SPRING
2023
LAST OF THE ICE GIANTS rewilding britain
THE WHITLEY AWARDS
VOL XXIV ISSUE I
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EDITO R FOR T TOP PICKS HE SE ASON
meet the winners behind benefiting wildlife, landscapes and people
WONDROUS WILDERNESS the puffins of skomer island
BIRDS, BEASTS & BEDLAM realities of rewilding: a review
A HIDDEN BRITAIN WITH WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER CATHERINE BALDWIN
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Inside cover: Photographer: Emily Jane Taylor Instagram: @capture_nature_emily_taylor
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Editor-in-chief Lucy Morris Sally Marie Rosie Nichols Tobias James Amelia Bazzone Darren Wynne Heather Wilkins Lyndsey Adams Chloe Bennet Isabelle Price Laszlo Balogh
Executive Editor Wildlife Editor Digital Editor Features Editor Photo/Sub Editor Photo Assistant Travel Editor Advertisement Director Editorial Assistant Logo Illustrator
Contributors SCOTT DUFFIELD, KSENIYA DRAHUNOVA, S. MOHAN RAJ NAIR, HARRY MUNT, CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING, HARRIET DAY, MATTHEW RYAN, PATRICK O’SULLIVAN, CATHERINE BALDWIN, EMILY JANE TAYLOR, MATTHEW WALSH, ANISH P R, THE WHITLEY AWARDS, VICTORIA HAIGH.
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Conker Nature Magazine takes pride in ethical wildlife photography that prioritises the safety and welfare of wildlife and their environment. Conker Nature Magazine is committed to the correct representation of the natural world, away from the manipulation of media, and total honesty in our captioning. Photographers, please support us in providing all relevant information around the circumstance of the image and giving total clarity of where the image was taken (to include, but not just restricted to, use of bait, captivity or habituated animals). Conker Nature Magazine will provide trusted, independent travel, wildlife, and gardening advice and information. Our aim is to allow access to (including, but not limited to, clothing, travel, accessories, tools and books) for a range of backgrounds and budgets. Within our travel sector, we are clear with the positives and negatives of a location we visit or recommend. The views that are expressed within Conker Nature Magazine are entirely the views of the authors, and not necessarily the views of the magazine, editorial team, or publisher. The editor-in-chief, the publisher, the contributors or the editorial team accepts no responsibility for advertisement errors, mistakes, omissions, or issues in any such advertisement feature. Conker Nature Magazine should not, under any circumstance, be reproduced either partially or wholly in any form or means without prior consent with the publication. It should not be hired, resold, or otherwise disposed to in any means of trade more than the recommended retail price set. PUBLISHED BY SWANKY GROUP PUBLICATIONS, DIRECTORS SALLY MARIE, DARREN WYNNE, TOBIAS JAMES, LUCY JANE MORRIS © Conker Nature Magazine 2023
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CONTENTS 08
B E H I N D -T H E - C O V E R WITH CATHERINE BALDWIN THIS MONTH, CONKER NATURE MAGAZINE SAT DOWN WITH BEHINDTHE-COVER PHOTOGRAPHER, CATHERINE BALDWIN. FIND OUT MORE ON HER JOURNEY. PHOTOGRAPHER: CATHERINE BALDWIN INSTAGRAM: @CATH.B_2.0.
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NORTHERN GANNETS & FIGHT AGAINST POLLUTION JOIN PHOTOGRAPHER SCOTT DUFFIELD WITH HIS SNAPS OF GANNETS. PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT DUFFIELD INSTAGRAM: @SCOTT.DUFFIELD. PHOTOGRAPHY FACEBOOK: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SCOTT. DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE: WWW.SCOTTDUFFIELDPHOTOGRAPHY. PIXISET.COM
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LAST OF THE ICE GIANTS WRITER MATTHEW WALSH TRAVELS TO GERMANY’S NORTH-RHINE WESTPHALIA FOR THIS SPECIAL FEATURE. WRITER: MATTHEW WALSH INSTAGRAM: @MWALSHWRITES
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THE NUTHATCH AND THE BLUE TIT PHOTOGRAPHER MATTHEW RYAN SHARES SNAPS OF BRITISH BIRDS. PHOTOGRAPHER: MATTHEW RYAN INSTAGRAM: @MATT_PHOTOGRAPHY6 LOCATION: LONDON, UNITED KINDGOM
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SPOTLIGHT - THE WHITELY AWARDS THE WHITLEY FUND FOR NATURE RECOGNISED SIX OUTSTANDING CONSERVATIONISTS WITH 2023 WHITLEY AWARDS! WRITTEN BY WHITLEY AWARDS INSTAGRAM: @WHITELYAWARDS COVERED BY LUCY JANE MORRIS INSTAGRAM: @LUCYMORRISWILD
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THE YELNYA RESERVE PHOTOGRAPHER KSENIYA DRAHUNOVA DOCUMENTS HER TIME ON THE YELNYA RESERVE. PHOTOGRAPHER: KSENIYA DRAHUNOVA INSTAGRAM: @DRAHUNOVA.PH WEBSITE: WWW.LINKTR.EE/ DRAHUNOVA
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June 2023
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REWILDING IN NORTH UK PHOTOGRAPHER VICTORIA HAIGH CAPTURES SPECIES IN REWILDING UK. PHOTOGRAPHER: VICTORIA HAIGH INSTAGRAM: @VICTORIA_HAIGH_PHOTOGRAPHY FACEBOOK: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/VICTORIAHAIGH
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THE WONDROUS WILDERNESS OF SKOMER ISLAND ESCAPE OF TO THE WONDROUS WILDERNESS OF SKOMER ISLAND THROUGH THE EYES OF WRITER AND PHOTOGRAPHER, EMILY JANE TAYLOR. WRITER AND PHOTOGRAPHER: EMILY JANE TAYLOR INSTAGRAM: @CAPTURE_NATURE_EMILY_TAYLOR
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BRITAIN’S MOST COMMON OWLS OWLS ARE PEOPLE’S FAVOURITE SPECIES, SCOTT DUFFIELD CAPTURES THE MOST COMMON. PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT DUFFIELD INSTAGRAM: @SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY FACEBOOK: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SCOTT.DUFFIELD. PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE: WWW.SCOTTDUFFIELDPHOTOGRAPHY.PIXISET.COM
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ENDANGERED WILDLIFE BREEDING PROGRAM PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT DUFFIELD INSTAGRAM: @SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY FACEBOOK: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SCOTT.DUFFIELD. PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE: WWW.SCOTTDUFFIELDPHOTOGRAPHY.PIXISET.COM
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YOU CAN PURCHASE OUR PRINT & DIGITAL IS SUES VIA MAGCLOUD
2023 WHITLEY AWARDS WINNERS THE WHITLEY FUND FOR NATURE RECOGNISED SIX OUTSTANDING CONSERVATIONISTS WITH 2023 WHITLEY AWARDS! WRITTEN BY WHITLEY AWARDS INSTAGRAM: @WHITELYAWARDS COVERED BY LUCY JANE MORRIS INSTAGRAM: @LUCYMORRISWILD
124 WILD WONDERS + YOUR LETTERS THIS MONTH’S WILD WONDER SPOTLIGHT IS BY REWILDING FAMOUS AUTHOR, DEREK GOW, WITH HIS BOOK - BIRDS, BEASTS AND BEDLAM. WHICH WAS REVIEWED BY ECOLOGIST AND WRITER, HARRY MUNT. REVIEWER: HARRY MUNT INSTAGRAM: @HARRY_MUNT_
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Editor’s Letter
June 2023
Lucy Morris Editor-in-chief
FABLE ENGLAND: ENAMEL MOTH & LEAF CHARM NECKLACE -£24
There are many aspects of British biodiversity and habitats I could cover, and I would be here for a while, if I were to list every single one - so, I’m going to mention the ones that cover a wide range, with more in-depth details being available on our website for more. In the past year, woodland reports have been published of the Forestry Commission’s Key Performance showed that the Government is lagging behind on the their target to create new woodland in England. In the target they set out to plant 30,000 hectares of new woodland in England by 2024. However, since 2019 the Government has only managed to implement 7,150 hectares - meaning they still have over 20,000 left with only one more year to complete it. Grasslands cover much of our countryside, however, the biodiverse unimproved grasslands are under threat from agricultural improvement or heavy recreational use. Although semi-natural grassland communities can occur within wooded mosaics, the scarcity of these unimproved grasslands in the wider countryside means that they do sometimes need to be safeguarded from scrub and trees. This can involve grazing as well as routine cutting.
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It is a delight to bring you an issue that has been highly anticipated among our team, and you, our readers. This is the Hidden Britain Issue. A theme chosen to appreciate and discover our British biodiversity.
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It is no surprise that water and wetlands are a vital part of our natural world - lives of animals, plants and people depend on them for survival. Yet, according to The Wildlife Trust, over 10% of freshwater and wetland species are threatened with extinction in the UK due to urbanisation, invasive species, pollution and abstraction.
MEN’S OLT - WO ACRE & H GO BLUE DI IN ET GIL £365 TWEED -
In this issue, we are joined by the photographer of this month’s behindthe-cover interview, Catherine Baldwin. Discover Catherine’s story, and her documenting her experience of the front cover shot. More on page 8. REGATTA: GIOVANNA FLETCHER X REGATTA SS23 - £100
In this month’s Wild Observer feature, we have the latest top story - the 2023 Whitley Awards have been announced. Read the full story on page 90. To wrap up, the Conker Nature Magazine team looks forward to welcoming you back next month with a special and important issue - The International Marine Issue - specially released for International Marine Week. Until next month!
WILDLIFE MAGAZINE
BARBOUR: REYES PLAYSUIT - £99.95
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BEHIND-THE-COVER - WITH CATHERINE BALDWIN
BEHIND-THE-COVER HIDDEN BRITAIN: A WILD ARCHIPELGO Many of us love wildlife. In Britain, however, there are a few species that make our UK rarest list; the red squirrel, the water vole, the pine marten, Bechstein’s bat, the New Forest cicada, the Scottish wildcat, the Hazel Dormouse (right), the Capercaillie, and finally the Cosnard’s net-winged beetle.
Photos by Catherine Baldwin Instagram: @cat.b_2.0
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BEHIND-THE-COVER HIDDEN BRITAIN: A WILD ARCHIPELAGO
‘W
elcome, Catherine, and congratulations on making the front cover of this month’s Conker Nature Magazine, The Hidden Britain issue. Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! Please introduce yourself to our readers, describing a little bit about yourself and your journey as a photographer. I am an amateur photographer based in Lincolnshire and I have enjoyed seeing British wildlife for most of my life. My enjoyment has grown more from capturing these unique moments of them. I became interested in photography around 2013 when I bought my first beginner DSLR camera (the Nikon D3200 with the kit lenses Nikon 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 and Nikon 55-200mm f4-5.6). I quickly upgraded my 2 kit lenses to Nikon 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6 lens and Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 to give me more flexibility with the zoom lengths. I then added another lens to my kit, the Nikon 105mm F/2.8 Macro because I wanted to capture close-ups of ladybirds, dragonflies, and butterflies. My photography hobby started to become more of a passion during the March 2020 Covid lockdown when I started taking pictures of my garden birds. I set up my camera on a tripod in the garden, a few metres from the bird feeder. I would then hide in the house, so the birds did not get spooked, and trigger the camera with a remote shutter release when one landed in the
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right spot. Using this method, I was amazed at the detail that I was able to capture – I was hooked! This progressed into going to local parks and nature reserves to capture more species of birds. I soon discovered that the Nikon 70-300mm lens was not able to reach far enough so I invested in the Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Contemporary lens. Using this lens really opened up what I was able to photograph and still get the level of detail that I was craving after my back garden pictures. Over the next months, I was able to capture pictures of birds I had never realised were all around us, such as Long-tailed Tits, Treecreepers and Nuthatches. I was especially keen at the time to photograph woodpeckers which are very easy to find by following their distinctive knocking sounds. However, they always seemed to be way above me in the tops of trees which never gave me a nice shot. This led to me booking my first hide experience in Lincolnshire. It gave me some amazing pictures that I would have struggled to get any other way. Since my first hide experience, I have since been to several more to capture animals such as kingfishers, badgers, kestrels, buzzards, foxes, and barn owls. My most recent change in kit happened after photographing birds in flight. This is one of those times where the advantage of digital cameras can be used to capture lots of shots, one after another, in an attempt to get that perfect action shot. However, I found I
BEHIND-THE-COVER - WITH CATHERINE BALDWIN
‘During the March 2020 Covid-19 lock-down, I started taking pictures of my garden birds. I would trigger the camera with a remote shutter release. Using this method, I was amazed at the detail that I was able to capture - I was hooked!’ was maximising the camera’s picture buffer and had to stop and wait for it to catch up. I upgraded my camera to the Nikon D500 – this was able to take more shots per second than my old one, and had a buffer able to keep up.
What is your favourite step in planning an image? Is it the planning, preparation, shoot day, post-production, or something else entirely?
For my next camera, I would like one of the new mirrorless kits but need to wait for the technology to come down in price a bit.
I love everything involved from planning the shoot, to taking the pictures but I especially love the post-production.
What inspired you to get into the creative industry, was there a specific reason or role model that inspired you to take this career path?
When taking pictures, I usually do not try and frame the shot on the day, instead focusing on my subject and leaving plenty of space around it. During editing, you can frame the picture perfectly. Often you can make multiple different edits of the same picture, for example, a complete picture of the subject or a close-up of its face.
It was a trip to Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire Coast that inspired me to get into photography. I was in awe of the puffins, which are still one of my favourite birds. I really wanted to photograph them on the cliff edges and potentially in flight, if possible. Bempton Cliffs is a wonderful place and the closest place to Lincolnshire to photograph Puffins, Gannets, Razorbills and Guillemots. It was not until a few years later when I went to the Farne Islands, off the Northumberland Coast near Seahouses, that I finally got that ‘Puffin in flight’ image. Oh, and nine-hundred other Puffin pictures in the one hour I was on the island– I might be slightly obsessed with them! Your cover image is beautiful, what was the story of this shot? Has it always been an aspiration to capture this species? I attended a Harvest Mouse Workshop in Lincolnshire and there was a fabulous set-up so I could capture the mice on natural stems in front of a neutral background. Harvest mice are a hard species to see in the wild, let alone take a picture of them, so attending a workshop to photograph them was something I had been wanting to do for a while. They are incredibly cute, and you can get some amusing poses from them to capture. What is the story behind your front cover, and what was the process to get there? I had mostly been taking pictures of birds and animals at zoos, notably red pandas. I saw this workshop and thought it was something a bit different. I took several images of harvest mice on the day, but this one stood out as something special. What was your favourite part of this shot, and what contributed to the success of the outcome for you?
Another trick I have learned more recently is to select all the picture backgrounds and remove some, or all, of the colour from them. This really makes the subject stand out and is especially good for creating canvas pictures. Sometimes the final crop of a shot ends up nothing like you imagined when taking the shot. One of the best feelings you can get from editing a picture is turning a mediocre-looking photo into something amazing. I use Adobe Photoshop and Topaz DeNoise AI to edit my photographs. Is there a specific species in the world that you have always wished to capture a photo of? If so, why is that the case? Kingfishers are one of my favourite birds that I have captured. I have photographed them on numerous occasions and I never get bored of photographing them. I was lucky enough to photograph one at a local park and he just sat there posing for everybody to photograph, was not fazed by people walking by. The species that I would love to capture, that I have not captured yet, is a wild otter. I am planning to visit Monterey Bay in America where I hope to see Sea Otters. They are incredible animals that use a pebble to break open shellfish and clams. They store their favourite rock in one of their pockets under their arms. I would love to catch one with its pebble!
FOLLOW THE PHOTOGRAPHER
I used a fairly large aperture with the camera close to the subject in order to create a narrow depth of field. The most obvious effect of this was to blur the background drawing attention to the mouse. However, if you look closely, you will see that even parts of the mouse are slightly out of focus. The only part that is fully focused are the eyes, which gives them an intense quality. It makes it feel like the mouse has stopped what it was doing and has all its attention on you, the viewer.
Catherine is an amateur wildlife photographer, based in Lincolnshire, England. Catherine started her photography journey during the March 2020 lockdown in the UK - and began taking images of her garden birds.
In your opinion, what is your favourite part of this shot? How do you feel it stands out from your other images?
Follow Catherine over on instagram at Instagram: @cat.b_2.0
This was my first time photographing a native British animal other than birds, I love the pose as it reminds me of a Koala hugging a tree. I think it stands out with its black eyes staring straight at the camera. Like it was ready for its close-up.
This is a private account, but Catherine does accept follow requests, so feel free to follow!
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BEHIND-THE-COVER - WITH CATHERINE BALDWIN
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BEHIND-THE-COVER - WITH CATHERINE BALDWIN
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BEHIND-THE-COVER - WITH CATHERINE BALDWIN
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BEHIND-THE-COVER - WITH CATHERINE BALDWIN As this is featured in our Hidden Britain Issue, what is your favourite aspect of the British Isles? I love visiting the Lake District, it is such a beautiful place with the vast number of lakes, mountains and wildlife. I have been several times and is a good place to visit for waterfall pictures. If I had to focus on the hidden aspect though, it would have to be all the varieties of common birds that are around us. If it was not for my photography passion, I would never have known they were there, and I am so grateful that they are. What equipment did you use to shoot this shot and what is your go-to camera body and lenses? I used a Nikon D3200 with a Nikon 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. My go-to camera body is my Nikon D500 and lenses Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 and Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Contemporary. Let us into a secret, were there any challenges that arose on this shoot, and how did you overcome them? Harvest mice are very fast-moving! They do not stay still for long so that was challenging. I had to shoot handheld to react quickly. What advice would you offer to someone who is interested in pursuing a career or hobby in wildlife photography? I have found that you need a lot of patience with wildlife photography. I once spent a whole day waiting for an 8-minute Kingfisher visit (but it was a fabulous 8 minutes). Wildlife is unpredictable but if you are patient enough, you can gain incredible photographs. Local parks and nature reserves are excellent places to see a wide variety of species, and with every visit, you will see something different. Hides seem expensive, but they can be the best way to acquire the animals you are after without disturbing them. Do not get hung up on needing the highest level of equipment, everyone believes that better equipment yields better results. While the latest features like tracking make it easier, it is the technique that gives the results, and the technique takes practice. Get out and shoot, understand what you are doing, and learn from the bad shots. The more you shoot the better your technique, the better your pictures. What projects are you working on next, and is there anything you can share with us on what you are working on moving forward? I am planning on visiting Derbyshire to try long exposures on waterfalls. I have bought myself an Urth ND1000 filter that I am looking forward to trying out at Lumsdale Falls in Matlock. I have not really done much long exposure, so this is a new skill for me to learn. I am also planning to photograph Red Squirrels in Hawes, North Yorkshire Dales where a photographer has set up some amazing hides of capturing them in their natural woodland habitat. I am also going to try to get some water reflection shots along with jumping shots. He has an amazing set-up where you can capture the squirrels jumping towards you and hopefully capture some mid-air manoeuvres. We do not get red squirrels in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire Dales is the closest place to photograph them in natural surroundings. Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, Catherine. We are sure the readers of Conker Nature Magazine will love learning about your journey as a photographer and your story behind the cover.’
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Northern Gannets & fight against pollution Photographer: Scott Duffield Instagram: scott.duffield.photography Facebook: www.facebook.com/Scott.duffield.photography Website: www.scottduffieldphotography.pixieset.com
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PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE
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The Northern Gannet is the largest of the gannet family and breeds in several large colonies here in the UK. Historically people would catch them or raid nests for food & although this practice has stopped they now face a new threat from plastic pollution. Added to this sequence you can see a nesting patch on the cliffs of East Yorkshire that is riddled with discarded fishing nets and various other plastic items. Whilst this doesn’t look to be an immediate threat they often get entangled in these nets when landing or taking off which can lead to starvation & drowning if entangled when at sea. This is particularly heartbreaking as Northern Gannets are monogamous meaning they mate for life.
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PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE
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PHOTOGRAPY FEATURE
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PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE
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PHOTOGRAPY FEATURE
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MAIN FEATURE - LAST OF THE ICE GIANTS
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LAST OF THE
ICE GIANTS The British Isles were once a land of giants. With the sizeable comeback of the Bison to Britain, can a region so highly developed by humans, and so intrinsically connected to the quaint and pastoral wildlife, ever truly connect with such a shattering of its natural norms? To find out, writer Matthew Walsh is travelling four-hundred miles east of Britain. To the last placed he’d expect to find such magnificent wildlife. The heartland of Germany’s industrial age. North-Rhine Westphalia. Written by Matthew Walsh
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis-Jäger ©Neanderthal Museum
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Wilder Blean Calf copyright: Donovan Wright | Kent Wildlife Trust
MAIN FEATURE - LAST OF THE ICE GIANTS
Left: Copyright Wilder Blean | Donovan Wright Above : Copyright The Rein in North-Rhine Westphalia | Dominik Ketz
The comeback is on
T
he British Isles were once a land of giants. Not the giants that so often adorn the Celtic and Nordic myths that have flooded the shores of this archipelago, but real, tangible giants. Looking east across the North Sea to Scandinavia is to take a glimpse into these islands’ own larger-thanlife natural history. The brown bears (Ursus arctos), grey wolves (Canis lupus), and lynx (Lynx lynx) that stalk the snowy wilds of modern Norway, Sweden and Finland among others, once called Britain their hunting ground. Colossal herbivores such as elk (Alces alces) would have browsed the vegetation of a British forest and in some instances been joined by the even larger and misleadingly named Irish elk (Megalocerus giganteus). Today, only these giant deer’s cousins wander the fields and woodlands of these islands, the red deer (Cervus elaphus). This, the largest land mammal Great Britain now has to offer, stands a little over half the height of its ancient relatives (The Mammal Society, 2019), with a rack (a complete set of antlers) averaging less than a quarter the size of the long-vanished Irish elk (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018). As for terrestrial predators (those on land), the largest left is the conflictingly beloved and maligned European badger (Meles meles) (The Wildlife Trusts, 2019), not a patch on the scale of a quarter-tonne brown bear. These are hardly the beasts of centuries past. From the drastic change in climate brought about by the most recent ice age, as with the Irish elk (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018), to hounding human persecution, as with the eighteenth-century decimation of the wolves (The Wildlife Trusts, no date), a number of factors are to blame for the historic shrinkage of UK wildlife. A shrinkage is seen both in physical scale and population numbers. Recently, however, Britain has seen a shake-up in its diminutive natural order. A long-lost giant has made a triumphant return. And a woodland in the south-east now resounds with the earthquaking hooves of a bygone era. Thought to have vanished from Britain along with the last ice of the Pleistocene time period, Europe’s most recent ice age (approximately 1.8 million to 11,000 years ago), great, woolly herbivores have returned for a dramatic encore. And no, not mammoths. Bison are back. The wisent or European bison (Bison bonasus) is Europe’s largest land mammal (Rewilding Europe, 2021). A woodland and grassland dweller with a range once stretching from France to the Volga in modern day Russia (Kuemmerle et al. 2011; Kerley et al. 2012; Bocherens et al. 2015, in Weçek et al., 2016), the heftiest bulls can reach two metres tall at the shoulder. A one-tonne mountain of bovine muscle (Berlin Zoo, no date). Though a close relative of the famed American bison (Bison bison), the two species can be noticeably separated on appearance with the wisent appearing leaner, almost lankier than its incredibly stocky and iconic cousin from across the pond. With such a sizeable animal making a comeback, can a region so highly developed by humans, and so intrinsically connected to its quaint and particularly pastoral wildlife, ever truly connect with such a shattering of its natural norms? To find out I am travelling four-hundred miles east of Britain. Strangely, into the last place I would expect to find such magnificent wildlife. The heartland of Germany’s industrial age. North-Rhine Westphalia.
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Down in the valley There is a quiet that washes through the valley. It wanders the slopes and hushes through the trees, now tinged with the vibrance of mid-Autumn. It is tranquil. A postcard of autumnal central Europe, with soggy fallen leaves underfoot, a spectral mist rising from the woodland canopy and a gentle drizzle prickling my cheeks. I find myself wandering in a perplexing place. I am standing on foreign soil, for the past few days I have been surrounded by a language that is not my own, yet to my ears the name of this place has a familiar ring. This is the Neander Valley. For millennia it has been meticulously snaked through the German countryside by the river Düssel, a babbling branch of the mighty, and mightily famous, Rhine in the country’s north-west. Reading this, the name may now be becoming more familiar with you too.
‘Whether you realised it or not, since the mid-nineteenth century, this valley has been a household name. It’s a name held proudly aloft on the sign of the nearby train station at which I have arrived from Düsseldorf. Neanderthal.’
Such are the mysterious and conflicting habits of natural history, the ice of the Pleistocene that took with it the bison of Britain also left behind the embers of modern humans. Embers that were soon to be stoked into a global inferno of migration, invention, industrialisation and domination. It is precisely this striving for development that led to quarrying the valley in 1856, where workers unearthed the skeletal remains of what would turn out to be one of our closest ancestral relatives (Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, 2010). These long-vanished Neanderthals were exactly what brought me here as I stumbled across the familiar-looking name while perusing maps and planning a trip to literally anywhere in Europe for a post-Covid escape. But these humans of the ice age were not here alone. And neither am I. As I wander through the calming woods and the Düssel murmurs by the tread of my boots, I come across a sight that history had tried to ensure I would never see. A herd of tarpans (Equus ferus ferus). The blue-grey and shaggy coated horses are unassuming as they crowd around a feeding stack of hay. Nothing is peculiar here. In fact, I would argue tarpans are unspectacular, their drab appearance blending seamlessly with the weather this late in the year. They are smaller and stockier than the typical domestic horse and nothing on the immaculate appearance of a racehorse. For one exceptional reason however, seeing this unremarkable horse with my own eyes becomes mind-blowingly special. Tarpans have been extinct for a century. And yet here I am, standing just an arm’s length and a wire fence away from half a dozen champing horses. Under normal circumstances, this sight could be put down to misidentification, but not here. Here they are real in every sense. This is the Ice Age Wild Park (Eiszeitsliche Wildgehege the signs read in native German) a sixty-four-acre window into the world across which the Neanderthals strode.
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Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Ausschnitt) copyright: Fundort Gibraltar copyright: Neanderthal Museum
The name is no coincidence. This site is where Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) were first discerned as a species of their own.
FEATURE - LAST OF THE ICE GIANTS
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Tarpane Wildgehege copyright: Neanderthal Museum Eiszeitliches Wildgehege Auerochsen
FEATURE - LAST OF THE ICE GIANTS
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‘Aurochs (Bos primigenius), considered to be the ancestor of domestic cattle and by (Rewilding Europe 2013) as “the most important animal in the history of mankind”. ’
Into the Ice Age In 1935, less than a hundred years after the bones of that seminal Neanderthal were blasted from the earth, a group of entrepreneurial conservationists, the Neanderthal Nature Conservation Society (NNCS) saw an opportunity and seized it (Neanderthal Museum, 2020). They transported this valley back in time. All the way to the last Ice Age. While not possible to bring our late cousins back to roam and hunt in these woodlands, the NNCS has succeeded in returning some of the animals they would have shared the world, perhaps even the valley itself, with before they passed on to history books and museum exhibits around 40,000 years ago. Of these returning animals, the herd of tarpans are just the first I encounter. Further around the mile and a half of damp trails, on a steep, open hillside, is an even more primal herd, not of horses this time, but of cattle. These are aurochs (Bos primigenius), considered to be the ancestor of domestic cattle and by (Rewilding Europe 2013) as “the most important animal in the history of mankind”. As a result, the aurochs is a true giant of natural history. Standing a little larger than the typical farmyard cow, this German hillside herd are the colour of strong coffee, with muscular bodies and the forward-facing horns of a Spanish bull, each set easily measuring a metre or so from point to point. Despite their importance to both the natural history of the continent and the history of humankind itself, the last free aurochs met its end in Poland in 1627 (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019). After generations of hunting, the wild aurochs were gone. Sadly, this three-century gap between their extinction and the founding of the Ice Age Wild Park, means that the wild cattle I see before me are not truly aurochs in a genetic sense and nor are the tarpans I encountered earlier. Instead, they stand before me now as the product of an ever-expanding area of genetic conservation called back-breeding. Back-breeding is a fairly simple conservation concept; take closely related breeds or species and selectively breed for the traits of the target animal (Shapiro, 2016), in much the same way crops are genetically modified for characteristics such as yield and disease resistance. This method of course means that the species, in its exact and purest genetic form, will never return to the wilds. It does mean, however, that an animal with exceptionally similar physical and behavioural traits can fill the ecological niche (the part of, or role within, an ecosystem that a species fills) left behind by a species’ extinction. Although these two species are a miracle of modern conservation genetics, I find myself more interested in another. And no back-breeding was needed for the Ice Age Wild Park’s third and final inhabitant. I continue my walk in the rain. Climbing and sinking into valleys, I marvel at the herds of animals I should never have seen. I begin to wonder intensely about how this place would have been millennia ago. And then I see it. A sight far more familiar than an aurochs or a tarpan. It’s a cave painting. I look closer. It is not a real one, only a mock-up, but one painted onto a waist-high rock by the side of the trail to invoke the prehistoric personality of the valley. It has a look of the paintings from Lascaux, the world-famous site of palaeolithic (Stone Age) art in southwestern France, with primal linework. It appears almost scribbled, though the shape is
unmistakable. The painting is of a cow, or at least something like a cow, but with peculiar proportions. Its shoulders are almost one half as high again as its rump. On its cubic head are placed a pair of small, inwardly and upwardly curved horns, its fur is painted russet brown. Undoubtedly, this is a bison. Beyond the painting, a sign adorned with the word ‘wisent’ tells me I have reached their enclosure. The departure and return of the wisent To the detriment of the wisent, being big and bovine is not a good combination of traits when humans are about. For centuries, herds of these large, lumbering cows, proved an irresistible target for game hunters. In more recent centuries, occupying soldiers of Eastern Europe during the First World War found the wisent equally as irresistible to put at the end of a rifle (Rewilding Europe, 2021). Excessive hunting was, however, not the only threat faced by the wisent. As with many large, nomadic mammals, the rapid fragmentation of their habitat due to the dense human development and, in no small part, to the rampant destruction of the continent in the First World War also aided their population decline. Hunting and habitat loss would prove to be a lethal combination. Just a year after the war ended, in 1919, the Lowland population of wisents - the herds of Poland, Romania and much of Eastern Europe - was gone. The very last of these massive animals lost their fight for wild survival at the hands of hunters in the Caucasus mountains beyond the Black Sea in 1927 (Rewilding Europe, 2021). With a painful twinge of tragic poetry, this was exactly threehundred years after the last aurochs. It is hard to find positives in such a horrific episode of European natural history, but the closing of this chapter in the story of the wisent is drenched with an ironic ‘luck’ of the time in which it happened. By this point in the twentieth century, Europe had developed a fondness for menageries and zoos, across which survived fifty-four captive individual wisents (Weçek et al., 2016). Believed to have expanded from an original “founding population” of just twelve, this tiny group, in both numbers and reportedly in size, proved to be Noah’s Ark for the wisent. From twelve to fiftyfour, European bison now number in excess of five thousand wild individuals (Raczyński, 2014, in Weçek et al., 2016) and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (2006) assesses their population trend as “increasing”, even downgrading the once extinct-inthe-wild species to a conservation status of “vulnerable”. It is an achievement bordering on miraculous in the world of wildlife conservation. A miracle that posits a short but loaded question: how? Breeding of the species was managed meticulously by organisations committed to its survival in order to maintain genetic viability (a characteristic needed to ensure a species can survive and reproduce unaided), and, almost thirty years later, the first wisents were returned to the Białowieża Forest.
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Again, this magnificent animal’s troubled story turns poetic as it is thought that this forest, now a UNESCO World Heritage site on the Polish-Belarusian border, was the final resting place of the Lowland wisent population (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, no date). This is where the book had closed on the European bison, and where the sequel was now to be written for Europe’s largest land mammals.
Although I will not be seeing them today, the wisents here are a prime example of Europe’s determination with the species. The plans for the Ice Age Wild Park ensure that in the future, returning here will bring with it views of a larger, healthier herd, and perhaps even future wild releases. It is all part of a collective determination that has been proven to work before, and we can look across to America for hope.
In the Ice Age Wild Park, the wisent herd is held on a veritable pedestal. The reserve’s only “pure” Ice Age species, they are protected by a Jurassic Park-esque electric fence, with a luxurious-looking refuge area available for them to shelter from the more miserable days. They are given the largest roaming area on the reserve and visitors can even make use of a purpose-built platform to get the best view. The view for me, however, is empty. The paddock that stands ahead is simply grass and trees. No herd walks here, there are no grazing mothers or nursing calves, and I am not hearing the bellow of a heated bull, just quiet grass and a visiting heron.
Back from the brink
As I walk the surrounding path, hoping to have perhaps just missed a few individuals sheltering from the drizzle among the thin trees, a sign both sinks and lifts my spirits. The enclosure is to remain empty for now. The sign, after a quick translation, informs me of the District of Mettmann’s plans to build a new stable for the “resumption of wisent breeding”. The animals of the Ice Age Wild Park here in north-western Germany are what could be referred to as ‘semi-free ranging’. They possess the ability to graze and browse at their leisure in a mix of natural habitats, however, their range is restricted, and they are protected from predation by fences, the animals are also tagged and sometimes fed supplementarily. The tarpans are not even in their natural habitat here. Originating from the vast steppe grasslands of central Eurasia, a narrow, tree-laden valley would likely not do to sustain a healthy natural population. And as for the aurochs, the complete genetic viability of the resurrected species still remains a future aim in projects such as the Taurus Foundation’s Tauros Programme (Rewilding Europe, 2013).
Yellowstone Grey Wolf | copyright: Mike Darter
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Icons of the American West, adorning state flags, having cities named after them, presenting on the logos of government departments, a glorious image of Native American idolatry, the American bison was a wide-ranging, revered and stunning creature. Before European arrival, they are even thought to have numbered some thirty-million individuals. ‘Catastrophic’ doesn’t come close to describing the decline of the American bison in this time period though. Yet, again through gritted teeth, the species was lucky. Thankfully, it hadn’t succumbed completely in the wild as its European cousin had. From a range once stretching from north-south and east-west across almost the entire continent, now only pockets remained. European-American expansion westward and government policies designed to maliciously disrupt the way of life of indigenous peoples who depended on the bison ensured less the species’ decline and more its near-complete collapse. By 1884, just 325 American bison remained. (National Park Service, no date). With thanks to the foresight of determined indigenous populations and of the enterprising conservationists of the time, somehow the bison butted back. One such place in which the bison regained footing was one of the world’s now most iconic conservation areas, the Yellowstone region. By purchasing and raising privately owned bison in the early twentieth century, managers of the Yellowstone National Park were able to turn the fortunes of the region’s just twenty-four remaining wild bison into a wealth of around 1300 individuals by
by the 1950s (National Park Service, 2016a). A population expansion more than fifty-fold. The number across the country now stands closer to 30,000 (National Park Service, 2016b). It is a number that still lies a thousand times below pre-western expansion levels, but it remains as one of the most significant and inspiring revivals in the history of practical conservation. Keys to success This act of returning a species to an area in which it historically ranged is known as ‘reintroduction’. Reintroduction itself is then a feeder of a greater conservation initiative known as ‘rewilding’, the act of restoring an ecosystem back to its natural order. And an enormous driver in the act of thoroughly rewilding an area is the presence of what is known as keystone species. Keystone species have an incredibly apt name. These are the animals that play the most important roles in a given ecosystem. Although all animals are important in their functions, each filling its own niche, keystone species are animals on whose presence the health of an entire ecosystem can hang. Much as their name suggests, removing the keystone causes the whole structure to become unstable and the smallest external impact can cause total collapse or structural change. Learning about perhaps one of the most noteworthy, or certainly famous, impacts of a keystone species requires us to cross the Atlantic once again, to the land of the American bison, and another reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park, that of the grey wolf. As is becoming a theme of keystone species extinctions, the 1920s also saw the end of the last wolves in Yellowstone. The formerly abundant canines had been excessively hunted as both pests and prizes for half a century and finally succumbed to local extinction in 1926. No one had anticipated the impact this would have on the region’s environmental health. Possibly the greatest beneficiary of this eradication was the park’s elk (Cervus canadensis) – sometimes called wapiti to avoid confusion with the European elk, known as moose in North America. The wapiti population boomed once the wolves, their foremost predator, had vanished. The species had broken almost entirely free of natural checks and, as herbivores, the wapiti plundered and pillaged the environment of its vegetation. One of the world’s largest deer, some bulls being able to reach almost half a ton, the wapiti degraded the habitat with terrifying ease. From this, concerns for the welfare of the Yellowstone ecosystem arose as soon after the wolves’ disappearance in the 1930s. Though it wasn’t until 1995, nearly seventy wolf-free years later, that the valleys of Yellowstone National Park once again echoed with howls (National Park Service, 2016c). From a scientific and environmental perspective, this reintroduction of a keystone species has been seen as a resounding success. Since the first wolves arrived, transplanted from Canada’s Jasper National Park in 1995, the wapiti have returned to their historic behaviours. The fear of being hunted by a hungry wolfpack keeps them closer to the treeline and limits their grazing in the open valleys of the National Park. This has led to claims that the reintroduction of wolves has led not only to changes in the living world of Yellowstone but the physical world too. Less grazing in river valleys means more and healthier vegetation along banks. In turn, this means rivers are less susceptible to erosion, river health improves, and more species
move into the healthy ecosystem. Animals such as beavers health improves, and more species move into the healthy ecosystem. Animals such as beavers (Castor canadensis) and birds return and modify the habitat further (Frey, 2018). The whole natural region benefits. From the altered perspective of reintroducing the hunted rather than the hunter, the wisent is an equally vital species as the wolf. While always unintentional, the presence of such a colossal animal is bound to alter any habitat it encounters. Something as simple as the sheer scale of the wisent is of benefit to its natural environment. In a woodland habitat, such as the Białowieża Forest the species once again calls home, a near one ton herbivore can’t simply move unhindered through the undergrowth as a small mammal would. By trampling undergrowth and breaking deadwood trees, wisents open space for new growth. A wallowing behaviour, typical of both the American and European bison, also opens up vast patches of earth for new plant life to thrive as the animals thrash and roll, revealing bare soil to the sun and rain. Additionally, and as a general rule of thumb, the bigger the animal the bigger the diet, and a hefty diet means hefty waste. Wisent dung thus becomes a valuable method of dispersal for seeds and nutrients throughout its habitat. And, in the end, when a wisent dies, its colossal carcass provides nourishment for scavengers and returns its high levels of nutrients and energy to the land on which it lived (ARK Rewilding Nederland, 2018). Keystone species provide for their ecosystem in both life and death. It can be argued then that the reintroduction of these keystone species is one of the most vital aspects of any habitat or ecosystem restoration project. These species are nature’s accidental engineers, bringing the world around them back to its most natural state, opening doors and corridors for natural wildlife movement, naturally degrading and rejuvenating habitats, curing the ailments of human meddling. This is rewilding. A European revival The inspiration of the great American revivals of wolves and bison can undoubtedly bolster positive feelings across the European continent towards the fortunes of its own bison species. Beginning with those two wisents reintroduced to their native Białowieża, the wisent rewilding craze has swept the continent. But as becomes the case with many conservation projects, especially ones involving such an obtrusive animal as the European bison, conflicts arise. Further north of the Neander Valley, remaining in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, the Wisent-Welt-Wittgenstein Association, a decade ago, released a small herd at Rothaarsteig. Reports in 2018 told of the released herd wandering further than expected, damaging beech plantations and angering local farmers into bitter legal disputes (Parth, 2018). These conflicts of interest, particularly among agricultural landowners, are common in rewilding projects. The wolves of Yellowstone have been a prime example of such a controversial release. In some instances, wolves have been shot after wandering beyond the protective (albeit invisible) border of the National Park, leading to the Human Society of the United States to push for a buffer zone beyond the park itself to help protect the species (Block, 2020). Despite the conflicts of Germany’s reintroduced herd, heading west to the Netherlands bears more good news for the species. The Kraansvlak Wisentproject, located in the Zuid-Kennemerland National Park along the country’s central coastline, released its own herd in 2007.
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Transplanted from the wisent wellspring of those Eastern European forests, three bison arrived, strangely, on the Dutch sand dunes in the spring (Wisentproject Kraansvlak, no date). Over the succeeding years, this population would be supplemented once more with a further three individuals and the project could begin in earnest. Within the decade, the new Dutch wisent herd would go on to boast in excess of twenty-five new births across more than seven-hundred acres of protected sand dunes and open landscape. The Kraansvlak project shows just how resilient this species truly is, back from the brink and now thriving on the beaches of the Netherlands. A comeback for the ages. It is precisely this project that is cited as inspirational by the Kent Wildlife Trust, now wardens to the UK’s own burgeoning bison rewilding project (Kent Wildlife Trust, no date a). Britain’s Wilder Woods So where does Britain lie in this network of wisent revival? Britain is new to the bison game, but the game being played on this isle is a monumental one. Unlike much of Europe, those countries such as Germany and Poland who were bison stomping grounds until much more recent history, Britain has been without them for thousands of years. In fact, the species in question, B. bonasus, likely never actually walked across Britain. Rather, only a close relative, Bison schoetensacki, known as the forest bison, called the island home back in the Pleistocene period (Rewilding Britain, no date). Sadly, the forest bison has not been afforded the same resurrective powers of its cousin, passing into the annals of extinction likely more than 100,000 years ago. Knowing this, it can be argued that introducing the European bison to British shores is not re-wilding at all but rather simply wilding. Britain has been inhabited, developed, invaded, burned down, rebuilt, farmed and deforested for thousands of years. It has always been an island that has served its people well. Now, though, we know this to be at the expense of its wildlife and wild spaces. Since Britain took the first steps into mass industrialisation in the nineteenth century, almost half (some 47 percent) of its biodiversity has vanished, the Guardian reported in 2021. The south-east of England seems to have been particularly hard hit. The location of the capital and largest urban area, London, as well as a region of particularly intense agriculture, it is no wonder this part of the country has suffered much worse losses than the fringes of the Scottish mainland or remote Wales. The history of human development in the British Isles prompts huge questions as to whether or not true wilderness has ever stood here since the bison last roamed. Resultant of all this history and the implications it has for the island’s natural future, turning Britain to the wild side has gradually moved closer and closer to the forefront of wildlife and habitat conservation. But if turning a country lacking many of its former keystone species to the wild was to happen, then a compromise needed to be struck. For the forest bison, the presence of so few related species, unlike the aurochs’ heavily branched family tree, likely rules out backbreeding as a viable method of species revival. Hope remains strong, however, in the fact that Britain’s long-gone forest bison and the modern wisents of Europe are, for conservation purposes, incredibly similar animals. With both being genetically closely related, herbivorous, heavy-set mammals, the wisent would be the perfect candidate for a British rewilding project. But where would such colossal animals reside on this overpopulated island? Luckily, the Kent Wildlife Trust, working with the Wildwood Trust, had just the solution in 2020.
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Inspired by the successes on the continent, the Kent Wildlife Trust decided upon West Blean Woods, a nature reserve near Canterbury, Kent as the site in which to introduce the bison. West Blean is stated by the Kent Wildlife Trust (no date b) to be one of the largest areas of ancient woodland in the UK, conveniently located in the hard-hit south-eastern region of England. It would be the perfect place. Ancient woodland as defined by the Woodland Trust (2020), is “woodland that has persisted since 1600 in England”, an environment that has grown and adapted alongside Britain’s native wildlife. West Blean Woods, however, was previously a managed woodland of timber production, leaving behind the scars of commercial plantation in the form of non-native conifers, species that provide very little in terms of ecosystem support. It could be easy to suggest a simple idea for the conservation management of these woods by removing the plantation forest and replacing it with native trees, literally shifting the deadwood. While the theory is sound, though, practice falters. This approach to conservation management is extremely intensive, coming with a package of heavy labour hours and heavier machinery, not to mention the financial costs and sheer length of time taken for a new forest to establish itself. Reintroduction is certainly a more confident method of conservation progress. From bison and wolves across America to wisents in Europe, there is compelling evidence of re-wilding working, and working well. These successes are a start and although they have far from converted this human world to a wild one, they have done something much more significant in opening that rewilding door and making sure there is no good reason to close it. Closer to home, the altogether successful reintroduction of Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber), another keystone species hounded to near extinction by humans for its winter-warm fur and multiuse castoreum - a vanilla-scented substance once used commonly in perfumes and food, uniquely secreted by beavers – gives the UK cause for great hope. In Britain, the near extinction of the continental beaver became full-blown, with the large rodents being lost from the isles in the 1500s. Yet what the bison is to the forest and grassland, the beaver is to the river and waterway. The rodent’s intensely industrious nature and considerably impactful behaviours (dam building for instance) can massively effect ecosystems. They are a true keystone, and one we need. From this realisation, an official project in England’s southwest county of Devon followed a Scottish Beaver Trial in its release of the species back to UK habitation, and, as of 2020 the project is considered a success and to have been relatively conflict-free (RSPB, no date). Coming from the success of the beavers and the prospective success of the wisent, other species are being considered for a British encore. Talk of large predators such as the Eurasian wolf and lynx comes with vast benefits but once again are accompanied by intense conflicts. This made the bison an incredibly sensible next move for Britain’s conservation world as herbivores worry livestock farmers much less and in general garner more public support for arrival. And arrive they did. The first British bison since the Ice Age wandered into woods of Kent at 7am on July 18th, 2022, an ironically roaring hot summers day. Those three sets of thunderous hooves were an undeniably incredible step for the wilds of Britain. And then a miracle occurred. The all-female herd expanded from three to four.
Eurasian Beaver | copyright: BBC Studios
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Bison | copyright: Kent Wildlife Trust | WIlder Blean
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An event that hasn’t occurred in Britain since glaciers covered the peaks of Eryri/Snowdonia surprised Blean’s Bison Rangers that September. A calf greeted them one morning (Davis, 2022). Bison pregnancies, as with many prey species, are visibly undetectable. It’s an evolutionary tactic designed to prevent pregnant individuals from standing out from the crowd as being vulnerable to predators, and after millions of years of fine-tuning this tactic, it appears it can even fool conservationists. This feat of evolutionary trickery is just another massive positive for the future of the UK’s wisents. The herd was completed in late 2022 with a bull, and now it sits in its natural state, the project is well underway. Its full bison-powered steam ahead for Wilder Blean. First of the Ice Giants As I prepare to part ways with the Neander Valley, I take one last walk from the wisent enclosure to the spot that put this little valley into the history books. The drizzle is subsiding and the valley quietens even further and it hits me. This is where we found our relatives. This is where that individual, discovered by accident nearly two centuries ago, survived their days and breathed their last. They walked, hunted, slept, loved and lived in this valley. It becomes impossible not to ponder on how not one but two human species used to live alongside all these giant mammals. In a time where humans lived very much with wildlife rather than apart from it as we often do now, the great wisents thrived. Our relatives will never be seen again. Time pulled its old trick, the world changed, and the Neanderthal couldn’t keep pace. Nothing could be done for them. But the wisent made it. Once a window into the evolutionary progress of humans, this valley, deep in the shadow of industrial Germany, now gives a crystal-clear view into the progress of our ability to conserve.
outnumbers the invasive grey (Sciurus carolinensis), where pine martens (Martes martes) and Scottish wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris) dominate natural woodlands that outnumber lifeless plantations. Britain has proven it has the resources, the public support, and the passion for the natural world that is needed to support all of these projects. The wisents are just one of the first hefty steps on this journey. In them, Britain hasw a route back to a long lost wild. They will certainly not be the last of the ice giants. With thanks to the following organisations and photographers for image courtesies: BBC studios, NRW tourism, Neanderthal Museum, Kent Wildlife Trust at Wilder Blean and Donovan Wright, and Mike Darter.
Bison | copyright: Neanderthal Museum
Through a changing environment, from the Ice Age to the Stone Age to the Iron Age, it was the Industrial Age, the modern human age that saw the wisent meet its end in the wild. And it is humans who have saved them. Now these bison have a chance to save us, to save our damaged habitats and to save our dying species. Britain is increasingly susceptible to wildlife extinctions over the coming decades and we no longer have the privilege of being able to think small. Thinking big is all we have left and well, few things come bigger than a bison. Personally, I feel that little inspires a love for nature, habitats and species more than witnessing them for yourself. From a TV screen to a zoo or a wild close encounter, we are more impassioned to save the things we know. The Ice Age Wild Park is exactly this, a catalyst for the love of these species, species that, at one point, were threatened with only existing in the text of books. Wilder Blean will be the same for Britain. In these nascent stages of the Britain’s wilding journey, bison will be a colossal flagbearer for the wilding movement. Looking to the past, the story of the European bison is a lesson. Looking forward, it is a cause for immense positivity and hope. For the first time since the Neanderthals walked the land, a herd of wisent now rumble their way through the woodlands of Britain, they toss up earth and spread seeds and life-affirming nutrients. Just as importantly, they inspire awe. They educate and they impress. In 2022 alone, Rewilding Britain (2023) can celebrate success stories in everything from evidence of enormous public support to the release of the wisents to the legal protection of the new British beavers. A wild Britain is now a real possibility for the future. Perhaps talks of introducing wolves and lynx and bears may materialise, spring boarded by a wisent success. Perhaps moose will return one day. Picture a country in which the red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris)
FOLLOW THE WRITER + PHOTOGRAPHER Matthew Walsh is a nature and travel writer and natural world photographer from Yorkshire, UK. Previously longlisted for Bradt Guides’ New Travel Writer of the Year 2022, he has a background in wildlife conservation and animal behaviour and runs the travel and nature website Finding Earth. Follow Matthew and Finding Earth: Instagram: @mwalshwrites Photography Instagram: @matthewwalshphoto Twitter: @mwalshwrites Website: www.finding-earth.com
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The Nuthatch and the Blue Tit Photographer: Matthew Ryan Instagram: @matt_photography6 Location: London, United Kingdom
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The Yelnya Reserve Photographer: Kseniya Drahunova Instagram: @drahunova.ph Website tree: www.linktr.ee/drahunova Tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@drahunova.ph
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REWILDING IN NORTH UNITED KINGDOM Photographer: Victoria Haigh IG: @victoria_haigh_photography FB: www.facebook.com/victoriahaigh
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There are over 1 million Puffins (Fratercula arctica) in the UK. Puffins have a preferred meal of sand-eels, where they can sometimes hold more than 80 in their bill at a time fascinating!
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FEATURE
THE WONDROUS WILDERNESS OF
SKOMER ISLAND ‘Whether you’re looking to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life, seeking a largely-unspoiled island to explore for the day, or a fan of animals including puffins and seals, then there are few better places to visit than the special Skomer Island. Situated just off the coast of Pembrokeshire, Skomer Island is a National Nature Reserve which is managed by The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.’ Words and photographs by Emily Taylor
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Puffins (Fratercula arctica), nicknamed ‘Clowns of the sea’, due to their clown-like faces and huge, multicoloured bills. The Puffin’s beak changes colour during the year, from a dull grey in winter to an outrageous orange/red colour.
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FEATURE
‘W
hether you’re looking to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life, seeking a largely-unspoiled island to explore for the day, or a fan of animals including puffins and seals, then there are few better places to visit than the special Skomer Island. Situated just off the coast of Pembrokeshire, Skomer Island is a National Nature Reserve which is managed by The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales. The Island itself from the landing place to Skomer Head is approximately 4 miles and takes around 3 hours to complete wellknown as a wildlife haven - especially after it was featured on Sir David Attenborough’s Wild Isles series, Skomer is a 15-minute boat ride from Martin’s Haven between April and September, with booking highly advisable, especially during peak times. Having had a brief experience with puffins in Cornwall last year, I was keen to visit Skomer Island with my husband and children to hopefully get a closer look at these wonderful sea birds. The morning of our trip brought with it the sound of heavy rain, which caused us great concern that the boat would be cancelled. Thankfully, the trip went ahead - giving us a whole five hours to explore the island, equipped with suitable clothes, footwear and of course camera equipment. The experience begins on the boat itself, with the crew sharing some top facts while we looked back at the truly spectacular view of the Welsh coastline, and even spotted dolphins swimming, gannets fishing and puffins diving into the water. After a short safety talk in sight of three razorbills taking a rest on a nearby cliff face, we headed up 87 steps to begin our exploration already able to see the puffins flying back and forth, fishing and then returning to their burrows that honeycomb across the island. A volunteer told us that the island is home to the largest breeding population of more than 300,000 Manx sheerwaters. Given they’re targets of the great black-headed gull, they are nocturnal so likely to be hidden underground during the day. However, puffin sightings are much more common - something I was excited about, as were my children who watched with amazement at these charismatic birds, waddling around and busying themselves around the homes they inhabit between April and the end of July. After this, they’ll fly back off to sea, returning the next year to repeat the process with a new generation. Unlike many other species, Atlantic puffins are totally unfazed by humans - they’ve been known to untie people’s shoelaces and think nothing of walking right in front of you. While they’re not frightened, it’s still important to stick to the designated footpaths and not attempt to touch them, as this is their home and we should always respect that. Our visit fell in April, at which time the puffins had paired up and begun building nests which will be full of chicks by the end of June. From the landing place to Skomer Head is approximately four miles either way around the island: we headed up the track to South Haven and Captain’s Kite where there were plenty more puffins to see, as well as a rocky outcrop covered in small white Sea Campion flowers - the perfect backdrop to take plenty of pictures with my new Sigma 150-600mm lens. It was a delight to see them collecting bracken and foliage for their rests and rubbing their bills (a courtship display).
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FEATURE Bluebell shoots were starting to appear, and by May the valley will be a carpet of purple tones which I imagine will look even more beautiful set against the vivid turquoise of the sea and the clear blue of the sky. Bluebell shoots were starting to appear, and by May the valley will be a carpet of purple tones which I imagine will look even more beautiful set against the vivid turquoise of the sea and the clear blue of the sky. Luckily, the sun came out by mid-morning, enhancing the photography opportunities even further - although the island is so spectacular, I’d advise going whatever the weather! As well as puffins, we saw great black gulls, linnets, stonechats, meadow pipits, wrens, wheat ears, rock pipits and rabbits and oystercatchers. Then we made our way to The Wick where you could see the puffins asleep in their burrows (a highlight for my children) and relaxing alongside the rabbits. We were fascinated by how tame and friendly they are, completely full of character and also hilariously clumsy when they land. As we headed back to catch the boat to the mainland, it felt like the five hours had flown past and we could have easily stayed longer. A grey seal was spotted bobbing in and out of the water and spending a second basking on the cliff face in the sunshine. Then dolphins swam alongside the boat as we journeyed back. What an incredible day! As we headed back to catch the boat to the mainland, it felt like the five hours had flown past and we could have easily stayed longer. A grey seal was spotted bobbing in and out of the water and spending a second basking on the cliff face in the sunshine. Then dolphins swam alongside the boat as we journeyed back. What an incredible day! One of the most special things about Skomer is how unspoiled it is, a truly natural haven for the wonderful wildlife who call it home. There are no food outlets and strict rules about picnics are brought on and off the island - meaning there are no rats or other ground predators. It’s also asked that you stick to footpaths to avoid collapsing burrows, stay away from cliff edges, take all rubbish with you, and don’t bring your dog with you. The dedicated staff and volunteers not only ensure the island remains a sanctuary but also enhance the experience for visitors by sharing their knowledge and the ongoing work and research they are undertaking. Part of this work involves counting the puffins - and over 42,000 had been counted by the time we visited, the highest count since the 1980s. Their future looks promising, which really wouldn’t be possible without the dedication and protection of those involved in their protection. To encourage everyone to help monitor seabird populations (who’ve been so badly affected by climate change, pollution and overfishing), WWF, RSPB and The National Trust have teamed up to launch a campaign - visit www.saveourwildisles. org.uk to find out more and get involved.
FOLLOW THE WRITER + PHOTOGRAPHER Emily Taylor is a wildlife photographer, an avid walker, and a naturalist, based in the Midlands in England. Emily works to capture wildlife in their natural habitat and records all her sightings, particularly declining species, to conserve our British wildlife. Follow Emily over on instagram at Instagram: @capture_nature_emily_taylor
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Puffins usually pair up with the same partner as previous years, making them a monogamous species along with swans and albatrosses. However, in species like puffins which have to migrate to distant wintering grounds during the non-breeding season, very little is known about how mates maintain their pairbond. A study at Oxford University in 2017, found that there is a clear benefit for puffins to migrate together.
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BRITAIN’S MOST COMMON OWLS
Owls are most people favourite native bird species, often considered to be wise but elusive. Owls can easily be seen at Dawn and Dusk as the light levels are dark enough for prey to come of foraging but light enough for owls to hunt by. Here are the UK most common owls. Photographer: Scott Duffield Instagram: scott.duffield.photography Facebook: www.facebook.com/Scott.duffield.photography Website: www.scottduffieldphotography.pixieset.com
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ENDANGERED WILDLIFE BREEDING PROGRAM I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to photograph some of the UK most endangered animals, the Scottish wildcat & the Polecat at the British wildlife Centre where they breed and release endangered animals back in to the wild. Photographer: Scott Duffield Instagram: scott.duffield.photography Facebook: www.facebook.com/Scott.duffield.photography Website: www.scottduffieldphotography.pixieset.com
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WILD OBSERVER - THE 2023 WHITLEY AWARDS
The Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) recognised six outstanding conservationists with 2023 Whitley Awards for their work to protect wildlife and ecosystems in partnership with local communities, spearheading solutions to the key drivers of biodiversity loss around the world.
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Image: Copyright - Lucy Maina | Shavani Bhalla Kenya Samburu Species Lion Words by Whitley Awards Covered by Lucy Jane Morris
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FOLLOW THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Lucy Morris is a wildlife photographer, an ecologist, editor-in-chief and journalist. Lucy works extensively with organisations, aiming to inspire the public with wildlife education - whether it is internationally, locally, in the classroom, or in the outdoors. Instagram: @lucymorriswild
IMAGE: MICHAEL LAUBSCHER | SHIVANI BHALLA - KENYA SAMBURU SPECIES
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NEWS - THE 2023 WHITLEY AWARD WINNERS
IMAGE: YULIANA BEDOLLA 2023: MEXICO, NATIVIDAD
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hitley Fund for Nature (WFN) is a UK charity supporting grassroots conservation leaders in the Global South. Over 30 years it has channelled £20 million to more than 200 conservationists across 80 countries. An early pioneer in the sector, WFN was one of the first charities to channel funding directly to projects led by in-country nationals. Its rigorous application process identifies inspiring individuals who combine the latest science with communitybased action, to benefit biodiversity, climate and people. Kenya’s Dr Shivani Bhalla, a former Whitley Award winner, was separately honoured with the £100,000 Whitley Gold Award for her work with her team of Samburu warriors, elders and women to secure a future for lions in northern Kenya amid the worst drought in living memory. WFN Patron, HRH The Princess Royal, presented the awards to Shivani and the six new winners on 26 April at the Royal Geographical Society in a ceremony that also marked the 30th anniversary of the Whitley Fund for Nature, livestreamed to YouTube. WFN Trustee Sir David Attenborough said that the work of conservationists has never been more urgent: “We need the work
of Whitley Award winners to succeed, and we need to help them to whatever extent is possible.” – Sir David Attenborough.
The work of this year’s biodiversity champions illustrated the extensive roles conservationists now play in local communities as they take a lead in climate change mitigation by restoring forests and protecting globally important carbon stores. As part of their work to protect wildlife in their home countries, they are boosting livelihoods by creating green jobs and including women in these new opportunities. The winners took part in a series of events in London to celebrated their remarkable achievements for people, wildlife and climate, and to help them leverage the success of their Whitley Award win. In addition to the £40,000 they were individually awarded in project funding, the Whitley Fund for Nature provided each winner with networking opportunities, communications and speech training, and introduced them to a dedicated network of over 200 fellow awardwinning conservation leaders across more than 80 countries. Edward Whitley, Founder of the Whitley Fund for Nature said: “Recently, we have seen increased recognition that it is local people who are instrumental to long-term conservation success; the understanding of which informed our approach all those years ago, when we began supporting local conservation leaders to provide their effective, sustainable, and equitable solutions in their home countries. As many of the challenges we face as a planet have grown, so has our ambition and determination to support the extraordinary tenacity of our winners.”
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Dr Shivani Bhalla Wins Whitley Gold Award for Securing Future for Lions in Northern Kenya
“A huge threat to lions and all wildlife in this region, is the loss of the Samburu culture. If the culture is lost, we will lose our wildlife.”
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hitley Fund for Nature (WFN) presented its 2023 Gold Award to Dr Shivani Bhalla, a Kenyan conservationist whose work with her team of Samburu warriors, elders and women has helped the local lion population rise to a 15-year high. The success comes even amid the worst drought in living memory in the Horn of Africa which is escalating conflict between people and wildlife. Dr Shivani Bhalla, a past Whitley Award winner, was recognised this year in the 2023 Gold Award ceremony, for the work of her and her Ewaso Lion team. Presented by HRH Princess Anne at the Royal Geographical Society in London, seven of Dr Shivani’s team members took to the stage at the spectacular ceremony to address the 500-strong audience of supporters, donors and country Ambassadors to share in the power of community-led conservation, rounding out the milestone 30th Whitley Awards ceremony with a Samburu blessing for all conservationists worldwide. Lions are now more endangered than elephants or rhinos in Africa where they number just 20,000 and have disappeared from 92 percent of their historical range. Shivani, the Founder and Director of Ewaso Lions, and her team work to promote the coexistence of people and wildlife. With the funding, they will pioneer a transformational framework for locally-led conservation which will be rolled out worldwide. The grassroots project in the Ewaso ecosystem, northern Kenya, will build on momentum following the COP15 global treaty agreed at the UN’s Biodiversity Summit which recognises the role of local and indigenous peoples in safeguarding as much as 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity. Ewaso Lions has overseen a rise in the local lion population to more than 50 individuals last year from 11 before 2008. The team safeguards community land and monitors lion movements using traditional knowledge and modern technology. This saves about 250 livestock from lions annually in its 4,530km² remit. The Samburu people are semi-nomadic and measure wealth in livestock, typically cows and camels –which can be worth up to $1,000 each. Lions are increasingly coming into contact with livestock, threatening livelihoods, while the drier landscape and ongoing drought is exacerbating coexistence. Other threats include plans for large-scale infrastructure projects and disease, such as distemper and rabies.
“Safe space for lions is reducing. In order to survive alongside people, lions need thick bush to hide during the day. They are losing this vital habitat, making it extremely challenging for them and are increasingly becoming confined to smaller, isolated islands of thick bush.” The project aims to inspire a global movement to empower local leaders to define community-led conservation efforts by boosting the skills needed to fight mounting threats. It will build on the success of programmes including “Warrior Watch”, created in 2010 by Jeneria Lekilelei, then a young warrior and now Director of Community Conservation at Ewaso Lions. Warrior Watch encourages young warriors to become wildlife conservationists and protect lions. Samburu warriors travel on foot throughout the landscape tracking lions and alert nearby pastoralists to their presence to prevent livestock from being attacked. “Mama Simba,” is another dynamic women-led conservation initiative created by local Samburu women.
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The all-Kenyan team at Ewaso Lions where Dr Shivani Bhalla is Founder and Executive Director is sustaining wildlife, livestock and people by incorporating drought management into day-to-day efforts by digging for water – the lifeblood for a region which consists of an arid panorama of grasslands, acacia trees and scrubland. A community-led approach has been key to the success of the team which has seen the local lion population rise to a record high even as lions remain more endangered than elephants or rhinos in Africa. Shivani’s team at Ewaso Lions also took on a humanitarian role when the drought struck, providing food relief to more than 1,700 households and schools.
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IMAGE: MICHAEL LAUBSCHER | SHIVANI BHALLA - KENYA SAMBURU SPECIES
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IMAGE: ANTHONY OCHIENG | SHIVANI BHALLA - KENYA SAMBURU COMMUNITY
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The lions of Samburu are more solitary than those found in other parts of Kenya and live alongside pastoral communities outside of protected areas. They hide during the day and emerge at night to hunt. Shivani’s new programme will empower and train 150 community members across northern Kenya, as well as engage with 25 top global conservation leaders to develop a framework to be rolled out globally, with the aim of ensuring that conservation decision-making happens at the local level, while also deepening the cultural values of communities which have always lived alongside wildlife. Shivani said “We need to be investing in local leaders from all demographics who ultimately provide their own sustainable solutions to address the conservation challenges that are faced globally… I envision a future where with or without conservation projects, conservation will be a way of life. “My team and community are what inspire me every day. Every single time we see lion cubs or lions feeling safer in places where they were once not safe - we know that we are making a difference,” “Hearing lions at night is also what keeps us going.” IMAGE: ANTHONY OCHIENG | SHIVANI BHALLA - KENYA SAMBURU HEADSHOT
IMAGE: EWASO LIONS | SHIVANI BHALLA - KENYA SAMBURU SPECIES
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MEET THE WHITLEY WINNER Shivani was born and raised in Kenya and has a PhD from Oxford University. She has been active in big cat conservation in Kenya since 2002, establishing Ewaso Lions in 2007 which has grown to a team of 64 full-time employees – mostly made up of Samburu warriors. Ewaso Lions encompasses 3 national reserves and 11 community conservancies. Its mission is to put local people at the centre of all programmes to create a sense of pride over the landscape by working with elders, warriors, women and children. Winning a Whitley Award in 2014, WFN has helped Shivani to scale up her work through subsequent rounds of Continuation Funding. In 2023, she receives the charity’s top prize, the Whitley Gold Award. The Ewaso ecosystem through which the Ewaso Nyiro River runs consists of an arid panorama of grasslands, acacia trees and scrubland, much of which is vulnerable to persistent droughts affecting East Africa. The region is home to the third largest population of lions, cheetahs and wild dogs in Kenya and includes populations of elephants, Grevy’s zebra and reticulated giraffes. The ecosystem of Samburu, Isiolo and Laikipia Counties is one of the only places in northern Kenya where lion numbers are increasing outside protected areas. IMAGE: GABRIEL BUSH | SHIVANI BHALLA - THE WHITLEY AWARDS
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The vast steppe landscapes of Kazakhstan are a globally important carbon store and home to 95 percent of the world’s population of the Critically Endangered saiga antelope. Albert Salemgareyev will conduct research to better understand and resolve rising conflict between saiga and local herders over dwindling water resources, in a country at risk of water scarcity within a decade. The saiga is a keystone species of the Central Asian steppe whose population has rebounded to a record high, but this new conflict over water puts this global conservation success story at risk.
IMAGE: ALBERT SALEMGAREYEV | KAZAKHSTAN SPECIES SAIGA
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Kazakhstan’s Albert Salemgareyev Wins 2023 Whitley Award for Managing Saiga Antelope Boom
“The Saiga Antelope is a symbol of the Eurasian steppe for the nomadic people it shares its habitat with, and has been an important source of inspiration for centuries.”
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lbert Salemgareyev from Kazakhstan was recognised with a 2023 Whitley Award for his conservation work with the saiga antelope, a keystone species of the Central Asian steppe grasslands, whose population has rebounded to a record high. His project will address the emerging conflict between saiga and pastoralists amid a scarcity of water that could threaten this global conservation success story. Kazakhstan’s vast sprawling steppe landscapes are a globally important carbon store and home to 95 percent of the world’s population of the Critically Endangered saiga. In a spectacular comeback, the saiga now number 1.3 million individuals after falling to a low of 50,000 in 2006. A catastrophic bacterial infection subsequently wiped out over 200,000 individuals in just three weeks, in one of the most dramatic declines ever recorded for a mammal. Unique among antelopes for having large downward facing nostrils that both cool the extremely hot summer air and equally warm the freezing winter air, the saiga is potentially under threat again close to the country’s newest protected area as human-wildlife conflict flares. The areas around the 657,000-hectare Bokey Orda State Nature Reserve and Ashiozek State Nature Sanctuary contain important grazing grounds and water resources for the livestock of local pastoralists. This is leading to competition across the steppe landscapes with the migratory saiga that move in herds of tens of thousands and which also rely on the region’s freshwater resources, which they congregate near to give birth. Albert, who is Lead Specialist at the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK) has a history of success where his research has contributed to the creation of more than four million hectares of protected land across Kazakhstan, including the new sites of Bokey Orda and Ashiozek. Through this project, he will seek to understand the nature of the emerging conflict affecting the Ural saiga population and the estimated 300 pastoralists living in the landscape around the Bokey Orda and Ashiozek Protected Areas. Amid calls for hunting of saiga to resume to control rising populations, Albert and his team aim to drive consensus and find sustainable solutions in a new community approach for Kazakhstan to include all stakeholders: the pastoralists, staff of the Protected Area as well as local government and civil society organisations.
“Emerging human-wildlife conflict between saiga and local pastoralists and farmers is requiring an urgent attention, but the solutions are not easy or quick.” Kazakhstan’s vast western desert-steppe ecosystems are especially vulnerable to climate change. The country’s work to conserve and restore its steppe which spans 750,000 square kilometres was recognised by the United Nations in December as a World Restoration Flagship, one of only ten pioneering efforts to revive the natural world. However, anthropogenic and climate stresses are expected to contribute to significant water scarcity in Kazakhstan within a decade, according to the World Bank.
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IMAGE: ALBERT SALEMGAREYEV | KAZAKHSTAN SPECIES SAIGA
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Albert’s project will map the distribution and management practices of all major water resources that are vital for supporting life on the steppe and combine this with existing data on both livestock and saiga distribution in relation to those water resources. Focusing on 15 hotspots, Albert and his team will gather scientific evidence and consult with local stakeholders to better understand the conflict, and then build trust among pastoralists, Protected Area staff and local government in the data that has been gathered. Together, these stakeholders will co-design strategies for sustainable resource management, and share their findings widely to inform saiga conservation across Kazakhstan and into neighbouring countries. One of the oldest surviving species of “the mammoth fauna” that inhabited a vast area of cold steppes from the British Isles in the west to China in the east, saiga help revitalize the steppe by grazing steppe grasses, spreading plant seeds and moving nutrients through the landscape.
Albert is responsible for co-designing and coordinating fieldwork, conducting Saiga research, managing and analysing data, and cooperating with the Government of Kazakhstan by making new recommendations for protected areas and mitigation measures to reduce the impact of international border fences and infrastructure. Albert received his Masters degree in Nature Conservation in May 2023. IMAGE: ALBERT SALEMGAREYEV | KAZAKHSTAN FIELDWORK
IMAGE: GABRIEL BUSH | ALBERT SALEMGAREYEV THE WHITLEY AWARDS
The saiga survived the Ice Age and now global warming: “Surviving in difficult natural and climatic conditions allows saiga to remain the most important species in steppe, semi-desert and desert ecosystems,” according to Albert. “These ecosystems must be protected and restored, and their nature and natural resources used sustainably in the future.”
MEET THE WHITLEY WINNER Since 2008, Albert Salemgareyev has worked for the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kakazkhstan (ACBK) as their Saiga Antelope Specialist. Albert’s work focuses on Saiga Antelope research, including studying calving and rutting sites, improving aerial census methods, and using satellite telemetry.
IMAGE: ALBERT SALEMGAREYEV | KAZAKHSTAN FIELDWORK
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IMAGE: ALBERT SALEMGAREYEV | KAZAKHSTAN HEADSHOT
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Dr Tulshi Laxmi Suwal Wins 2023 Whitley Award for Protecting Nepal’s Pangolins and Forests
“Impacts of forest fires on wildlife, including pangolins, are currently being overlooked by national and local concerned agencies.”
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epal’s Dr Tulshi Laxmi Suwal was given a 2023 Whitley Award for her work to protect pangolins -- the most trafficked mammal in the world -- and their habitat. Pangolin habitat is increasingly threatened by the growing prevalence of forest fires which also put at risk an ambitious reforestation programme in one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Tulshi – known locally as ‘the pangolin woman’ – will use the funding to conduct Nepal’s first impact assessment to focus on the effects of fires on the Critically Endangered Chinese pangolin, which is already highly threatened by illegal poaching for its meat and scales. Her project will create ten sustainable Community Pangolin Conservation Groups to monitor pangolin populations and their habitats and equip them to manage fires and plant trees. Communities now manage 40 percent of Nepal’s forests and play a crucial role in a reforestation programme which has seen forest cover almost double since a pivotal forestry act in 1993, without which Nepal’s forests were on track to disappear by some estimates. Nepal has increased forest cover to 45 percent of the country, and aims to halt deforestation by 2030. Fires could put that progress at risk: Nepal is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change and is seeing more floods and droughts. Drier conditions are increasing the risk of fires with over 3,000 fire incidences reported each year. These are mainly sparked by human activity, such as slash-and-burn agriculture practices which can spiral out of control, and the discarding of matchsticks and cigarettes onto dry leaves. Nepal is home to two of the eight species of pangolin -- the Critically Endangered Chinese pangolin and the Endangered Indian pangolin. They are known locally as “friends of farmers” for the vital ecosystem services they provide: a single pangolin can eat 70 million ants and termites a year. They are the only scaly mammals and their scales are made of keratin, the same protein found in rhino horn as well as human hair and nails. Founder of Small Mammals Conservation and Research Foundation, Tulshi has led pangolin research and conservation in Nepal for 15 years. Her project will support the livelihoods of local communities while assessing pangolin populations, implementing threat mitigation measures and restoring habitat by planting 20,000 local mixed broad-leaved trees. An awareness campaign will reach 200,000 people in households and schools.
“We foster women and youth in the local communities to lead in advocating pangolin conservation.” The project will include three districts in Bagmati Province, central Nepal, spanning 4,000 ha for habitat survey. The study area stretches from the sub-tropical Siwalik region in the south to the Mahabharat Lekh in the Himalayas in the north. The area is home to tigers as well as Gangetic dolphins, rhinos and elephants as well as the Tamang and Newar and Chepang indigenous communities who mostly depend on the forest for wood and for raising livestock.
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3 In Nepal, where more than 3,000 fire incidences are reported every year, the country’s top pangolin expert Dr Tulshi Laxmi Suwal will use her Whitley Award funding to lead the country’s first fire impact assessment on the forest habitat of the Critically Endangered Chinese pangolin, one of the most trafficked mammals in the world. Tulshi’s work aims to address the growing prevalence of forest fires in one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change.
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A member of the IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group, Tulshi has also proved a significant role model for female students in Nepal after she was the first female in the country to receive a PhD in pangolin studies leading her to be known locally as “pangolin woman.” Overcoming initial scepticism about her work she says “local communities, especially community forest users groups, are coming forward and are highly willing to conserve this species.
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In Madagascar, rapidly disappearing forest cover has left one-third of lemur species Critically Endangered. Mamy Razafitsalama will accelerate his community-based fire management programme to protect lemur habitat in a country that the UN said experienced the world’s first climate change-induced famine.
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Madagascar’s Mamy Razafitsalama Wins 2023 Whitley Award to Save Lemur Habitat from Fires
“Lemurs are the most endangered group of animals on the planet and they are only found in Madagascar. If lemurs go extinct it would be a huge loss to Madagascar and the whole world.”
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onservationist Mamy Razafitsalama won a 2023 Whitley Award for his work to accelerate his community-based fire management programme to protect lemur habitat in Madagascar where rapidly disappearing forest cover has left one third of lemur species Critically Endangered. Mamy, Country Director of Planet Madagascar, will focus on fire management and prevention in Ankarafantsika National Park in northwest Madagascar, one of the largest remaining fragments of primary forest in the country, which is threatened by fires, logging, construction, slash-and-burn agriculture and domestic grazing. Ninety-five percent of fires in Western Madagascar are caused by humans. The country has lost an estimated 44 percent of its natural forest cover since the 1950s, and climate change is compounding poverty, putting more pressure on the forests. The UN has said Madagascar experienced the world’s first climate-change induced famine. Mamy’s work aims to improve local livelihoods to reduce pressures on the dry deciduous forest and engage communities in fire management and prevention efforts. The project will protect 8,000 ha of forest in Ankarafantsika from fire, grazing and extraction incidents through community patrols, who will also maintain firebreaks. In addition, Mamy and his team will increase local awareness about the impact of fires on lemurs, forests and people through educational programmes and radio broadcasts. Ankarafantsika is home to eight lemur species, five of which are threatened with extinction, and all of which live within Mamy’s fire management zone: Coquerel’s sifaka; mongoose lemur, common brown lemur, Milne-Edward’s sportive lemur, western woolly lemur, fat-tailed dwarf lemur, golden-brown mouse lemur and the gray mouse lemur. The country is a global biodiversity hotspot with 82 percent of plants and 90 percent of vertebrate species in Madagascar endemic to the island, which is the size of California. It is home to 150,000 species found nowhere else on Earth, including 112 species of lemur which are important seed dispersers, contributing to the health of the forest ecosystem. This funding will be critical to continuing a fire management program that started in 2015 and to support ongoing patrols to protect the forest from human disturbance. The work has seen Planet Madagascar do hundreds of radio broadcasts to communicate conservation messages with local communities, and each project is run by project staff from the communities themselves. This intimate connection keeps community members engaged in conservation. Mamy says “local communities are the decision makers – they can save biodiversity.”
“The biggest threat to our project is economic insecurity in Madagascar. If residents in and around the national park have no opportunities they will turn to extracting resources from the park. Our fire management team is made up of community members who benefit through ongoing employment and we benefit from their local expertise.”
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IMAGE: GABRIEL BUSH | MAMY RAZAFITSALAMA | THE WHITLEY AWARDS
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Kenya’s Leonard Akwany Wins 2023 Whitley Award for Fisheries Revamp at Lake Victoria
“These wetlands are surviving because of the efforts of local conservation groups.”
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enyan conservationist Leonard Akwany is recognised with a 2023 Whitley Award for his work to bolster grassroots fisheries management at Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest freshwater lake, where native fish species have more than halved and unsustainable fishing is tipping waterside communities into food insecurity. Shared by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Lake Victoria is a key global biodiversity hotspot, with fishing activity supporting the livelihoods of four million people and producing an annual catch worth $600 million USD. However, overfishing, climate change, pollution, and the degradation of critical aquatic habitats such as wetlands have led to plummeting fish stocks and reduced native fish species from 500 to 200. Globally, freshwater species have fallen by 83 percent, the largest decline of any species group, according to the most recent Living Planet report. The Founder of non-profit Ecofinder Kenya based in Kisumu – the hometown of Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o – Leonard’s project will create a community-managed fishery reserve of 3,000 ha to allow native fish species to recover. He will use the award to bolster the capacity of five Beach Management Units (BMUs) – which consist of fishers, fish traders, boat owners and stakeholders – so they can effectively manage fisheries in their zone, and reduce environmentally damaging fishing practices, like the use of trawl nets. With 281 BMUs in total across Lake Victoria’s shore in Kenya, the success of Leonard’s new programme has the potential to have a much wider impact. Leonard’s plans include the training of 200 BMU members on alternative green livelihoods to reduce fishing pressure while protecting local incomes, building on previous work in restoring wetlands which promoted ecotourism, green energy technologies and regenerative agriculture. Training will also address the poor involvement of women in BMU leadership. Leonard expects the proactive participation of women in the fisheries industry to help address cases of gender-based violence in fishing communities, known locally as “jaboya culture”.
“I am a native of Lake Victoria. I share local people’s problems and aspirations. So I am in intimate synch with problems facing Lake Victoria fisherfolk communities. They have traditional ecological knowledge of fish breeding grounds but protection of those areas is constrained by limited resources and inadequate BMU empowerment,” says Leonard. “Local people’s involvement in wetlands restoration, citizen science monitoring and surveillance, and the developing of green-value chain options such as ecotourism exemplifies involvement, benefits and positive attitude to this work.” “I am inspired by the proactiveness and sense of community service from local fisherfolk communities; youth, women and men working with me towards the conservation of fisheries and wetlands resources of Lake Victoria in Kenya.”
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5 The work of Kenya’s Leonard Akwany to bolster grassroots fisheries management at Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest freshwater lake, seeks to help native fish species recover after they more than halved due to unsustainable fishing and habitat degradation, which is tipping vulnerable waterside communities into food insecurity. Leonard’s plans include the creation of a community-managed fishery reserve, improving the capacity of five local Beach Management Units and will also address the poor involvement of women in fisheries management. Its success has the potential to have a much wider impact across Lake Victoria.
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His new project will be implemented in the Winam Gulf area covering Kisumu, Siaya – the hometown of Barack Obama’s father – and Busia Counties in western Kenya and will target three native fish species which are Critically Endangered; cichlids, Ngege and Mbiru as well as the Ningu, found in shallow, inshore waters. It includes the protection of riparian wetlands and river mouths and will indirectly benefit papyrus birds and semi-aquatic antelope known as sitatunga.
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In Mexico, Yuliana Bedolla Guzmán is also working with fishing cooperatives and boosting the role of local women as she addresses the threat of invasive species -- one of the top drivers of biodiversity loss. Mexican islands provide important breeding grounds for nocturnal seabirds, and are crucial habitats for one-third of the world’s seabird species. Yuliana will use her funding to boost the role of local women and fishing coops to strengthen seabird monitoring and protocols to prevent accidental introduction of invasive mammals, which can decimate seabird colonies. An accidental introduction of a mouse on San Benito Oeste in 2006 was only eradicated after seven years and at a cost of $654,000.
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Mexico’s Yuliana Bedolla Wins 2023 Whitley Award to Protect Rare Seabird Nesting Sites
“These small islands hold such a magnificent amount of biodiversity, but they are incredibly fragile ecosystems.”
M
exican conservationist Yuliana Rocío Bedolla Guzmán is awarded a 2023 Whitley Award for her work to protect important seabird colonies from invasive mammals on two of the world’s most important nesting sites for the nocturnal Black-vented Shearwater and Black Storm-Petrel. Mexican islands and their surrounding seas provide important breeding grounds and are crucial habitats for one-third of the world’s seabird species. The Baja California Pacific Islands are key nesting sites for 23 seabird species, 11 of which are nocturnal when breeding. Known locally as “nocturnos,” the birds visit the islands at night and nest between rocks or in burrows. Yuliana, who is Project Director at Grupo de Ecología y Conservación del Islas -- a non-profit focused on the restoration of islands in Mexico -- will use the funding to boost the role of local women and fishing cooperatives on two of the islands to strengthen seabird monitoring and protocols to prevent accidental introduction of invasive mammals, particularly cats and rodents, which have decimated at least 27 seabird colonies in the region in the past. The sparsely-populated islands of Natividad and San Benito Oeste support more than one million nocturnal seabirds: Natividad holds 90 percent of the world’s breeding population of the Black-vented Shearwater, listed as “Near Threatened” by the IUCN. San Benito Archipelago is the most important colony for the Endangered Black Storm-Petrel. Following decades of conservation, the two islands are among eight in the Baja California Pacific now free of invasive mammals. However, the risk of reintroduction remains amid a steady stream of people, equipment and materials travelling between the mainland and the islands. An accidental introduction of a mouse on San Benito Oeste in 2006 was only eradicated after seven years and at a cost of $654,000; a single black rat on Natividad spotted by a local fisher took three months to capture in 2019. Local fishing cooperatives -- which sell lobster and abalone to mainly Asian markets – will become actively involved in implementing biosecurity protocols. Yuliana will also provide further training to women from local communities to prevent, detect and respond to invasive species and will equip them with the tools to sustainably finance their locally-led conservation work on the islands in future. San Benito Oeste has a resident population of 10-60 people while Natividad is home to 302.
“For conservation to succeed, the local communities must be empowered as the stewards of their land and resources.” Yuliana’s programme will actively protect nesting sites by evaluating breeding success of the nocturnal seabirds by monitoring eggs, chicks and adults of the Black-vented Shearwater on Natividad and the Black Storm-Petrel on San Benito Oeste. Community leaders will survey for early detection of invasive mammals once a year on both islands; prevent rodent reintroduction at landing sites as well as provide environmental training for islanders focused on what action to take if they become accidental carriers.
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“After our interventions, 20 seabird colonies have returned to nest and several new colonies have been formed... recording a new colony that we have never seen before or a pair of a species that historically nested there is a huge motivation,” said Yuliana. “I stay positive because I have seen over the years that with commitment and perseverance, it is not too late to take action, that we can still make a difference.”
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Dr Serge Alexis Kamgang will use his Whitley Award funding to protect the last remaining stronghold of 250 lions in Cameroon’s Bénoué ecosystem. Dwindling habitat and a decline in prey along with a rise in human and livestock populations in protected areas have set the lions on course for conflict with local herders. Serge plans to enlist local youth to become lion guards and train park guards to monitor lion and cattle movement and mitigate human-wildlife conflict, one of the key drivers in the decline in African lions along with habitat loss.
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WILD WONDERS
IMAGE: NETFLIX
Wild Show Watch Out
Natural History Museum: Saving Planet Earth |Channel 5 - Release: 10th May 8pm
IMAGE: NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM
Wild Show Watch Out
Chimp Empire | Netflix - Released: April 2023 From the Academy Award®-winning co-director of My Octopus Teacher and the team behind Rise of the Warrior Apes, Chimp Empire explores the fascinating world of the largest chimpanzee society ever discovered as they navigate complex social politics, family dynamics and dangerous territory disputes. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Mahershala Ali. Under the lush canopies of Uganda’s Ngogo Forest dwells the largest chimpanzee society ever discovered. For the last 25 years, scientists and field trackers have lived alongside this tribe, watching as they built a sophisticated political and familial structure: forming alliances, building trust, caring for one another, and often going head to head in a never ending fight for power.
Natural History Musuem: Saving Planet Earth, launching on Wednesday 10 May at 8pm on Channel 5. Bill Nighy narrates this UNMISSABLE look at one of the greatest and most popular museums in the world – the Natural History Museum, London. The 4 x 60 minute (weekly) series introduces the teams keeping it up and running and the scientists working behind the scenes uncovering incredible discoveries about our natural world; from billion-year-old meteorites and dinosaur fossils to the wildlife in the Museum’s own garden. They’re on a mission to save our planet and travel the world to learn more about the natural world in all its incredible glory. In episode 1, space expert Ashley King, Future Leader Fellow, UKRI, makes the greatest discovery of his career as he studies the Winchcombe Meteorite – the first meteorite to land and be recovered in the UK in 30 years – as he hopes to answer if meteorites hold the key to all life on Earth. He’s working on an ongoing study, looking at biological material and water on the meteorite, which sheds light on the early formation of the solar system.
Wild Show Watch Out
Prehistoric Planet | Apple TV + - Premiering: May 22nd 2023 “Prehistoric Planet” combines award-winning wildlife filmmaking, the latest paleontology learnings and state-of-the-art technology to unveil the spectacular habitats and inhabitants of ancient Earth for a one-of-a-kind immersive experience. The series is produced by the world-renowned team at BBC Studios Natural History Unit. “Prehistoric Planet” season two continues to bring Earth’s history to life like never before as the series presents new dinosaurs, new habitats and new scientific discoveries.
This is the story of the initial find. More recent research has been focussed around the origins of water on earth and how meteorite like Winchcombe may have bought water to Earth. And there’s the monthly giant sleepover, where 500 children and their parents and guardians can sleep with the dinosaurs, while the staff try to contain the excitement and the chaos, by creating a night to remember amongst the museum’s incredible collection.
WILD BOOK ROUND UP REWILDING AFRICA
Little, Brown Book Group | £10.99 Conservationist Grant Fowlds lives to save and protect Africa’s rhinos, elephants and other iconic wildlife, to preserve their habitats, to increase their range and bring back the animals where they have been decimated by decades of war, as in Angola, Mozambique. and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
FORGET ME NOT
Bloomsbury Publishing | £10.99 Forget-me-not - a beautiful flower and a plea from our islands’ wildlife. When climate change has driven dozens of our most charismatic species to extinction, will they be forgotten? Like many of her generation, Sophie Pavelle is determined to demand action on climate change. In her hilarious and thoughtprovoking first book, she describes the trips she took to see ten rare native species: species that could disappear by 2050 and be forgotten by the end of the century if their habitats continue to decline. ten rare native species: species that could disappear by 2050 and be forgotten by the end of the century if their habitats continue to decline. Sophie shows us we can dare to hope.
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THE QUEEN’S GREEN CANOPY Ebury Publishing | £40.00 The Queen’s Green Canopy is a stunning photography book showcasing 70 ancient trees and 70 ancient woodlands dedicated by the QGC initiative in honour of Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee. These photographs were taken over the course of a year by Adrian Houston (author of A Portrait of the Tree) and Charles Sainsbury-Plaice to celebrate the work of the initiative. The Queen’s Green Canopy features their photographs alongside extended captions telling the stories behind these historic trees.
Peacock butterfly on blackthorn blossom © Chloé Valerie Harmsworth
NATURAL WORLD BOOK OF THE MONTH BIRDS, BEASTS AND BEDLAM: TURNING MY FARM INTO AN ARK FOR LOST SPECIES By Derek Gow | Chelsea Green Publishing | £20 all but gone. Wolves, Black Storks, even the minutest Tree Frog couldn’t escape our iron, anthropogenic grasp on Britain, leaving us with mere shreds of what we had. And, as Gow demonstrates first-hand, could have again. Follow Derek at: Instagram: @derekgow Website: http://www.watervoles.com/ Review by Harry Munt Instagram: @harry_munt_
‘O
Suitably, the books open with Gow’s childhood, nestled in the legs of the imposing Cutler Hills. His natural-born affinity with the outdoors was always there, as he reminisces childhood days of spying Grey Partridge eggs, and Black Grouse, frivolously displaying in their Spring finery. Today, both species oppose steep declines; placed on the Red List.
nce, Britain was an untamed landscape. Ancient goliaths: Tarpan, Auroch and Wild Boar commanded a dynamic landscape, where habitats ebbed and flowed boundlessly; free of human rules and prescriptions; where Bison splintered through scrubland and Beavers toppled Willow stands.
Wildlife wasn’t Gow’s first love however, simply the backdrop. Living amongst sweeping hilltops, poker-dotted with hardy, old-breed livestock, he focussed his childhood devotion on sheep. His first “awakening” to natures untamedness, was when a Ewe gifted by a local landowner, died in a bid to escape its metal confines.
Sadly though, as Derek Gow states in his new book: Birds, Beasts and Bedlam (reminding of the changemaking conservationist Gerald Durrell’s book: Birds, Beasts and Relatives) these enigmatic species of earth and wood are
Indeed, this book isn’t only a testimony to the splendour and un-tapped potential of British wildlife, but an autobiography of an incredible figure, Gow’s life after childhood mimicking a rickety, colourful river, meandering and
and tobogganing in free-fall. Stories of zookeeping, farming, and eventually rewilding, are written in hilarious, yet honest prose, yanking you into his truly unique life story. Not many people pull into a Service Station on the A3 due to their Bison getting rowdy in the back. His style and charisma emulates a 21st-Century Gerald Durrell, who revolutionized the world of wildlife conservation with captive-breeding and release programs; championing animal welfare. Ideals shared by Gow, who it’s apparent, is a criminally underrated force in the conservation world. Many a project, such as the monumental comeback of breeding White Storks to the UK in 2020, succeeding a 600yr+ absence, or the equally wave-making restoration of Beavers to South England, feature hardworking efforts by The Radical Rewilder as he’s fondly referred to by The Times. As part of his innumerable projects, Gow’s slept with dribbling Wild Boar piglets, unleashed a cluster of never-ending energy sprites that is litter of fox cubs into his living room, and has had an awkward/painful meeting with almost
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all of Britain’s natural icons. And something dividing him from many in conservation, is his brutal honesty describing each of these experiences, and conservation as a whole. Conservationists can sometimes be revered as the sole, independent saviours of Britain’s wildscapes. However, through decades of firsthand experience, Gow exposes many truths behind the wall of wellmeaning ecologists and conservationists. The Red Tape isn’t a term restricted to politics it seems, Gow explaining how conservationists can be tightly embroiled in it also. Reintroductions, eventually Gow’s “ecological niche” in conservation, he notes as especially frustrating. Prior to even the smallest motion of action, he describes a sea of talks, logistics meetings, feasibility studies, and research; sometimes direct opposition from conservationists rearing to meet him. However, open-minded, and friendly with his mistakes/learnings, Derek remains stoically persistent, achieving more by the turn of his book than many of us may in a lifetime. His own farm was arguably the site of greatest change. Subsequent years of watching Wheatear, Curlew, and migratory Geese fade, it was a small-mammal trapping workshop, whereby the entire farm yielded a solitary Wood Mouse, that finally brought it home. With his trademark honesty, he realized the state his land was in for wildlife, and immediately went about re-engineering. Fences were ripped out, posts excavated, and ancient breeds of livestock released, proxies for the primeval animal forces that once managed the landscape. This book is a treasure-trove of stories, lessons, and powerful insight into how the great cogs of the natural world in the UK turn, shift, and buckle. All surrounding the turbulent, hilarious journey that is Gow’s life; written in a way that makes you feel as though it’s you are suffering a vice-like bite from a Wildcat, right alongside him. Derek Gow and his book bridges the world of conservation and farming and is truly an inspiration to all. Official media Birds, Beasts and Bedlam recounts the truly wild adventures of farmer-turned-rewilder Derek Gow, who is on a mission to save Britain’s much-loved but dangerously threatened species – from the water vole to beaver, wildcat to white stork and tree frog to glow worm. Derek’s first book, Bringing Back the Beaver, was a riotously funny and subversive account of his single-handed reintroduction of the beaver in Britain. Birds, Beasts and Bedlam, a natural successor to Gerald Durrell’s A Zoo in My Luggage, tells the story of Derek’s rewilding journey and his work to save many more species by transforming his Devon farm into a wildlife breeding centre. Growing up in a farming community in Scotland, Derek Gow kept his first sheep at the age of 10 – but to be a zookeeper was his childhood dream and, after a period as a livestock auctioneer, he jumped at the chance to manage a wildlife park in Scotland, before developing two nature centres in England and eventually returning to farming. Inspired by progressive keepers and the rare species he worked with, Derek began to breed beavers and watervoles. The final straw came in 2018 when Derek laid 70 live traps on Coombeshead, his 300acre farm, to see what kind of wildlife he could find. To his horror he caught only two mice and not a single vole. This was the moment his career as a rewilder took hold.
He removed the farm’s fences and enclosures, bid tearful farewells to the majority of his livestock and moved his herd of heck cattle to live wild in his woodland with his pigs. Since then, Derek has been rewilding the land and operating an independent wildlife centre on the Devon/Cornwall border, working to reintroduce animals and revive our local ecosystems and biodiversity. Birds, Beasts and Bedlam tells us the realities of Derek’s experiences; how he reared delicate roe deer and a sofa-loving wild boar piglet, moved a raging bison bull across the country, got bitten by a Scottish wildcat, returned honking skeins of graylag geese to the land and water that was once theirs and restored the white stork to the Knepp Estate with Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree. ‘Derek Gow’s riotous adventures rescuing threatened species and releasing them for rewilding read like Gerald Durrell on steroids. Courageous, visionary, funny and always up for a scrap with bureaucracy and complacency, the world needs many more Derek Gows.’—Isabella Tree, author of Wilding ‘A brilliant read – and the entertaining backstory of a species of human megafauna who has transformed the British conservation scene.’—Benedict Macdonald, author of Rebirding (winner, 2020 Wainwright Conservation Prize) ‘There is only one Derek Gow. Like a gruff, bearded naiad, he speaks for nature with all the force of someone who has spent a life protecting it. The trickle of good news stories coming out of British conservation nearly all owe a significant debt to Gow; he has been instrumental in the restoration of the marvellous beaver, the increase in water voles and the return of storks to English land. In Birds, Beasts and Bedlam, this fascinating man tells us about his life and how he ended up championing rewilding as a solution to our impoverished landscape. More than this, there are hilarious stories of his many interactions with animals, both wild and less than pleased, that have dotted his journey in turning sterile Devon farmland into a beautifully rewilded tapestry of faunal interactions.’—Dr Ross Barnett, author of The Missing Lynx ‘A great read from a rewilding polymath. This is how it’s done – and you’ll also learn about the struggles. Nature needs more bold people like Derek Gow to restore our damaged planet.’—Roy Dennis MBE, author of Restoring the Wild ‘It is a charming, passionate and timely book. It will stir thoughts in many, and motivate them to do even small things that can have large consequences. I hope it will become a classic.’—Bernd Heinrich, author of A Naturalist at Large ‘Derek Gow’s Birds, Beasts and Bedlam is charming, witty and has a “get it done” approach to the reintroduction of endangered species and restoration of natural habitats destroyed by hundreds of years of overmanagement.’—Benjamin Kilham, wildlife biologist; author of In the Company of Bears.
FOLLOW THE WRITER + PARK RANGER Harry Munt is an ecologist and park ranger based in Portsmouth, UK. He is currently studying Environmental Management BSc. Harry was previously the face behind popular conservation project, Save The House Sparrows. Follow Harry at Instagram: @harry_munt_
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YOUR LETTERS
100 Barn Swallows Ringed in Rotherham with Harriet Day Hi my name is Harriet Day, and this year I have been closely monitoring Barn Swallows throughout my local area (Rotherham, South Yorkshire). I am a licensed bird ringer for the Sorby Brecks R.G, my aim is to help protect these aerodynamic birds from any more risk of decline! There are many reasons why these birds are in decline, one reason is due to long migration routes, too and from their breeding grounds. Swallows travel 6 weeks at 200 miles a day, avoiding man-made dangerous objects such as wind turbines and power-lines, also Severe weather conditions, having to fly low across the sea avoiding predators and not to mention the risk of climate change. Increasing measures of climate change can result in migratory birds moulting their flight feathers early. And most importantly their tail feathers, this then can affect Swallows from pairing up to breed, as females choose their mate by the best symmetrical tail feathers, ensuring her mate meets her standards to produce offspring. On top of all that, the sad loss of habitat is growing concerning, old buildings being demolished and sadly no mitigation being put in place! The loss of habitat has a knock on effect with the food supply, for instance, less wild areas provides less flowers, less insects resulting in hungry Swallows.
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The average weight of a Swallow is 24 grams, when migrating they have to build up their fat reserves for the journey back to South Africa. This reduces less stops to refuel, which is done in the reed beds that they roost in, at night in groups. This year has been interesting, in most cases I have noticed a pattern in the weights, this being that the 2 broods in June weighed less then the 3rd broods in July and August. The outcome could be that better weather conditions have produced more insects, increasing the food supply, plus the 3rd broods have less advantage, not having enough time to feed themselves up to migrate, due to them being inexperienced and young. I feel that this is the parents way of feeding young, more quicker to help reach migration weight! For example the 3rd broods weighed 2 to 3 gram heavier than the previous broods, as well as the wing length increasing by 3mm larger. Old nests from last year have been reused for this year’s 3rd broods and evidently just only for the 3rd brood, Saving a minimum of 12 to 15 days of rebuilding. In addition to this the Swallows that had done this had reduced their clutch size to 3 eggs, could this be to reduce the pressure of feeding up so many young, before returning home? I believe that the adults that have chosen to have done this have experience, perhaps suggesting, mature birds! I recently caught and ringed a young Swallow in France. This is when a light weight ring is securely fitted to the leg, to help monitor the population and record data!
The juvenile swallow was moulting into adult plumage in France, weighing 17.4 grams. This queried me as the chicks in the nest, back home (England) at 7 days old were weighing the same or more, this led me to think that perhaps this young bird was in the process of migrating and had stopped off in France to refuel… My data has resulted in much heavier chicks in the nests, to be in rural habitat! For instance the heaviest chicks happen to be reared in old, outer buildings, stables and tool sheds, that are situated on chicken farms South- Eastof Rotherham. However sadly in some areas covered, (Thorpe Heslesy), (Greasbrough) and (Brampton) has hit a substantial decline! When communicating with farmers the indicated that the time scale being from 1987 having between: 10>20 pairs to the 2000 having 8>10 nesting pairs then to 2022 a downhill slope to 0>2 pairs is worrying! The farmer’s opinions throughout the declining areas, believe the cause to be: different farming methods,pesticides and chemicals being used and less livestock being managed on farms, plus demolition of buildings. My figures show that Aluminium and Metal roofs used on stables or other buildings devastatingly caused many deaths for the Barn Swallow. The heat penetrating the roof is causing the eggs to fry as they are exceeding the incubation temperature! Alongside this some of the young chicks are jumping out of the nest before fledging due to the heat, putting them on risk on the
ground! One of my experiences this year was when a single nest at Wentworth reached high temperatures causing the chicks to jump, unfortunately there was only one that survived. My only option was to put this youngster into another nest of the same age (in pin) this means that the chicks are at an early stage of growing their primary flight feathers. Luckily the foster parents accepted the young one and all six successfully fledged at 24 days old. The outcome from this sad experience was that it had only taken the unsuccessful parents just four weeks to rebuild, lay and incubate a new brood. But I did notice, intelligently they had moved to a less heated area in the stable. Only making a smaller nest, resulting in 3 successful chicks. This made me question the birds ability, can and do they know that by making a smaller nest, they have less room to raise their young, this allowing them to control their clutch size? A strange example of a nest at (Whiston) was when a female Blackbird decided to feed three young swallows in the nest, this is known to happen in some birds (allofeeding). Sorrowfully, the consequence led to them dying, possibly due to an incorrect diet and the wrong nourishment provided! However supporting evidence proves that if and when a nest happens to be predated, 80% of adults will instantly move to breeding sites. Nonetheless, nests that have been unsuccessful and remain to have been infertile eggs, oftenly in some farms the swallows that have been unfortunate on their 3r broods have disappeared and no sighting remains. Assuming they might have moved sites or chosen to, concentration on stocking up their fat reserves, to migrate home earlier than expected? There’s a slim chance that the infertile eggs on a 3rd brood could reveal the age of the bird. And conceivably mean that the older bird is slowing down in her reproduction and not having the ability to fertilise, sometimes when birds get older, they don’t generate enough calcium this can have an effect on the egg, as it’s the calcium that strengthens the shell of the egg! As opposed to the 1st and second brood being successful. If this was reversed and this happened on the first brood, being unsuccessful and the rest successful. I would be wise to think it’s due to lack of experience pointing out first time breeding! Having insight of the nests, the majority of them were lined with other bird species as well as their own down feathers, alongside Mallards and Chickens. Also a lot of horse tail is used neatly to line the nest positioned in a dome, at the bottom of the mud built cup.
Swallows invest enormous amounts of effort in constructing a nest. It is thought to believe they might need to carry (more than 1000 pellets of wet mud) to achieve this! My attention was drawn to the Swallows that had old nests from the previous years in the stables. Then went on to reuse them in the current year, resulting in much quicker second broods. The time scale, ranging from 8 weeks from the 1st brood fledging to rebuilding, laying and incubating. Whereas the Swallows that used their old nests saved a period of 1 to 2 weeks saving more time dedicating this to their babies. My initial goal is to help monitor and maintain a positive outlook for their future, which is on a rapid decline in some areas. I will be building relationships with local farmers advising them on how to improve their habitat and provide them with artificial nests and ledges, to encourage breeding sites. Currently I have created a Swallow Protection Group on social media (Facebook) for people to share views and options and to engage with the community to help stop the long term disappearance. Saving these forked tailed flyers for the next generation to indulge!
Raana - The Rockstar of Jhalana by Anish P R I Think he is one of the most photographed Leopard in the World. Leopards are very shy animals but this Bold & Beautiful male looks straight into your eyes and didnt care your presence. We spotted RAANA on 26th January 2023 on Morning & Evening Safaris and in both he went to sleep in the bushes nearby the moment he saw us. As if teasing all tourists present there telling either you wait for me or go away. Lot of vehicles with families lost their patience and went away. We waited for 1 1/2
-2 hrs in both safaris for him to complete his sleep to finally have some pose for us when he felt he should. Thanks to him. The whole safari was spend patiently on him only. After he thought he is finished with his sleep, nearly at the end of the safari time with low light, he started his moves. He was moving right and away from us, saw the vehicle in front of him and turned left towards us in between the gap in the bushes in front of him. Light was very low and I was with 1/40s shutter speed, was getting blur and out of focus images. Just for a very little fraction of second he noticed us in front of him and looked up to us. exactly at that moment luckily for me my focus was in between his eyes in forehead and I clicked. Just this only picture was in focus and then he turned right and went away. Thanks to the Forest department of Rajasthan and the Driver/Guide we had on that day for their efforts and FOR THIS. Shot in: Jhalana Leopard Conversation Reserve, Jaipur, Rajasthan
To The Curlew by Patrick O’Sullivan What do I hear in the curlew’s plaintive call? The voices of father and grandfather and all The old fishermen who loved the river and the moon. Their spirits woven into the whistling silver cadence Of its fabled melancholy, Its wistfulness spellbinding, So that in every rueful call, the ancestors live and breathe, And shine, Just as the river did of old, when they made their hauls by moonlight In the pools of stars and dreams, And the salmon leapt like dancers In the courts of the High Kings. And I hear in it the sound of silver-grey horizons, Mysterious and changeful, and always out of reach; Unfathomable as moonbeams, when the river, like a lover Takes them in its arms and they lie in its embrace. Curlew, oh my curlew, in your wild lament the wilderness, Where your olive eggs are laid. May you ever have that wilderness, and your precious song be saved, And I, a boy again hear your call threnodic Underneath a roof of stars: The moon, an ancient grace, a talisman for dreamers.
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CONNECTED WITH NATURE
S. Mohan is a wildlife photographer based in Malaysia. ‘This picture shows that how I connect with wild animals, the story of picture is if you love nature they will love you back.’ Photographer: S. Mohan Raj Nair IG: @mohan_wildlife
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YOUR LETTERS Piebald Deer: A Rare Beauty - Words by Madelyn Stencel There are millions of white-tailed deer located from Southern Canada to South America. The smallest of the deer family, they can grow to be between fifty to one hundred and thirtysix kilograms and live up to twenty years but most only live to be two to three years of age. They feed on a variety of vegetation including shrubs, twigs, poplar, and in the case of the herd of deer that I have been observing, apples seem to be a favourite. Of the millions of white-tailed deer in existence, less than two percent have a genetic condition known as piebaldism. While piebald deer are more common than albino deer, seeing one is a once in a lifetime experience for those who get to witness this majestic creature. Animals that are piebald have certain characteristics that can been seen to the naked eye (like white patches on the body) but very depending on the severity. Piebald refers to an absence of melanocytes which are mature melanin-forming cells in specific areas of the skin and hair areas. Other animals that can be affected include birds, cats, foxes, and pigs. While driving through a local cemetery, I came
across not one, but two piebald deer. This extremely rare encounter has granted me the opportunity to study their behaviors and characteristics over the past few months. This specific heard of deer consists of ten white-tailed deer. They have stuck to a predictable schedule, allowing me to follow and observe them. In the early morning, they can be found down by the stream, munching on the vegetation and laying among the buttercup flowers. In the evening, I find them near the woods about half a mile away from their morning spot, playing and chasing one another. Social hierarchies are evident when deer congregate in herds, and I have observed the leader of this specific herd. While the others play and eat, the leader keeps a close eye on me. Any sudden movements on my part have alerted this deer and as a result has caused them all to retreat to the woods, which has happened on more than one occasion. The two piebalds always stick close to the others and are often the last to come out of the woods. While the other deer have approached me with curiosity, the piebald
deer stay back with caution. Even though they prefer to keep their distance, I have been able to notice certain abnormalities that the other deer lack. Piebald one has shorter front legs while piebald two has normal length legs like the rest of the herd. Piebald two has a bowing of the nose which is known as ‘Roman nose”. This difference does not seem to cause any issues with the deer. Humans can also have this condition too. “Roman nose” gets its name from the reference to fierce Roman fighters. While a couple characteristics of piebaldism can be seen, there are some possibilities that I have not observed including overbites, scoliosis, short lower mandible, and while impossible for me to notice, internal organ deformities are also a possibility. These sometime crippling genetic mutations can make it difficult for piebald deer to survive into adulthood. Even though these two piebalds seem to be doing ok with minor mutations, it is hard to fully tell the state of their health. Piebald white-tailed deer have symbolic ties to Indian cultures. They believe that piebald deer are spirits in the process of transforming to or from the spirit world. This is interesting as these two piebalds are located at a cemetery where my grandfather is buried who liked to hunt. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide. While the symbolism is a positive one in Indian cultures, to many hunters, it is the complete opposite. Some hunters believe that just seeing a piebald deer could result in a negative hunting experience and have abandoned the hunt entirely upon seeing one.
In some areas, it is illegal to hunt and kill piebald deer, but in other locations, including where I live, it is completely legal. While it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to hunt them, many hunters refuse to do so as they believe that killing one would bring a curse or bad luck. In Europe, some hunters believe that those who kill a piebald deer will die within a year. Whichever way you choose to interpret a sighting of a piebald deer, they are indeed a fascinating find for those who have had the opportunity to see one (or two)! Words and photography by Madelyn Stencel Instagram: @ madelynstencel
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