Anecdote vs Science

For my sins I am a reader of the Daily Telegraph. I say reader but I m more of a skim reader and picture observer. Some articles that piqué my interest are fully digested but most pass me by. One column that I began to read with interest was Robin Page’s Country Diary. I thought this would reflect some of my views on the countryside and the traditions therein, this was not the case. His column is in the Weekend section of the Saturday paper and is a mix of country and farming comment and opinion.

The opinion part is what riles me. He like anyone has a right to express an opinion but unlike many he has a wider platform. He has a particular problem with the RSPB and many of the other nature conservation bodies. He seems to be in favour of culling birds of prey to protect other species and espouses some rather weak evidence to support him.

My biggest issue are not his views, as I said he is entitled to express them but his vitriol for science. Take for example today’s piece on Butterflies, he counter poses the idea that British butterflies are on the decline with the anecdotal evidence that he has seen more Small Tortoiseshells this year, and this is the problem, much of his evidence is anecdotal. Such evidence is useful it raises ideas and perhaps prompts research, but it cannot replace hard science.

There are many reasons why Small Tortoiseshells could be prevalent where Robin lives and I could challenge Robin’s assertion that Butterflies are not in as much trouble with my own anecdote that on my patch Tortoiseshells are declining. The difference is I can analyse my assertion through science. I have taken population data on wildlife on my patch for the past 12 years and am just in the process of producing a 10 year study report. This analysis shows a general declining trend but the graph seems to indicate a fluctuating population structure 7 year peaks. This is a guess my data is not extensive enough to say anymore than that the general trend is down and that 2003 and 2010 were amazing years.

My data does not say that all Small Tortoiseshells are declining everywhere; I cannot extrapolate my small patch to represent the whole country in the same way that Robin can say that the species as a whole is okay because he say plenty where he lives.

Accurate science reporting is an ongoing battle and I do think there is a major issue to be handled here. There seems to me to be a disconnect sometimes between the research that is carried out and how much that research can inform and guide conservation policy. Sometimes we need to act without science, how many species could become extinct whilst research is conducted into whether they are declining or why?

Nature conservation needs to science led but it needs to have science that is focused on the practicalities of on the ground conservation workers. Local wildlife trusts need to know how they can maximise their work on their small budgets and be prepared to make hard decisions regarding policy areas.

I applaud Robin on his passion and gusto but hope that he can balance his annoyance with the science of nature conservation a little more fairly in his column. Nor should his views be ignored or his anecdotes treated negatively. There is a lot of wisdom in the countryside but there is much to be said of balance and supporting your arguments with peer reviewed research, a hallmark of scientific practice.

Feral Re-wilding for all

After a week’s pleasant reading I have now finished reading George Monbiot’s book ‘Feral’. I mentioned I had started this book in one of my previous last blog posts (22^nd July), I also commented that in the past I have found George’s approach to environmentalism idealistic and unrealistic. When I was younger I found this vexing but now as I get older and start to feel that yearning for how things used to be, and have watched the travesty of decision making coming from government I am beginning to find my views more in line with his.

The central thesis of ‘Feral’ was that nature conservation should be taking a more hands off approach to conserving wildlife. That nature should be able to reclaim its own balance encouraged by the reintroduction of what many call ecosystem engineers – key species that enable a cascade of effects down through the system. One of the key examples of such an engineer is the European Beaver. Such reintroduction projects using this species have been trialed in Knapdale in Scotland with some success although escaped Beavers in Devon are facing capture and possible execution.

George uses the example of Wolves in the Yellowstone to illustrate the idea of rewilding quite eloquently. He can be seen in this clip explaining what happened.

The book carefully explores the types of animals that could be introduced into the UK and he lists a range of species from Wolves and Lynx to Wild Horse and Grey Whales! He has arbitrarily graded each of the species suitability and I agree with his estimations. He ranks Lynx as more suitable than Wolves. He also highlights the hypocrisy inherent in Britain today. We pay thousands of pounds to Africa to protect big cats some of which threaten villagers whilst living comfortably in a land with no dangerous predators to contend with. We lambast Brazil and Indonesia for its logging of rainforest, whilst we deforested much of the country centuries ago. As in charity I do think conservation should start at home and with less condescension to local people. For people who watched Charlie Hamilton James’ excellent ‘I bought a Rainforest’ series he showed beautifully that world conservation is a much more complex affair than just fencing off an area. In fact such fencing can adversely affect people and in the long term wildlife.

In the UK pretty much all wildlife sites are heavily managed to maintain them in ecological terms they are kept at plagioclimax, an arrested state of development. Naturally the ecosystem wants to develop into in most cases in the UK woodland. Woodland supports the greatest number of species than any other terrestrial habitat, but is nature conservation just a numbers game?

Every year we read of declines in Farmland Birds for example. These values are admirably quantified by the British Trust forOrnithology. But given years of agri-environmental schemes both domestic and European, why is this decline continuing? Again it is a complex answer but at its heart lies the basic premise that wildlife is separate from farming. That the bottom line is the cost of the land and the produce on it, the emphasis is always on the productivity and not the conservation. A key marker for this is that protection of the Environment is paired with Food and Rural Affairs in DEFRA. The government agency contains two areas that are antagonistic to one another. Yes we want a balance between the two. I m not in favour of hounding landowners out in favour of wildflowers... not entirely, but the Environment deserves a government department of its own, one that enables it to carry the same weight as others. In recent years the language of conservation is continually one of compromise.

This brings me to what I am beginning to view as one of the death knells of conservation – sustainability. It rose to prominence whilst I was still at university in 2000 despite being coined much earlier. It has led to, in my mind, the constant flood of green wash. Tiny amounts of offsetting and other techniques to enable construction or development. Builders and planners use sustainability as a byword for getting more. Its okay this housing estate is sustainable – we have planted 30 trees and dug a pond

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Having rambled off from the point I now return to George’s book. His vision for a rewilding of the UK is very exciting and something I see real potential in. Work is already going on in Glen Fleshie, Scotland and I hope that this will serve as a flagship for more work. ‘Feral’ is a well written work, both at turns humorous and engaging. It is well researched and does try to balance the disparate views. I would suggest that every ecology student read it as part of a reading list.

For those who want to know more and do not wish to read the whole book, this month’s BBC Wildlife magazine has an excellent article in which I read with interest Georges ambition to launch a rewilding charity later in the year. I will keep you posted on this.

Feral is available from all good bookshops.

Amazon

I Spy with my Infra-Red Eye...

As you may know I have been keeping track of a small piece of my patch with a Bushnell Trail camera. I have been using trail cameras for about 8 years now. My first camera was bought from a company in America as at the time there were few on sale in my price range, although I was stung by the import duties.

I am what some might call a lazy naturalist. I enjoy listening to the dawn chorus only from my bed. I m not one who gets up at 5 am nor am I able to manage to stay up much past 11 pm. This proves somewhat of a problem in that most of our countries more interesting species only come out at night. The trail cam allowed me to explore my patches wildlife through the night whilst I selfishly slept the hours away. At first I experimented with a number of locations and was pleased with reasonable picture of badgers coming out for bait – peanuts. I found later that the smaller of my now two cameras was perfect for catching the antics of mice. I lowered its positioning and began to record the antics of Wood mice and Voles.

With my latest acquisition I have opted for a more scientific approach. A fixed camera point on a well used animal track along a hedgerow separating a wet meadow and Alder Carr from a barley field. The camera is mounted at about chest height on a beech tree. The trees canopy ensures there is little understory providing clear lines of sight.

To track movements rather than get good sightings I decided not to bait the camera and just record what passed by over the course of several weeks. I started on the 14^th April and barring 2 weeks when I moved the camera to the river, it remained in situ until today when it was revealed that the batteries had run out (these will be replenished tomorrow and the survey will continue with only a week’s gap). I now therefore have 11 weeks’ worth of data and patterns are beginning to emerge.

It has been a pleasure to watch the Vixen rearing her single cub that seemed to use the tree as a marker as to how far he could travel from the earth whilst she was absent. It has been fascinating to watch the Badgers rocketing by. They seem to not stop to forage in the spot. Instead this is definitely a highway and one that is used intermittently perhaps once or twice a week. It is some 200 metres from the sett and not far from a latrine pit area that probably marks the edge of their territory. Muntjac are an occasional visitor. They do not seem to be residents, moving into the area for a day or so before moving on. 

The last sightings have encouragingly include a male and female pair rather than a lone male. Lastly there are the smaller mammals, Grey Squirrel, Brown Rat and Wood Mice. These are all infrequent visitors.

I am hoping to keep up this tracking of animals for as long as possible with as few gaps as possible and see what further patterns emerge. At present I have recorded 6 species of mammal and 7 species of bird but am holding out for my holy grail species, a Weasel. I have recorded them at this exact location in the past but have never managed to catch them on trail cam. Heres hoping the next few months are as productive.

The Wild Life

Some of you may be aware that I am currently reading George Monbiot’s book ‘Feral’. It’s a book I have been meaning to read for some time and although I know the central precepts of his thesis I am finding it interesting. In my youth I found Monbiot somewhat of a fool. I lauded his ambition and common sense but shook my head sagely as I read his ideas that seemed unwieldy and impractical in todays world. In recent years I have softened towards George and have begun to come round to his way of thinking and in particular his views on re-wilding, both of the wider ecology and ourselves.

I have yet to get the crux of George’s central point in the book; he is still building up the picture in a series of Bear Grylls like encounters, but something he did elude to was something I encountered today; the connection with wildlife and the outdoors. I am lucky, I grew up in a family that appreciated nature. Weekends were spent walking in the country and holidays were spent in this country in a caravan. Camping of an kind inevitably brings you closer to nature, even if it is just the mosquitoes in the gloom, the harvestmen on the ground sheet or the occasional frog in the welly. I therefore am one of those people comfortable with wildlife, I would go as far to say I am more comfortable with wildlife than I am with people. Sadly this isn’t true for all. I can recall meeting someone who on going to Wales saw their first ‘Wild’ Cow! Or the children I work with who cannot complete a Food Chain worksheet because they don’t know what the animals are on the sheet let alone what they eat.  I would like to stress that their lack of engagement is not to do with boredom or apathy merely circumstance. When I have taken classes out bug hunting or surveying nearly all light up and find themselves enthralled, the tadpoles in the pond are a particular favourite. It just took someone to take the time to explain to them what they were looking at. To turn over the stone revealing an ants nest and to show how the workers frantically worked to drag the eggs below ground.

In one of the early chapters George described searching for a certain place. Somewhere he found tranquil and energised him. For him it was in a canoe out in the sea in Cardigan Bay, Gannets above him and Mackeral beneath. My place is my local patch that I have visited weekly for the past 13 years, but I can get that same attachment, that moment of calm and awe at any moment.

This week is part of Butterfly Conservation's Big ButterflyCount

and I headed this morning to the local park that I knew would be good for Butterflies. With camera in hand I spent an hour coming the long grass chasing crickets, all of which turned out to be the southern invader Roesell’s Bush Cricket, and identifying butterflies. I paused to sit on a rock in the baking heat beside a brook. Here I watched as an Emperor Dragonfly hawked along its length and attacked the preening Banded Agrions. Whilst sat quietly a Peacock butterfly fluttered into view and made a beeline, well as much of a beeline as butterflies are able towards me. It alighted on my knee, its tongue outstretched probing my hairy legs. I assume scientifically it was attracted to the salt in my sweat but alongside that analytical thought came the engagement with the animal itself. I could gaze into its swirling eyes and watch as the tongue rolled and unrolled.

From this encounter I sought the shade and remembered a few lines in an old book that claimed that in the 1970’s the park had a colony of Common Lizards. I had tried to see if they still existed before but thought today’s heat might help. I sought out the old walls and fallen trunks that seemed likely spots. As I ventured down one of the mown strips in the grassland I came upon a mother with two five year olds sat in the shade of a tree. They each carried little fishing nets, the kind you buy from the seaside and were gleefully chasing butterflies in the vain hope of catching one. The mother called them together and showed them how to take a bark rubbing from the cherry tree that offered them protection. It was at that moment that I had one of ‘those’ moments. A moment of peace despite the squeals of children, the discarded beer can and the noise of the traffic only metres away. It was a realisation that despite the struggles we interested in nature conservation face we have a lot to be thankful for. We all need and should have a moment or place, ideally both that energise us before we are worn asunder by the reports and government decisions, somewhere that nature can touch our core. It was also reassuring that there were at least two more budding ecologists who knows what they could do now that their mother had taken the time to show them what was out there.

Getting Foxy

Following on from my review of the Bushnell Trail Cam I can say that I am well impressed. So far I ve had it in the field for 5 weeks and its only just used half of the battery life.

What I like about using the trail cam is the stories that develop through its recording.

When I started the first few images included Foxes, most seemed to be of a Vixen. Then towards the end of the 2nd Week I caught her twice carrying food, once a bird the second a rabbit. The fact that she was carrying it suggested the presence of young and lone behold in the next week a young cub was seen.

Over the next few weeks the cub was seen more often and you could begin to see behaviour develop. The protectiveness of the Vixen, how the cub doesn't seem to be allowed past the tree on its own and how the cub is starting to forage around by itself.

Below is a collection of clips showing them.

And just to finish off an interesting clip of a Fox being pestered by something in the tree and getting something up its nose.

What do you want for nature conservation from the next government?

I read with interest Mark Avery's column in this months British Wildlife. It outlined a reappraisal of last election manifestos from the big three parties in reference to wildlife conservation. He reiterated his view that all three of the statements made were bland and non-committal. No surprise there. Of the big three Labour doesn't have a great record during their time in office and who can forget that whopper of 'Vote blue go green' that ushered in the current Conservative government.

Mark finished his article with a list of things he would like to see the parties to address in the run up to next years General Election, inspired by this I have created my own list (Some I have borrowed from Mark - they are too good to waste):

Dear Government please implement the following.

1. Ensure that 80% of SSSI's are in favourable or better condition by 2020
2. Reduce bTB using scientific advice involving the deployment of vaccines and biosecurity.
3. Ensure that for a start 25% of all new buildings are built with water recycling facilities and come with renewable energy options such as solar panels/heating or ground source heat pumps.
4. Ensure that all new housing projects have at least 10-15% of land set aside for wildlife refuges.
5. To reduce the risk of flooding invest in the reforestation of headwaters and on unprofitable/nonviable farmland beside rivers create wetlands and reedbeds to soak up excess water.
6. Ideally scrap HS2 and if not to ensure that a wildlife corridor at least as wide is created along its length.
7. Seriously examine the reintroduction of certain species such a Lynx and Beaver to act as ecosystem engineers in rewilding projects.
8. Designate all of the 127 marine conservation zones that were proposed/
9. Take lessons from NGO's and best practice conservation farming to model a better balanced agri-environmental scheme.
10. Be on track to meet our climate change requirements.
11. Create a new National Park with in the next 5-10 years and increase the number of SSSI's and LNR's.
12. All schools should be required to have a designated wildlife area.
13. Develop the role of the JNCC to act as a liaison to all NGO's to help co-ordinate fundraising, research and work to enable nationwide action.
14. Ensure biodiversity offsetting does not just become 'greenwash'. Regulate to ensure replacements are like for like and that they are protected from further development.
15. Place even greater emphasis and incentive to use brownfield sites before greenfield ones.
16. Develop a new designation of No-build Zones to stop urban sprawl and the conglomeration of towns and villages.
17. Increase penalties on all aspects of wildlife crime and environmental law.
18. Untie the hands of English Nature, SNH and CCW and Environment Agency to do their job more independently of central government.
19. Actually appoint a minister for the environment who has a background or at the very least an interest in the subject.
20. Lastly and most importantly listen to the scientific advice given by the NGO's and government bodies consulted. 

Bushnell Trophy Cam

This post has been awhile in the making. I had hoped to get it posted earlier but I wanted some footage to show how it performs and so needed to wait a week or so to get some.

I am a big fan of trail cams and have been using them for the past 6 years or so. I have put them out at intervals on my bit of land to record the fauna present. At one point I had two devices. One a simple device imported from America but that actually served me well and an old Bushnell that these days seems enormous.

Over the winter my old Bushnell died and so over Easter I invested in a newer model - the Bushnell Trophy Cam.

The camera is a revelation. It is half the size of my old one and has a much better interface. A standard On/off/setup switch is supported by a colour monitor with a range of buttons to enable playback.






The big draw for me with this model aside from the price and size was the use of no-glow LED lights. On previous models whilst the normal Infra Red LED's provided excellent lighting - often too bright - they disturbed some of the wild life. Badgers in particular seemed to become spooked by the activation. This newer model doesn't attract any unwanted attention.

Battery life claims for the unit are impressive. My last models ran on 6 size C batteries that drained fast. This newer model takes 8 AA batteries and has been out in the field for 2 weeks now with no appreciable loss of battery life it claims to be able to last 6-12 months.

Resolution is good with the ability to take 8 Mb pictures and record video in HD.

Examples of the Video quality:
Night

Day

Its still early days but I have to say that for the moment I am impressed. I ll keep everyone posted as time progresses to see it the camera keeps up the good work.