Pennington Flash

Here is a blog post I wrote about a week ago following a trip to Pennington Country Park between Wigan and Manchester.

About a fortnight ago I had the privilege of spending an afternoon birding at Pennington Flash Country Park near Leigh, Greater Manchester, during a foray up North to see my dear friend Tom, getting out birding for the first time in a few days.  The site, which sits on the fringe of the great conurbation, between the City of Manchester and Wigan, was created in part by mining subsidence, where collapses enabled the formation of several large pools. An expansive lake, used by boaters, birders and the inevitable duck feeders armed with bags of bread, greeted us when we arrived. A scan of the water revealed distant goosander and Tufty among the Mallards, which was promising, but it was the nature reserve which adjoins it that we were interested in. A number of hides overlook a range of smaller pools, all home to interesting waterfowl.

Shoveller and Goosander at Pennington Flash.

Confident Reed Bunting, close to the appropriately named Bunting Hide. 

The first hide we visited revealed Shoveller engaged in their rather fascinating and rather mesmerising courtship dances, the male and female swimming in close circles, matching each others’ speed while often beak to beak, forming pair bonds that would presumably travel North with them onto their summer breeding grounds.  There were also several Goosander,  which typically winter on inland waters, especially in the North, where they seem to be growing more common.  They are among Britain’s prettiest ducks, the green-headed males sporting bright white flanks, while the females crests are endearingly punky.

Blue tit from Bunting Hide. 

Stock Doves from Bunting Hide.

The highlight of the visit had to be the experience of sitting in what is called the bunting hide, just watching so many birds around the feeders. Mottled and wintery Reed Buntings, smart hen Chaffinches, gaudy male Chaffinches, and fascinatingly pink Bullfinches landed on the tables. A grey squirrel, apparently blind in one eye but seemingly none the worse for its disability, enjoyed the seeds it could pull from behind the bars.  Little, noisy parties of Long Tailed Tits came and went from the hanging peanut feeders, accompanied by Blue Tits and a Coal Tit with an unusually long beak, perhaps regrown following some injury.  A pair of handsome stock doves, in beautiful slate grey plumage with their deep metallic green neck flashes, not dissimilar to woodpigeons but so much (even) more beautiful sat eyeing each other in the trees at the back of the clearing. The clearing was dotted with bird tables and feeders, bringing all the passerines so close. The scarcest bird in this little clearing was a beautiful female Brambling, a winter visitor from Scandinavia and other more boreal climes. It resembles a Chaffinch, with pale orange on the breast and mottled black and brown on the back and crown, with similar wing markings to its cogener, but suffused with orange, and a bright white rump. It fed on one of the bird tables, sadly the one furthest from us but still close enough for a photo for the records.

Partially blind squirrel

After we had sat in the hide a few moments, the birds scattered, and a Sparrowhawk flew through the clearing at speed. The mallards and moorhens which did not flee suddenly paddled or swam into the vegetation, apparently still nervous. The bird of prey disappeared, maneuvering between the trees, and we could not tell whether it had caught anything, but it took the passerines a long time to return, with the feisty blue tits appearing first, and the shy bullfinches taking their time to return to the clearing.

Brambling

This grey day was just the night after the latest round of storms which had affected the country, and especially the North West, and a few trees were down, including one close to bunting hide. Crack willows by the main lake had been snapped, their jagged edges reaching skyward, and elsewhere smaller Birches lay uprooted across the paths. The clouds were coming over in waves, and the wind was light but chilling, a shadow of the destructive force which had brought trees down on top of cars in the town centre just the night before. Despite the sporadic greyness and showers we wandered through the diverse habitats around the pools, adding a pair of kingfisher to our day list, the two bright little birds pursuing each other at speed, zigzagging close to the water surface. We saw a very windswept moorhen picking its way among the patches of gravel which formed islands in the pools, its breast feathers caught in the breeze.

Windswept moorhen

We saw a handsome Goldeneye out on the water of the main lake, and plenty of little grebes and scruffy, first winter grey herons.  Herons seem to have a roost in a cluster of trees beside one of the scrapes, to which the huge, broad winged birds were returning as we watched.   As the sun began to set, the sky cleared and we spent a few moments trying,  fruitlessly, to pick out a Mediterranean gull reported on the sightings board among the confiding, black headed gulls which had gathered amongst the motley collection of wild and feral mallards.

Motley mallards. 

Pennington Flash sits among major conurbations and is well used and much valued by a range of people. As a country park it represents a popular local day out. Despite the breeze we saw a range of dog walkers and other members of the public wandering around the site, but nevertheless it held a range of remarkable wildlife habitats and a surprising array of wildlife, and has become, in  my mind, something of a gem in the Greater Manchester area, and I look forward to seeing it again!

Sunset Gulls.

Falls of Clyde

On Thursday I was lucky enough, while North of the Border, to visit Scottish Wildlife Trust's reserve at Falls of Clyde. It sits beside the New Lanark UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated for its industrial history. Mills were established by Richard Arkwright in the 18th century beside the river Clyde's only waterfalls. Arkwright was certainly not noted for his philanthropy, but his successor at New Lanark, Richard Owen, a reformer and philanthropist turned the mills and the town into something of a social experiment and example of Utopian Socialism, a philosophy which he helped to found. Today the only industry there is a hydroelectric power station.

Today the site is largely a tourist attraction, and reached by a steep set of steps from the public car park, which sits between the village and the car park. Here several crows were mobbing a Buzzard, the only raptor I saw that day. Falls of Clyde is famous for its Peregrines, which are best seen in summer when they are nesting.  I passed among the stone mill buildings to the River Clyde.

In the shallow water where the river is relatively wide through the village of New Lanark itself, a Dipper was bobbing about on a moss covered rock. Throughout the wooded valley could be heard the roar of the waterfalls, ever present, continuous. The Corra Linn falls are the largest on the Clyde, and the riverside path offered views of the falling, churning white water.

Corra Linn on the Falls of Clyde.

The woodland which fringed the river seemed to be mixed in composition, featuring birch, oak and pine trees. When the open country outside the deep gorge could be seen from the path, snow capped peaks looked in the far distance. The woods echoed with passerine contact calls but they seemed reluctant to be seen, although ubiquitous friendly robins, and early singing great tits were seen, as well as a wren, busy in the undergrowth. On the river itself a single female and three smart male Goosander were about, the males resting on the bank yards from the cascading water.

A beautiful place.

An Open Letter to my local MP on the fate of the Hen Harrier in England and Wales

The below is an open letter to my local MP on the subject of Hen Harrier persecution. I recently spent a year living near the Forest of Bowland, where I never got to see a Hen Harrier, despite it being their last stronghold, and not for want of looking. The shooting industry is to blame.  Soon the only Hen Harriers in England will be the wintering individuals found on wetlands in the South East.

Use it for inspiration, ideas, whatever, but I must request that you please do not treat it as a form letter and produce copies of it.

Dear Mrs Watkinson

I am writing to express my disappointment about some of the recommendations of the Environmental Audit Commission to the government, made in October 2013, in particular the failure to call for the introduction of an offence of ‘vicarious liability’ for landowners who fail to prevent the persecution of birds of prey on their land in England and Wales. The offence of Vicarious Liability is essential if we are to reverse the terrible decline in birds such as the Hen Harrier (Circus cyanaeus) in the UK.

There is a widespread perception among gamekeepers and others in the shooting industry that birds of prey like C. cyanaeus inflict substantial losses on the quarry species which the industry commercially exploits, and as such, its persecution is ongoing and well documented, despite the legal protection it is supposed to receive.  Gamekeepers, where caught, can be tried and jailed for the illegal killing of Hen Harriers, however, in what can only be described as an affront to reason and to social justice, their employers enjoy impunity. Therefore, were I a land owner, in charge of a shooting estate, I could ask my employee to kill a hen harrier, and face no threat of prosecution, a mere denial being sufficient to absolve me of responsibility. Indeed, many gamekeepers convicted of offences against birds of prey have stated that their employer did nothing to discourage wildlife crime by their staff.  This situation has to change. If a crime boss pays an assassin to kill for him, or pays a criminal to steal a precious item, then both parties are clearly liable for that offence. Why should this change when the crime is committed against endangered wildlife, and the victims are biodiversity and all who care for it? When a gamekeeper commits an offence against wildlife, both he and his employer, who is ultimately responsible, should face jail.  One may suggest that issues of social class on the part of the lawmakers, willing to send a country lad to jail, but heaven forbid one of their colleagues should be put in such a situation, is responsible for this obvious inadequacy in the law.   

Another option which could be explored, perhaps in addition to Vicarious Liability, would be to introduce a policy of licensing for Grouse Moors and other areas used by the shooting industry.  Thus, after a confirmed incidence of raptor persecution, or the use of an illegal snare, for example, the licence for shooting on an estate could be revoked for a fixed time period, such as 5 or 10 years. This may provide an effective economic deterrent, ensuring that the persecution of raptors becomes harmful to the profit margins of the businesses responsible.  Where raptors are shot, shoots are cancelled for years to come, and profits forgone.  In respect of the well documented beneficial effects managing for shooting can have for invertebrate diversity, effective legislation must be employed to prevent unscrupulous landowners ‘repurposing’ the moor or discontinuing management, and interim arrangements to maintain the vegetation cover and wildlife value could be introduced.   Licences may be removed regardless of whether a successful criminal prosecution has occurred.  Such a move may complement existing criminal legislation, providing the conservation and law enforcement agencies with the equipment needed to bring the criminal ecocide of the shooting industry under control.

Hen Harriers, Britain’s most endangered bird, have failed to breed in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, in 2013, and in the summer of 2012, Bowland Betty, one of the last of her kind to be fledged in England, a marked and tagged individual, much loved by the local community in Bowland, was shot dead while crossing a grouse moor in Yorkshire. No-one has ever been brought to justice for her killing, and the frustrated city boys on weekend jollies continue slaughter grouse with their shotguns for fun, returning great profits for her killers, oblivious or indifferent to the ecocide they support.  Grouse moor operators also rake in vast sums of money through public subsidies, intended to support food production but freely taken by the shooting industry to line its pockets, and these too are unaffected when birds of prey are killed. Indeed, economic measures against criminals in the shooting industry seem very straightforward and easy to take. What is clear is that measures to protect our birds of prey are needed, and needed immediately, to deter shooting interests from continuing to depauperate our wild countryside of predators and rob everyone who enjoys living in a healthy environment with thriving ecosystems.  Please act now to protect birds of prey.

Yours Sincerely

JohnisJae RGB MSc

Further information about Bowland Betty available here:  http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/ourwork/skydancer/b/skydancer/archive/2012/12/10/bowland-betty-final-update.aspx

Petition Calling for Grouse Moor Licencing here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/46473

Wicken Fen

Please excuse the months it has been since I last blogged. A master’s degree can rather suck up ones free time. Which is a shame, as my field work on Warton Crag would have offered a lot to blog about. However, please forgive. 

the historic wind pump at Wicken Fen.

Having got back to the Home County, perhaps a little reluctantly, after my year in the wonderfully wet and windswept North West, I took a ride up to the Cambridgeshire fens with my folks for a day on the 1st October. We went to the National Trust’s Wicken Fen, one of the oldest Nature Reserves in the country. A small visitors centre, a glorified souvenir shop with the typical National Trust merchandise at typical National Trust merchandise greeted us. We stepped outside into the sedge fen, where a boardwalk led us through the tall reeds to a small windmill, or wind pump, a small reminder of the times when the fens were being drained for agriculture, when these once vast wetlands shrank, consigning much of their wildlife and the way of life of their people to history.  They once stretched across a huge swathe of East Anglia, the reed and sedge regularly harvested for building materials maintaining the open reed beds, and the people fishing and hunting wildfowl. Cranes used to nest here, alongside a huge range of bird life through the seasons. Here at Wicken, a fragment survives. The reeds still grow tall, sometimes rising to head height as I walked along the boardwalks among them, and they are still harvested to keep the site open. Patches of Carr woodland, with silvery Sallow and Alder trees still offer a habitat to passerine birds. The site was saved by the National Trust in 1899, when part of the reserve popular with the botany department at Cambridge University, and used by insect collectors was bought by the nascent heritage NGO.  On summer nights the banks of the loads were lit up by the ‘Edison lighthouses’ of numerous moth trappers. The Cambridgeshire fens once hosted Large Copper and Swallowtail butterflies, the former now gone from the UK, and the latter confined to the Norfolk Broads, despite attempts to reintroduce both species over more recent decades.

The Common Darter on our boat trip

We opted to explore the site initially by taking a boat ride on the lodes, the man-made waterways that cross the site and eventually link it to the river Cam. The electric vessel made its way among the reeds, as our informed guide brought our attention to the Guilder Roses, red with fruit, that grew among the reeds. Where the reed beds gave way to meadows, the highland cattle, which are left apparently in a wild state, in their small groups, and the Konik geldings which manage the vegetation with their grazing looked on curiously. A male Common Darter dragonfly was our companion for part of the journey, sunning himself on the plastic floor of the boat until he was interrupted and chased off by a rival conspecific. While there were few birds about, there were plenty of dragonflies, Southern and Migrant hawkers, the males with electric blue bands on their slender abdomens and in their eyes patrolled the reeds, wheras Common and Ruddy darters sat motionless on the reeds, waiting to take off and snatch smaller insects out of the air, or engage in aerial combat to fend off their rivals. A buzzard wheeled effortlessly on the thermals in the blue sky, and a few late Swallows and House Martins were still on the wing, many of them juveniles, surely days away from the perilous trip South.  As if to provide a counterpoint to the wildlife, American AWACS aircraft were flying over occasionally all day. 

Konik Horses

NATO Boeing 707 AWACS aircraft.

Our boat eventually returned to the visitors centre and we treated ourselves to the inevitable National Trust coffee and cake, before heading back out along the bank of Wicken Lode. A sign at the visitors centre advised us of a couple of scarce birds visible from one of the hides, and a chat with the lady in the centre informed us of their most recent known location. We walked along the short grass beside the load. Roach and sticklebacks shoaled in the crystal clear water, and a Mute Swan hissed at us as we passed. We made in to the hide after an hour’s walk.  It had a view of the open water of ‘the Mere’ as it is known, a small area of still open water fringed by the ubiquitous Phragmites reeds and Carex sedges. Four Cormorants (Phalacocorax carbo) sat on a log that stuck out of the water, and a number of Mallard and Teal dabbled in the shallows in front of us. out across the water was the bird we were looking for. With a Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea) stood beside it, if only to demonstrate the size of the bird, was a Great White Egret (Ardea alba). This is a tall, long-necked and stunning looking heron that is somewhat rare in the UK. Indeed the first breeding pairs in Britain in recorded history bred on the Somerset Levels in 2012.   It stands taller than a Grey Heron, to which it is closely related, and its plumage is bright white, like that of the much smaller Little Egret which colonised the UK in the 1990s.  And here one was, preening itself nonchalently. 

The Great White Egret

I looked through the scope and scanned the bases of the reeds. There was another snipe opposite us, close to the egret, and a couple of smart Godwits, medium-sized waders with very long beaks, wading about and probing in the lake mud. But something at the bottom of the reeds caught my eye. Stripes. Golden stripes, against a dark coloured back, a bird hunkered down among the Phragmites. I wasn’t sure, but I showed the other birders and family members present. We figured it was a Jack Snipe. Seconds later it stood up, and wandered around with the characteristic bobbing motion associated with that species. Two rarities! A couple of smaller waders, periodically flying low across the water as they moved between feeding spots, turned out to be Dunlin, and the ducks were joined by a small party of scruffy looking Shoveller, ducks with massive bills, which arrived with an influx of Teal and Mallards.  We stayed and watched the birds, as the Jack Snipe faded once again into the reeds and his excellent camouflage.

We left the hide not long after the Egret took to the wing and flew off on slow lazy wing beats over the tops of the reeds, assuming the strange, front heavy shape of a heron in flight. we wandered back through the reeds, before setting out, just as the sun was beginning to drop nearer the long, flat fen land horizon. We found a small hide, just a couple of hundred metres from the visitors centre where we could watch a couple of Marsh Harriers, large, scarce birds of prey but increasingly familiar on the wetlands of South Eastern England, hunting over the reeds, wings raised up slightly, riding on the evening thermals. Every so often a coot or moorhen would be flushed from the reeds. These big birds of prey were splended but what happened next was something of a surprise. We wandered out of the hide and onto the board walk, which would take us on a short circuit around the area known as Sedge Fen. I saw ahead of us what looked like another Marsh harrier, sharing the same  profile in flight, so I raised my binoculars to look at it. This bird was moving faster than a Marsh Harrier, and when it stooped after something in the reeds, it moved quicker than any marsh harrier I had seen. Its’ wing tips were black, and its back a very uniform steely grey, apart from a white flash above its tail.  I wasn’t looking at a Marsh Harrier. I was looking at an adult male Hen Harrier, one of the most threatened and rarest breeding birds in Britain. This one wasn't breeding here, the UK population breed in the uplands and fly down to the coast in winter. He was probably passing through to a wintering ground further South; those that winter at Wicken Fen I learned from the informed volunteer at the visitors centre later do not typically arrive until later in the year.

A hen harrier. I had just returned from a year spent beside the Forest of Bowland, last breeding site of Hen Harriers in Britain, without ever seeing one, and here I was in Cambridgeshire, looking at such a beautiful, elegant adult male.

A successful days birding, I thought.

RSPB Hodbarrow, or The Start of the Northern Summer

I want to blog about the buzzards, I really want to, but nothing but incoherent rage can come out of my mouth on the subject at the moment. Indeed, I cannot talk about it without incitement so I’m not going to. Instead I am going to tell you about all the trips I managed to squeeze in, between the GIS coursework, in  the last few days, the days summer arrived in Lancashire! Instead of raging against English (anti) Nature, and the game industry to whom they are in thrall, I am going to tell you all what a nice week I have had.  There will be more to come, think of this as “part one.”

Sunday took Natty and I to the RSPB and National Nature Reserve at Hodbarrow, on the West coast of Cumbria, near Millom, where apparently there is an ex RAF airfield and possibly a prison. It is also home to a large coastal lagoon where a colony of very special, on a UK level at least, Terns live. No sooner had we left the car park, and overcome the disappointment that for some reason dogs were permitted on the reserve, we were surrounded by the sound of birdsong. We could hear the scratchy melodies of Whitethroat, the full-on techno beats of Sedge Warbler, the tumbling melodies of willow warbler, and the repetitious, two-note song of Chiffchaff, the melody with flourish at the end of Chaffinch. A pair of blackcaps hopped about in an oak tree. The paths were lined with yellow flowering Gorse.  There were a few white butterflies about.

Rounding a corner, passing a pond attended by the obligatory pair of Mute Swans and large numbers of Swallows and Sand Martins, Natalie, ever the sharp-eyed entomologist, found me the season’s first Damselfly, sunning itself on a blade of grass. By the season and the red colour, it was probably a Pyrrhosoma nymphula, A large Red Damselfly. A couple of fresher damselflies were about, still to develop their adult markings.  The trees had only just entered full leaf, and one or two were still sparse. To see the first Damselfly of the year was a relief. The snow in Bowland and down into the Peaks at Easter is still a recent memory, as was Roeburndale in late April, sliding about in the pouring rain, and noticing the bluebells were still underground. We walked on and found a small cove. A few crab skins lay about on the beach. Out on the water we could see some Red Breasted Merganser, and a few Eider and Shelduck. Redshank and crows foraged in the mud. We were out of Morecambe Bay by now, having driven through the South Western corner of the Lake District National Park. Across the river Duddon the fells of South Lakeland stood out above the estuary mud.

We were crossing a small headland when we saw a bird of prey being mobbed, fairly relentlessly, by gulls. It drew toward us over the estuary. There is nothing unusual about seeing a buzzard or some such crossing a small strip of water, or getting mobbed by gulls, but raising my binoculars, this was no buzzard. Its long wings arched slightly like a gulls’, and its body was white, a dark stripe running through its eye. This was an Osprey! We couldn’t see a tag or a ring, and shortly the gulls had seen it off, back over the Duddon Estuary. To my mind this seemed too late to be a passage migrant, the internet reports the Rutland Water Ospreys already have chicks, it may have been one of the adults now nesting in the Lake District.

We had lunch on the beach and dipped our toes in the still freezing water. A few Sandwich and Common Terns flew by, some diving for fish, and some skimming the water surface. Hodbarrow is one of the few places little terns can be seen in the UK. They breed on islands left behind by abandoned Iron workings on the site. The industrial history of the Hodbarrow reserve is rich, and plain to see, the muddy soil stained red by haematite, old quarries scarring the landscape and the odd fragment of a concrete structure protruding among the rushes. We walked the sea wall to the hide were we were entertained by the pretty Little Terns, sweet looking little birds with black caps, yellow bills and short forked tails. They were feisty, defending their nest site against anything, mobbing even larger terns as they passed by. They had arrived only a few days ago, but now there seemed to be as many as forty of them, nest scrapes already established on the bare bars of stone in the lagoon, presumably stacks of spoil from some quarrying operation. Despite their aggression little terns are infamously vulnerable to predators. Here, electric fences, and broken fences, were all over the islands, presumably from attemptos to protect these nationally rare (but globally distributed) birds.  I have seen Little Tern before, but only when I was volunteering in Gialova in Greece, in a place which bore odd similarities to Hodbarrow.  A few Eider swam in the still water, one of the males very vocal, tipping his head back and making the classic Eider call, perhaps best described as an impression of Kenneth Williams. The smart sea ducks dabbled about for a while. Great crested grebes swam around, paired up, no longer dancing as the summer is now in full swing, but not yet with the little chicks on their backs, as will I have no doubt charm us in the months to come.

We ended the day with a spot of sea watching, in the distance, Gannets and Kittywakes could be seen diving for fish in the open water among flocks of terns and black headed gulls. Gulls and Eider, and a few Red Breasted Merganser bobbed on the surface. The falling temperature and building wind coming in off the sea reminded us of our latitude, but among the birds, the swifts and swallows flying all around us on the walk back to the car park, we could be in no doubt that the summer had begun.

Lydd Airport Expansion

Finding time to blog is sometimes a bit of a challenge.  This is why I am blogging about an announcement made now several weeks ago. On the 10^th of April the news broke that permission had been granted for Lydd airport to be expanded, a measure which will may conclude the story of Dungeness’ National Nature Reserve’s “Death from a thousand cuts” to quote the expression once used by the botanist Brian Ferry, who has worked extensively on the site.

Dungeness Old Lighthouse from the RH&DR narrow-guage railway.

Dungeness, announced as “the other lands end” by a sign welcoming visitors to the expansive National Nature Reserve and ramshackle fishing community, is a totally unique habitat, with no parallel existing anywhere in the world. It consists of miles of shingle, bound by a community of lichen and bryophytes, grazed by a few hardy rabbits and hares.  It shows a complete succession from a maritime flora of rare Sea Kale, a curious, salt-tolerant member of the cabbage family, up to scrub, established on soils left behind by lichen and bryophyte pioneers, an example of life finding a way on a stony desert of rounded pebbles deposited by the sea. Wild flowers grow among the simpler plants and lichens, and in high summer these are visited by a range of butterflies, small tortoiseshell, small heath, small copper.  A single road winds across the foreshore, past the two lighthouses, historic and modern, past the Pilot Inn, serving local fish and chips, past the old coastguard cottages housing the Dungeness Bird Observatory, my home for five weeks in the Autumn of 2010, toward the dual towering, steam emitting monstrosities of Dungeness A and B nuclear power stations. A small footpath cuts north in a straight line across the shingle, past a memorial two a couple of brave Polish lads who died in their Spitfires defending the English coast, a threadbare polish flag flying over the wild, flat shingle country. A series of lakes,  traces of the gravel extraction workings which dot Romney Marsh are attended by herons, and in Autumn, swallows and martins gather over them in their thousands, surround an old cart track, where the lichen flora is barer, and where one can experience jelly legs after hours spent walking over the unstable shingle, which leads up to the famous RSPB reserve, home to the most obliging birds of prey in the country, a population of Marsh Harriers, a bird described by the lands custodians as rarer than a Golden Eagle. Yellow wagtails and meadow pipits breed here, and the reserve hosts black redstarts, specialists in these extreme habitats, and a rare colony of Tree Sparrows.  The gravel workings present an opportunity for migratory birds passing through the area from Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and even Iceland and Greenland, through the migration bottleneck the peninsula presents, on their way to the Mediterranean and beyond. From the lighthouse the ridges and troughs, landforms typical of an apposition beach, can still be seen, creating interest for Geomorphologists as well as Ecologists.

Rare Lapland Bunting at Dungeness.

Lydd airport as it is now is fairly inoffensive. Light aircraft fly out of it, pleasure flights take in the beauty of the channel coast and the Kent countryside. But the news of impending airport improvements threaten all of this, and, wooed by the promise of a meagre 200 new jobs (according to the Guardian’s transport columnist) local opinion is spilt, although a poll suggested 2/3 people would still rather not see their treasured NNR disappear, and are opposed to the airport expansion.  More concerningly, the scheme has been approved by government who claim, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary,  that the airport scheme will not damage local wildlife.  This is a clear falsehood, as the RSPB, and Professor Ferry, of whose teaching I had the honour when I was an undergraduate at the University of London, would testify. The Sulphur dioxide pollution associated with jet propulsion causes increased nitrogen deposition to the soil, to which lichens, complex symbioses of algae and fungi, specialists in nutrient-poor environments, in which the two organisms depend on each other to survive, are particularly vulnerable.  The increased nutrient levels will destroy the unique plant communities and the succession.  The RSPB manages its reserve for birds, and flight safety legislation may prevent them from managing in such a way as to encourage them. The Wildlife and Countryside act protecting wild birds from hunting does not apply where there are flight safety issues, and any birds perceived as presenting a danger to flights will probably be shot.  Lydd Airport expansion, for Dungeness and its wildlife, means death.  The RSPB has been campaigning hard against airport expansion, with petition after petition, and even calling in the initial approval of the scheme to judicial review.  Their case was that the nature conservation value of the area was overlooked by the planners, which is clearly true. Nevertheless the judiciary sided with the business cartel.  The airport is owned by the charming Sheikh Fahad el Athel, who was once in court over millions of pounds of commissions involved in weapons deals between BAe and his native Saudi Arabia, who complains the runway.

Cricket among the shingle at Dungeness.

The government seems intent to force upon us some new airport building in the near future, despite widespread campaigns to the contrary. They support their war on Ecology through the use of academic stooges such as the Ecosystems Markets Task Force, a group, tellingly composed of economists, who claim it is possible to offset damage caused by commercial building projects simply by directing conservation effort, funded by developers, to other sites, equivalent to licensing an individual to destroy the Mona Lisa and replace it with a picture of a smiley face. Dungeness is irreplaceable, as the barren shingle “habitat creation” projects at Sussex Wildlife Trust’s Rye Harbour reserve demonstrates. Such habitats, and the landforms which accompany them, cannot be created artificially. This deserves another blog, but ridiculous exercises in market-based approaches will sound the death knell of the British conservation movement if they are permitted to get any further. Nevertheless they will try and fall back on such guidance notes.  Meanwhile Hundreds of loyal, Tory-voting West Londoners have succeeded in convincing the government not to expand Heathrow, with the help of well meaning green campaigners. Few of us see the need for increased airport capacity, and much as I love aeroplanes, and the opportunities for travel they provide, I acknowledge we need to reduce, not increase our capacity if we are to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and minimise the coming climate disaster. Campaigners, including those at the climate camp in 2005 I had the honour of attending, have done well, but using Heathrow as a focal point for protest is problematic, as it risks diverting development to places they can do much more damage, places like the Thames Estuary, and Cliffe. Places like Lydd.  The truth seems to be, although many West Londoners appear curiously reluctant to adjust to the jet noise which has been going on above their heads, usually since before they were born, Heathrow may just be the least worst place for this environmental tragedy to play out. Not Dungeness. We would all rather it didn’t happen anywhere, but so called green campaigners who talk of airports “in unpopulated areas” are really doing biodiversity no favours at all.

View across Dungeness to the Nuclear Power Station.

Now it seems the campaign against the airport, and to save Dungeness, could have found a pair of very unlikely friends. When it is next in court, as the RSPB will, with widespread support, ensure it will be, the main focus may be in the area of Nuclear safety.  Large aeroplanes and nuclear power stations present a fairly obvious safety risk and security challenge, and, especially in these days of paranoia, the risk of aeroplane-reactor collision, and all the associated fallout, are a real concern.  A blight on the beautiful landscape may yet, ironically, save it.  If not, one can hope that the legal fees will eventually build up sufficiently that the business interests whose endless greed would see this green, windswept paradise of bird life and lichen erased forever, will be put off by the mounting cost. The possibility remains that the cost of building the airport at Lydd will eventually prove prohibitive. We must not be complacent, campaigns continue to prevent it. It is not over, and it may yet go to court in Europe, where, as a designated SPA site, UK equivalent of the Natura 2000 network, the planning authorities will have to demonstrate that the airport, is in the vital national interest.

Small Copper butterfly and Cladonia lichen

What is in the vital national interest is preserving this unique, and incredibly fragile and vulnerable wildlife habitat.

View across Romney Marsh from the RSPB reserve.