National Nature Reserves: what happens next?

England’s National Nature Reserves – which include some wonderful freshwaters (like the Pevensey Levels and Woodwalton Fen) are the ‘crown jewels’ of our wildlife habitats – and the risk that they might be ‘sold off’ was first highlighted in the Guardian last August.

Today’s Telegraph is reporting that they won’t be sold.

But will they be staying with Natural England or being transferred out to a mutual company set up by the staff running the reserves? We don’t yet know as far as I can see (though I’m only reading the papers here).

Maybe it would make more sense, as Mark Avery has suggested, to merge Natural England and the Forestry Commission.

But please note: I may be biased towards Mark’s ideas as he’s also a Pond Conservation Trustee.

Is this the UKs first frog spawn?

Trevor Theobald from Spittal in the far west of Wales reports to us frog spawn yesterday, the 5th Feb.

He’s certainly in the right place for it because south, west and mid Wales are traditionally amongst the earliest places in Britain for frogs to spawn.

UPDATE: Neil has pointed to another record, on the WildAboutBritain forum, from Cornwall, also yesterday here.

UPDATED AGAIN: And an even earlier one – here on Nature’s Calendar.

See the maps below: one produced by Maxwell Savage 50 years ago and a more recent one based on modern recording (which also indicates that spawning is getting a bit earlier too).

Contour maps (a) from Savage (1961) showing the date of first appearance (day of year) of frogspawn for the period 1938–1947, and in colour (the lower map)  updated showing the date of first appearance (day of year) of frogspawn for the period 1998–2007. ‘Day number’ refers to the days after January 1st. The coloured map is from this paper. If you want a full copy of the paper, e-mail the authors who will (usually) send you one free of charge if its for a serious, non-profit use.

So, can anyone beat 5th February?

The degraded Thames

A quote from the Flora of Berkshire, by Mick Crawley, which deserves to be more widely known:

“The aquatic flora of the Thames represents one of the most comprehensively degraded communities in all of Berkshire. The combination of eutrophication and heavy boat traffic has simply destroyed this once-rich plant community.”

Most of the submerged species (e.g. different kinds of Potamogeton) and many of the marginals (including Greater Water Parsnip) are gone“.

Flora of Berkshire, 2005.

What will happen to the New Forest ponds? No-one yet seems to know

The New Forest is one of the most important places in Britain, indeed in the whole of western Europe, for its freshwater life.

It has the biggest collection of clean, unpolluted, ponds south of the Scottish Highlands – and streams too – and its one of the last places in England where every pond you visit is likely to contain some wildlife treasure – the way we imagine most ponds to be, but sadly aren’t because of pollution.

In the dirty landscape of England the New Forest’s water is as  much a wonder as its trees.

So its interesting that no-one seem to know what’s going to happen to the open parts of the Forest, the heaths, bogs, streams and ponds, which is run by yes, you guessed it, the Forestry Commission.

You can’t sell the open bits: they belong to the Queen. So who’s going to keep an eye on them? Is that still the Forestry Commission?  Will they just sell the woods they own (they don’t even own all the woods in the Forest – some are private) and carry on managing the heaths and bogs when there are no trees to give them the excuse? Will it ultimately be the case that nothing much changes at all? And what about the commoners – the Verderers, as they are known.

It sounds like a muddle. Now this isn’t such a bad thing, because muddle and untidiness quite often protects nature.

Let’s hope that the 1000 year old complexity of the New Forest – in which the rights of commoners have been fiercely defended against all kinds of big powerful interests (Kings, foresters, enthusiasts for enclosure of open land, big companies) – will be its real protection.

 

Err…that’s not quite right, is it?

I notice a bit of text on the front page of a leaflet about garden ponds from a well known organisation’s website:

“Apart from giving great pleasure to homeowners, garden ponds also provide a valuable habitat for most of our native wildlife. This is particularly so in rural areas where natural ponds are fast disappearing due to modern farming practices.”

Well, its certainly true that people get a lot of pleasure from their ponds. Unfortunately the two other ‘facts’ in this statement are not true.

Of course, as most people will realise, garden ponds do not provide a valuable habitat for ‘most of our native wildlife‘. If we look at the creatures and plants it’s easiest to assess, our information suggests that maybe 25% – a quarter – of freshwater invertebrates found in all freshwater habitats (rivers, lakes, streams, ditches and ponds) out in the rural landscape can be seen in garden ponds. This is actually pretty good – given the tiny area of garden ponds compared to these other habitats. But it ain’t ‘most‘: garden ponds are pretty rubbish for our most endangered fish and they’re rubbish, at present, for water plants, though they could probably be much better. They look to be pretty useful for 4 of our 7 native amphibians (though again not the most endangered ones) and they can be a pit stop for birds and mammals but no-one knows really how important they are in this role.

‘Ponds are disappearing in rural areas‘  This simply isn’t true. And it wasn’t true when the leaflet was written, either. Pond numbers in Britain are going up. The problem is, as readers of the blog will know, is that their quality is still going down.

Sorry chaps but this is simply too cavalier with the facts. And slightly amusing given that the people in question say: “We use technical and scientific data and research – our own and others’ – to……..underpin all of our work.’ Well, perhaps not in this case!

Garden ponds probably are adding useful habitat for some species, and we think they could be quite a lot better given how primitive our knowledge is of making good small ponds.

For example, our research (more on this later in the spring) indicates that in urban areas some of the cleanest water is in some (not all) garden ponds – rather than in the streams, rivers or lakes out in the wider world which are usually full of fairly contaminated ‘brown’ water.

Might GM crops add another stressor to freshwaters?

It’ll be interesting to see the details of a new Government report coming out tomorrow on the need for GM crops, reported here.

I’ll be wondering about one very specific area: the possible impact on freshwater. In the United States there’s widespread planting of maize engineered to produce an insecticidal protein originally derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. The maize should in theory protect itself from the pest.

There’s now clear evidence that the protein (i.e. the insecticide) is getting into streams on a fairly large scale in bits of dead maize – leaves, cobs, husks, stalks that get into the streams near the maize field.

But is that a problem?

In lab studies, the maize with added insecticide can reduce the growth rate of caddis, though it doesn’t actually kill them. This isn’t too surprising because caddis are quite closely related to moths and butterflies which the Bacillus thuringiensis protein will kill. The main maize pest that the GM engineering is targeting is the European Corn Borer – which is a moth.

But in the field, there’s no effect discernible effect of the engineered maize pesticide.

Ironically, this is could be because, in the cropland environment, the animals that might be sensitive to the GM pesticides have already been eliminated by other forms of environmental stress: nutrients, pesticides, channelization and altered flow.

This is the only published information on the subject so far: but it’s worth watching. It may add yet another stress to our already troubled waters.

Water bird stats

Data published yesterday by Defra on breeding bird numbers:

- Birds of slow flowing and still water up 73% since 1975:  Coot, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Little Grebe, Moorhen and Great-crested Grebe.

- Birds of wet grassland down 56% since 1975:  Mute Swan, Yellow Wagtail, Teal, Redshank, Curlew, Little Egret, Snipe and Lapwing.

- Birds of faster flowing rivers down 17% since 1975:  Common Sandpiper, Grey Wagtail, Goosander and Dipper.

As with other groups of plants and animals this suggests that the specialists of high quality habitats are declining whilst generalist and robust species are faring well. There could also be a link with the increase in open water provided by gravel pits since the 1970s.

See: http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/environment/wildlife/download/pdf/110120-stats-wild-bird-populations-uk.pdf

Frog mortalities

More and more information is coming in from the Big Pond Thaw.

The story is on the BBC website now.

See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment/ and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Amphibians and the cold weather

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone sending in Big Pond Thaw forms.

For the second year in a row Pond Conservation is getting a lot of reports of dead amphibians, mainly Common Frogs, following the cold weather.

It seems to be mostly down to ponds (and so frogs) running out of oxygen under the ice.

Help us find out more about the problem by completing a Big Pond Thaw form online.

We’re interested to hear both about ponds that have had dead fish or amphibians, and those that haven’t.

And look out for our campaigns to save freshwater wildlife more generally, Support Us if you love water, and find out more about the Million Ponds Project.

A quick dip in the Old Pond

My first post-ice dip in the Old Pond reveals plenty of Large Red Damselfly larvae – most look ready to emerge.

I found a couple of well-grown Broad-bodied Chasers and a half grown Brown Hawker larva. All were amongst the marginal grasses at the edge of the pond.

Plenty of Smooth Ram’s-horn Snails too.

Most surprising was a Water Cricket. I don’t see these very often on the pond – they are much more of a stream animal. They are hard to miss, so when you don’t see them it’s pretty certain they’re really not around! But I did see a couple this time last year in January which surprised me at the time. Even more surprising was a very young nymph, which must have been bred on the pond, in the summer (here).

I’m beginning to wonder if they disperse from the nearby stream 200 m away early in winter to lay eggs – or perhaps they are overwintering near the pond?

Maybe someone who knows more about water crickets could tell me!

Water Cricket