State of Nature

Ian H said:

can you spot the glaring error in image use?

Sure can. That Collared Dove is not doing a very good impersonation of a Turtle Dove.

Keen eyes TJ!

When I get home onto computer, I'll have a look. Heard the news on the radio, find it shocking

Just down the road from me a large area of mature trees, hawthorn and 'scrub' has been bulldozed over the last few days for housing development. When this is allowed during the nesting season what hope is there? Ok - it is only a small area but this sort of thing is going on all over the country - AND IT ALL ADDS UP!

CJ

I'm at a loss to understand what has happened in the last twenty to thirty years. I grew up when factories were still spewing filth and pollution into the air and our rivers (1950s) , but butterflies and birds were still plentiful. Now when I go into the countryside I'm stunned by how few of them I see. Woodland and meadow are eerily deserted. I can usually count on my fingers how many I see. It's high time the politicians woke up and recognised the signs that something has gone dreadfully wrong. If they don't , how long before the human race also finds itself on the brink of extinction ?

cjbeady said:

a large area of mature trees, hawthorn and 'scrub' has been bulldozed over the last few days for housing development. When this is allowed during the nesting season what hope is there?

CJBeady, I picked up on your comment, I wanted to offer a bit of advice in case there is still a chance to step in. Any habitat clearance work at this time of year is high risk with regards to damaging active nests. If it is still ongoing and you have access to the site, if you can identify any areas where active birds nests are, such as visible nests or behaviours linked to nesting, flag these up with the staff on the ground, the developer and council. You may also wish to point them out to the local police (ideally the local wildlife crime officer) if you feel nests have been destroyed intentionally and where it would have been reasonably possible to avoid them. It might be too late to stop the development from going ahead but any developer has to take precautions to avoid active nests if the potential nest sites are identified to those carrying out the work. If it is too late for that, what you could do is contact the developer and the council expressing your concerns and also to call for sensitive landscaping, the inclusion of trees to directly replace those lost and encourage others to do the same.

Thanks for your comments so far! If you have a look at the urban section of the SoN report, the many factors include tidier gardening, loss of green spaces and habitat fragmentation. The changes in how we care for gardens, parks, verges and where we build houses and other developments have all had impacts on the species that share the built environment with us. So we know what some of the problems are, what solutions do you see?

Ian H said:

So we know what some of the problems are, what solutions do you see?

Yes , we know what some of the problems are but I believe there's a major underlying cause that we haven't yet identified. Loss of habitat is obviously one factor we have identified , but it's rare that we see one type of habitat disappear completely , pockets remain. One would expect that those pockets would hold the maximum number of a species that was dependent on that habitat that the area could sustain , but we don't see that. Even where the habitat is OK numbers are declining.

I don't accept the climate change theory either. Let me be clear. I don't deny climate change is happening , but a couple of degrees change in average temperature is well within the extremes that most creatures and plants are equiped to cope with.

This is depressing stuff. I haven't read the whole report, but I heard about it on Radio 4 this morning. I'll report back when I've read it.