Moss
Before you drag the pressure washer out of its winter hibernation, let’s talk about the ecological importance of the moss growing between your patio pavers.
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Are we saving the wrong bees?
Annual report
Every Christmas, the National Trust publishes a report on the ways in which the year’s weather has affected the UK’s wildlife. This year, after the summer’s extreme drought, we can clearly see some of those effects in the reserve.
Continue reading “Annual report”COP27
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP27, begins today in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
Continue reading “COP27”International cooperation 2
Volucella inanis
by Ian Bushell
Email from Dr R.L.Brown, of Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, NZ:
Continue reading “International cooperation 2”International cooperation!
by Ian Bushell
At the beginning of October, at the Amateur Entomological Exhibition at Kempton Park, I was introduced to Dr R.L.Brown from New Zealand, who was doing research into potential biological control of wasps.
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Meadow foxtail
In the summer, County Recorder Richard Aisbitt identified meadow foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis) in our fields, a tall grass with a furry flower head that looks like a fox’s brush: hence its name.
Continue readingHabitat fragmentation
Conservation is full of jargon, full of buzzwords and phrases that sound good. We all use them and we do it to save ourselves the trouble of proper research. We are trying to demystify some of these terms.
Continue reading “Habitat fragmentation”Habitat loss
People think of an uprooted forest when they think of habitat loss: orang utans starving in a palm oil plantation, the rabbits running from the machinery at the beginning of Watership Down, or the man-made desert of a dust-bowl. But habitat loss is, in the majority of cases, a lot less dramatic and much more ordinary than that, and often a great deal closer to home.
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Insect losses
In the UK the populations of our more common butterflies have fallen by 46% in the last 50 years while the rarer species have declined by 77%. We have lost 60% of our flying insects in just 20 years. We have entirely lost 13 species of our native bees since the 1970s and fully expect more to follow.
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Nature reserve problems
We are not the only nature reserve struggling with increased visitor numbers. Here, David Attenborough presents a twenty minute documentary about Richmond Park, showing us a biodiversity not dissimilar to Southwick Country Park’s own, and wrestling with very similar difficulties.
Please comment below. The problems of sharing our few public green spaces with our threatened wildlife in a damaged biosphere grow as our population grows, and we all need to find solutions.
Re-wilding
Re-wilding projects, as a method of restoring Britain’s depleted biodiversity, are gaining support.
Six spot burnet moth
This is a six spot burnet moth (Zygaena filipendulae), a dayflying nectar feeder, photographed on the reserve’s plentiful, nectar-rich, tufted vetch.
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Water vole protection
Water voles are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Are we doing enough to ensure the protection of the reserve’s water voles?
Continue readingLight pollution
According the the Countryside Charity CPRE, light pollution is falling, dropping sharply during the pandemic lockdowns and continuing to fall as the cost of electricity soars. This is good news!
Continue reading “Light pollution”Real or fake?
A lot of people buy artificial Christmas trees in the belief that it benefits the environment, but environmentalists and energy analysts disagree. We need only look at a single element of the hundreds of thousands of artificial trees that will be put up and decorated this Christmas: they are all made of plastic.
Continue reading “Real or fake?”The return of neonicotinoids
On 1st September 2020, the EU’s ban on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides came into effect but investigators have found that eight EU countries and the UK have since exported neonicotinoids to other nations with weaker environmental regulations. These are unacceptable double standards: the companies that produce these dangerous chemicals are prioritising their profits at the expense of our environment.
Continue reading “The return of neonicotinoids”House sparrow
A study by scientists from the RSPB, BirdLife International and the Czech Society for Ornithology has found that there are 247million fewer house sparrows in Europe than there were in 1980. This is a loss of almost half the house sparrow’s European population.
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Cop 26 does not appear to have reached an agreement that will limit global heating to 1.5°C. The really frightening thing is that we all know what has to be done but the people who make the decisions are not listening to us.
Here is Sir David Attenborough on the simple matter of saving our planet:
Bioturbation
Wikipedia defines bioturbation as the reworking of soils and sediments by animals or plants. Here is a video of a system with and without soil fauna such as earthworms, mites and isopods over a 15 week period: this is what is happening to the fallen leaves all over the reserve.
Let the leaves lie
There are thousands of species of invertebrates that overwinter in the leaf litter below our gardens’ trees and shrubs.
Continue reading “Let the leaves lie”Eco-gardening
Challenges such as climate change, habitat destruction and invasive species are pushing our native ecosystems to the edge, making urban and suburban spaces into critical resources. There are 22 million private gardens in the UK, an astonishing potential that, used carefully, might just make the difference between success and failure for the Nature Recovery Networks proposed by the new Environment Bill.
Continue reading “Eco-gardening”“Nature is our home”
At the beginning of the year the UK Treasury commissioned and published for the very first time a full assessment of the economic importance of nature. Professor Dasgupta, the Cambridge University economist who carried out the assessment, concluded that our prosperity has come at “devastating cost” to the ecosystems that support us. “Nature is our home,” he said, “good economics demands we manage it better.”
Continue reading ““Nature is our home””The whole thing
“It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for – the whole thing – rather than just one or two stars.” David Attenborough
Our park doesn’t have snow leopards or white rhinos. Our rarities are small and fragile: water voles, pondweeds, dragonflies zipping past so suddenly they make you jump, a visiting marsh tit, a linnet singing in the trees, little bottom-feeding fish. Then there are the hundreds of flowering plants, thousands of invertebrates and probably tens of thousands of species of fungi hidden away where we can’t see them.
Continue reading “The whole thing”Cats
Usually we would welcome predators into the reserve; they are a sign of a healthy ecosystem. We have resident stoats and weasels, foxes and badgers and are happy to know that our ecosystem can support them. Domestic cats, like this one photographed early in the morning in the woods in Village Green, are a very different proposition.
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Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 