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YOUR GUIDE TO A WILD SUMMER

NOW YOU SEE ME...

THE CLEVER SCIENCE OF COLOURCHANGING ANIMALS August 2021 | Vol. 39 No. 09

WILDLIFE HARVEST WHY WE FESTIVAL NEED TO EAT RANGERS Supporting the Celebrating Britain’s unsung heroes of INSECTS smallest mouse conservation

All in a day’s work... hat does your working day look like? I know I’m extremely lucky with mine – I get to chat to experts all over the world about all kinds of fascinating wildlife, and then I work with a lovely group of talented and creative people to make this beautiful magazine you’re holding. And mostly, I do so surrounded by home comforts – I’m never far from good coffee!

For Marcelo Segalerba, a Brazilian ranger, it’s a very different story. “A major challenge of my job is simply returning home alive,” he tells Sarah McPherson in her eye-opening feature celebrating

Cover: Panther chameleon by Andy Rouse/naturepl.com (Controlled conditions); harvest mouse: Klein & Hubert/naturepl.com (controlled conditions); This page: Marcus Westberg

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World Ranger Day (p66). These are nature’s first responders, and yet many don’t even have basic equipment and training. “We need better working conditions, recognition, security, pay and legal support,” says Marcelo, adding: “But I’d never dream of giving up.”

They get shot at, stampeded, bitten, poisoned and infected, all while often earning a very meagre salary. I’m sure we all doff our caps in their direction – although I daresay they’d rather have improved conditions and pay.

Paul McGuinness Editor

A ranger’s day might involve confronting wildlife criminals, or fighting wildfires.

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August 2021

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Harvest mouse: K e n & Hubert/NPL (contro ed cond t ons); fish: Co n Marsha /A amy; toad: A ex Hyde; rangers: Adam Keifer; Kingfisher: Kevin Elsby/Alamy; illustration by Harry Tennant

August 2021

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�� The people behind our stories August 2021

WILD MONTH 12

Seven species to spot

66 Wildlife rangers

Along a canal Mike Dilger takes us to the towpath to see water voles, dragonflies and pike

COVER STORY

Meet the people putting their lives on the line to protect the environment

Nick Baker’s hidden Britain The spider that sports an ‘eye horn’

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COVER STORY

Our appetite for protein is a problem for the planet – bugs could be the answer

COVER STORY

What to look out for in August

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62 Why we need to eat insects

OUR WILD WORLD

22 News The Government is set to introduce Highly Protected Marine Areas

26 Truth or fiction?

82 At home Natural history TV, books and more

86 Your photos

Do animals change their accents to fit in, like we humans?

27 Mark Carwardine The conservationist considers New Zealand’s hedgehog conundrum

28 Meet the scientist Laly Lichtenfeld on resolving human-wildlife conflict in Tanzania

ALEX HYDE The award-winning wildlife photographer explores the Sefton Coast. “It’s incredible to me that this dynamic dune system flourishes so close to such centres of industry,” he says. See p44

88 Feedback Your letters and Tales from the Bush

91 Puzzles

LALY LICHTENFELD The co-founder of African People & Wildlife has been working to protect the livestock of the Massai people. “These communities have an incredible amount of tolerance for large mammals roaming through their backyards,” she says. See p28

REGULARS 6

In focus Brittlestar, swift and wildebeest

FEATURES

74 Behind the image Trafficked lizards in Australia

30 The dam busters Man-made obstacles on rivers are a menace to aquatic wildlife. Can we start to free our waterways?

38 Harvest festival

COVER STORY

It is difficult to find the UK’s smallest mouse, but citizen scientists are on a mission to track them down

44 Photo story: Dune bugs From tiger beetles to satin moth caterpillars, the vast dune system along Sefton Coast is full of treasures

54 Now you see me...

COVER STORY

Discover how chameleons, cephalopods and fish change colour – and why

August 2021

76 Q&A Are any animals bulletproof? Why do blue and great tits hiss?

98 Mark Watson

AMY JANE BEER “Woven from living strips of leaf blade, harvest mouse nests are beautifully camouflaged” says the naturalist. She finds out how the public are helping to record their wherabouts. See p38

The comedian shares the story of how he came to love kingfishers

�� MARK WATSON The comedian on his love of kingfishers and why their habitat needs saving. “They are magnificent birds,” he says. “I love the dramatic way they swoop down for their food.”

See p98

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WILD AUGUST 4 | STOAT

Starting out Young stoats born in spring are now splitting up to hunt for themselves, after relying on their mothers’ hunting prowess throughout the summer. They are perhaps unlikely to catch many adult rabbits – the favourite prey of stoats – but naive baby rabbits and small rodents had better watch out. As well as finding enough to eat, the newly independent stoats must dodge everything from foxes to tawny owls, grey herons and pet cats. Few survive their first winter, which is why stoat litters are so large, with up to a dozen kits.

FIND OUT MORE Stoat blog posts and videos: robertefuller. com/diary/tag/stoats

August 2021

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Òscar Miralpeix

IN FOCUS | Star attraction This kaleidoscopic mix of colours and shapes is a small brittlestar draped over the venomous spines of a fire urchin, and was photographed during a night dive off the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. The brittlestar is an echinoderm, closely related to starfish, and a scavenger on coral reefs. As it feeds away on debris – which helps to keep the reef spick and span – it is afforded protection by the formidable weaponry of its host.

Nikolaos Fokas

IN FOCUS | Winged wonder Regular summer visitors to Europe from Africa, pallid swifts nest on cliff-faces and buildings and can feed, drink and even mate on the wing. This individual was captured in Athens, Greece, its swooping aerial display punctuated by high-speed dives into the water to catch invertebrates.

Pallid swifts have paler plumage than their common cousins, along with blunter wings, stubbier tail forks and a lower-pitched version of the ‘ssrrreee-ssrrree’ call typical of this family of joyful acrobats.

Will Burrard-Lucas

IN FOCUS | Rain dance When the rains arrive at Liuwa Plain National Park, Zambia, it’s the cue for Africa’s second largest wildebeest migration to begin. Vast herds move into the area, taking advantage of the rich grazing available in a seasonal wetland paradise.

With the drumming of hooves and the snorts and grunts of some 45,000 animals, there’s a visceral quality to this spectacular wildlife event.

WILD AUGUST

C ockw se from top eft: John Bent ey/A amy; N k Gou thorp/A amy; Dav d Burton/FLPA/Minden; A amy; Pau van Hoof/Bu ten-bee d/M nden/A amy; Jonathan Ashton/A amy

Clockwise from top left: the Shrewsbury and Newport Canal; our native kingfisher can be seen darting along banksides; the Rochdale Canal crosses the Pennines with the help of 91 locks; water voles are active during the day; the floating water plantain; look out for brown hawker dragonflies on canals from now until September.

these waterways. Invertebrates abound, and a rich diversity of dragonflies, aquatic beetles and molluscs can be encountered in many canal systems at this time of year. And in those areas where recreational boat traffic is limited, meaning the water is less turbid, fish such as perch, tench and pike, and charismatic vertebrates including water voles and kingfishers may also make an appearance.

Canals are also about much more than just the water, as they are frequently accompanied by strips of woodland, scrub and grassland. Operating as linear habitats, often in association with marginal plants along the banks, this mosaic of towpath vegetation doubles as a wildlife corridor linking other isolated August 2021

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WILDMONTH Flowers are blooming and butterflies and bees are on the wing. Don’t miss August’s wildlife highlights.

By Ben Hoare 1 | GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL

Hermansen/Wild Wonders of Europe/NPL

Here come the gulls With the British media’s traditional silly season in full swing, you can be sure of stories about aggressive ‘seagulls’, featuring harassed tourists and outraged locals calling for the chip-stealing, pavement-fouling pests to be culled. A 2017 study found that in summer the number of gull articles soars; seven times as many appear in August compared to May or June. Yet these beleaguered birds are merely taking advantage of food we carelessly provide. (There’s no such thing as ‘seagulls’, either. They’re just gulls.)

Two species in particular attract people’s ire: the herring gull and its smarter, yellow-legged close relative, the lesser black-backed gull. Both are conspicuous, both increasingly seen in city centres. However, our biggest,

and arguably most thuggish, gull ironically gets a much better press. The great black-backed gull (pictured in the foreground) may be intimidating – it is the world’s largest gull, with a hulking physique, meat-cleaver bill and longer wingspan than a buzzard – but it keeps itself to itself and seldom visits urban areas. It patrols seabird colonies alone, scanning for undefended chicks, which it swallows whole. Another favoured feeding technique is to mug adult birds coming ashore with beaks or crops full of fish.

The victims usually give up their catch.

FIND OUT MORE BTO gull research: bto.org/gull-tracking

ONLINE

TWEET OF THE DAY Michaela Strachan on great black-backed gulls.

WILD AUGUST 2 | GREATER BURDOCK

Sticky situation

Burdock: Colin Varndell; butterfly: Oliver Smart; stoat: Alan Williams/naturepl.com

Related to thistles, burdock is an impressively sturdy plant that grows rapidly. Once foraged for its edible root, it is today often considered a weed. In summer, burdock produces thistle-like purple flowers, with a ball of viciously hooked spines below each flowerhead.

This prickly structure, called a burr, contains the seeds. If a mammal brushes past, the spikes latch onto its fur and the seeds are dispersed. In 1941, the super-sticky burr famously inspired a Swiss engineer, George de Mestral. His invention? Velcro.

FIND OUT MORE Spot it in the wild: wildlifetrusts.org/ wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/ greater-burdock

3 | CHALKHILL BLUE

Celebrate the blues August is peak season for blue butterflies, with six of the UK’s nine regular breeding species on the wing.

Chalkhill blues are habitat specialists – to see them, visit a chalk downland in southern England managed for nature.

There are also isolated colonies in the Midlands and Norfolk. Focus your search on sheltered areas where the microclimate at grass level is warmer.

Mark Cocker, in his book A Tiger in the Sand, describes how these baby-blue butterflies gather in sunny spots, “their wings opening and closing like so many pale winking eyes”.

FIND OUT MORE British butterflies: ukbutterflies.co.uk and butterfly-conservation.org

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August 2021

WILD AUGUST 4 | STOAT

Starting out Young stoats born in spring are now splitting up to hunt for themselves, after relying on their mothers’ hunting prowess throughout the summer. They are perhaps unlikely to catch many adult rabbits – the favourite prey of stoats – but naive baby rabbits and small rodents had better watch out. As well as finding enough to eat, the newly independent stoats must dodge everything from foxes to tawny owls, grey herons and pet cats. Few survive their first winter, which is why stoat litters are so large, with up to a dozen kits.

FIND OUT MORE Stoat blog posts and videos: robertefuller. com/diary/tag/stoats

August 2021

BBC Wildlife

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WILD AUGUST

6 | BELL HEATHER

Purple haze Swathes of heather look stunning this month. The hardy shrubs turn entire moors purple, especially on estates managed for grouse shooting. Of the three widespread species, bell heather wins hands down for knockout visual impact. It is an intense magenta, much bolder than the mauve of its relatives. The flowers, which hang in bunches, are bell-shaped with four prongs around the rim. They produce copious nectar, so hum with insects.

Bell heather prefers drier areas than other heathers, such as wooded lowland heaths and coastal clifftops.

GET INVOLVED Download monthly wildflower spotter sheets: plantlife.org.uk/uk/discoverwild-plants-nature/spotter-sheets 5 | COMMON CARDER BEE

Comb-overs These delightful little bumblebees vary quite a lot in colour, though usually have ginger fuzz on their thorax, with cream and black stripes on their ‘tail’. They are among our most abundant summer bees, flourishing in gardens and allotments, as well as in all kinds of other grassy places. Their name comes from their curious habit of

combing (‘carding’) plant hairs and pieces of grass over their brood cells.

Unlike many other bumblebees, they don’t build their nests underground, but tucked among moss or tussocky grass, or hidden under hedges.

FIND OUT MORE British bumblebees: bumblebeeconservation.org

7 | MINKE WHALE

Welcome whales

Bee & whale: Genevieve Leaper; heather: Laurie Campbell

Whale watching has taken off at a few locations around Ireland and northern Britain. July to August is probably prime time for encounters with minke whales, the most frequent large species in this part of the world.

Normally seen singly, the 7–10mlong cetaceans come here to hunt herring and sandeels. Their name is pronounced ‘minky’, hence the (rather cruel) nickname ‘stinky minkes’.

In his memoir Cottongrass Summer, Scottish conservationist Roy Dennis writes: “I prefer to use ‘lesser rorqual’ than commemorate the name of a long-gone Norwegian whaler.”

FIND OUT MORE British and Irish cetaceans: seawatchfoundation.org.uk 16

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August 2021

WILD AUGUST

Hidden

N ight legs, eight eyes and a body bristling with all manner of hairs and knobbly bits – so far, so normal for a spider.

But, if it wasn’t for Walckenaeria acuminata’s diminutive size (less than 3mm) we would all have heard of this miniature monstrosity. A word used in the best possible and original taste, for this spider is of no harm to anything bigger than a thrip.

It is a spider that doesn’t conform to anything you might have seen anywhere else in the spider world. Look a spider in the ‘face’ and, while you’ll struggle to see features that you can relate to, most spiders at least have eyes (usually eight) and a couple of these are where eyes might be expected to be positioned. An adult male Walckenaeria is very different.

It belongs to the dwarf or money spider group, of which there are 270 species in the UK – that’s 40 per cent of all British spider species.

The double challenge of this group is not just their tiny size, but also that they are very difficult to tell apart, without considerable knowledge and a powerful microscope. However,

I ustrat ons by Peter Dav d Scott/The Art Agency

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NICK BAKER Reveals a fascinating world of wildlife that we often overlook.

The purpose of Walckenaeria’s ‘eye horn’ is still a mystery.

this spider – well, the adult male anyway – bucks the trend somewhat and knowing they are common and widespread is enough to make you look closely at every money spider you see from now on.

Overall, it resembles other spiders of its family, with a dark, shiny body and orange-red legs, but lean in a little closer and you’ll notice something strange. Slap bang in the middle of its head is a bizarre protuberance.

Looking a bit like a DID YOU unicorn’s horn and KNOW? twice as high as the The swollen ends of rest of the spider, male spiders’ ‘palps’ (appendages near the this turret can only mouth) deliver sperm amaze and instigate to the females. an internal monologue of questions in those lucky enough to meet one.

How does it work? And what does it do?

TOUGH LOVE A closer look still and it will The sex life of spiders is a rather kinky affair... be noted that towards the very Male spiders run the risk of with a silk-wrapped nuptial gift top, looking like a pin head being injured, or even eaten, in (pictured) – something else for on the top of a very bent pin, face-to-face mating. So, many her to get her fangs into. Some is a swelling, which houses will disarm their ofteneven tangle her up in a ‘bridal two pairs of glassy eyes. The larger partners by veil’ of silk – or, more remaining four of its optical pinning back her extreme still, tie her up contingent are clustered around flag-like head completely. There is another bulbous swelling about appendages also evidence that halfway up. called silk produced by the So, what is it used for? There chelicera. male holds appeasing have been many theories, such Others will pheromones to set the distract her right mood. as enabling it to see its prey

August 2021

WALCKENAERIA ACUMINATA

over obstacles, or using it like a stag might use its antlers to display to females, or as a club in combat. None of these really stack up in my view, both because these eyes don’t see very well and only males have the eye stalk.

The clues to its possible purpose may come from studies on another money spider species, Hypomma bituberculatum, which is nearly as odd. The males have a couple of glossy, bean-shaped swellings on the top of the front part of their body and it seems that these are surrounded by glands that exude a liquid the female finds attractive. So, when in the grips of passion, she holds onto the bumps with her fangs while supping up these mysterious secretions.

It is possible that the cephalic protuberance of Walckenaeria may act in a similar way – an extreme form of ‘love handle’, perhaps? Or it could serve to aid in the dissemination of pheromones. Still, nobody has actually witnessed the mating of this tiny, widespread spider, so for now the purpose of Walckenaeria’s ‘eye horn’ remains a secret that is yet to be revealed.

NICK BAKER is a naturalist, author and TV presenter.

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By AmyJane Beer

The

mous s map

WILD AUGUST

C ockw se from top eft: John Bent ey/A amy; N k Gou thorp/A amy; Dav d Burton/FLPA/Minden; A amy; Pau van Hoof/Bu ten-bee d/M nden/A amy; Jonathan Ashton/A amy

Clockwise from top left: the Shrewsbury and Newport Canal; our native kingfisher can be seen darting along banksides; the Rochdale Canal crosses the Pennines with the help of 91 locks; water voles are active during the day; the floating water plantain; look out for brown hawker dragonflies on canals from now until September.

these waterways. Invertebrates abound, and a rich diversity of dragonflies, aquatic beetles and molluscs can be encountered in many canal systems at this time of year. And in those areas where recreational boat traffic is limited, meaning the water is less turbid, fish such as perch, tench and pike, and charismatic vertebrates including water voles and kingfishers may also make an appearance.

Canals are also about much more than just the water, as they are frequently accompanied by strips of woodland, scrub and grassland. Operating as linear habitats, often in association with marginal plants along the banks, this mosaic of towpath vegetation doubles as a wildlife corridor linking other isolated August 2021

BBC Wildlife

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WILD AUGUST

sites often surrounded by a hostile sea of agriculture or urban sprawl.

Like virtually every other habitat in the UK, canals face pressures that threaten the very wildlife that makes them such a valuable commodity. Poor water quality remains a constant issue, while excessive siltation in canals without boat traffic may initially result in a loss of open water, before pushing the habitat into a swamp community. Non-native species

Towpaths make this a far more approachable habitat than many rivers, which might be harder to access.

have also found canals very much to their liking, with invasive mink, signal crayfish, New Zealand pigmyweed and parrot’s feather all able to use and abuse the interlinking networks for facilitating dispersal to pastures new.

For those keen to sample some ‘canalophilic’ wildlife, towpaths make this a far more approachable habitat than many rivers or streams, which might be harder to access, or susceptible to wildly varying water levels. Fisherman, with their sit-and-wait approach, are often rewarded with the best views of kingfishers. But perhaps the best way to appreciate this idyllic habitat is to take to the water itself, with canoes, paddleboards or narrowboats offering the most immersive experience of all.

More frequently heard than seen, this charming waterside mammal will often escape with a ‘plop’ into the water when sensing disturbance.

Plump and with a rich brown pelage, its large, rounded head should help distinguish it from the brown rat. Vastly reduced in numbers due primarily to predation by invasive American mink, spotting a water vole will be the highlight of any day walking on a towpath.

Kingfisher No larger than a sparrow, the bright orange and iridescent blue plumage of our native kingfisher makes it one of our most instantly recognisable birds. Often seen whizzing straight and low over the water, the key to catching the rapid fly-by is to listen for its shrill ‘chree’ or ‘chee-kee’ whistle.

Very localised along stretches of nutrient-

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4

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Pike, also known as northern pike, are very common in our waterways.

2 Rochdale Canal was opened in 1804 and was the first trans-Pennine canal. It runs from Manchester to Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, and is home to water voles and kingfishers.

3 Montgomery Canal, known locally as ‘The Monty’, contains several Sites of Special Scientific Interest along its length, with the stretch in Wales also designated as a Special Area of Conservation due to its aquatic plants.

4 Newport Canal in Shropshire poor and slow-flowing canal, the floating water plantain is best identified by its rosettes of eggshaped leaves, which are connected to other plantlets by aquatic runners. Its solitary white flowers then rise above both vegetation and water, with a distinct yellow basal spot clearly visible on each of its three petals.

Brown hawker Immediately identified by its brown-tinted wings, this distinctive and large dragonfly is often a common fixture along many slow-flowing water bodies during the height

of summer. The patrolling males have a distinctive flight patten, as their long glides are interspersed with bursts of rapid but shallow wing-beats.

Pike Often reaching around a metre in length, the pike has a voracious appetite for other fish, frogs and even the occasional unwary water bird. With golden-green bands and spots marking its greenish-brown body, this apex predator of canals is perfectly camouflaged for lurking unseen in the aquatic vegetation.

provides a link between the Shropshire Union and Shrewsbury canals. After falling into disrepair, it is now being restored to its former glory.

5 Basingstoke Canal traverses both Hampshire and Surrey and is considered one of the most biologically diverse of all waterways. Twenty five species of dragonfly have been recorded and the Greywell Tunnel hosts one of the largest winter bat roosts in the UK.

Take a dragonfly guide with you, such as Britain’s Dragonflies: A Field Guide to the Damselflies and Dragonflies of Great Britain and Ireland (Wild Guides, 2018) by Dave Smallshire and Andy Swash.

August 2021

Alex Mustard/naturepl.com

Floating water plantain

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1 Caledonian Canal in the Scottish Highlands runs for about 95km, with short stretches of man-made canal linking up a number of scenic, natural lochs through the Great Glen.

S P EC I ES TO LO OK OU T FO R Water vole

C H O IC E LO CATI O N S

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

A FORCE FOR NATURE Jordans Cereals is working to keep the Amazon bursting with wildlife – and Brazil nuts!

WHETHER IT’S DONATING to animal charities, making small changes in our garden, or simply cutting down on our waste, we all want to do our bit to help the planet. And sometimes helping out can be as easy as buying from certain brands. Take Jordans Cereals, for example.

Not only is it improving biodiversity through the Jordans Farm Partnership, which sees all of its British farmers dedicate at least 10 per cent of their land to wildlife, but it’s also helping protect the Amazon rainforest.

Working with the Bolivian Centre for Research and Promotion of Small Farmers (CIPCA), Jordans is supporting 15 communities in the Bolivian Amazon, ensuring they and the rainforest, where Brazil nuts come from, stay as healthy as possible.

After all, when we take care of our world, our world takes care of us, right?

THE PEOPLE As it stands, large parts of the Amazon are under severe threat of being converted into cattle ranches and agribusiness crops.

Indeed, it’s this habitat destruction that is the main cause of biodiversity loss in the region, something Jordans is working with CIPCA

to help prevent. So far, the company has helped plant 35,000 Brazil nut seedlings to support the Bolivian Amazon’s Brazil nut collector communities who rely on the rainforest for a fruitful harvest.

Jordans is also working with these communities to create tree nurseries and is facilitating trail clean-ups, along with providing health education and training that will help them keep the Brazil nut trees and forests healthy. Without a sustainable income from Brazil nuts, these communities may have to turn to other local income streams, such as logging, which ultimately contribute to the destruction of one of the most biodiverse and precious places on our planet.

THE WILDLIFE From monkeys and macaws, to bees and frogs, the work Jordans is doing for the rainforest also benefits its wondrous wildlife, who rely on the Brazil nuts for food. Like us, capuchin monkeys enjoy feasting on them when they’re fully ripened, while macaws prefer to eat them when they’re still immature.

Among Brazil nuts’ biggest predators are agoutis, large rodents that, thanks to their

powerful teeth, are able to open the fruits once they fall to the forest floor. In fact, agoutis can open up to 80 per cent of Brazil nuts, making them the principal seed predators for this species. That said, they’re also the main seed distributor, facilitating the regeneration of Brazil nut trees in places with positive conditions for their development.

And, when agoutis have eaten their Brazil nuts, dendrobates castaneoticus – a small, poisonous frog – likes to deposit its eggs in the leftover open shells, which fill with rainwater. It really is fascinating stuff!

To find out more about what Jordans Cereals is doing for nature, visit jordanscereals.co.uk

WILDNEWS

By SIMON BIRCH, STUART BLACKMAN, MEGAN SHERSBY and CLAIRE VAUGHAN

K E E P I N G YO U U P TO DAT E W I T H T H E B I G N AT U R E STO R I E S

Alex Mustard/naturepl.com

“The UK has some of the most widlife-depleted seas in the world.”

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The Atlantic grey seal is just one of a vast array of marine species that could benefit from the increased protection of English waters.

MARINE

Government plans New Highly Protected Marine Areas will ban all damaging activities. roundbreaking Government plans to introduce a new class of increased protection for the seas around England are being hailed as a major victory by wildlife and environmental campaigners.

Following the independent Benyon Review, an introductory series of five Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) are set to be designated by the Government next year, with the aim of restoring the depleted marine environment.

“This new type of marine protection will be the gold standard for rewilding parts of the sea,” said Joan Edwards, director of policy at the Wildlife Trusts and a review panel member.

“This is an historic moment and we’re certain that HPMAs will help our seas become healthier and that degraded underwater habitats will be better able to recover.”

HPMAs are areas of the seabed and sea where no human activities can take place. They will supersede the existing Marine Protected Areas that currently cover about 40 per cent of the seas around England and that have had a mixed record for their effectiveness.

“This special form of protection is vitally needed. Decades of overexploitation and pollution have left our seas damaged, with the result that the UK has some of the most wildlifedepleted seas in the world,” said Edwards.

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August 2021

It is hoped that the newly protected areas will increase the number, diversity and size of fish, as well as enabling the ‘spill-over’ of species to surrounding areas, which would help to restock the seas and benefit commercial fisheries.

The restoration of the marine environment is also crucial in the fight against the climate crisis, as healthier seas support more plankton, which absorb carbon and lock it away.

“Highly Protected Marine Areas will be vital to transforming our existing broken network of Marine Protected Areas, where all forms of destructive fishing are still allowed to take place,” said Chris Thorne, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK. “They can restore habitats, revive fish populations, breathe life into struggling coastal communities and help us tackle the climate emergency.”

While the Government has yet to announce where the first HPMAs will be sited, Joan Edwards commented that: “HPMAs should be designated in each regional sea, in both inshore and offshore English waters, encompassing a range of habitats so that experts can study how different ecosystems recover when pressures are reduced.” Simon Birch

FIND OUT MORE Read the Benyon Review into Highly Protected Marine Areas: bit.ly/2TRn5uM

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WILD NEWS

Grey wolves are viewed as merely a menace to livestock by some.

Below: white-tailed deer are frequently hit by cars in Wisconsin.

ECOLOGY

Wolves make roads safer The presence of the top predators reduces road traffic accidents in the USA. yielding an economic benefit that is he recolonisation of old haunts 63 times greater than the costs of verified by grey wolves across Europe and wolf predation on livestock,” write the North America is apparently having the scientists behind the study. unexpected effect of making roads safer.

But what exactly are the predators That’s the finding from a new study doing to make the roads safer? Firstly, showing that the predators reduce traffic they eat deer, and fewer deer collisions with deer to the means fewer collisions. Indeed, point that the economic gains D ID YOU the analysis showed that deer vastly outweigh the costs of any numbers stop rising once livestock losses.

KNOW ? wolves move into an area.

Wolves were hunted The USA is home to However, the effect occurred almost to extinction in the about 18,000 wolves, even in areas with very small USA (excluding Alaska) two-thirds of which are wolf populations, suggesting by the 1960s. But legal in Alaska. In Europe, that controlling deer numbers protection allowed them to there are about 11,000, is only part of the story. start reclaiming lost territory distributed amongst The scientists think wolves from the 1970s. The new 28 countries. change the behaviour of research gathered data on the deer by their mere presence. rates of deer-vehicle collisions “Wolves use roads, pipelines and other (DVCs) as packs recolonised the state linear features as travel corridors, which of Wisconsin, where DVCs cost almost increases wolves’ travel efficiency and the $200 million per year, not to mention the kill-rate of prey near these features,” the associated human casualties. scientists write. The result is a “landscape “We show that, for the average county, of fear” that keeps deer from the roads. wolf entry reduced DVCs by 24 per cent,

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BBC Wildlife

Stuart Blackman

FIND OUT MORE PNAS: bit.ly/3AD207O

August 2021

Wolf: Linda Freshwaters Arndt/Alamy; deer: Michael Tatman/Alamy

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Jennifer Raynor of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, who led the research, says that human hunters use similar routes to access deer and therefore also scare them away from roads. “However, most of the hunting season is compressed into a single weekend, so the scale of the effect is much smaller than wolves that affect deer behaviour year-round.”

She also suspects that similar effects are playing out as wolves recolonise Europe: “I feel confident that wolves would reduce collisions through the population channel anywhere that wolves reduce ungulate numbers.”

31 July 202

Adam Kiefer

Rangers from Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo, caring for young gorillas at the Senkwekwe Center (prepandemic). The facility is the only mountain gorilla orphanage in the world, and also plays a critical role in rehabilitating orphaned eastern lowland gorillas confiscated from animal traffickers.

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protectors

WILD NEWS MARINE

Sharks’ loss is whales’ gain

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iologists have stumbled upon evidence of a mysterious mass extinction of sharks 19 million years ago, which may have cleared the way for the evolution of modern whales.

“We happened upon this extinction almost by accident,” said Elizabeth Sibert of Yale University. She and a colleague had been looking at historical shark populations by studying the occurrence of shark ‘scales’ (called dermal denticles) buried in sediment.

“We decided to generate an 85-million-year-long record of fish and shark abundance, just to get a sense of what the normal variability of that population looked like in the long term,” she said. “What we found, though, was this sudden drop-off in shark abundance.”

The event wiped out 90 per cent of individuals and 70 per cent of species (more than twice as many as disappeared 66 million years ago when the infamous asteroid struck). Open

ocean species rather than coastal ones were hardest hit; other fish groups were largely unaffected.

The cause of the mass dieoff remains a mystery, but it’s one from which they have not recovered. The biologists suspect that it set the stage for the subsequent evolution of other large ocean predators such as whales. SB

FIND OUT MORE Science: bit.ly/3hGtReD

Millions of years ago there were many more sharks around.

TRUTH OR FICTION?

Animals change their accents to fit in

WANT TO COMMENT? Email wildlifeletters@ immediate.co.uk

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BBC Wildlife

Red-handed tamarins speak the lingo of pied tamarins.

English. (Well, it’s probably more polite than just shouting.)

But it’s not only humans who feel the need to modify their accent according to the social situation in which they find themselves. Research published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology shows that tamarin monkeys in Brazil do something rather similar.

While red-handed tamarins range across much of the Amazon, Critically Endangered pied tamarins are found only in a small area near Manaus. When redhandeds enter their territory, something strange happens – they modify their calls to match those of their new neighbours.

The researchers suggest the behaviour serves to ameliorate conflict between two species that compete for similar resources.

Intriguingly, only the red-handed tamarins modify their calls in this way, and it may be no coincidence that they seem to be gradually outcompeting the pieds where their respective territories overlap. SB

August 2021

Caribbean reef sharks: Shane Gross/naturepl.com; tamarin: Thomas Marent/Minden/NPL

Humans are known to adapt their accent according to social situations, but do animals too?

WATCH A PRESS conference following the signing of a prominent British footballer by a European club and you might be fortunate to witness a fascinating – not to mention hilarious – linguistic phenomenon.

The player in question is likely to answer questions with a distinct, generic European accent, with the result that they sound something like a Dutch person speaking

WILD OPINION

MY WAY OF THINKING

MARK CARWARDINE The conservationist discusses the tricky problem faced by New Zealand when it comes to the harm caused by non-native hedgehogs.

hile we are fighting to save our rapidly dwindling hedgehog population in Britain (down from 30 million in the 1950s to fewer than 1 million today), conservationists in New Zealand are trying to get rid of them.

The difference, of course, is that hedgehogs are native to Britain, but they are ‘accidental tourists’ in New Zealand, shipped out to remind homesick settlers of their gardens back home (it’s an irony that they are now two-a-penny in New Zealand, while most of those gardens back home haven’t seen a hedgehog in years).

In the good old days, New Zealand’s native birds, reptiles and insects lived the life of Riley, safe in the knowledge that there were no predatory mammals to eat them. But then settlers arrived and unleashed a menagerie of hungry ferrets, stoats, weasels, rats, cats, dogs, possums – and hedgehogs – into this innocent land. Kakapo, kiwi and all the other home-grown inhabitants – completely unprepared for the onslaught – were sitting ducks. Their populations plummeted, and many species disappeared altogether.

Centuries later, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) is still cleaning up the mess. In its bid to make New Zealand predator-free by 2050, returning the country to a nearpristine state, it has become the worldrenowned expert at trapping, shooting and poisoning.

But it hit the headlines when it set its sights on hedgehogs (following recent research that revealed the significant harm these prickly predators are doing

Stephen Dalton/naturepl.com

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August 2021

S Should we play

to native wildlife).

The reason it caused a furore? Hedgehogs are cute.

The prospect of hedgehog eradication has highlighted a tricky dilemma.

Should DOC play God and kill all the introduced hedgehogs to protect native wildlife?

Is it okay to cull one species to save another? Is the survival of endangered species more important than the lives of individual animals?

It’s a conundrum faced by conservationists around the world.

Alien species – plants or animals intentionally or accidentally introduced into a place that was never part of their natural range – are the second biggest threat to biodiversity (after habitat loss).

They can plunge entire ecosystems into spirals of extinction. Worldwide, alien species cost a minimum of US$26.8 billion per year (in terms of direct economic losses and costs associated

God and kill all the hedgehogs to protect ground-nesting birds? T

Hedgehogs are thriving in New Zealand.

with dealing with these invasions) and that figure is trebling every ten years.

Some animal welfare groups argue that no animals should be culled under any circumstances. After all, it’s not the fault of the hapless hedgehogs – we are the ones who shipped them to a new country on the other side of the world.

If only we could ship them all back to Britain. That’s what we’re doing in the Outer Hebrides. Seven hedgehogs were introduced to the Uists in 1974 to control garden pests, but they bred like rabbits and preferred to gobble up the eggs of ground-nesting waders – with devastating results. Unfortunately, it took 13 years to move just over a third of them (2,441 hedgehogs) at a cost of £1,097 each. Just imagine how much it would cost to relocate untold thousands from New Zealand to Britain (not to mention all the logistical and biosecurity challenges).

But what is the alternative? Leaving introduced predators to run amok is clearly not a viable option. Neither are non-lethal measures, because they inevitably result in a far-from-pristine mosaic of fenced enclosures. Culling isn’t good because it requires killing each generation over and over again – the killing never stops. So the most humane solution is eradication.

It’s a sad reality. No-one goes into conservation to kill things, of course.

But environmentalists can’t always be sentimentalists.

MARK CARWARDINE is a frustrated and frank conservationist.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? If you want to support Mark in his views or shoot him down in flames, email wildlifeletters@immediate.co.uk

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WILD NEWS

MEET THE SCIENTIST

Laly Lichtenfeld Co-founder and CEO at African People & Wildlife A love of big cats and a commitment to empower rural communities led Laly Lichtenfeld to help develop ‘Living Walls’, a project to protect livestock in Tanzania. rowing up in the beautiful ‘garden state’ of rural New Jersey, Laly Lichtenfeld was outdoorsy from the getgo. But it was when she first heard a wild lion roar in Kenya that she fell in love with big cats. “I knew from that moment I would be returning to try to contribute to conservation in this part of the world,” she says.

Lichtenfeld was a freshman studying biology at the time. Later, she received a Fulbright scholarship to research community-based conservation in Africa. Fast-forward 21 years and she still calls the continent home, having co-fo the non-profit organisation A People & Wildlife.

“There is a long history of on these landscapes, intera with wildlife. In East Africa we work, people are as muc of the environment as some large mammal species. They there for centuries,” she exp So, when finding a solutio the problem of big cats atta the livestock of the Maasai p in Tanzania, Lichtenfeld and team invited community me to the table. “When you lose to a lion, it’s not just the eco [it affects], it’s the whole so fabric,” she says. Building tr and incorporating local, trad knowledge is at the heart of organisation’s work.

Livestock corrals are – qu literally – at the centre of th homestead. In the past, brush would be cut down locally to fo t y

A corral with a ‘Living Wall’ keeps livestock safe from lions and other large predators.

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BBC Wildlife

part of the environment as some of the large l i T

them against roaming predators, but the Maasai were having to go further and further afield to find it.

Could chain-link fencing supported by metal or wooden stakes do the trick? Metal was dismissed by the communities as being too expensive and wood would rot, they thought.

Instead, they wondered if indigenous thorny African myrrh trees could form the posts. Branches could be harvested without killing the tree, dried out for several weeks, and then planted in the dry season African lions have declined by more than 40 per cent in three generations.

FIND OUT MORE WWF Land for Life project: wwf.org.uk/life

when they wouldn’t rot. “That would have never occurred to me!” laughs Lichtenfeld. African People & Wildlife then secures chain-link fencing to the branches, and over time the growing trees weave through it, creating a sustainable, predator-proof barrier.

Word spread fast and now there are more than 1,300 of these ‘Living Walls’ across northern Tanzania.

Lichtenfeld feels they are successful because the communities are invested. “It’s important it isn’t a handout,” she says. They plant the trees themselves and pay 25 per cent towards the cost of the fence.

The rest is covered by African People & Wildlife and its key supporters and partners, with plans for more Living Walls funded by the Land for Life project led by WWF. “These communities have an incredible amount of tolerance for large mammals roaming through their backyards compared to other parts of the world. I think they should be looked to for solutions more than they are.” Catherine Smalley

August 2021

Laly headshot and Living Wall: African People & Wildlife/Felipe Rodriguez; lioness: Richard Barrett/WWF-UK

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S The people are as much a

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

A WAKE-UP CALL By supporting the Woodland Trust, you’ll be boosting its efforts to help the tiny, sleepy – and adorable – hazel dormouse thrive again

THE RARE HAZEL DORMOUSE lives in England’s woodlands, but it’s highly unlikely you’ll catch sight of one in its natural habitat. Known for being shy, this miniscule creature spends most of its time asleep, or hidden high-up in tree branches and canopies.

Sadly, with numbers estimated to have fallen by 52 per cent since 1995, the hazel dormouse population is in danger. The loss of ancient woodland and hedgerows across the UK is a major factor behind this decline. As dormice never venture out into large, open expanses, they become isolated in the remaining wooded spaces.

Ultimately, this means the species starts to lose genetic diversity, which makes it more vulnerable to extinction.

Climate change has also played a part in the dwindling dormouse population.

As our winters become milder, the mice’s hibernation cycle is disrupted, and they start waking before sufficient food is available. What’s more, with the

nation’s move away from more traditional forestry methods such as coppicing, which creates ideal habitats for dormice, the creatures struggle to find the safe habitats that once existed in abundance.

Fortunately, hope is not lost, and there are a variety of steps we can all take to help this precious species thrive once more...

THE DORMOUSE FACT FILE Here’s some of the key information about this precious species…

Name: Hazel dormouse

BUILDING BACK

(Muscardinus avellanarius)

The Woodland Trust is protecting the UK’s hazel dormice population by restoring woodland, as well as providing nesting boxes for the mice to use. Recently, it partnered with the National Trust to restore Fingle Woods in Devon. This involved gradually removing maturing conifer to return the wood to broadleaves, in a way that enhanced the habitat of the dormice living there.

This restoration also provided also provided the opportunity to monitor the mice and observe their behaviours and feeding habits, which will help the charity better understand how to protect them.

Diet: Insects, flowers, nuts, seeds and berries

Habitat: Woodland, hedgerows Appearance: Just 6-9cm in length and weighing no more than 40g, these tiny creatures have soft, golden fur and a long, feathery tail.

Not to be confused with: The edible dormouse. This is a much larger, non-native species of dormouse, first introduced into the UK in 1902.

For more information, and to become a member of the Woodland Trust from just £4 a month, visit woodlandtrust.org.uk/WL Registered charity numbers 294344 and SC038885

NEWS FEATURE

ds of re d n u h , e p ro u E s s ro c A ams, rivers are blocked by d . But a s e e v le d n a s k c lo , s e k dy g pace movement is gatherin rs to remove these barrie . and restore water flow

Lou Benoist/AFP/Getty

Report by Graeme Green

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BBC Wildlife

August 2021

NEWS FEATURE

n the Netherlands, salmon was once seen as food for the poor,” says Herman Wanningen, founder of the World Fish Migration Foundation and the Dam Removal Europe movement. “There was a lot of salmon in the 1600s and 1700s, and people didn’t want to eat it every day. Millions of the fish travelled in from the sea and up rivers through the delta on their way to Germany and the Swiss Alps.”

Then came a dramatic change to the rich riverscape with the Delta Works in the mid1900s; a series of construction projects in the south-west Netherlands to protect the area of delta surrounding the rivers Rhine, Schelde and Maas. “The Dutch say ‘we’re proud of how we managed the delta. We built dams, sluices, dykes, locks and levees, to make it safe for humans and reduce the risk of flooding’, but the result was that it was not a good place for fish,” explains Wanningen.

“That, in turn, had an impact on birds and fish-eating animals, such as eagles and otters.

There was far more diversity and abundance of fish and wildlife here 100 years ago.”

What happened in the Netherlands happened on a global scale. Throughout

“I Excavators at work tearing down the Vezins dam in Isigny-le-Buat, northwestern France, in August 2019.

August 2021

history, humans have attempted to modify and control nature, including water sources for crops, livestock and drinking. But the construction of river barriers accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, to power mills and factories, create reservoirs and aid flood management. Today, an estimated 1.2 million dams, weirs, culverts and other barriers straddle Europe’s rivers – at least 100,000 of which are thought to be obsolete. The UK is thought to have between 50,000-60,000 of these structures, at least 10 per cent of which serve no purpose.

Fears for freshwater fish According to the recent World’s Forgotten Fishes report, from WWF, Shoal, IUCN and other partners, one third of the world’s freshwater fish are threatened with extinction.

In the UK, burbot and sturgeon are already locally extinct, salmon is in decline, and the European eel is now Critically Endangered.

“Nature and biodiversity around the world are in freefall, and nowhere is this crisis more acute than in our rivers, lakes and wetlands,” says Dave Tickner, chief adviser on freshwater at WWF-UK. “Freshwater wildlife has declined by 84 per cent globally since 1970, twice the rate of forests and oceans. Many factors, including pollution, are to blame. But the construction of dams and barriers, which present a physical obstacle to fish travelling to their breeding

BBC Wildlife

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NEWS FEATURE

Eel pass: Nick Upton/naturepl.com; sturgeon: Herbert Frei/mauritius images GmbH/Alamy; osprey: Pete Cairns/naturepl.com; Weir removal: West Cumbria Rivers Trust

grounds, is a particular threat. Anything we can do to restore rivers has to be a good thing.”

A movement to remove barriers is gathering momentum across Europe and the UK, part of the wider shift towards rewilding. More than 100 European dams were removed in 2020 alone. “The relationship is simple: if the river doesn’t flow, migratory fish can’t breed and their numbers crash,” says Wanningen.

“In the past 50 years, populations of migratory fish have gone down by 96 per cent in Europe. Some species, such as Atlantic and beluga sturgeon, are now approaching extinction. The problem applies to fish that travel long distances, such as salmon, sturgeon, sea trout and eels; and those that only travel in fresh water, including ide, brook trout and common dace. We need to get rivers flowing again.”

Going with the flow The benefits of free-flowing rivers go far beyond supporting healthy fish populations. “Barriers interfere with the natural flow regime of a river – the water volume, speed of flow and movement of sediments and nutrients – all of which are vital for many plants and animals,” explains Tickner. “Freeing rivers is about restoring entire ecosystems.”

This October, deconstruction of the 15m-high Roche-Qui-Boit dam on France’s Sélune River is due to commence. It follows the removal in

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A beluga sturgeon, or great sturgeon, is one of the largest predatory fishes on the planet. Above left: an eel pass, which allows the migration of young eels up the side of a weir.

In the past 50 years, populations of migratory fish have gone down by 96 per cent in Europe.

their reservoir, which was used for fishing,” says Wanningen. “Suddenly, it had to go, and the French government didn’t bring those people on board. There’s still a lot of misunderstanding about these projects.

Local support is needed from the start.

When we gave a seminar there in 2019, people were protesting. But after taking the opportunity to talk to experts, they started to understand why dam removal is important.”

2020 of the 36m-high Vezins dam on the same river – Europe’s largest damremoval project so far. Removing these structures, built in 1914 and 1927, will cost about 70 million. “The Vezins dam was 200m wide. It was too expensive to refurbish,” says Wanningen. “But if nothing was done, it would have been unsafe.

Removing it will restore 90km of freeflowing river, which means Atlantic salmon, European eels and sea trout can return.”

Removing dams isn’t always a popular undertaking. “Villagers living around the Vezins dam protested because they were concerned about what would happen to

From start to Finnish In August, work will also begin in Finland to remove the first of three dams on the Hiitolanjoki River. The demolition will allow the passage of endangered salmon to their traditional spawning grounds for the first time in more than 100 years.

As in France, getting to the removal stage wasn’t easy, with dams seen as an effective source of green energy. People were persuaded with the help of a ‘mating belongs to all’ campaign, featuring couples taking romantic boat trips upriver – only to find their progress blocked. Finland’s rivers became a national topic ahead of the

NEWS FEATURE

CASE STUDY

STEP-BY-STEP THE REMOVAL

Removing Ennerdale Mill Weir Spanning 50m across the River Ehen in Cumbria, this obsolete weir was a barrier to migratory fish and a threat to local mussel beds. The structure was dismantled in 2018 by the West Cumbria Rivers Trust.

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Installing sediment traps

Silt-control measures are installed in the form of silt-capture matting. A ‘rock ramp’ is installed below the weir to prevent a sudden drop in water levels.

A crumbling slab of degraded concrete, blocking the passage of fish such as salmon and trout.

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AFTER

A re-naturalised, fast flowing stretch of freshwater habitat, restored for 400m.

from funding new hydropower dams to removing existing structures.

Across the UK, applications are in place for dam and weir removals, including Bowston Weir on the River Kent in Cumbria.

Many of these structures once powered mills and factories, but have long been dormant. Today, they merely contribute to a decline in fish and degrade the ecosystem.

“The scale of the problem is massive,” says Barry Bendall, operations director for The Rivers Trust. “There are many barriers built for land drainage, industry, agriculture

Free-flowing rivers not only benefit fish – they also allow birds such as ospreys to flourish.

and flood defence… It was fashionable to pour concrete. And less than half of the UK’s barriers are thought to be mapped.”

The number of barriers removed so far in the UK is still low. But, from Slitting Mill Weir on the River Don in Sheffield to Keybridge Weir on the River Camel in Cornwall, freed rivers have already experienced positive changes, with higher numbers of salmon, sea trout, smelt, lamprey and eels. “Removing the dams, you’d expect to see a healthier ecosystem that benefits everything from insects to iconic species like otters or kingfishers,” says Bendall.

Campaigners point to trailblazing successes in the USA, such as the removal of two dams on the Elwha River in Washington State, which has seen fish and birds thrive again.

“Another great example of what’s possible is Penobscot River Restoration Project in Maine,” says Tickner. “They carried out river restoration, taking out some obsolete hydropower dams and reconditioning others to make them

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Notching

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Removing the weir

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Creating rapids

A digger ‘notches’ the weir. This creates a gap for water flow, to lower the water levels upstream and allow sediment deposits to be removed. The concrete face of the weir is removed.

The weir is taken out, section by section. The stone is reused in new features, such as boulder cascades, in the river system. The riverbed is reprofiled above and below the weir.

Upstream, rapids and a pebble ‘beach’ are created. The riverbed is reprofiled and banks strengthened.

BBC Wildlife

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NEWS FEATURE

River obstacle terminology explained Weir A low dam built across a river to raise the level of water upstream or to regulate its flow.

Culvert A tunnel carrying a stream or open drain under a road or railway.

Sluice A sliding gate or other device for controlling the flow of water.

Almost extinct in the UK in the late 1950s, otter numbers have recovered thanks to improved river quality.

more efficient. They opened up vast stretches of river. Numbers of fish rebounded, and they still generated as much hydropower.”

Dam removal doesn’t mean the end for hydropower. “Hydropower is still a potentially useful energy source,” says Tickner. “It’s better than coal-fired power stations in terms of emissions for climate change. But it can have a negative impact on river systems. Since a lot of Europe’s dams were built, other renewable energy sources – such as solar and wind, which have lower impact – have become a lot more viable.”

Projects in the pipeline

Calum Dickson/Alamy

Nonetheless, major new dam projects are in development elsewhere in the world, from the Rufiji hydropower project in Tanzania to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. China is also building or funding major dams in Laos, Myanmar, Tibet and China itself – including on the Mekong and Irrawaddy, both home to rare river dolphins – and there are fears for the environmental fallout.

The controversial Belo Monte dam complex in Pará, Brazil, was completed in 2019. It was recently reported to have cut the Xingu River’s flow by 85 per cent, which will leave 70 per cent of normally flooded forest dry this year.

This will be a disaster for fish, trees, plants and local indigenous people.

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Since a lot of Europe’s dams were built, other renewable energy sources have become more viable.

Europe, though, is shifting away from hydropower. From Slovakia to Spain, obsolete dams and weirs are due to be taken down.

To date, the removal operations have been paid for with crowdfunding, a sign of public support for river restoration. “Thousands of people have paid in to get dams out,” Wanningen says. “We crowdfunded the first ever removal project in Lithuania.

From there, the Lithuanian government started a dam-removal policy in favour of opening up rivers.”

Politicians across Europe have been convinced of the benefits of removing dams or ensuring they are equipped with fishways, which allow fish through. “We’re proud that the European government has included a target of 25,000km of free-flowing rivers in the next 10 years by removing dams,” says Wanningen. “It wants biodiversity. That helps other countries to include similar targets in future.”

In the UK, though, there’s still frustration and a feeling that a lot more could and should be done to provide safe passage for

Levee An embankment built to prevent the overflow of a river.

Dam A barrier constructed to hold back water and raise its level, forming a reservoir used to generate electricity or as a water supply.

Lock gate A gate at either end of a short section of a canal or river that can be opened or closed to change the water level.

These are usually used for raising and lowering boats.

fish, whether by installing fishways or by removing obstacles altogether. Despite assurances from the government and recognition of the importance of freeing up rivers, the promised laws have yet to be brought in.

“Fish passage regulations that would require owners of weirs to allow them to be removed or modified have been delayed successively for more than a decade,” says Bendall. “There is little imperative to address barriers if there’s no legislative requirement – owners currently don’t have to do anything. Without those incentives, a lot of obsolete weirs will remain in place.

But the efforts are worth it. I’d like to see safe fish-passage systems on rivers and barrier removal being prioritised.”

GRAEME GREEN is a journalist, photographer and founder of New Big 5. newbig5.com.

FIND OUT MORE The River Obstacles app: river-obstacles.org.uk

August 2021

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By AmyJane Beer

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mous s map

The harvest mouse is the only British mammal with a prehensile tail, which comes in useful when climbing among grass stems.

se The harvest mouse is the smallest and least known of all British rodents, mainly because it is so difficult to find. A fiveyear citizen science survey in Kent is revealing valuable new information.

cologist Steve Kirk has a nose for harvest mice – or, more precisely, for the places they live. “You can be driving along with him,” says Suzanne Kynaston of the Wildwood Trust, “and he’ll suddenly shout ‘Stop the car!’ and jump out, and within minutes he’s found a nest in the verge.” It’s a remarkable skill: harvest mouse nests are notoriously difficult to find. Woven from living strips of leaf blade, they are beautifully camouflaged. But Steve insists there’s no trick to it, just a keen eye and insight honed by years of experience.

The popular image of the harvest mouse is of a tiny creature clinging to a stem of golden wheat, but the species’ natural habitat is long, grassy vegetation and reeds, such as might be found in rough pasture, scruffy margins, wetlands and

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Above: the size of a harvest mouse nest can vary from 5cm wide to 10cm for breeding. Below: this species weighs in at less than a two-pence piece.

As grass-stalk zone specialists, they spend their lives feeding, sleeping and breeding without ever descending to the ground.

ditches. As grass-stalk zone specialists, they spend their lives clambering from stem to stem – feeding, sleeping and breeding without ever needing to descend to the ground. In the days of less intensive agriculture, arable land was an extension of this natural habitat, and the mice were most often seen fleeing to the safety of field margins when crops were cut by hand – a scene described by 18th-century naturalist Gilbert White, who documented the natural history around his rural parish in Selborne.

Changes in agriculture mean crop fields are now seldom the haven they once were – and the mice that do venture into them are much less likely to survive the onslaught of a vast combine harvester. Meanwhile, many former wetland habitats have been converted to farmland or urban sprawl.

Pressure on land is particularly acute in Kent, one-time Garden of England, where intensification of agriculture and seemingly relentless pressure on land for housing,

business and transport infrastructure have wrought a century of drastic change.

Marshes have been drained, hedgerows removed, green space eaten away. Harvest mice were declared a Species of Principal Importance for UK biodiversity in 2006, but the designation offers no real protection and the animals are rarely given any consideration in development plans.

Historical sightings Wondering what hope there might be for an old-fashioned mouse in a 21stcentury landscape, Steve began looking for harvest mouse data in the early 2000s. He discovered that while historical records were well-scattered, suggesting the species had been widespread, they were also incredibly thin on the ground. “Actual sightings were recorded by the county biological records centre at a rate of about two a year since 1961,” he told me. “There was a national survey in the 1970s to which Kent August 2021

HARVEST MICE

Finding a mouse in a haystack Ecologists have tried a variety of methods for monitoring Britain’s most elusive rodent. None is perfect by any means, and nest surveys remain the most reliable method, even if it means surveyors go years without seeing a live wild specimen.

Tui was trained by ecologist Emily Howard-Williams.

Clockwise from above: adult harvest mice are 5-7cm in length with a tail almost as long as their body. Their average lifespan is about one and a half years; Steve

Kirk has a knack for finding nests and advocates using a stick to help; with pale yellow or ginger fur and a white belly, this species is found across the UK, south of Yorkshire.

TRAPPING Good-sized harvest mice do turn up in Longworth traps used in small mammal surveys, but smaller individuals can easily enter without triggering them. The risk of false negatives makes trapping unreliable for monitoring purposes.

TENNIS BALL

Handling & sniffer dog: Nick Upton/NPL; nest & belly: Klein & Hubert/NPL (Controlled conditions) tennis ball: David Jones/PA Images/Alamy; tail: Andy Sands/NPL (captive); Steve: Wildwood Trust

A tennis ball with a 15mm hole (below) and baited with millet allows access to harvest mice and can be examined for droppings or feeding signs.

contributed a total of 12 records. What’s more, that survey only recorded at a scale of hectads. What can a conservationist in 2021 do with the information that one mouse was present in a 10 x 10km square nearly half a century ago? Nothing.”

To assess a species’ status, conservationists need to know where populations live and how they are faring in different landscapes.

But wild harvest mice are tricky to spot and their nests hard to find; they also leave few obvious field signs. They don’t create runways through grass like ground-dwelling mice and voles, they don’t gnaw nutshells or create large caches of food, and their droppings are too small for even the most sharp-eyed ecologist to spot.

Steve began actively seeking harvest mouse nests across Kent in 2004, and recorded more than 500 of them in 10 August 2021

SNIFFER DOG years. He noticed that many were not in so-called ‘broad habitats’ such as fields or reedbeds, but strung out across networks of linear habitats, including field margins, ditches and road verges. It occurred to Steve that such in-between places might provide a solution to the data problem. Road verges had been largely overlooked in previous surveys, yet are – by definition – widespread across the country and relatively accessible.

With the aid of Google Street View, Steve found he could scope an area from his desk and thus narrow down his search areas – and use the same method to direct other surveyors to likely locations.

He also realised that to be meaningful, the survey needed to generate a higher

In 2015, Tui the flat-coated retriever (above) was trained to detect harvest mice by smell and could indicate whether a bait station had been visited or not.

RADIO TRACKING In 2003, Chester Zoo used the smallest radio collar ever developed to monitor the movements of a reintroduced population of harvest mice on its estate.

PIT TAG Passive Integrated similar to those used to microchip pets, have been used to monitor released harvest mice.

HARVEST MICE

resolution of data than previous efforts.

The hectads often used in national species mapping are vast compared to the scale of harvest mouse home ranges and habitats.

Much more useful is a tetrad, an area of 2 x 2km – four of the kilometre grid squares on a standard Ordnance Survey map.

There are 1,004 tetrads in Kent (1,100 if you count those that spill into other counties), so it became clear that monitoring the entire county at this resolution was going to require a lot of effort. And thus a citizen science project was born.

With lottery funding and by harnessing the logistical and public engagement capacity of Wildwood Trust, Steve began to reach out. Over the next five years, he recruited and trained more than 600 citizen scientist surveyors, aged from 8 to 80.

Top search tactics

Clockwise from above: the harvest mouse mainly feeds on fruits and seeds, along with the occasional invertebrate; look out for this species in tussocky

grasslands, wetlands and farmland; the Wildwood project has come to an end, but its work monitoring and safeguarding the species in Kent is set to continue.

confirming harvest mouse presence in just over a third of the county. But Steve emphasised that the real figure will be much higher, because there will also be harvest mice in many unsurveyed tetrads.

On the face of it, this dramatic infilling of the map looks like good news, but Steve warns that the headline figures don’t tell us how precarious the harvest mouse populations are. “Take the North Kent Marshes, which flank the Thames Estuary. They probably represent our largest continuous area of harvest mouse habitat – but they are also the most threatened by proximity to London. The development and

Nests were identified in 304 tetrads, confirming harvest mouse presence in just over a third of the county of Kent.

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destruction there is just relentless, and it’s the same on the Essex side.”

Meanwhile, those marginal habitats that are so crucial elsewhere are also at risk.

“An individual verge or ditch can disappear overnight without anyone even noticing.”

Steve’s concern is borne out by a random repeated survey of the relatively few map squares with historic harvest mouse records.

This suggests a 22 per cent decline in the species’ range, and it’s reasonable to assume that overall numbers are down too.

Nest revelations The results also provided valuable insights into other aspects of harvest mouse ecology.

Of just over 1,000 nests identified in five years, the height range varied from 10 to 120cm above the ground, though most were found between 20 and 50cm. While many were woven from grasses, reeds and sedges, some were constructed entirely from the down of willow herb or thistle seeds, and in every year there were incidences of harvest August 2021

Feeding & release: Wildwood Trust; grassland: Klein & Hubert/ NPL (Controlled conditions); Holincote x2: National Trust

“We had to accept that you can’t fully standardise a volunteer, so the protocol asked simple questions, and we gave a lot of direction in terms of where and how to look,”says Steve. “The critical instructions were on how to give an accurate grid reference and the importance of a walking stick – not for health and safety reasons, but because without one you can’t part the vegetation to get a proper look without cutting your hands to ribbons on sedges and brambles.”

The volunteers were allocated survey sites in which they were asked to walk transects along suitable habitat features, such as verges, ditches and field margins, probing and looking for the tell-tale woven orbs.

When nests or possible nests were found, the volunteers photographed them and sent pictures in for confirmation.

The project has transformed the harvest mouse map of Kent with a bonanza of precious data. Because volunteers were concentrated in areas of high population, the coverage was a little patchy, but results came in from half of all the tetrads in Kent and covered a wide range of landscape types. Nests were identified in 304 tetrads,

HARVEST MICE

A boost for mice Long-term absences of harvest mice can be addressed by the release of captivebred individuals. At the National Trust’s Holnicote Estate in Somerset, harvest mice have been released as part of Riverlands, a major habitat restoration effort. In 2019, 198 individuals were released in an ungrazed meadow comprising rough grassland, scrub and dense hedgerows. Plans for a second release in 2020 had to be put on hold, but the team has confirmed that the mice are still present, with good evidence of breeding, and hopes to pick up where it left off in 2021, with a top-up release. The National Trust is reverting to a later and more fragmentary vegetation-cutting regime in order to ensure continuity of refuges.

mice taking over and modifying bird nests.

Some nests were still green into October, suggesting their inhabitants were breeding well into the autumn. Harvest mice were spotted only 19 times during the survey, reinforcing the decision to focus on nests rather than sightings of actual mice.

The five years devoted to the survey revealed a natural cycle of population boom and bust. One farm surveyed had 187 nests the first year, but on several later visits there was none, then suddenly they were back.

“It’s encouraging to see how well harvest mice can respond to new and ephemeral habitat opportunities,” says Suzanne.

“But their resilience has to be dependent on connectivity. They can persist where there is a reservoir of population to recolonise cleared areas. That is where the marginal and linear habitats come in. There is an urgent need to consider the management of these superficially mundane features of the landscape.” The results have given the Kent team a clear August 2021

Leaving uncut vegetation provides a welcome refuge for harvest mice. Inset: there is evidence that they are settling in at Holnicote Estate.

idea of what needs to be done to shore up harvest mouse populations in the county. “It would be great to give the species some kind of protected status,” says Steve, “and also to designate its edge habitats.”

A place to call home Protecting remaining marshlands is a priority for conservation, as is the creation of buffer zones in areas of development.

Elsewhere, it is clear that management of ditches, field margins and road verges is vital in securing a network of connectivity that will make populations more resilient over a wider area. The team plans to publish advice to councils on managing verges and emphasizing the value in letting them become tussocky and rough, where it is safe to do so. This would be cheaper and much more beneficial in ecological terms.

Both Steve and Suzanne stress that further monitoring is also essential, both in Kent and elsewhere. There have been some efforts (a remarkable ecologist called John

Dobson has almost single-handedly covered the road verges of Essex, and a similar survey is ongoing in Devon), but the clearer picture emerging in Kent emphasizes the extent to which the national picture is very much unknown. Steve and Suzanne are now working with the Mammal Society and coordinating a regional mapping effort in southern England. Thousands of volunteers will be needed. Could you be one?

AMY-JANE BEER is a naturalist, writer and author of more than 20 science and natural history titles.

FIND OUT MORE Read about harvest mice at discoverwildlife.com/harvest-mice.

For details about becoming a harvest mouse volunteer, email harvestmouse@ wildwoodtrust.org. The Mammal Society is seeking volunteers for its National Harvest Mouse Survey: visit mammal.org.uk/scienceresearch/harvest-mouse-project.

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Corrugated sand spanning some 20km fringes the Sefton Coast in Merseyside. It’s the UK’s largest undeveloped dune system – bustling with rare insects, reptiles and amphibians – and is the focus of a major conservation project.

Photographer Alex Hyde Words Paul Bloomfield

Photo story

At first glance, sand can seem a harsh, inhospitable environment – yet dunes are teeming with life. Those flanking the Sefton Coast host a diverse community of rare and beautiful species, including this iridescent northern dune tiger beetle photographed by Alex Hyde while documenting the Gems in the Dunes project, part of the wider Back from the Brink conservation programme. “These ultra-predators are just berserk – speedy and tricky to photograph,” he recalls.

“They’ll charge anything that moves.”

Habitat restoration work at Sefton – home to Britain’s largest northern dune tiger beetle population – included the creation of open sand patches for such animals to bask on and burrow in.

BELOW The setting sun gilds the grasses crowning Sefton’s dunes, signalling a changing of the guard: diurnal species retreat into burrows, while their nocturnal counterparts emerge to feed and mate. “Each morning, little half-moon holes in the slopes reveal where tiger beetles left their burrows,” says Alex, “and tiny tracks spidering the dunes – footprints of insects, sand lizards, natterjack toads – write stories into the sand.” Protection of this habitat, much of which has been destroyed across Britain, is vital; on the Sefton Coast alone, some 81 per cent of bare sand has gone since 1945.

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PHOTO STORY SAND DUNES

Sand lizard photographed under licence.

TOP Photography can be challenging in the dunes, where invertebrates such as this sand bear spider are camouflaged against the speckled grains – “when they’re not dashing off to hunt like greased lightning”, adds Alex.

This is another species benefiting from habitat management by the Gems in the Dunes team: volunteers clear scrub and create bare sand.

August 2021

ABOVE A sand lizard, sporting the striking yellow-green flanks typical of Sefton males during the breeding season, basks in the sunshine to warm up before hunting and to speed up sperm maturation. This is an important stronghold for Britain’s rarest lizard, which is why efforts to create and conserve habitat here are so vital.

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The vicious-looking mandibles of a northern dune tiger beetle are intimidating enough – but it’s those huge eyes that make it such a formidable predator.

“They have incredible vision,” says Alex, “and can spot prey from far away, but they’re so quick – among the world’s fastest insects – that they experience motion blur in their vision while running down prey, and have to pause frequently to reacquire targets.”

Natterjack toad photographed under licence.

PHOTO STORY SAND DUNES

ABOVE On spring nights at Sefton, Alex was serenaded by male natterjack toads calling to females – audible up to 2km away. “This picture was taken just past midnight in May,” he recalls. “It was a particularly good night for natterjacks – they all emerged from their burrows and either went to the dune slacks to mate, or to the shore to feast on sand hoppers and other invertebrates.”

LEFT Strings of toadspawn lace freshwater pools in the dune slacks at Sefton, home to possibly a quarter of the UK’s natterjack population. Creation and restoration of such shallow pools is vital for natterjacks; their warm water helps tadpoles develop quickly. Over four years, dozens of volunteers with the Gems from the Dunes project undertook surveys of natterjack toadspawn and adults to produce local population estimates.

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PHOTO STORY SAND DUNES

RIGHT “The same habitat that suits natterjacks is also good for other species, such as this broad-bodied chaser dragonfly larva, possibly about to snack on a tadpole,” observes Alex.

“I always find it slightly unsettling to witness invertebrates predating vertebrate species.” The larva is covered by algae in which sand grains have become embedded, providing it with camouflage against the sandy bottom of the pool.

BELOW Not all species at Sefton are rare – meadow grasshoppers are widespread across Britain – but this bubblegum-pink nymph made quite a visual statement. “I shot it during a Back from the Brink outreach photography workshop we ran in June,” explains Alex. “I was just a stone’s throw from Liverpool but, seeing this jewel of an insect, felt as if I were in the deepest Amazon.”

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White satin moth caterpillars feed on creeping willow that is often found growing in dune slacks and is part of the succession of plant species that stabilise the dunes, with grasses at the seaward edge.

“I was attracted to this caterpillar’s striking aposematic [warning] markings and coating of irritating bristles,” says Alex, “acting as a deterrent to would-be predators.”

PHOTO STORY SAND DUNES

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PHOTO STORY SAND DUNES

LEFT In June, flowering kidney vetch and bee and pyramidal orchids spangle Sefton’s dunes, creating a dense, eye-catching carpet of colour. “On a summer’s day it’s literally buzzing with life, as solitary bees feast on these flowers,” says Alex. “It’s incredible to me that this dynamic dune system, with all these very rare species – including endemic dune helleborine – flourishes so close to such centres of industry. A lot of the animals are effectively marooned on this little island of sandy habitat, so we really need to look after this special place.”

ALEX HYDE is an award-winning wildlife photographer based in the Peak District. alexhyde.co.uk O More info on the project: naturebftb.co.uk/ the-projects/gems-in-the-dunes August 2021

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YOU

NOW

SEE

ME...

By Laurie Jackson

Vincent Grafhorst/Minden

Some animals use colour change to blend into the background; for others it is a powerful form of communication. But how exactly do they do it?

The panther chameleon of Madagascar in all its splendid technicolour.

Mixed message Several species, including Caribbean reef squid and mourning cuttlefish, have mastered the art of multi-tasking colour change. They present different messages on each side of their body, simultaneously attempting to impress a female on one side while sparring with a male on the other.

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trigger gradual colour changes, involving alterations to the type and concentration of pigments within skin, exoskeleton, feathers or fur. A diet-driven transition is performed by several species of crab spiders, which ambush flower-visiting insects. The arachnids take about a week to morph from white to yellow, hiding in plain sight against their preferred backdrop of golden blooms.

For crustaceans, a slow colour change allows them to adapt to alterations in their environment. Chameleon prawns, for instance, transition between green and red, tracking the seasonal appearance of seaweed in their rocky shore habitat; shore crabs take on a more uniform colour as they mature,

Crab spiders take about a week to morph from white to yellow, hiding in plain sight against golden blooms.

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Above: a shoal of Caribbean reef squid in the Bahamas. Right: the shimmering long-tailed sylph, a species of hummingbird.

allowing them to blend in as they migrate onto the seabed of the subtidal zone.

Coloration in animals is achieved in several ways. In birds and mammals, skin cells known as melanocytes contain packages of melanin pigments, which produce blacks, browns, yellows and reds that can be combined in varying patterns. Birds can also gather pigments such as carotenoids through their diet to produce yellows and oranges, alongside the vivid greens, blues and violets created by the structure of their feathers.

Awash with colour The colour palette is expanded in fish, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans and cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish and squid), which are equipped with colour-producing cells known as chromatophores. These cells either contain pigment or produce iridescence, and there are several types, including melanophores (black, brown, red), xanthophores (yellow), erythrophores (orange and red), iridophores (iridescent colours) and leucophores (iridescent white).

Of these, the best understood are the melanophores. Pigment can be moved August 2021

Squid: Shane Gross/naturepl.com; hummingbird: Thomas Marent/Minden/NPL

ears ago, during a field trip to the Scottish island of Cumbrae, I came face to face with a stout bobtail squid. As I watched, rapt, the tiny mollusc blushed from ghostly pale to deep red and back again, like a magic performance. But this was no illusion.

Squid are part of a whole spectrum of species that are able to change colour – an ability that comes with several speed settings. At its more relaxed end there is a handful of birds and mammals – including the Arctic fox, willow ptarmigan and snowshoe hare – that undergo a seasonal whitening triggered by waning day length. The transformation occurs as pigment disappears from fur and feathers.

In mammal fur, this makes space for more air, which provides the added bonus of extra insulation as temperatures plummet.

Other environmental factors, such as ultraviolet, diet and surroundings, can also

COLOUR CHANGE

within the branch-shaped structure of the cell. When dark pigments are dispersed throughout the melanophore, they obscure the neighbouring chromatophores and make the animal appear darker; when concentrated into the centre, the surrounding colour becomes more visible.

The oval iridophores contain thin layers of crystal platelets that are mostly used to produce a range of shimmering blues, greens and silvers, according to how they are spaced and orientated. Iridescence is directional: a creature can appear utterly striking from one angle yet drab from another, allowing for targeted visuals.

Hummingbirds, for example, use frenetic displays to appeal for a mate, and will position themselves at just the right angle to the sun in order to dazzle with their finery.

While birds rely on light to manipulate their iridescence, certain fish, including the paradise whiptail, can actually alter their appearance by varying the space between the layers of platelets in their iridophores.

In doing so, they change the wavelength of light reflected by the cells and are thus able to rapidly switch their reflective head stripes August 2021

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Some frogs, lizards and crabs use their chromatophores as natural dimmer switches, adjusting their colour and brightness as day turns to night. While these daily changes provide camouflage – enabling, for instance, a frog to fade into a darkening forest floor, they may also play a role in temperature regulation and protection from damaging ultraviolet rays.

Colour and pattern are important elements of camouflage. Chameleons and fish have the ability to blend into their habitat, taking visual clues from their surroundings to guide decisions on which colour combination to deploy. Some fish, such as flounder, can match new backgrounds in a matter of seconds; others, including sole, fine-tune over days.

Some fish can match new backgrounds in a matter of seconds; others fine-tune over several days.

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Above: a panther chameleon stalks its prey.

Sometimes colour change helps them avoid detection and sometimes it is a social tool.

Natural habitats can be complex, though, with certain colours and textures inherently more challenging to replicate. While flatfish are adept at blending in with finer sediments such as sand and gravel, rocks can present a challenge. The fish, therefore, select substrates they are better able to mimic. Behavioural adjustments, from the waving appendages of stonefish that liken them to seaweed, to the characteristic quivering walk of chameleons that obscures them among rustling leaves, boost the chance of the ruse succeeding.

On the run Camouflage can be a crucial defence against the threat of predation, ensuring a species remains undetected, unrecognised or untargeted. While background matching is a widespread tactic, it can be less useful when a species is highly mobile and a habitat changeable. Here, other tricks, such as disruptive patterning, may be used. Bold markings create visual ‘noise’ that breaks up a shape, making it hard to discern where an animal begins and ends, and blurring the line between what is or isn’t a potential meal. A predator may fail to recognise its August 2021

Chameleon: Nick Garbutt/naturepl.com; cuttlefish: Gary Bell/Oceanwide/Minden; fangblenny: Alamy; lizard: Paul Souders/Getty

from blue to red. Likewise, the diminutive blue-ringed octopus tweaks its iridophores to make a statement, throwing out a dazzling warning display when it starts to feel threatened.

Chromatophores are controlled either using hormones or neurons, allowing far swifter colour change than seen in seasonally shifting mammals and birds. The cells can be spread in a mosaic across the body or clustered to create patterns, such as the stripes of a zebrafish. In some reptiles, amphibians and fish, chromatophores are layered in the skin, with xanthophores closest to the surface, followed by the iridophores and finally the melanophores. This gives great potential for rapid appearance control and allows for striking displays.

COLOUR CHANGE

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3 shades of sly With colour-shifting ability comes the temptation of dishonesty.

Here are three species that have learned to be crafty with colour.

Subordinate male GIANT CUTTLEFISH have been filmed adopting female displays during breeding congregations to distract rival males guarding potential mates. If the ruse works, the interlopers switch back to a male pattern and make their own bid for courtship.

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The BLUESTRIPED FANGBLENNY, found among the reefs of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, shares its habitat with the bluestreak cleaner wrasse, recognised by other fish for its parasiteremoval service. The fangblenny (pictured on the right) can rapidly change to black with a single neon blue stripe that mimics the wrasse and gains it close access to other fish. The fangblenny then bites a chunk of flesh from a waiting customer.

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3

The male AUGRABIES FLAT LIZARD (among others) imitates female coloration to avoid confrontation with more dominant males – though at closerange, its scent gives it away.

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Dressing for the seasons

Mountain hares can be very visible in early spring if the snow has gone while they are still white.

The wide repertoire of the mimic octopus includes disguising itself as venomous lionfish.

quarry entirely, or direct its attack to a less damaging area of the body.

Anything that is constantly transforming its size, shape or appearance is hard to locate, and cephalopods are undoubtedly some of the most confusing meals to catch.

So complex are their chromatophores that they are considered organs in their own right, drawing together the pigment-filled cells with tiny muscles and nerves that all function as a unit. Pigments are held in pouch-like structures that can be rapidly compressed or flattened out. This detailed architecture provides precision-control over each chromatophore, and allows for mesmerising displays and vanishing acts alike.

With thousands of reflectors and chromatophores, cephalopods’ colourshifting creativity enables them to face an unpredictable environment head-on. A choice of uniform, mottled and disruptive patterns helps them to hide in plain sight; muscle-controlled bumps on their

Clockwise from above: an Arctic fox in its winter coat; a mimic octopus impersonating a flounder; this crab spider has turned yellow to blend in with the flower; the deceptive dottyback.

skin (papillae) rapidly switch their skin from smooth to textured, allowing them to melt into barnacle-clad rocks or soft sediments.

Should they venture beyond the relative safety of rocky habitats and reefs, cephalopods can masquerade as patches of algae or coral. In an environment where there are fewer places to hide, the objective shifts from being unseen towards being unrecognised. You can be highly conspicuous, as long as you blend in.

Most species don’t have the luxury of having just one predator to avoid. Instead, they must manage multiple adversaries that have diverse hunting strategies and detection abilities. Colour-shifting skills can offer flexible lines of defence. Dwarf chameleons match their background more closely if their enemy is a bird, but brighten if it’s a snake. This shows a fascinating awareness of their predators: snakes have relatively poor colour vision, and by dialling up the glare, the chameleon makes itself hard to pick out against a sunlit canopy.

Cuttlefish also make proactive decisions August 2021

Hare: Andrew Mason/FLPA/Minden; fox: Danny Green/NPL; mimic octopus: Alex Mustard/NPL; brown dottyback: Colin Marshall/Alamy; sp der: Chr s Matt son/A amy; S r Dav d: Gav n Thurston/Humb e bee F ms

With climate patterns changing, the chances of a mismatch become increasingly likely for seasonally whitening species. A recent study of mountain hares in Scotland found that the timing of their moult has hardly changed when compared with data from the 1950s, despite there now being a shorter season of snow cover. A similar pattern has been seen in their American cousin, the snowshoe hare, which can also be seen gleaming against a snowless mountain backdrop. The main trigger to moult is changing day-length, and these species now face about a month sporting the wrong coat colour for their surrounding habitat, making them increasingly conspicuous to predators.

The same problem is seen in seasonally whitening birds, but there is evidence of behavioural adaptations that may reduce their vulnerability: male rock ptarmigans, for instance, have been observed dirtying their white plumage with soil.

COLOUR CHANGE

CATCH SIR DAVID ON COLOUR

dependent on the predator, opting to deploy their colour-changing prowess when threatened by visual predators such as flatfish, which actively search for prey, but beating a hasty retreat from sharks and crabs that hunt using entirely different senses.

Clear winners Several deep-sea octopuses even include transparency within their armoury, helping them to evade predators by disguising their silhouette against the last rays of light filtering down to the twilight zone.

At these depths, many species make their own light. The octopus can rapidly switch to red – a colour incredibly difficult to see in deep water, helping them to dodge the bioluminescent searchlights that would reflect off their internal organs if they were in transparent mode.

Octopuses are accomplished character actors and the wide repertoire of the mimic octopus includes disguising itself as venomous lionfish and sea kraits. Its soft body allows it to contort, and it embodies August 2021

sends a clear signal that they are prepared to fight and that an attack is imminent.

Octopuses, too, can use dark colours as they puff themselves up as part of an aggressive display. Such visual signals allow individuals to assess one another, judging risk before resorting to Find out more in the potentially damaging altercations.

BBC show Life in Chameleons assert their strength Colour with David and dominance by biting, but the guise of as flatfish by Attenborough – which may engage in a colour battle arranging its arms into uses innovative first: the brighter the skin, the undulating fins and bulging technology to reveal more willing the contender. out its eyes. The dusky the extraordinary Colour can also be attractive. dottyback also sets its mind ways that colour For panther chameleons, it is to mimicry. This unassuming works in the wild. It’s a deciding factor for females reef fish switches between available to watch for selecting a mate, with males yellow and brown to match another eight months attempting to seduce them the damselfish with which it on BBC iPlayer. with displays of reds, yellows, cohabits. With such similar greens and blues. The females appearances, the species have exacting standards, will mingle closely, and preferring the suitors sporting the dottybacks reveal their the brightest shades. motivations and proceed to eat any juvenile From dimming-down frogs to seaweedneighbours. It is a well-named case of simulating prawns, wildlife is still offering ‘aggressive mimicry’. up its secrets when it comes to colour But colour change isn’t always about change. Perhaps the greatest surprise of all hiding. Many species adorn themselves is that, despite their talent for dynamic and to stand out. Colour can communicate dizzying performances, most cephalopods emotion or intent in an instant, allowing a appear to be colour-blind. species to determine willingness to mate, aggression or social hierarchy. Trinidadian guppies provide a subtle, but ominous, LAURIE JACKSON is a freelance warning by changing their eyes from silver ecologist, wildlife guide, writer and to black when competing for food. This natural history trainer.

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Talking point

Putting

esitantly, I reached my jittery hand into the termite mound, coaxed by my field guide to pull out one of the tiny, plump insects. Going against all of my natural instincts, I put the miniscule bug into my mouth and began to chew.

While the termites did not deliver the promised taste of peanut butter, I had to admit that these little creatures did pack a salty punch that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

My apprehension about eating them had absolutely nothing to do with their taste or texture, but everything to do with my preconceived ideas about eating bugs.

It got me thinking. Where have these ideas come from? In a world where we eat birds, mammals and even sea creatures such as prawns – themselves referred to as ‘insects of the sea’ – why does munching on an insect evoke such feelings of revulsion? And, more significantly, with two billion people on our planet happily

H insects on the

menu

Our appetite for meat and dairy is suffocating our planet. Surely it’s time to bring insect-based food to the table?

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consuming insects as part of their daily diets, why is this fare not served up more regularly on western plates?

Humans across the planet were once hunter-gatherers, with insects widely featuring on the menu. Studies have shown that early hominins (an ancestor of humans who lived about two million years ago) used tools made of bone to dig into termite mounds, while many examples of insecteating appear in religious literature in Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths.

Then, over 6,000 years ago, agriculture swiftly spread from its origins in the Fertile

Crescent – a scythe of land in the Middle East – to Europe, whereupon it quickly became apparent that, when it came to the needs of a growing human population, domesticating livestock was far more beneficial than catching and eating insects.

Farm animals delivered high yields of meat and milk products; provided skins, wool and fur for clothing; and were useful as a means of transport. They were also far more reliable in comparison to the unpredictability and seasonality of insects – particularly in colder climes, such as the UK, where many species lie dormant or

“Two billion people on our

die in winter. Insects were soon relegated as pests that threatened food production, rather than being considered a source of food themselves. ast forward to today and insects are slowly returning to the table in the West. By 2050, it’s predicted that there will be nine billion people on Earth.

Put simply, our current methods of food production will not be able to cater for such

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Insects offer a promising alternative to a low-ecological-footprint diet: they are genetically very distinct from humans, so viruses are unlikely to make the jump;

insects as part of their daily diets.”

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Talking point

them is okay.

global biodiversity loss, and contributes to overfishing, climate change and water

The way we produce and consume meat often requires huge amounts of land to grow animal feed, such as soy and maize. Indeed, growing livestock feed is the biggest driver of deforestation on the planet. Fifty per cent (51 million km2) of the Earth’s habitable land is currently given over to agriculture; of that, more than 70 per cent can be attributed to the meat and dairy industry. Meat production also guzzles oceans of water – to produce just 1kg of beef protein, you’ll need an eye-popping 22,000 litres of H2O. For the same amount of cricket-based protein, you’ll need just 1 litre. tudies on human behaviour show that the way we view our food and the decisions we make about what to eat are controlled by different parts of the brain. It can be hard to change dietary habits, despite what we know about the negative environmental impacts of our choices, as these are already so ingrained. Our decisions are further reinforced by culture, social norms and the influences of the people around us.

Joanna Trewern, WWF-UK’s sustainable diets and behaviour change specialist, is researching how food companies can help consumers to veer towards more sustainable diets. “Society has significant and often overlooked influences on food choice,” she says. “These include mass advertising, such as television adverts, internet pop-ups and billboards, as well as menu design and the layout of canteens and supermarkets. For example, placing a product at the end of an aisle in a supermarket subconsciously encourages customers to buy it. In order to change behaviour at scale, it’s vital to analyse, understand and adapt food

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environments so that they encourage healthier and more sustainable choices.”

But a revulsion towards eating bugs is a largely western phenomenon. Two billion people across South America, Asia and Africa currently eat insects regularly and generally always have done. Their choice to consume something with six legs rather than four has nothing to do with a lack of alternative food options or income – many are even considered delicacies.

Ants, for example, are highly sought after in many parts of the world, and about 80 grasshopper species are consumed across the globe. An estimated 9.5 billion mopane caterpillars are harvested annually in South Africa, while in the Chiapas region of Mexico, locals tuck into 27 types of caterpillar, alongside red and white maguey worms. The larvae of yellowjacket wasps are a staple in Japan and, as of 2012, there were some 20,000 cricket farmers in Thailand. e may recoil at the idea of eating insects, but many of us are consuming them without knowing it. Honey, in its truest essence, is simply bee vomit. And if you’ve

processed foods means we’re missing out on the nutritional benefits this species could provide. Insects, after all, are highly nutritious. They’re loaded with fibre (largely the insoluble chitin in their exoskeletons), vitamins, and minerals such as calcium, iron and zinc. When dried, crickets contain up to 69g of protein per 100g, compared to beef, which delivers just 19.4g per 100g. And, perhaps surprisingly for their size, insects are also a complete protein, containing all nine essential amino acids.

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s well as their nutritional value, rearing insects for

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more to other processes.

So, what would incorporating insects

consumption to a significant degree” within the EU before 15 May 1997.

Waters have been muddied further by for insect farms in the UK and the EU.

consumption across Europe in January 2021 is a signal that things are moving in the right direction. There are more than 20 applications for edible insects currently awaiting approval.

In the meantime, the good news is that we do have some brilliant sources of insect protein native to the UK, and farming insects for consumption is surprisingly easy. Tiziana Di Costanzo, who runs urban insect farm Horizon Insects, went from breeding mealworms in her utility room to building a specialised shed in her garden, in

insect breeder starter kits. “Mealworms are by far the easiest to farm due to the smaller space requirements to keep them healthy,” she says. “In comparison, crickets are territorial, so they need a lot more space to be ethically farmed.” ecause one female mealworm beetle lays about 500 eggs, these creatures produce protein relatively quickly. Horizon Insects is still breeding, consuming and selling from the same

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Tiziana’s interest in insect cookery has

It certainly seems to be an exciting time

Foods, there is a growing acceptance of insect-based food. “Consumers are being led more and more by the sustainability and nutritional benefits of insect protein,” she says.

While there isn’t enough science yet to conclude the environmental impact of large-scale insect consumption, there is certainly research to demonstrate the huge environmental benefit that eating insects has in comparison to our overconsumption of meat and dairy. But as American naturalist Joseph Bequaert wrote in his paper ‘Insects as Food’ in 1921: “What we eat is, after all, more a matter of custom and fashion than anything else.”

Awareness and understanding that it is merely our societal and cultural norms that encourage us to form specific opinions about certain products is crucial in breaking down these barriers to alternative food sources and opening our minds to different ways of producing food that is good for our health – and that of our planet.

JESS MURRAY is social media manager for WWF-UK and a content creator. She writes about environmental issues, with a particular interest in food systems.

WANT TO COMMENT? Should we learn to accept insects as food? Tell us what you think by emailing us at wildlifeletters@ immediate.co.uk BBC Wildlife

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Rangers are nature’s first responders. They risk their lives to protect our planet, yet some don’t even own a pair of boots. So, why are rangers not respected and supported? And what’s being done about it?

By Sarah McPherson

Protect the p

31 July 202

Adam Kiefer

Rangers from Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo, caring for young gorillas at the Senkwekwe Center (prepandemic). The facility is the only mountain gorilla orphanage in the world, and also plays a critical role in rehabilitating orphaned eastern lowland gorillas confiscated from animal traffickers.

1

protectors

RANGERS

C “

an you name another profession that, all in a day’s work, fights wildlife crime, prevents extinction and mitigates against climate change and zoonotic disease?

No, you can’t, because there isn’t one,” says Sean Willmore, managing director of ranger support charity the Thin Green Line Foundation (TGLF). “Wildlife rangers are the missing link in saving our planet.”

Global biodiversity loss has reached unprecedented levels, with one million species estimated to be threatened with extinction. Protected areas are key to saving wildlife, but they cannot function without rangers. Whether on the icy wastes of Russia’s Wrangel Island, where they prevent conflict between polar bears and people; on the ragged slopes of Mongolia’s Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park, where they’re camera-trapping snow leopards; or in the high fells of our very own Lake District, where they manage a landscape shared with thousands of visitors, rangers defend ecosystems across the globe.

“If you imagine the planet as a house, then every park is a brick in its foundation,” says Barney Long, senior director of species conservation at Re:wild and contributor to Life on the Frontline 2019, a global survey on the working conditions of rangers. “By looking after those bricks, rangers provide essential services for humankind: the clean air we breathe, the fresh water we drink, the biodiversity that gives us new drugs every year. The planet would be pretty much unliveable without them.”

So, it makes no sense whatsoever that the vast majority of the world’s rangers are not

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STATS

£1,000 The cost of equipping a 10-person anti-poaching ranger patrol team with basic but critical gear

13 RANGERS KILLED BY ELEPHANTS IN 2020

STO R I E S

Marcelo Segalerba Freelance consultant ranger, Brazil I’ve had a passion for nature and conservation from an early age. When I realised that people were risking their lives to protect nature, I wanted to be one of them. Rangers are my heroes.

In 1998, when I was 26, I got a job as park ranger in San Miguel National Park, on the border with Brazil. I was the only ranger there at the time. That same year, I completed a ranger course in Mexico. It was expensive, so my parents helped me to pay for it. I’ll always be grateful for that.

I have been training indigenous rangers since 2005. They needed help protecting their land in the Brazilian Amazon.

Seeing them achieving remarkable things is very rewarding.

Being a ranger comes with many risks – wildlife criminals, natural disasters, wild animals, poisonous plants. Once, I was shot at by poachers. I could hear the bullets landing all Marcelo has around me, but luckily rescued sloths they all missed. from roads

I was once given a female palethroated sloth to take care of. She had fallen out of a tree into the road and been hit by a car. I spent weeks nursing her back to health and then re-released her. It was hard saying goodbye. I will never forget the last time she looked at me.

I have to be prepared for anything. A major challenge of my job is simply returning home alive. We need better working conditions, recognition, security, pay and legal support. But I’d never dream of giving up

and rivers.

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Prem Kanwar Assistant forester, Bhainsrorgarh Sanctuary, India My love of nature made me become a ranger. I was raised in a village where women did not have permission to leave their houses, and I’d gaze at the mountains through my window. My great uncle worked for the forest department and told me inspiring stories, feeding my passion. I am the only woman in my village with a job.

I monitor and protect many species. I have rescued more than 500 wild animals, including crocodiles, snakes and leopards.

A few years ago, I single-handedly saved several Indian peafowl from poachers.

Much of my work focuses on managing human-wildlife conflict. I’m often called out to emergencies involving poaching and logging. Communities live close to reserves, so protecting species such as leopards from retaliatory killings through education is very important.

Otters are my favourite animal – mothers and cubs have a special bond. I’ll never forget the day I saw a family cuddled up together. It was reassurance that our efforts are paying off.

Sergeat Nkateko Mzimba is one of 23 Black Mambas – an allfemale ranger unit. The women are unarmed and trained in antipoaching and survival skills.

Black Mamba: Julia Gunther; sloth: Ariadne Van Zandbergen/Alamy; Prem headshot: Ranjan Ramchandan ; workshop: Prem Kanwar

properly resourced, supported or trained.

Shockingly, nearly half of the 7,110 rangers interviewed for Life on the Frontline stated that provision of basic needs, such as drinking water, was inadequate; more than half said that medical treatment, when required, was insufficient.

Dangers of the day job If the data is gloomy, the situation on the ground is gloomier still. “There are about 1.5 million rangers in the world, and my guess is that 80-90 per cent of them are completely under-equipped,” says Willmore. “Some don’t have any boots. In Thailand, I’ve seen rangers drinking out of waterholes that elephants defecate in.

In Africa, they have no mosquito nets and get malaria eight times a year.”

As if the bugs and no boots weren’t enough to discourage the faint-hearted August 2021

from a career in the ranger sector, this is also one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, claiming more than 1,000 lives in the past decade. Violent clashes with armed poachers hit the headlines with tragic regularity (in January, another six rangers were killed by rebels in Virunga National Park, bringing the total number of ranger deaths there to more than 200), but there is more than one way to die in the wilderness.

There are attacks by large predatory animals; there are deadly bites and stings; there are tropical diseases, road accidents and bushfires. Rangers put their lives on the line every day.

The underlying problem, according to Long, is that despite everything we know about the natural world going to hell in a handcart, the global ranger force remains woefully

I love every aspect of my work. It brings challenges that no other profession offers.

My community sees me as a role model and are encouraging their daughters to follow their dreams.

It can be difficult working in a maledominated arena. I face discrimination and am often excluded from decision-making processes. A lot of work is needed to improve the lives and working conditions of rangers. Addressing the gender gap is most important of all.

Prem works with local schoolchildren to raise awareness of wildlife.

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Florin Halastauan Wildlife officer, Southern Carpathians, Romania I spent my teens around people who loved and protected nature, and was inspired by all of them. My first job was in 2003, in the mountains of Retezat National Park.

I am currently working on a WWF project to reintroduce European bison into the Romanian Carpathians. We need to collect a lot of data to understand how the species is adapting, so most of my time is spent monitoring the animals in the field.

It may look like I do the same thing every day – I don’t. Nature is continually evolving, and I have to evolve with it. I’m always learning.

One of the most important aspects of my job is to inspire young people. I’ve organised educational nature camps for children. Young people are the future!

her and her partner with a machete. Had Mohammed Akram, a community ranger from Pakistan, fully understood the implications of being outnumbered, he might have decided against confronting the six illegal loggers that turned their AK-47s on him.

Back to school Life on the Frontline was borne of a need to gather evidence to present to the International Labour Organisation, with the aim of gaining the ranger force professional recognition. “There are recommendations for sectors such as teaching, but nothing like that exists for rangers, because there’s no data,” says Long. “We need guidelines for rangers that apply across the world. And we can expect consistent high standards in return.”

Long believes ranger colleges are the way forward, something that could be achieved by adapting existing courses.

“Take the Carribbean. The University of the West Indies has produced biologists for years. Hypothetically, it could offer ranger studies. Carribbean governments should then commit to only hiring staff who have earned that qualification. If you can do it for nurses, you can do it for rangers.”

In the meantime, there’s still a morethan-pressing need for training on the ground, but various initiatives have started to plug the gap. LEAD Ranger, launched in 2018 by the International Anti-Poaching August 2021

Rangers: Adam K efer; po ar bear: U yana Bab y; b son: Unterth ner/W d Wonders of Europe/NPL

under-professionalised. Professional, government-paid rangers – such as those in Canada, the USA or the UK – are the exception, not the rule; most rangers work in a community or indigenous capacity, supported by local villages, charities or NGOs. “If we don’t treat rangers properly, they will not be able to protect the planet,” says Long. “I can’t fathom why we’re not As a ranger, it’s difficult balancing your throwing everything at this right now.” work and personal life. Being a ranger “The role of a ranger needs to be means being involved and dedicated, but repositioned,” adds Willmore. “Many so does being a husband and father. are hard-working and dedicated, yet are not respected or paid enough. The whole Rangers needs recognition, respect system needs to be regarded in the same and support from all levels – from local way as a fire brigade or police force.” communities to international authorities.

Training is at the root of that, with We are the ones on the front line. We rangers frequently not qualified to do need equipment, protection and legal what is being asked of them. They could protection. Government support for have knowledge of, say, tree planting, then rangers is largely lacking in Romania. find themselves extinguishing a wildfire, handling an outbreak More than of Covid-19 or enforcing the law, 100 bison confronting armed criminals now roam in with none of the high-precision Romania. training necessary to work in a warzone. Had Esnart Paundi, a Zambian ranger and motherof-five, been taught proper surveillance techniques, she might have cleared her patrol zone before apprehending two poachers. She might have uncovered a third, hiding in the bushes, before he killed From 2010 to 2016 I worked in Jotunheimen National Park, Norway.

I went on patrol with the head ranger, Rigmor Solem, and managed to film and photograph a wolf. I have seen wolves in Romania, but Rigmor had not seen a wolf in this part of Norway for 25 years.

From left: Bienvenue Tsongo, Jean Paul Bisika and Sebastien Kaposo, part of Virunga’s 700-strong ranger force, guard the Lulimbi River and its resident hippos on the park’s eastern border.

RANGERS Rangers on Wrangel Island Nature Reserve – which hosts one of the largest gatherings of polar bears on Earth – alternate spending winter on the island.

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500 The number of families currently supported

by TGLF’s Fallen Ranger Fund

$297.14 Foundation, Ranger Campus and TGLF, is having particular success, training rangers to become instructors in disciplines such as anti-poaching strategy and first aid. “LEAD Ranger leaves a huge legacy as the skills stay in situ, enabling long-term change,” says Willmore. And it’s not just wildlife that benefits: to date, medical skills acquired via LEAD Ranger have saved the lives of 16 people and helped countless others.

“LEAD Ranger is fantastic and we need more like it,” says Long. “But it shouldn’t be down to charities alone to drive training.”

The average monthly salary of a ranger

61.9% of rangers have to buy their own boots

Service charges Slap a dollar sign on something and people tend to take notice. Ecosystem services – the benefits to humans from a healthy natural environment – are nothing new, but only recently have we started to recognise their vast financial potential. And who holds the key to unlocking this pot of gold? Rangers.

Rangers could find themselves extinguishing a wildfire or enforcing the law, confronting armed criminals.

August 2021

Take forest elephants in Africa. They earn their nickname of ‘mega-gardeners’ by weeding out small trees as they feed on and trample vegetation, freeing up space and fertilising larger, hardwood species.

These, in turn, grow taller – and store more carbon. Economist Ralph Chami has calculated that if forest elephants, which were recently declared Critically Endangered, were to recover their numbers and repopulate their former range, carbon capture in the region would increase by 13,000kg per hectare. The worth of this service is, per elephant lifetime, a not-tooshabby USD$1.75 million. It makes the US$40,000 price tag on a pair of tusks look like small change.

The collapse of elephant populations due to poaching and habitat destruction, is, then, a double-edged tragedy: the loss of both a marvellous keystone species and a huge asset in the fight against climate change.

“Governments spend money on education, health, development and transport, and if there’s any left, they spend a bit on nature as it’s ‘nice’, not because it’s our life-support system,” says conservationist and biologist Ian Redmond. “But if people view a species like an elephant as doing a vital job for the planet, that work can be monetised, and its guardians – rangers and communities – paid what it’s worth.”

To that end, Redmond has co-launched Rebalance Earth, an initiative that will BBC Wildlife

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Samuel Loware Sgt ecological monitoring and research, Kidepo, Uganda My uncle inspired me to become a ranger.

He was campaigning about conservation issues back in the 1940s.

I work in Kidepo Valley National Park and its neighbouring reserves, with elephants, giraffes, buffaloes, lions, cheetahs, leopards, elands, zebras and ostriches.

I’m very proud of my involvement in translocations, including of giraffes, elands and kobs. Their numbers are amazing now.

I also do a lot of work monitoring giraffe and lion populations, which are increasing.

I enjoy the challenge of protecting nature from wildfires. I am Kidepo’s fire master, and I’m responsible for the park’s fire management plan.

Dealing with armed criminals is just part of the job. In 2018, I was shot by poachers from Sudan. I was then charged by a wounded buffalo that had been shot by the same poachers.

Inadequate transport, the poor road network and lack of skills and knowledge in the local area make my job very challenging. My low salary (equivalent to US$266 dollars a month) means I can’t afford a better home for my family.

Last year, I was awarded the Rhino Conservation Award for Best Field Ranger.

I love working for wildlife, but being a ranger in Africa leaves a lot to be desired.

protect woodland and savannah habitat in Kidepo.

enable companies to offset their carbon emissions by paying to protect forest elephants, sending funds direct to their protectors via secure digital blockchain.

Turning the tables If there’s one significant shift happening in the ranger sphere, it’s addressing the gender imbalance in what has long been a traditionally male domain (less than 11 per cent of the ranger workforce is female). “It’s a huge missed opportunity,” says Long. “Many countries have deeply held views on gender that make it difficult for women to enter the force. We need to think systemically about how we can change that.”

Women rangers are arguably most visible in the all-female teams that have shot to fame in recent years, the first of which was the Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit, founded in South Africa’s Balule National Park in 2013.

The idea to create the Mambas was something of a lightbulb moment for Balule’s head warden, Craig Spencer.

“Wildlife crime had spiralled out of control and Craig was at his wits’ end,” recalls Holly Budge, founder of anti-poaching charity How Many Elephants. “Then one day it just came to him – why not train the local women as ‘bobbies on the beat’?”

The Mambas have since proved an inspiration, not only to their communities but to anti-poaching operations across Africa, who are recognising women as a vastly under-utilised workforce. The Akashinga, an elite squad that protects the Phundundu Wildlife area in Zimbabwe, was formed in 2017; Team Lioness, who guard Maasai land around Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, followed in 2019.

“The training is tough – particularly for the Akashinga – but these women are accustomed to hardship and see it as an opportunity,” says Budge, who has joined both the Mambas and Akashinga on August 2021

Samue : Thom P erce/The Th n Green L ne; rangers: LEAD Ranger 2019; e ephant: Jwngshar Narzary/EyeEm/Getty

I need better field and communications equipment, and the technology to be able to share my work with the world.

Constance Mwaka Mwandaa with fellow rangers on a LEAD Ranger instructor programme.

Despite the challenges of Covid-19, 76 rangers have graduated the course in the past two years, going on to train more than 2,000 others.

RANGERS

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568 The number of rangers killed in action in Asia from 2009 2010

INDIA

Statistically the most dangerous country to be a ranger, with 46 rangers killed in 2020

Forest elephants are a valuable resource in mitigating climate change, but are now at just nine per cent of their former population.

Since the Mambas’ inception, Balule has seen a 99 per cent drop in snaring and an 89 per cent drop in poaching. patrol. “It’s easy to see why the female ranger movement is picking up momentum.

Women are natural communicators and protectors, and can ease local tension.”

For anyone inclined to dismiss these all-girl crews as a PR gimmick, the proof is in the percentages. Since the Mambas’ inception, Balule has seen a 99 per cent drop in snaring and an 89 per cent drop in bushmeat poaching. The unit has also been a key part of pandemic response, delivering food parcels by the truckload. “These women are on the front line of conservation, but are also educators and role models,” says Budge.

“They are beacons of hope, and are changing attitudes towards women in Africa.”

Eyes forward In a noisy world, those who work for wildlife are making their voices heard. The Universal Ranger Support Alliance, launched in 2020, is a collaboration of eight organisations that intends to deliver a ‘new deal’ for rangers by implementing the Chitwan Declaration, a summary of needs and priorities drawn up at the 2019 World Ranger Congress in Nepal.

Ranger round-tables with the World Health Organisation and World Bank are also under way. “These are going well,” says Long. “We need governments to see rangers as a key part of governance on the frontier, and of climate change response and pandemic response.

They need to be talked about at a new level.”

The world is at tipping point. By 2030, we will be asking rangers to protect 30 per cent of the Earth’s surface. Without support, they cannot possibly fulfil this critical role. “If global authorities invest in rangers, then we’ve got a chance,” says Willmore. “If not, then all the ideas we have to save the planet will stay in folders on shelves. And people like Eznart and Akram will continue to die.”

SARAH MCPHERSON is acting deputy editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine

FIND OUT MORE internationalrangers.org; ursa4rangers.org; howmanyelephants.org; thingreenline.org.uk; leadranger.org; rebalance.earth; worldfemalerangerday.org August 2021

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S The reptiles

found that day were dehydrated, and had suffered skin damage. T

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Behind the image

High-tech trafficking

by DOUG GIMESY

2019

Documenting the illegal trade in Australian reptiles, Doug encountered native lizards concealed in electrical equipment.

DOUG GIMESY is an Australian conservation and wildlife photojournalist. gimesy.com

hen scanners at a Melbourne sorting office detected blue-tongued lizards hidden inside a DVD player, you'd think the discovery would have come as something of a surprise.

Sadly, such findings are all too common – a symptom of the growing illegal international trade in Australian reptiles.

This image, of a lizard being measured by wildlife officers, was captured by photographer Doug Gimesy, who spent several months documenting the issue. “This was just one of two bluetongues stuffed inside that DVD player, which was intercepted en route to Asia,” Doug recalls. “That same day, another package was detected containing four more blue-tongues, individually bound with tape and wrapped in socks.”

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Cruel and criminal The illegal capture and export of endemic Australian reptiles – which, along with native amphibians and birds, are highly prized overseas, mainly as pets – is a lucrative trade, and one that represents a significant conservation and welfare problem. Removing individuals from the wild not only impacts local populations, but can also result in habitat destruction.

And transporting the animals, in food packaging, toys or electrical appliances, can lead to starvation, stress, exposure to cold, injury and, all too often, death.

“The reptiles rescued that day were dehydrated and had suffered skin damage from the tape,” says Doug.

“They also had ticks, suggesting that they had been taken from the wild.”

The lizards were given fluids and feed, and checked by animal experts. Sadly, though, some have to be euthanised.

Australia’s federal government is contributing to the development of 3D X-ray scanning technology to combat such crimes. As yet, though, the cruel trade continues. Paul Bloomfield August 2021

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This month’s panel

ST UA RT B L AC K M A N

NEIL GARRICK MAIDMENT

DAV E H A M I LTO N

ELLEN HUSAIN

L AU R I E J AC K S O N

RICHARD JONES

ALEX MORSS

M EG A N S H E R S BY

Science writer

The Seahorse Trust

Horticulturalist

Wildlife film-maker

Wildlife tour leader

Entomologist

Ecologist

BBC Wildlife team

We solve your wildlife mysteries.

Email your questions to wildquestions@immediate.co.uk More amazing facts at discoverwildlife.com

&A

Are any animals bulletproof? es. Armadillo ‘armour’ – composed of bony plates known as osteoderms – has been seen to deflect bullets. In one incident, a Texan man was hit in the face when his own bullet bounced back from an armadillo that he tried to shoot. In another, a bullet ricocheting off an armadillo penetrated a house, injuring an elderly lady.

Accounts from early colonial times describe

Ellen Husain

Armadillo: Daniel Heuclin/naturepl.com (captive); bullet: Sean Gladwell/Getty;

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bullets glancing off the hides of saltwater crocodiles or being lodged in their robust skulls without penetrating the brain. The semi-bulletproof nature of crocodiles and other large animals, such as elephants and rhinos, gave rise to the ‘elephant gun’ in the late 1800s – this was a very heavy-duty weapon specifically designed for killing big game.

August 2021

Q&A

Small but strong: the word armadillo means ‘little armoured one’ in Spanish. The animal’s tough plates protect it from predators and can even deflect a bullet.

August 2021

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Q&A BIRDS

What’s the difference between leucism and albinism?

eucism is the lack of melanin pigment in some feathers due to the absence of melanin-producing cells; albinism is the complete lack of these pigments due to the absence of a particular enzyme (tyrosinase).

However, according to Hein van Grouw, senior curator of birds at London’s Natural History Museum, many ‘white’ birds are actually exhibiting something different – a condition known as progressive greying. An individual starts life with normal pigmentation, then gradually loses the pigment-producing cells, so that with every moult, the amount of white feathers increases.

This isn’t a heritable condition, and the precise causes are not usually known. “In progressive greying, the white feathers are more randomly spread,” says Hein.

“Whereas most forms of leucism cause a bilateral and symmetrical pattern of patches of white feathers, with the extremities most affected.”

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Megan Shersby

BOTANY

Why are strawberry seeds on the outside? trawberries are unusual among edible fruit in having their pips exposed on the outside, rather than nestled within the flesh. The fleshy, edible parts of most fruits are formed from the ovaries – the parts that contain the seeds – which swell after pollination. A strawberry, though, is formed from an enlarged receptacle, the part of a flower on which the ovaries sit. So, what look like seeds are, in fact, tiny individual ovaries, each housing a seed within. This means that, in botanical terms, a strawberry is not a true berry, though most people are happy to overlook this technicality when making a summer pudding.

S

Stuart Blackman

What’s in a name?

Strawberries are not technically berries.

A ‘progressively greying’ puffin, seen on the Scottish island of Handa.

ORNITHOLOGY

lue and great tits are cavitynesting birds, breeding in tree crevices and nestboxes. Despite the apparent safety of these enclosed spaces, the birds are still vulnerable, since any predator venturing inside will block the only escape route. Incubating females therefore use their hiss, which is remarkably like that of a snake, to deter any would-be intruders.

By invoking their inner serpent, the tits are taking advantage of the innate fear of the reptiles held by many mammals and birds. It’s a

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nice example of Batesian mimicry, in which a species passes itself off as something more menacing.

Cornered females employ further shock tactics: raising their wings, jutting their heads and snapping their beaks. The performance is enough to make great spotted woodpeckers, yellow-necked mice and cats think twice about approaching nest sites, though is not always successful against small predators, such as weasels, that enter the abode and discover the deception. Laurie Jackson

August 2021

Puffin: Dora Hamilton/Scottish W d fe Trust; strawberr es: Getty; t t: Dav d T p ng/naturep .com; seahorse: Alex Mustard/naturepl.com; pinecones: Alamy

Why do blue and great tits hiss?

Blue tits’ nest sites are at risk of attacks from predators.

Q&A MARINE BIOLOGY

How do seahorses eat?

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eahorses are voracious feeders and can eat up to 80 full-grown shrimp a day. They need to feed continuously because they have a very simple digestive system. Seahorses consume their prey using a special technique known as pivot feeding. This involves a trigger mechanism within the lower part of the snout that, when activated, accelerates the movement of water through the snout and out of the gill siphons on the top of the head. The suction force is so powerful that it can be heard underwater, and rapidly draws the prey item into the mouth.

Neil Garrick Maidment

Seahorses are noisy eaters and almost literally ‘hoover up’ their meals using a special suction technique.

Some pine cones rely on wildfire to release their seeds – and the wait can be long.

3 questions on

Fire ecology

1

HOW CAN FIRE HELP PLANTS?

Fire may seem a destructive force, but for some plants, it can be helpful. In wildfire-prone lands, a blaze can bring fresh vitality by recycling and boosting nutrients, and bestowing space and light.

For some species, fire also confers a competitive advantage. In lodgepole pines, for example, seed cones hang high in the canopy, their scales firmly sealed with resin. Only the heat of a forest fire can melt the glue, ensuring the seeds fall on ashenriched ground.

2

HOW DO THEY SURVIVE IT?

Many plants have adapted to tolerate fire. For example, larch, eucalyptus and some species of pine have thick, fireretardant bark; the South African aloe has dense, insulating leaves; and Banksia bushes are equipped with starchy, fireresistant growths (known as lignotubers) that protect their buds. Tall growth also helps. Once the flames die down, dormant seeds and shoots are awoken by the charring and the chemicals in the smoke, triggering an explosion of blossom in the scorched landscape.

3

WHAT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?

A diverse community of plants and animals is kept in flux by natural fire cycles. However, there is a limit to how much even the most resilient plants can take. An increased intensity and frequency of fire events could destroy seed banks, and pressure from introduced grazers can affect species recovery. In a warming world, land managers must consider how they can help forests and grasslands recover – by creating restoration seed banks, for instance. Alex Morss

Q&A ENTOMOLOGY

Do wasps feed royal jelly to their queens, like honeybees?

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or the first few days of life, honeybee grubs are fed on a protein-rich substance secreted from the throat glands of the workers (small, infertile females). Most are then fed with nectar and pollen and develop into more workers.

Some selected grubs, however, continue to receive the nutritious secretions, glutinous masses of which accumulate in the wax cells. This is the

Wasps fed nitrogenrich food as grubs may grow into better nourished queens.

The Explainer

Red Queen hypothesis

famous royal jelly that produces larger, better nourished and fertile queens.

Nothing like this has been found in wasps, but there is some evidence that grubs that are fed insect prey with a higher nitrogen content are more likely to become better nourished queens.

This dietary requirement could be achieved by feeding herbivore prey (such as caterpillars) to worker grubs, and carnivorous prey (such as blowflies) to predestined queens. It’s tantalising to think that the wasp hunters could tell the difference. Richard Jones

Bladderwrack – the ocean’s answer to bubblewrap – is one of our most common seaweeds.

“It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”

Wasp & bladder wrack: Ross Hoddinott/naturepl.com; Alice: Getty; spores: Sarang Naik

Most of us can relate to the Red Queen of Alice Through the Looking-Glass fame, who had to keep running to stay in the same place. Her predicament has been borrowed by biologists trying to explain why virtually all species reproduce sexually, even though it’s highly inefficient. The idea is that organisms must keep evolving just to survive in a world where everyone else is evolving, too. And by mixing up genes from different individuals, sex allows species to evolve faster.

Stop running on the spot and extinction surely follows.

Stuart Blackman

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MARINE BIOLOGY

Why are seaweed fronds sometimes full of air and sometimes full of liquid?

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any seaweed species have bubble-like structures on their fronds. These are known as swim bladders, and comprise oxygen-filled chambers that are used for bouyancy, which aids photosynthesis.

Swim bladders vary in position and size according to species. On bladderwrack, for instance, they lie either side of a central spine; on eggwrack, one large, egg-shaped bladder is added to the fronds each year (you can age an individual by counting these). In spring and summer, when certain

species of seaweed are fertile, additional cavities at the tips of the fronds can swell and fill with protective goo. Look closely and you will see little pits dotted across the surface. Known as conceptacles, these tiny structures contain either sperm or eggs, depending on the sex of the seaweed (yes, you get male and female seaweeds!).

Seaweeds such as bladderwrack provide important food and habitat for coastal creatures. You’ll often encounter sea snails nibbling on the fronds. Dave Hamilton May 2021

Q&A

What is it?

GOBLET OF FIRE Most fungi live rather secretive lives, lurking out of sight within their wood, dung-pile or humus habitats. But to reproduce, they must temporarily abandon their penchant for privacy and reveal themselves via fruiting bodies – better known as mushrooms – through which they cast their spores to the wind. In the right light, the release can be a sight to behold, as this individual (likely an Indian Reishi mushroom) testifies, its millions of spores rising into the air like a flame.

OUR WILD WORLD

At home A beautiful corner of England is revisited by Chris Packham as he walks north alongside one of the oldest waterways in the country.

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BBC Wildlife

Bring a little extra wildlife into your life with the best of this month’s TV, books, podcasts, streaming and much more.

WILD WORLD

A relaxing countryside TV choice

Join the naturalist and presenter in Hampshire as he revisits an enjoyable springtime walk from his childhood.

CHRIS PACKHAM: THE WALK THAT MADE ME CATCH UP ON BBC IPLAYER

different to his usual documentaries. Rather than standing in a field somewhere in the UK or in the bush somewhere in Africa, this one kicks off in his kitchen with his gorgeous poodles, where he introduces the programme and explains that, without the normal film crew available due to pandemic restrictions, he is using a 360-degree, hand-held camera to record his walk.

“It’s not any old walk, it’s a really important walk to me.

I’m going to be following in my distant footsteps, on a path where I grew up. Where I really cut my teeth as a naturalist and had plenty of time to think about the world.”

Chris takes us to the southern county of Hampshire for the 16.4km walk, starting near Eastleigh and following the River Itchen and the Itchen Navigation for much of the way, before finally finishing outside

Winchester Cathedral. It’s an early spring day, with a blackthorn tree in flower (an “absolute cloud of confetti”), frost covering the ground, an argumentative robin singing overhead and sunlight filtering through the branches and leaves of the trees.

Supported by some fantastic drone shots, this is a wonderful, emotional and enchanting journey.

Packham points out the local wildlife and historical features, sticks the camera underwater to have a look at minnows, revisits both beautifully joyful and heart-breakingly painful memories, and chats to other people enjoying the outdoors, including some rather brave cold-water swimmers and a community following the ancient tradition of flooding their watermeadows. So intimate is the effect that you feel as if you are walking with him.

Megan Shersby

Tim Smith/Atypical Media/BBC

BBC Wildlife

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OUR WILD WORLD Swallow-tailed hummingbirds are named for their deeply forked tails.

BOOK

The Glitter in the Green JON DUNN, BLOOMSBURY, £20

The nature-quest genre – where authors attempt to see a list of target species – is getting pretty tired now, but Jon Dunn’s skill as a travel writer sets this engrossing book apart. His adventures in search of rare and unusual hummingbirds whisk us from Alaska to the chilly shores of Tierra del Fuego, via a mouthwatering array of habitats and off-the-beaten-track lodges.

Dunn encounters mudslides, a political coup and the illegal wildlife trade, is checked out by an inquisitive mountain lion and visits the remote volcanic island that inspired Robinson Crusoe. As you’d expect, we learn plenty about the extraordinary lives of the ‘hummer’ family, a group of birds only found in the Americas.

But the chequered history of our long-running fascination with these exotic and colourful creatures, and the obsessive characters who painted, traded or collected them, proves equally fascinating.

WI LD ST RE AM RADIO DRAMA Song of the Reed Sophie Okonedo and Mark Rylance star in this four-part Radio 4 eco-drama.

BBC Sounds, episode one available now TV SERIES Penguin Town Actor and writer Patton Oswalt narrates the lives of penguins in a South African town.

Netflix, streaming now FILM Sherni A fictional thriller following a forest officer and her team tackling wildlife-human conflict and a man-eating tigress.

Amazon Prime, streaming now

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BBC Wildlife

PODCAST

BOOK

Golden Grenades

Ecology and Natural History

ON ITUNES AND SPOTIFY

For a podcast that pivots around the theme of an environmental apocalypse, Golden Grenades remains remarkably upbeat. The premise is simple: each week a bird-lover chooses five species to save from this impending disaster. At the end of the show, one of their birds must go head-to-head with presenter Kit’s favourite – the peregrine falcon. The real joy of this podcast is found in the heart-warming, fascinating and at times bizarre stories of the chosen birds, and why they mean so much to their champions. From sky burials to vomiting fairies, once-in-a-lifetime sightings to garden regulars, Golden Grenades covers them all.

Kerrie Ann Gardner Artist and writer NEW TO PODCASTS? Read our guide:

BY DAVID WILKINSON, WILLIAM COLLINS, £65

Brilliantly written, with wit, humour and clarity, and using examples and scenarios from the British landscape, David Wilkinson tells engaging ecological stories through the eyes of a naturalist and ecologist. Major concepts are explored and explained, making this book an essential read for both the student of ecology or the layperson that delights in the beautiful and sumptuous diversity of life. If you’re someone who asks questions of the interconnectivity of everything natural, then this book contains many of the answers. Highly readable and instantly engaging.

Nick Baker Nature writer Turn to p91 for a chance to win a copy

August 2021

Jon Dunn

Ben Hoare, BBC Wildlife editorial consultant O Look out for Jon’s feature on hummingbirds in the next issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine

OUR WILD WORLD TV

Playing With Sharks STREAMING NOW ON DISNEY PLUS

Valerie Taylor adores sharks. “Maybe I’m a bit funny, but I just love going down there, I love seeing that big bull shark here, going ‘Ah!’” A champion spearfisher in the 1950s, Valerie has been a passionate conservationist and underwater photographer and filmmaker for many years, alongside her husband Ron, who passed away in 2012.

In particular, she’s been working to change the public perception of sharks and campaigning to protect them. The film explores her relationship with these predators, featuring vintage footage of her years spearfishing and then later filming sharks for Jaws and The Blue Lagoon, plus interviews with friends and colleagues. MS

Ron and Valerie Taylor

A chainmail suit was designed for the couple’s filming work.

O N OUR WEBS ITE FLORAL FUGITIVES Learn how to identify non-native summer flowers in our guide by naturalist Brett Westwood discoverwildlife.com/nonnative-summer-flowers MARINE ART Follow author Heather Buttivant’s step-by-step guide to pressing seaweed discoverwildlife.com/ press-seaweed SHROPSHIRE WILDLIFE Discover the beauty and variety of Shropshire’s species and landscapes in this collection of images by wildlife photographer Andrew Fusek Peters. discoverwildlife.com/ hill-dale-gallery

Let’s Go For A Walk

BY RANGER HAMZA, ILLUSTRATED BY KATE KRONREIF. THE IVY PRESS, £7.99

Super-bright, engaging, accessible... this book is a blast of fresh air. Its 15 cheery spreads are pitched at early readers and inspired by the popular CBeebies series with Ranger Hamza – the alter ego of wildlife photographer Hamza Yassin.

Whereas children’s wildlife books often focus on identifying species or learning basic biology, this one is much less prescriptive. The emphasis is as much on sharing the thrill of spotting natural things,

Ben Hoare BBC Wildlife editorial consultant MORE CHILDREN’S NATURE BOOKS

BOOK

BOOK

The Heeding

The Sea Is Not Made Of Water

BY ROB COWEN, ELLIOTT & THOMPSON, £12.99

Covering a year of the pandemic, Rob Cowen could have written in prose about his experiences. Instead, he chose to write 35 poems crammed full of honesty and pain, but touchingly funny, relatable, tender and full of hope. Add to this an inspired collaboration with artist and author Nick Hayes, who has produced the powerful, linocut-style illustrations, and you have a book about people, place and nature that’s impossible to put down. From a sparrow as it “shrieks over the back wall into the cobbled street”, to an elderly woman lovingly gifting cakes to staff at her local pharmacy, The Heeding notices, and pays great care and attention to, the changed world we now live in. A book to be cherished.

Jane Adams Nature writer

August 2021

like, and discovery through wild play.

Loosely based around nature rambles, Kronreif’s artwork shows urban settings as well as the idyllic ponds, woods and coasts that are the staple fare of similar books. Also refreshing, the multi-racial characters look like contemporary Britain. Wildlife is for everyone, urges the rhyming text. My daughters commented that the book is great fun, with one saying: “I wished I’d had it when I was younger, daddy!”

BY ADAM NICOLSON, WILLIAM COLLINS, £20

Plunge into the ocean with this excellent new book by Adam Nicolson, author of the award-winning The Seabird’s Cry. Nicolson takes us down to the shoreline to discover the enthralling world of the intertidal zone, and to learn how its resident species have adapted to living in a habitat that is constantly changing around them. He also recounts stories of humans and our relationships with the shoreline throughout history, from the Mesolithic people moving north as the climate improved and leaving behind impressive piles of used seashells, to how landscapes and their wildlife have become interwoven with our superstitions and beliefs. MS BBC Wildlife

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OUR WILD WORLD

Your photos

Amazing images taken by our readers Enter our Your Photos competition at discoverwildlife. com/submit-your-photos

Star photo

At eye level I was photographing bees in the garden when I felt something land on my hand. I looked down and saw it was a damselfly – a really beautiful and playful creature. I was glad it wasn't afraid of me. The look on its face was as if it was smiling.

Ata Hassanzadeh Dastforoosh, Urmia, Iran

ENTER TO WIN A ROYAL ROBBINS JACKET This month, our star photo wins a Women’s Switchform Lite Parka or a Men’s Switchform Lite Jacket from Royal Robbins, worth £135 each. These windproof smart shells can be converted into bags, and have eco-conscious, fluorine-free C0DWR treatment for water resistance. royalrobbins.com

OUR WILD WORLD 1 Caught in the act After a four-hour drive to Suffolk to spend a day photographing a kingfisher, I was rewarded with some fantastic light.

I used a fast shutter speed to capture this individual diving for food for his brood.

Neil Treloar, Bognor Regis

2 Feeding time

1

2

3

While on safari in Kenya's Maasai Mara, I was walking around camp when I noticed a mother warthog with her piglets.

Once I'd spent a few minutes quietly watching the family, the female felt comfortable enough for her youngsters to suckle, and allowed me to click away with my camera.

Gavin Foster, Chesham

3 Park life I took this picture at Eastville Park in Bristol while waiting for a kingfisher. These cute squirrels were playing in a tree while their mum watched over them from above. I didn't see a kingfisher, but I brought home this nice shot.

Giorgio Pede, Bristol

4 Hide and seek

4

5

It had been my dream to photograph a horned viper. One evening, my husband and I went to the dunes in West Negev with a guide. We saw this one, which had burrowed into the sand until only its head was visible.

Limor Bahar, Israel

5 Feathered friend In October 2020, I was at my favourite birding spot when I saw this stonechat perched in the tall grass.

It was against the sun, but eventually shifted position, allowing me to get a shot against the green background.

Suman Paul, Pune, India August 2021

BBC Wildlife

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OUR WILD WORLD

Feedback

Want to get something off your chest? This is the ideal place By contacting us, you consent to let us print your letter in BBC Wildlife Magazine. Letters may be edited.

EMAIL US

FOLLOW US facebook.com/wildlifemagazine; twitter.com/WildlifeMag; instagram.com/bbcwildlifemagazine

wildlifeletters@immediate.co.uk

I am Henry and I am nine years old. I have a deep passion for nature, as deep as the Mariana Trench, in particular for birds. During lockdown last year, I started a blog called The Bovey Birder, where I could document my sightings.

I got into birding when I was four, when I was given a book – I wanted,

Henry would like to be an ornithologist.

Bolsonaro's decisions

BBC Wildlife

Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin reply: Reading this is enormously uplifting. We can almost taste Henry’s enthusiasm for birds and for the places he explores! When we see a young person with such a powerful love for the natural world it is so reassuring.

I agree with Mark's views on Jair Bolsonaro and others, and support the call for him to be investigated by the International Criminal Court.

The difficulty is that we need to get the message across to all those who know little about the link between the state of the Amazon and our personal ability to

take action to help. Education in schools is helping, but we need a far more urgent response. Can we support and learn from the indigenous peoples around the world who know how to live in harmony with nature?

Having read Mark’s piece, I then read the proposals to mine the deep-sea floor for rare metal nodules for manufacturing products such as batteries for electric cars. I am horrified – is nothing sacrosanct? Had I known, I might well have refrained from buying an electric car last year, when I thought I was doing the right thing.

Marlies Could Jair MacLean, Bolsonaro via email be accused of ecocide?

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading Katie Stacey’s wonderful article on tigers (Bringing back the tiger, May 2021). The sad thing is that during all of my life the tiger has had to struggle to find a place and country to live. It is the same tired tale of human inability to respect other animals and make a space for them to live naturally. Still, the lessons being learnt gives one some hope for their future, particularly where there is the political will.

I would welcome future articles on other endangered animals, not necessarily the well-known ones, such as the Mediterranean monk seal, Barbary stag, kouprey and Bactrian camel.

Norman Marshall, Llandudno Junction, Conwy Anyone reading your lead feature on tigers ‘bouncing back’ would think there are grounds for enormous optimism. Small increases from small tiger nations are encouraging, but this article has not given India’s census figures even the most rudimentary forensics. Conservationists concur that those numbers were questionable at best and a blithe acceptance of the government’s number is both naive and unwise. Some countries may have doubled their populations, but this does not mean India can do the same, particularly with flawed record-taking.

Sadly, the illegal trade in Chinese traditional medicine, which includes tiger parts, is flourishing. Until this is approached ferociously with huge penalties and sanctions rather than tokenism and August 2021

Bolsanaro: Rodrgio Pavia/Getty

I agree with Mark in his piece on Brazil (My way of thinking, spring 2021). The current administration could not be worse. However, the declines in the rate of Amazon deforestation in the 2000s, that Mark mentions, are misleading.

Big agricultural soy operations simply moved and began tearing up the pristine ecosystems of the Cerrado and Pantanal to produce livestock feed.

But we can do something very powerful and direct: stop buying the end product of deforestation, namely intensively produced livestock. Brazil is a huge international exporter of soy for livestock feed. Intensive livestock aren’t fed on fresh air; meeting just the UK’s annual demand for livestock feed

Attenborough, Chris Packham, Megan McCubbin and Dara McAnulty.

I’m autistic and my ability to focus means that when it comes to the natural world, I am basically a sponge. I absorb every fact that comes my way, and birds give me an intense joy I don’t get from much else. Writing my blog helps me to express my feelings and emotions in a way I can’t always do verbally.

My list of birds is currently 132 strong, and I am continuing to add to it. My absolute favourite is the cuckoo, and I love to hear it when we are up on Dartmoor, mainly at Emsworthy Mire.

Henry J, age 9, Bovey Tracey, Devon

requires 1.4 million hectares of land, an area the size of Northern Ireland. What we eat has a huge impact on the future of the world’s forests. Is it really worth six square metres of rainforest to put a chicken on the table for dinner?

Dom Wormell, Jersey

WRITE TO US BBC Wildlife, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST

Targets for tigers

Blogging and birding

Star letter

88

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OUR WILD WORLD

TALES FROM THE BUSH

Grounded by a giraffe Coming face-to-face with wildlife on a walking safari was a humbling experience for Teresa Allen.

The fortunes of tigers have varied across Asia.

Have a wild tale to tell? Email a brief synopsis to catherine.smalley@ immediate.co.uk

toothless homilies, there will be no dramatic recovery of Asian tiger populations. There is also no mention of the 5,000-plus tigers kept as pets in the USA – 80 per cent of the world’s total.

Tigers, as with all wildlife, are dependent on tourism for survival and there will be no ‘bounce’ without that.

Paul Goldstein, via email

New view

CORRECTIONS July 2021, Wild Quiz, p99: question 2 should have read “Which is the world’s most venomous snake?”

QUIZ ANSWERS (see p91) 1B, 2B, 3A, 4B, 5C, 6C

August 2021

Teresa was able to admire the giraffe's beautiful markings from an intimate but safe distance.

espite the number of safaris under my belt, I will always fondly remember the time when I inadvertently became the centre of attention.

It was a case of the observer becoming the observed.

Seeing wildlife in its own habitat provides unforgettable experiences and I’ve found some of the most authentic encounters occur when you leave the confines of the 4WD behind and explore on foot. Walking safaris are a humbling way to connect to the surroundings, putting you on the same level as the animals.

My walking safari in the HluhluweImfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa was led by Nunu Jobe, a.k.a. The Rhino Whisperer. With a reputation as a highly experienced trail ranger, I knew I was in extremely capable, experienced hands.

As our intimate group gathered, Nunu explained that going on a bush trail is a spiritual journey. We held hands in a circle and he invited us to express our intentions about what we wanted to receive from the experience that day. It was a poignant lesson in mindfulness.

As we walked single file through the dry, grassy shrubland, Nunu’s senses were on

D

high alert, reading the signals the bush was providing. He pointed out insects and plants we couldn’t fully appreciate during the game drives and even identified a fairly fresh leopard pawprint in the condensed sand next to a stream.

As we rounded a corner of bushveld, we discovered a lone male giraffe, prominent in his stature, soaring up amongst the trees. From where he stood, he swivelled his beautifully patchwork-patterned body round to face us head on. His aura remained calm and there became a clear essence of intrigue in his behaviour. Viewing each person in turn, his gaze settled on me and I could physically sense him ‘checking me out’ as he deliberately looked me up and down.

It was an unusually deep interaction.

I could sense him watching me with the same intent that I was watching him and I felt immensely grounded to be sharing the wild space with such a looming, yet serene presence. I appreciate it was a profoundly connected and shared moment, unlikely to be repeated again.

S Viewing

each person in turn, his gaze settled on me. T

TERESA ALLEN is a pastel wildlife artist and travel/safari enthusiast. tjallenart.weebly.com BBC Wildlife

89

Teresa Allen

As a new reader of BBC Wildlife, I enjoyed perusing every page of my first issue with pleasure, viewing the vivid colours of nature and reading about animals both exotic and familiar in one fell swoop.

The pictures of your magazine also captured the moments of nature so interestingly that the impression was translated as the feeling of sorrow when I saw a lone gorilla sitting amid the rude human spectators taking its picture without social distance amid the global pandemic situation (Wild News, spring 2021).

People clamour for animal welfare, but their egotistical ambition to fulfil entertainment outfits their lofty metaphorical ideals for an actual situation.

I hope that the administration for wild parks will enforce strict rules and regulations protecting their animals in keeping, rather than displaying them like creatures in freak shows.

Stephanie Suh, Los Angeles, USA

From butterflies to rocky shores, discover the wonders of nature with the British Wildlife Collection

Explore the full series and buy at discount at www.bloomsbury.com @chiffchat

Available as eBooks

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Possibilities are Endless

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OUR WILD WORLD

PUZZLES

Win a prize with our crossword, and test your wildlife knowledge.

Answers in our October 2021 issue

Wild quiz

JUNE ANSWERS ACROSS: 1 Snetsinger,

DOWN: 1 Sahel, 2 egretry,

3 stimuli, 4 nurse, 5 eagle owls, 7 trepang, 8 moss phlox, 9 Angola, 14 bean goose, 15 lodgepole, 18 carrion, 19 Saigon, 21 reptile, 22 fledged, 24 ouzel, 25 spear.

JUNE WINNER C Boardman, Durham ACROSS 7 Antipodean tree with flaky, russet bark (3,5) 9 Orkney island, home to the Orkney vole (6) 10 Fish that might be largemouth, smallmouth or spotted (4) 11 Behaviour seen in fleas and mistletoe, for example (10) 12 Substance found in the cells of wood and bark (6) 14 Canine (3,5) 15 Series of wildlife guides published

by Collins (3,10) 17 Large, white water bird with an orange bill (4,4) 19 Like a grizzly, say (6) 21 Small grassland rodent found in the UK (5,5) 22 Scavenging bird of prey that might be red or black (4)

23 ___fowl, African bird in the family Numididae (6) 24 Plant in the genus Centaurea, also called loggerheads or starthistle (8) DOWN 1 ___ hog plum, Himalayan fruit tree with yellow-green fruits (6) 2 Long-billed wader that might be sacred or scarlet (4) 3 Endangered forest mammal of the Himalayas and China (3,5) 4 Sea fish in the family Labridae (6) 5 Climate zone such as the Mediterranean basin or south-east USA (10) 6 Small songbird with black cap (5,3) 8 Sea duck known in the USA as lords and ladies (9,4) 13 Home to 22 Down (3,7) 15 Ancient species of marine mollusc

found in the Indo-Pacific (8) 16 Blue-plumaged corvid of South America (5,3) 18 Australian marsupial (6) 20 Tree of Indonesia, cultivated for spices (6) 22 Nocturnal flightless bird in the genus Apteryx (4)

Getty Images

6 stem, 10 harrier, 11 gannets, 12 lettuce, 13 exocarp, 14 bay willow, 16 algal, 17 ascus, 20 desert fox, 23 garpike, 24 ospreys, 26 Orinoco, 27 shingle, 28 erne, 29 hellbender.

Which tree do these leaves belong to?

A ash B rowan C elder

2) How long is a newborn blue whale?

A 1-3m B 7-8m C 12-14m

3) A ‘knot’ is a group of…

A toads B snakes C rats

4) Which is the most common mouse in the UK? A house mouse B fieldmouse C yellow-necked mouse

5) Which beetle is a parasite of solitary mining bees?

A violet ground beetle B leaf beetle C oil beetle

6) How many years can a common earthworm live?

A up to a year B up to 2 years C up to 6 years

Crossword compiled by RICHARD SMYTH, quiz set by CATHERINE SMALLEY

Find out the answers on p89

WIN NEW NATURALIST LIBRARY BOOK HOW TO ENTER This competition is only open to residents of the UK (including the Channel Islands). Post entries to BBC Wildlife Magazine, August 2021 Crossword, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA or email the answers to August2021@wildlifecomps.co.uk by 5pm on 25 August 2021. Entrants must supply name, address and telephone number. The winner will be the first correct entry drawn at random after the closing time. The name of the winner will appear in the October 2021 issue. By entering, participants agree to be bound by the general competition terms and conditions shown on this page.

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hardback copy of Ecology and Natural History, a New Naturalist Library series book, written by David M. Wilkinson and worth £65.

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kk Hummingbirds – we uncover the secrets of these miniature marvels of the Americas kk Rewilding step by step – explore a new network of restoration projects in Scotland kk Gene editing – the debate rages over the use of this cutting-edge science in conservation

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VIEWPOINT

WILDLIFE CHAMPION

MARK WATSON In our series about people with a passion for a species, we ask caught his eye.

Interview by Catherine Smalley

Why do you love kingfishers?

fact that everything we do affects the many amazing creatures we’re sharing the planet with.

Kingfishers are magnificent birds. One reason I love them – like most people – is the dramatic way that they swoop down for their food (at least, some of them do): it caught my attention as a kid. But they also come in such a range of extraordinary colours. So, in short, a mixture of visual style and performance. A bit like how I would wish to be seen as a comedian, in a way.

How can we help?

Coolest kingfisher fact?

One thing that people often don’t know about kingfishers is that they are a large family of birds; the ones we see are only the tip of the avian iceberg. So, for example, the Australian kookaburra is a kingfisher. I love those guys because their call, famously, sounds like a laugh and is said to typify the Aussie spirit (I’ve spent a lot of time there and it’s a second home to me). In Borneo, meanwhile, there’s a kingfisher that is seen as a bad omen.

S I drew a picture of a kingfisher for my school journal – I can’t say I entirely did it justice. T

(being, as I am, a city boy). I drew a picture of it for my school journal, but looking back, I can’t say I entirely did it justice. I can still remember the sight of it coasting above the water, the gentle drama of it.

When did you first see one?

During my school days, we used to have trips to Slimbridge Wetland Centre. That was the first place I saw a kingfisher, along with many other birds

What threats do they face?

Like a lot of our wildlife, they’re at threat from the changing face of our climate, but there’s a more fundamental

Many of the ways we can help are just about small-scale changes to our behaviour. Not running the shower too long, and taking showers instead of baths; avoiding over-filling the kettle; not letting the tap run. These are all pretty easy mental habits to change, but it’s also easy not to bother. Thinking about the beautiful animals and birds we live around, and imagining life without them, is one way of focusing on what is at stake.

Where’s your favourite wild place to escape to?

I live in East London, and we’ve got a beautiful wetland, which is an easy run away (although you can’t actually run in there because it upsets the swans). For someone like me with a pretty urban upbringing and background, who likes living in a city, it’s really valuable to be able to dip into nature in this way and connect with things I’d normally be oblivious to.

MARK WATSON is a comedian and an ambassador for Affinity Water’s SOS: Save Our Streams campaign. Visit saveourstreams.co.uk for more information.

The expert view

Dan Rouse, ornithologist, author and presenter

August 2021

Kingfisher: Kevin Elsby/Alamy

Kingfishers spend most of their time sitting quietly on a perch.

Kingfishers are beautiful birds, often associated with streams and rivers.

We have seen a decline in their numbers at suitable breeding areas due to the lack of food available, agricultural run-off, pollution and contamination of water sources. Once a common sight on our waterways, they’ve become increasingly sparse. If you get the chance, watch them hunt their prey – their head remains perfectly still whilst their body moves around in the wind.

James Rushforth Wilkinson Cameras Ambassador Photographer For more information about our Ambassadors visit wilkinson.co.uk/blog

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