The party conference season has started and so I am in Bournemouth with the Liberal Democrats. Over the next month, starting here in Bournemouth, and then in Brighton with Labour, Manchester with the Conservatives and Aberdeen with SNP, RSPB staff will be encouraging politicians to use their voice for nature, defend the EU Nature Directives and ensure that there is sufficient resource available to restore landscapes for people and wildlife.
Through this blog I shall let you know how we get on.
For me, the start of the conference season means autumn has arrived, so I was delighted to mark the “end of summer” by joining our team at Arne to celebrate the reserve’s 50th birthday yesterday.
Arne is a fabulous site full of colour and life. Over the weekend I saw water voles, spoonbills, southern hawker dragonflies, raft spiders, all four heather species (including Dorset heath) in one square metre and followed a group of Dartford warblers, stonechats, whinchat and redstart over the heath.
If you haven’t been, you must go!
10am at Arne on Saturday
Arne’s signficance as a heathland stronghold is beyond question with our suite of sites in the Peninsula now covering over 1000 hectares. As a nation, we've lost about 75% of our heathland since 1800 due to agriculture expansion, plantation forestry and housing development. And there has been a 60% decline in heathland species since 1970. Today, just 0.3% of the UK is heathland although this still represents a large percentage of the global resource.
For species like the Dartford Warbler, our ability to restore and manage heathlands will determine whether it can adapt to climate change. It is globally recognised as Near Threatened (assessing its risk of extinction) as it is experiencing major declines in the southern part of its range. Like most species, its expected range will shift northwards with climate change (see below), but it needs to have adequate habitat to colonise new areas.
Dartford warbler at Arne by Ben Hall (rspb-images.com) alongside maps showing shifting potential range of Dartford Warbler from today (top) to a possible future (bottom - warming scenario 3 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures) with dots depicting breeding range (from A Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds)
This is why the RSPB has had a long term strategy of trying to establish heathland strongholds both in the south but also up through the midlands of England. This is why we continue to expand the heathland area at our Headquarters at the Lodge and why we are delighted to be leading the partnership responsible for guarantee the future of Sherwood Forest.
We need to establish more, bigger, better and connected heathlands to buy species time to adapt. So, despite being hit hard by recent cold winters, our resident Dartford Warbler has had a good year with 54 pairs recorded at Arne.
Yet, the ability to move through the landscape depends on a species’ ability to disperse which is why we have intervened to help the spectacular, but very localised and elusive, Ladybird Spider expand its range into Arne. We are hopeful that a translocation project started in 2012 will lead to the establishment of a self-sustaining population at Arne.
And it is the efforts of those working in the southern heathland sites as well those across the country which will determine whether these heathland specialities will become features of the British countryside in the future.
So give three cheers to all those working on our wonderful heathlands and here’s to the next 50 years at Arne.
3pm on Saturday. It was eaten by 3.30pm.