I have spent much of this week at the Lodge. This makes a change from my usual, slightly nomadic lifestyle. I celebrated by spending my lunchtimes running round our reserve. It has the halmarks of a true forest with its mix of woodland, heath and grassland. And it felt right to be amongst this landscape as the future of our forests were debated this week.
Most will now agree that it is important that we get the institutional arrangements for forest management right. We need the right investment and management to help our forest (woodland and heathland) wildlife recover. I am glad that this week's report from the Independent Panel on Forestry has been so well received.
But I also know that this is only part of the picture.
I was reminded this week of a rather flattering extract from a speech given by Lord Chris Smith (Chair of the Environment Agency) this spring. And yes, sorry, it did remind me of the Dry Bones song. In Lord Smith's speech (press coverage of which was slightly dominated by his remarks about fracking) he says:
"I sometimes remind my erstwhile political colleagues that organisations like the RSPB and the National Trust have far more members, each, than all the political parties put together. And what they do is help to take people on a rather remarkable – dare I say political – journey. They take a tiny thing – a dipper, say. And they tell you, “if you’re interested in what’s happening to this dipper, you need to understand about the habitat it lives in and which it needs for survival. You need to understand about water quality and about the fate of our hedgerows and about patterns of agriculture. You need to understand about the planning system and how it protects valuable landscape. You need to understand about the pressures of development and urban expansion and industrial growth. You need to understand about how the crucial decisions are taken, by business, by local government, by national government, by European institutions. And you need to understand about the impact that climate change is going to have and what causes it. And you need then to understand about the faltering international discussions and negotiations and how we must press for more and quicker action. And before you know what’s happened, you’ve been taken on a journey of understanding from something incredibly small and tiny and vulnerable – a dipper – and you’ve reached into a hazy understanding of the global and national political forces that shape the future of our environment, and the dipper’s environment. "
I'd hope most of readers of this blog have more than a hazy understanding of how it all fits together...
But, as we look to save species like the nightingale - which has experienced a staggering 60% decline - we know that we will need to get to grips with a vast array of issues.
We need to understand and provide the right habitat requirements for nightingales. This means that we need to improve the management of woodlands. To do this, we need the right institutional arrangements and incentives in place to assist with the management of publicly and privately owned woods. But we also need to tackle other threats they face while they are with us during the summer. Crucially, we need to protect key sites (such as Lodge Hill) from inappropriate development. And, yes that means getting stuck into the planning system and understand why pressures on land use are growing.
Our work cannot be restricted to the UK. We need to work with our BirdLife partners to stop persecution during their migration; understand their ecological needs during the winter months they spend in sub-Saharan Africa. As in the UK, we then need to identify threats from and drivers of changing land use. Before you know it we have to engage in debates about changing demography and consumption patters in West Africa.
All this to save the nightingale. But I am sure you'd agree that it's worth it.
I hope you have enjoyed my woodland warblings this week. Next week I shall return to the challenges facing farmland widllife.
Until then, have a great weekend.
I have to say to Chris Smith of EA that the clear experience of the Forest and NNR debate "Sell Off" shows quite clearly that the backbone of the communal protection of our wildlife sites, for the benefit of all, rather than "locked away" on some private estate, is membership of the Labour party or a trade union. This has been grossly underestimated.
With regard to wintering and in relation to our Cuckoo; I heard Cuckoo from Calais to Cahors on farmland, near farmland/woodland, reedbed and riverine and in the limestone oak scrub de Les Causses de Quercy; on ^ camp sites across that range. I am quite convinced that the problem, at least for this curious "raptor", is the intense agricultural production that most of England is now subject to. In fact have nitrates and pesticides so undermined the "ecological base" and its entomological richness that as with bees we are witnessing its actual death throes ? England olde England is dying ?
Peter Plover