Linda and Holly at GCER welcome all sighting data. Contact them at gcer@gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk or on 01172 309119.

For those interested in learning more about the natural world around them, I suggest the following three websites as excellent places to start. Whilst they are Gloucestershire biased, they give a good starting point into biodiversity and surveying networks.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust organising over 300 public activities a year.

National Biodiveristy Network which co-ordinates species recording across the UK.

Gloucestershire Naturalists Society where the county’s top specialists can be contacted.

Learning for life

2009-05-08T17:54:00.008+01:00

pictured from l to r: Hugh Tollemache, Henry Elwes, Patricia Broadfoot & Gordon McGlone

“I am delighted to sign this Memorandum of Understanding with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. Together we have already produced this wonderful guide to the wildlife of The Park. We welcome members of the local community who would like to visit and enjoy the campus. Universities are not scary places at all.”

Genuine words of sentiment that I was honoured to hear from Patricia Broadfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Gloucestershire speaking at our breakfast meeting held in Cheltenham on Wednesday.

I have been working with a very committed top team from the University for two years to find ways in which a Wildlife Trust and a place of higher learning can find areas where together they may be more effective in partnership. The outcome of our first collaboration has been a full wildlife study of the Park and a lovely illustrated leaflet that explains its history. Few Cheltenham people know that the site was originally designed as a menagerie with a central lake in the shape of Africa!

My single biggest piece of learning from this is has been to find the huge commitment within the university to make itself accessible for learners of all ages. This is quite a change from my university days in the late 1960’s. Then only 5% of school leavers were able to study for a degree. Older people and those who had not had the advantages of a grammar school education could not easily benefit from the excitements of study and discovery.

Open public access to the campus is a first stage in helping to show that universities are very much a part of the life of the community. The Trust and the university will be developing a range of learning activities that will give access to experts for people wishing to understand environmental and wildlife subjects. Together we aim to make the natural world more immediate and relevant. This is a very necessary task, the environment needs more friends – and quickly.

The future is a foreign place

2009-05-07T17:58:00.004+01:00

Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was a seminal piece of writing that changed the way that the chemicals that had become available after World War 2 were affecting wildlife. Small songbirds dying from the effects of agricultural chemicals that people believed to be safe were a dramatic wake-up call from the wild.

Carson’s book and visible changes to the countryside resulted in the development of a huge range of environmental bodies across the world. The Gloucestershire Trust for Nature Conservation (now Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust) was formed in 1961 by local people who wanted to safeguard the counties wildlife.

The willingness of people to make changes that benefit their communities is still alive and well. Three of the current challenges that are firing the imaginations of local thinkers are Climate Change, Food Security and Peak Oil. Each of these issues is as huge as Rachel Carson’s global alert on pesticides such as organochlorines and the ‘drins’. Books such as The Transition Handbook by Rob Hoskins are a good example of this thinking.

Localness is strong and alive within the ‘Transition Town’ movement http://www.transitionculture.org/ . Local groups are thinking about a very different future in which energy prices are much higher, food more expensive and the climate several degrees warmer that today’s.

I spoke to a very insightful group of 50 local people about the importance of understanding the need to maintain local biodiversity issues within the transition agenda. The Newent Transition Town meeting confirmed that there is a huge reserve of energy and intelligence that may provide fresh insights into how societies will adjust.

We must all adapt to rising oil prices and increased fous on local food production. But it is imperative that the mistake of not giving wildlife priority is not repeated in future strategies. If we do not accommodate biodiversity Rob Hoskins’ vision of travelling from oil dependency to local resilience will not be achieved. The environment is an integrated system. Wildlife locks the pieces together.

Back to nature

2009-05-06T12:23:00.007+01:00

One of the perils of becoming a manager in any organisation is the distance that may develop between you and the very thing that got you into the business in the first place. In my case, I see little wildlife from my desk (apart from the very obliging long-tailed tit that occasionally sits in the bush outside the window. However, every so often there is the very real treat of visiting one of the Trust’s 60 plus nature reserves.

This week I had the very real thrill of being out in the woods when I hosted a visit by some of The Trust’s loyal members to our Lower Woods Nature Reserve. This wonderful square mile of ancient woodland was gifted to Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust by the estate of the late Duke of Beaufort. Since the gift of the site, we have been able to invest in essential fencing, gates, signs, bridges and all the other infrastructure that is essential for effective and safe nature reserve management.

There is still much to be done in Lower Woods and on the other Nature Reserves that The Trust manages. However, the outlook for major new projects is looking difficult. Sources of grant aid will be hit hard by the twin impacts of the 2012 Olympics and the recession. The Olympics will prove a real drain on government funds as commitments are honoured and the legacy is ensured and the recession is already shrinking the income of commercial supporters and the investment income of private trusts.

But Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust withstood both the 1980s and 1990s recessions and actually grew in size and capacity. There is a tendency in the media to dwell on the glum side of events. Investing in wildlife is the one good news story that ensures better future returns than the speculative hedge funds of the City.

It was certainly good to be able to share this optimistic outlook yesterday with the 70 members who shared a great walk in over 600 acres of bluebell covered woodland.

Crossing the river at Lower Woods (c) Margaret McGlone

Conservation Skills

2009-05-06T11:39:00.002+01:00

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has been a benevolent employer to me. The job is exciting, the people wonderful and the sense of achieving something very motivating! I have also been allowed to become involved in work that might not seem to have obvious importance to Wildlife Conservation.

During the last significant recession in the 1980s, the government implemented a major job creation scheme. At its peak The Trust, with only nine core staff itself, was employing another 100 Community Programme workers. One of the key pieces of organisational learning to emerge from our 1984-88 programme was the importance of training and skills.

We were carefully able to pool funds to create a significant training budget. This was used to ensure that everyone on our community scheme could do their job properly. The results were very rewarding. We achieved really good quality work and the success rate of participants returning to mainstream employment was very high. The participants got better jobs, the government reduced unemployment and Gloucestershire’s wildlife got a better deal!

Because of our experience in Gloucestershire, I was asked to participate in drafting the first vocational nature conservation qualification, an NVQ. The team that put the NVQ together comprised people actually doing the jobs that the qualification was designed for. But the end result was far from perfect because the educational machinery of Whitehall in the 1990s insisted on a structure and language that made the NVQ obscure and inaccessible.

Almost 20 years later, employers and employees still make the case that vocational qualifications are not quite what they want. Lantra and the other 24 Sector Skills Councils are now well placed to shape vocational education. But there is still a large gap between the future skills needs of industries like environmental conservation and the competences of those trying to gain work in the best jobs around. Skills supply and demand has a place even in the work of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust.

Photograph (c) The Wildlife Trusts

Tide changes for marine wildlife

2009-05-05T11:01:00.002+01:00

Structured nature conservation got going in the UK with pioneering legislation passed just after the Second World War. For the first time, important terrestrial wildlife sites could be protected in a statutory network of Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Because of this 1949 legislation, important plants and animals that live above the high tide mark have been reasonably protected.

Sadly, this is only half of the story as our estuarine and marine wildlife has largely remained unprotected. Is that important? Yes, absolutely! There is even more fabulous wildlife in the seas around the British Isles than on the mainland and islands.

But the tide may be changing in favour of the sea horses, sea anemones, seals and corals, species that live largely unseen within our coastal waters. The Marine and Coastal Access Bill now before the House of Lords will, for the first time, give substantial legal protection to our special marine places.

DEFRA Minister, Huw Irranca-Davies, confirmed the English government’s commitment to establishing Marine Protected Areas at our Wildlife Trusts Marine Dinner, held appropriately at the Fishmongers Hall in London on Tuesday last week. The Wildlife Trusts have worked hard to progress this essential legal protection for our precious Marine Wildlife. The Marine Act, when it is passed, will be as important in its way as existing wildlife legislation.

Speakers at the dinner referred to this exciting development as a seminal moment in the history of nature conservation. We were each given a goody bag at the end of the evening. If I was a believer in Karma and reincarnation, I would now have a clear view as to my likely status in a future life. The bone china mug in my bag featured the Long-snouted Sea Horse, a unique species, largely restricted to Studland Bay and suffering habitat loss due to sailors tearing up Eel Grass with their anchors. This is a species with a poor conservation outlook, but the males make good really good sea-horse dads. Perhaps I might even be doing something right in this life!

Spiny Seahorse (c) danjc003 on Flickr

Home is where the heart is

2009-04-29T11:51:00.002+01:00

My love of wildlife started when, as a very small person, I began exploring the damp, crumbly places that I found under the stones and hedgerow of our modest Southampton home. As I grew, my home range extended to the bomb site at the bottom of the road. There I found a common lizard that scuttled around a big pile of rubble and a fabulous butterfly bush that attracted scores of peacocks, small tortoiseshells and the occasional comma.

I still find the best wildlife close to my home here in Gloucestershire. My patch now includes organic allotments that have given me two wildlife “wows” in the last month – two creatures at very different ends of the visibility scale but each having their own magic.

The allotments that my wife Margaret and I run are managed of the perma-culture raised-bed system. This includes the use of carpet to cover paths and uncultivated spots. Each year in spring we look forward to our first sighting of the slow worms that have emerged from their winter hibernation. Last Sunday we found two adults, one of them probably the mother of two exquisite babies that lay curled nearby. Even the Royal jeweller could not create such beauty as their tiny bronze bodies with jet black undersides.

At the other end of the show-off scale was the red kite that drifted along the scarp inspecting the allotments in the clear hope of some tasty snack! The kite is a spectacular bird, graceful in the air and mildly patterned in reds and subtle gold. It has not yet re-established itself as a breeding bird in the county but it cannot be long before it does.

Slow worm (c) Colin Varndell, Red kite (c) Wildstock

A spoonbill's appraisal

2008-09-11T09:25:00.002+01:00

In business the terms ‘back and front’ office are used to differentiate the parts of a company. The front office delivers products and services to customers, whilst the back office manages the mechanics of systems, finances, training, health and safety and sundry other important issues.

As a Wildlife Trust we try to manage our back office, including our priceless membership database, to the highest possible standards. The downside for those of us who spend most of our time in the office is that we are separated from the very things that drew us to nature conservation in the first place – WILDLIFE.

It was therefore a real treat for me yesterday when I visited Coombe Hill Nature Reserve. The purpose of the visit was highly worthy and very back office – my important annual appraisal with Trust Chairman Andrew Kerr. However, the delight of the visit was not just in seeing such a fantastic Severn wetland full of waders, warblers and ducks on their Autumn passage, but it coinciding with the visit of two rather aloof and clearly superior water birds – Spoonbills.

Now I am no twitcher and I have never before seen any of the passing rarities that drop in on our sites from time to time. However, the spoonbills were magnificent. What makes their visit so tantalising is that they breed locally just across the channel in the Netherlands. Will they ever make the leap across to become a fully fledged (bad pun) British bird rather than the intermittent breeder that they are now? No-one knows and even the clairvoyant and seminal ‘A climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds’ is no more informative.

For me I will continue to consider my forays onto our nature reserves as journeys of discovery and savour those chance encounters that make nature such an immersive experience. Every visit is a delight and I will try to leave as few carbon footprints as I can justify.

And the appraisal? Best not to discuss in public!

Miserable weather...

2008-09-10T09:13:00.002+01:00

So, we've had a miserable cloudy wet August with copious rainfall. How is this evidence of climate change? Terry Wogan, TOGMeister and leading vocal climate change denier, has used the weather as more evidence that global warming is a invention of the environmentalists. Hurricane Gustav is probably being cited in the same way in an American context.
The fact is that individual weather events can not be linked with climate change. Nor does climate change infer that we will be experiencing warmer sunny summers as standard. IT is the case however, that globally average temperatures are increasing. Climate change models also predict increasing storminess and greater variability in weather systems. We are seeing these trends on both sides of the Atlantic.

And is there any real evidence that our native wildlife is suffering from these changes? Well, I've just returned from a study trip to Scotland and it is clear that their uplands are changing at quite a rapid pace. The snowfields that once hung on in the corries of the Cairngorms well into summer are now a thing of the past. Indeed, the headwaters of rivers such as the Dee, which were once fed by cold snow melt, are now up to 2C warmer in summer. Such is the change that there is real concern that the 'King of Fish' that Atlantic Salmon may no longer be able to spawn in its headwaters.

The sensible argument for climate change is lets live within environmental limits, consume less and then, even if wrong (which personally believe is an enormous if) we will be leaving less of a mess. We are overspending hugley on our environmental credit card. A global environmental credit crunch would be much more serious than a stalled housing market and slow high street sales.