The War on Wildlife I

*I wrote this blog in May, but did not publish for some reason A few tweaks have been made, and better late than never, perhaps.*

In another chapter of their ongoing bid to cement their position as real-life pantomime villains, the Conservative government in their wisdom to consulted in May on the legalisation of the destruction of Robin (Erithacus rubecula) Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) and Pied Wagtail (Motacilla alba) nests and the killing of their eggs, which is currently a criminal offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Now, I dislike Tory ideology intensely; I make no claims of political neutrality. Under current plans, the eggs and nests of these much-loved species will be added to the General Licence, essentially a list of agricultural pests and invasive species that farmers and other land managers feel it necessary to control.  There is no suggestion that such unobtrusive and much loved birds as the gardener’s friend the Robin are pests, so the decision remains a mysterious one.   However this suggestion has come directly from the statutory body responsible for delivering Nature Conservation in England, the logically named “Natural England.”  Intriguingly, unlike tough decisions made by Natural England in the past, such as the deeply troubling decision to licence the destruction of Buzzard nests on a pheasant farm, made under the threat of the funding axe and of judicial review from the powerful game shooting lobby, and still an admission of weakness, the legalised Robin-killing was offered apparently voluntarily; there was no public call to be allowed to destroy robins nests, no clear source of external pressure, Natural England simply offered the helpful suggestion that it “would not have appreciable conservation impacts."

Our unofficial national bird, a target for the Tories.

In the interests of proportion, the consultation ideas could indeed be worse; they also propose to remove the Jay (Garrulus glandarius) from the General Licence, as it is seldom cited as an important agricultural pest, and also to offer some protection to Atlantic Herring and Lesser Black Backed Gulls (Larus argentatus and L. fuscus respectively), both declining species endemic to North Western Europe.  They suggest that Robin and Pied Wagtail nests may present a hazard to human health if they occur in air vents, for instance, yet do not propose similar measures for hole nesters such as Blue and Great tits, though their nests occasionally raise the same issues, and one hopes this distinction is made the basis of an understanding of their ecology.  A lost nest, though a considerable blow, will not necessarily rule the parents out of the gene pool, Robins breed more than once a year and can live for several years.  Blue and Great tits make a single annual nesting attempt and seldom live far beyond 18 months.   However the potential for worse moves does not validate these awful ones, and I’m going to stop with them lest our malevolent rulers get wind and put them in the next consultation.

The declining Starling, the target of politically motivated persecution.

The reason for this strange proposal probably lies in the unusual choice of Natural England chair, as identified in an excellent blog post at Pride’s Purge (http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/heres-the-real-reason-the-tories-are-allowing-the-destruction-of-robin-eggs-and-nests/ accessed 29/05/2014) Andrew Sells is not an ecologist, he is an accountant and entrepreneur, who includes major development companies in his portfolio.  He is also a major Tory donor, having given over £100000 to the party.  It is easy for one to suspect he may have bought his position with Natural England, despite repetitious denials from the government, and he certainly appears to be exploiting it.  Adaptable Robins and Pied Wagtails, and unfussy hole-nesting Starlings can often present problems for development companies, as their presence can hold up developments when they are scheduled for the Spring, as work must, of course, stop when nests are found, necessitating brief postponements.  All three birds are adept at exploiting the nesting opportunities provided by brownfield sites, utilising cavities in abandoned buildings or industrial apparatus, or hiding their nests in developing scrub. Pied Wagtails frequently roost in town centres and can eke out a living picking invertebrates out from between paving slabs. Now Brownfield sites are valuable to developers, and this change could free developers from some of the shackles of basic environmental responsibility and compassion.  While the consultation does not explicitly allow the removal of nests in the interests of development- they can only, in theory, be destroyed when human health is threatened-it does make it markedly easier for any company to break the rules.  Nests are currently occasionally removed or destroyed in the interests of human health; doing so is a licensable activity, and some licences applied for are granted.  The government, already has a licensing system which does not appear gravely dysfunctional, licensing some but not all nest removals.   If successful in implementing these proposals, there will be no need for any such application, no reporting procedure, no monitoring of the number of nests destroyed, and an assumption by the law enforcement agencies that nest destruction is legal.    These changes will clearly make breaking the law much easier for developers, like the business owned by the chair of Natural England. Despite their claims to the contrary, Natural England and Andrew Sells know this is the case. Indeed, it all smells a lot like a clever ruse by the government and its stooges.

This is actually a White Wagtail. It's okay, because it lives outside Natural England's jurisdiction.

 Combined with the badger cull, shamefully recommencing as I type, and the government’s decision to continue subsidising recreational shooting, most of the cost of the shotgun licencing system, for example, is met from the public purse, at the Prime Minister’s personal insistence, during such times as we are told we cannot afford the most basic of public services or the weakest environmental standards, and at whatever cost to our moorlands, mammalian predators and birds of prey, the government certainly appears to be waging a war on wildlife. It is relaxing the planning laws, promoting fracking, known to have caused serious water pollution in the USA, and disempowering conservation bodies, replacing their informed leaders with accountants and venture capitalists, and it wants to legalise the slaughter of Robins. The greenest government ever has revealed itself to be an ecological pantomime villain.

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.