Breaking News Newsletter for Breaking New Ground Landscape Partnership Scheme
Sept 2016
A newsflash for project partners and participants with news items, project updates, special features and forthcoming events.
A magical day at Enchanted Forest
Work Placements with Suffolk Wildlife Trust
Over 1000 people attended Enchanted Forest event at Brandon Country Park. It was a wonderful event on a sunny day and the park was filled with families exploring the magic of the forest. Several BNG partners attended and activities included drumming, den making, tree dressing with the Green Light Trust, wand making, and learning about animal skulls with Suffolk Wildlife Trust
As part of Breaking New Ground, we are funding 12 work placements across our projects. Suffolk Wildlife Trust is hosting three of these:
Photo: Suffolk Wildlife Trust
Kathryn has a background in education and has been gaining experience with SWT at Lackford Lakes. She helped with planning, developing, trialling and evaluating programmes for visiting local primary school groups throughout the summer term.
Tree Dressing
Look out for the next instalment: Enchanted Heath is at West Stow Country Park on Sat 22nd - Sun 23rd October!
Alexandra has a masters in ecology and is also working at Lackford, leading a team of volunteers who are carrying out an otter survey in the area. She hopes that the experience will help her go on to a career in conservation. Jake is working with the team at SWT Knettishall Heath, gaining a wide variety of experience including visitor engagement and carrying out wildlife survey transects. He is also hoping to develop a career in conservation. You can see short videos about Kate and Jake’s work placements on our YouTube channel! http://bit.ly/2csX8LQ Funding of up to £700 is available to conservation/heritage organisations who would like to offer placements like this please get in touch!
Project Focus Thirty years ago, most of stone curlews’ natural breeding habitat – grass-heaths and downs – had been lost, and a high proportion of For the first time in the UK, scientists working in the birds took instead to nesting on Brecks are using high-tech GPS tags to study the farmland, where they were extremely movements of one of the country’s most threatened vulnerable to agricultural machinery birds, the stone-curlew. The birds were close to operations. Thanks to the intensive becoming extinct in the UK 30 years ago. Thanks to efforts of farmers, land managers, conservation efforts, around 400 pairs of stone-curlews gamekeepers and conservation organisations to now breed in the UK each year – more than half of protect vulnerable nests and create safe nesting plots, those in Eastern England. By using GPS tracking to the number of stone-curlews breeding in the UK has learn more about how these shy and elusive birds use more than doubled since 1985. However, with many different areas of the countryside, researchers hope to pairs (more than half of those in the Brecks) still help landowners create the conditions stone-curlews nesting in areas of farmland where they are at risk need for nesting and feeding, in order to ultimately from farming operations, more sustainable solutions achieve a sustainable stone-curlew population in the are needed to secure the UK stone-curlew UK. population. Delivering those solutions is the aim of the EU LIFE+ project – ‘Securing the future of the stone-curlew in the UK’, which is working with partners and stakeholders to create more safe nesting habitat for stone-curlews.
Photo: RSPB
A1: Ground Disturbance: Stone Curlew Tagging is UK first
The study is part of the PhD research of Rob Hawkes, RSPB Heathland Officer, and is being supported by the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, the University of East Anglia, Natural England, EU LIFE+ as well as the BNG Ground Disturbance project. Rob Hawkes says “It’s incredibly exciting, not just because we’re doing something that hasn’t been done before, but because we’re learning new things about how the birds behave that just haven’t been possible to study before, and this will improve our understanding of what we need to do to help stonecurlews.”
Emily Field, RSPB Project Manager, EU LIFE+ project says "By working together to a common end conservationists and land-owners and managers have been able to turn things around for stone-curlews, showing just how much people care about wildlife and value their natural heritage. “Now we are looking to landscape-scale management to secure stone-curlews’ future in the UK by providing them with enough safe habitat to nest on that intervention to protect nests is no longer necessary. The number of birds nesting on these safe habitats has steadily increased during the project. “This ground-breaking GPS tracking study represents a significant step on the path to achieving that ultimate goal – a truly sustainable UK stone-curlew population in the UK.”
Robert Gough has farmed in the Breckland region of East Anglia – one of the stone-curlew’s UK strongholds – all his life: “Like lots of farmers in the Brecks, we’ve been working with the RSPB and others for many years to help stone-curlews nesting on our farm, and it has been very gratifying to see the positive impact And there have already been some surprising these efforts have had on their numbers. “This year results: “We knew that stone-curlews are mainly we’ve had 5 pairs of stone-curlews on the 7 specially nocturnal and forage at night. When they have eggs created nesting plots we have on the farm as part of the adults take it in turns to sit on the nest, which gives our agri-environment agreement. Because the nests the ‘off duty’ bird the chance to go in search of a meal. were on safe plots and not in amongst crops we didn’t Using the GPS tags we have discovered individual need to intervene or interrupt farming operations to birds travelling much further from their nest to find food avoid damaging them. “The more we can encourage than had been known previously, suggesting the birds the birds to nest where they are safe the better – for are prepared to travel a substantial distance to reach a them and for us – and that means creating safe places favoured feeding site.” for them, on farmland and elsewhere.”
Project Focus C16: Sheep in the Brecks Our Sheep in the Brecks project, in partnership with the Breckland Society is just starting. The project offers the chance to get involved in researching and understanding one of the most interesting aspects of livestock management in the Brecks, and how it has affected the landscape. There will be archival training days, fieldwork skills and three practical workshops including how to make a stick or shepherd's crook, how to make a hurdle or sheep pen and general sheep husbandry. The first event for this project is the sheep husbandry workshop to be held at West Stow Country Park on September 10th: Booking essential http://www.breakingnewground.org.uk/ events/breckland-sheep-day/ To get involved, please contact sheepinthebrecks@gmail.com
Norfolk Horns Photo: Breckland Society
Events Coming Up: Sheep Workshop: 10th Sept 10:00-16:00 West Stow Country Park Brecks from Above: Aerial Archaeology Workshop: 17th Sept 10:00-16:00 Norfolk HES Offices Hoverflies of the Brecks: 25th Sept 10:00-16:00 The Classroom, Santon Downham Find out more and book at http://www.breakingnewground.org.uk/events
Followers: 1430 Likes: 391 Instagram: 125 t: @TheBrecksBNG f: www.facebook/TheBrecksBNG i: TheBrecksBNG
Picture of the Month A wish from the Wishing Tree at Enchanted Forest
What the Brecks Means to Me... When I first encountered the Brecks, back in 2006, I was heading to the University of East Anglia (UEA) for an open day. I recall the flatness, large fields and distinct pine lines. Now I have worked here for over three years. I am continually struck by the aridness of the ground but also by the continuity of the area the way heath, forest and arable land all sit on this unique soil structure of sand intermixed with chalk. Although the landscape is so different in so many areas, disturbing the soil in any of these areas is able to deliver for the wealth of biodiversity that this area, the Brecks, holds. I have been learning to identify beetles and the biggest thing that has struck me is the number of special species found here. I have been astonished how much the mix of beetles Downy Set-aside beetle (Ophonus laticollis) found varies from one area to another. A © John Walters - See more at: https://www.buglife.org.uk/ beetle may be commonplace in one habitat and entirely absent from another. I nearly fell breckland-ground-beetles of my chair with excitement when I identified a rare beetles known to the Brecks, the downy set-aside beetle – which is a striking metallic emerald colour, not much larger than a little finger nail – and is found in disturbed areas on grassland and on cultivated margins of arable fields. Examples such as this demonstrate how much there is to learn about the Brecks and how many surprises there are out there. Rob Hawkes, RSPB Heathland Project Officer
“Thank you for organising such an inspiring event that encouraged my children to enjoy the world around them, and make magic from nature” Enchanted Forest attendee, Brandon Country Park, 26th August
Get your project noticed! If there is something that you would like included in the next newsletter, please send details to Amy by 28th September: BNG.Admin@suffolk.gov.uk
Get in touch! Breaking New Ground c/o Visitor Centre, Brandon Country Park, Bury Road, Brandon, Suffolk, IP27 0SU 01842 815465 e: bng.admin@suffolk.gov.uk t: @TheBrecksBNG f: TheBrecksBNG. w: www.breakingnewground.org.uk