ECOS 35 (2) whole edition

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2014 issue 35(2)

Just the tonic? Steps for engaging with nature Heritcal wildlife heritage - looking back or forwards?

Nature blindness - can we care for what we don’t know?

ECOS

A REVIEW OF CONSERVATION ECOS is the journal of the British Association of Nature Conservationists

www.banc.org.uk

ECOS 35(2) 2014

ecos@easynet.co.uk Editorial

Managing Editor: Rick Minter 07768 748301 ecos@easynet.co.uk Assistant Editor: Martin Spray Hillside, Aston Bridge Road, Pludds, Ruardean, Glos. GL17 9TZ 01594-861404 Acknowledgements This issue was edited by Rick Minter.

Cover photo courtesy Bristol Natural History Consortium.

The opinions expressed in ECOS are not necessarily those of BANC Council or of the Editors.

ECOS may not be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, in English or other languages, without the prior written consent of the publisher, BANC.

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Vice-Presidents: Marion Shoard Adrian Phillips

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ECOS is printed by Severnprint using Cocoon Silk 300gsm cover and Cocoon uncoated 100gsm text paper. Both papers have a 100% recycled content and are FSC certified. The electricity used during printing is generated from renewable sources. The magazine is printed under the SylvaPack environmental print route using no alcohol and processless plates. Severnprint donates to Tree Aid to support tree planting in sub-Saharan Africa.

Finding our way back to nature We have lost our roots in nature. Generations are not passing on the local folklore, and the different uses and names of local wildlife. Chris Rose calls this ‘nature blindness’ and he explains how we might tackle the problem in this issue. He challenges wildlife groups to look beyond the converted audience. Encouraging people to engage with the natural world must start from where they are at, he suggests. Activities and messages must be tailored to their values and interests – we should not expect one type of communication and one set of activities to have impact across the board.

This is all daunting, surely? Yes, but at least different bodies are on the case. Many organisations are devising ways of tempting people to take action to survey, learn about, or care for wildlife on their doorstep. Chris Rose himself describes Ecoteering, which provides wildlife information as participants go about their orienteering-type of challenge. Elsewhere in this edition, Kay Haw looks at the range of Citizen Science activities on offer, from studying tree health, to bird counts, and checking on hedgehog hibernation. These can directly inform volunteers about wildlife topics, and show the value of record keeping, mapping and data quality. Likewise, Matt Postles explains how people can be plunged into a BioBlitz day, helping survey all types of wildlife present in a greenspace such as a garden, park or cemetery. BioBlitz and Citizen Science surveys are meaningful ways for people to watch wildlife close up, experience different species, use systematic methods, handle wildlife keys, and learn with specialists. Some of these participants, of whatever age, might get the bug and come back for more.

While we want people to study, care for and defend wildlife, there is a growing body of evidence to show the striking social benefits of closer contact with nature. Helen Bovey summarises achievements of the Access to Nature grants offered by Natural England in recent years, and Justin Dillon looks at wider examples and the evidencebase for the community cohesion, family togetherness, self confidence, and learning skills which nature experience, such as Forest Schools, bushcraft activities, and field trips can provide. Finally, what of digital technology, that great distraction to the fresh air and puddles of the real world? Gina Maffey and colleagues categorise the basics of ‘Digital Conservation’ in this edition. The different tools, apps, software and blogs can offer virtual representations of nature, tools for public engagement, information and monitoring systems, networking tools, and more. The authors suggest conservationists are trained in the uses of digital conservation, to exploit it wisely. As we slowly cure ourselves of nature blindness, becoming rooted in nature will take many forms.

Geoffrey Wain

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Navigating nature How to heal our blurred vision of wildlife Parents, grandparents, and even teachers, are no longer able to ‘introduce young children to nature’ because they can’t really see nature themselves. This article calls for a national campaign of remedial action to motivate a population which has become ‘nature blind’. Such a drive needs to learn the lessons of marketing and large-scale campaigns that have influenced public priorities.

CHRIS ROSE In 2008 a National Trust survey of children found that: • Only 53 per cent of children could correctly identify an oak leaf, Britain’s national tree • 29 per cent could not recognize a magpie, although they had increased in despite numbers soaring three-fold over the preceding three decades

An elf training camp, as run by the Fairyland Trust, provides an imaginative way for young children to make links with nature.

Photo: Chris Rose

• Only 47 per cent could identify a barn owl

Coosloop – Lincolnshire

• One in three failed to recognise Britain’s best-known butterfly, the Red Admiral.

Cower-Slop – Shropshire

And apparently, half could not tell the difference between a bee and a wasp.1 On the other hand, in 2002 Cambridge University Zoologist Andrew Balmford and colleagues found that children could identify more Pokémon characters than native British wildlife.2

Cuckoo – Cornwall (and Coucou in France)

Nature links lost

Culver Keys – Somerset, Kent, Northamptonshire Fairies’ Basins – Somerset

In the days before farms were industrialised, working on the land meant many generations encountered nature in huge variety. Hundreds of plant and animals were both common and familiar. The connection to nature is evident in the 39 local names for ‘cowslip’ recorded by Geoffrey Grigson in his The Englishman’s Flora (1958), a selection of which are listed below:

Fairy Bells – Somerset

Bunch of Keys - Somerset

Horse’s Buckle – Wiltshire, Kent

Cowflop – Devon, Somerset

Keys of Heaven – (cf German – Himmelschussel) – Devon

Cowpaigle – Hertfordshire

Lady’s Keys – Somerset, Wiltshire, Kent

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Fairy Cups – Dorset, Somerset, Lincolnshire Golden Drops – Somerset

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Long Legs – Somerset Milk-Maidens – Lincolnshire Oddrod – Dorset Racconals – Cheshire Tisty-Tosty - (properly a cowslip ball), Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire

NEIL BENNETT

Cowslips today are a rare sight in most of our farmland and roadside verges. When Grigson wrote in the 1950s, the engine of agricultural destruction had only just got going and many of these local names were probably still in use, at least by older people. Their diversity reflects the past abundance of wild flowers, and the universal connection to nature enjoyed by generations of our ancestors. Grigson’s daughter, Sophie, wrote in the Introduction to the 1996 edition to the book, that: “Reading it takes me straight back to the foraging strolls through my native Wiltshire countryside. My father transformed what might, for a child, have been a penance, into a voyage of discovery. He illuminated the hedgerows and fields with his knowledge of the plants that grew there”. It is this knowing, the ability to read the countryside and living places in detail, which makes the connection with nature, and enables it to be passed on from parents to children.

Poor nature-sight in students and teachers In 2005 Anne Bebbington from the Field Studies Council found that both A-level students and their teachers, as well as trainee teachers attending courses at Juniper Hall Field Centre, had little ability to name ‘common’ wild plants. A third of students could only name three species. “86% of A-level biology students could only name three or fewer common wild flowers whilst 41% could only name one or less”.3 So low is the nature-literacy of modern students emerging from university with biological sciences degrees that Reading University now offers an MSc in Species Identification and Survey Skills, because there is a market for ecologists who can identify wild plants and animals in order to conduct the surveys needed by developers under the European Habitats Directive and similar regulations. This is not a sign of nature-connection but of disconnection.

The experience of the Fairyland Trust I help my partner Sarah Wise run the small conservation charity The Fairyland Trust.4 Its mission is to engage children with nature, and it does so by creating events and activities designed to be attractive to mainstream families, building on their established interest in things ‘magical’. It provides creative workshops and ‘magical days out’ such as the Fairy Fair. Having attracted over 70,000 people to our activities since 2001, our direct experience is that most British people’s nature understanding is now too low for them to actually ‘introduce children to nature’, even if our survey shows that 85% of them think it is ‘vital’.

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‘Green’ but nature-blind The audience at Glastonbury Festival in the ‘Green Fields’, is about as environmentallyminded as you can get. Nevertheless, we met parents attending our workshops there who expressed astonishment that there was more than one type of ‘hedge tree’.

We’ve also had to simplify our magical nature workshops on moths and butterflies, when we found that most people assume that it is the adult butterflies that require specific food plants, not the caterpillars. Nor have most ever experienced a real haymeadow of the type that once covered much of England before tractors replaced farm horses. Many think that industrial oil seed rape fields are flower meadows and so post photos of them online, with comments like “beautiful countryside”.

Nature disappearing from popular culture Previous generations knew a different countryside, not just from direct experience but from popular art and culture. Actual nature once featured prominently in commercial art, such as posters designed to encourage excursions on trains or buses.

They tell of a time before Alton Towers and the M25 when nature and the seasons were a trip-generating selling point for public transport. Many of the posters, feature such botanically accurate flowers as the 1938 primrose in ‘Coming Out ?’.

Others such as ‘Flowers o’the corn’ poster designed for London Underground and Bus Group by Edward McKnight Kauffer in the 1920s, showed wild flowers that have long vanished from modern fields.

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ECOS 35(2) 2014 Contemporary depictions of grasslands and meadows are dominated by dairy product advertisements from the likes of Country Life Butter and Kerrygold. Many of these make great play on nature but give the utter disconnect of modern intensive farming as revealed by the images they use of ‘cows on green concrete’.

Nature-blindness in nature groups Starting from where public audiences are at, rather than where committed conservationists area at, Sarah and I at the Fairyland Trust created something called ‘Ecoteering’, which in different formats could be a cross between geocaching, treasure trails, nature trails and orienteering. The crux of it being that in order to find hidden treasures and succeed in completing a route, you had to be able to identify some ‘navigation species’.

Ecoteering turned out to be popular with the public and we trialled numerous versions of it. To test an early variant, we thought it would be easy to begin with some of Natural England’s own staff. We had been wrong to assume that they would be able to identify common plant species. One staff member, who admittedly wasn’t a field surveyor or warden, commented in her feedback to us that the ‘navigation species’ were ‘too difficult’ and that only a ‘specialist’ would know such things as the difference between heather and bracken.

This is just one small part of the big picture of societies disengaged with nature: ecologists who understand modelling but can’t recognize real plants or animals; and ‘education’ staff who may know learning theories and ‘good practice’ for Health and Safety but who see natural history as outside their remit. These people are disconnected from nature because they can’t recognise it because nobody showed them, be it grandparents or parents, teachers or work mentors. Nature then becomes a theory, a concept rather than a reality, and as a concept it can survive indefinitely, even as real nature dies out.

Taking nature for granted Despite their best efforts, organisations like the Field Studies Council and the Wild Flower Society have been left in a backwater, and the explosion of nature on TV has not been a replacement for real natural history. This situation has crept up on us over decades in which conservation groups, who you would assume should naturally be in the front line for engaging the public with nature, have been looking the other way.

Faced with the need to raise funds to operate, conservation NGOs have also focused mainly on their members, a manageable, reachable group, rather than the great ‘disinterested’ public. This is like running a drive to increase public literacy amongst people who already use libraries. Such an approach is guaranteed to reach mainly the ‘converted’. We need to do differently, to get a different result.

The parlous state of national nature-literacy cannot be blamed solely on the education system but that is one element that needs fixing. Lobbying for changes to formal education will get us only so far in reconnecting the population with nature: significant response from ‘the system’ needs popular demand, not just calls 6

ECOS 35(2) 2014 from advocacy groups with a limited base. A population literate in nature needs to become a political objective.

Getting outdoors ?

Schemes like Forest Schools are great for improving learning through ‘outdoor classrooms’, which is their objective but the learning may be maths or PE or physics: it is rarely nature per se. Much the same goes for the Natural England sponsored 'Access to Nature' and ‘Natural Connections’ schemes (see specific articles on these initiatives elsewhere in this issue), which principally focus on outdoor learning and getting-children outdoors. Similarly, the main ‘ask’ of even the Wild Network5 project, which includes most of the larger UK NGOs such as National Trust and RSPB and links to National Children’s Day, is to ‘get outdoors’, eg. swapping ‘screen time’ for time outdoors. All very good but it may not lead to any nature ability or understanding.

On its own, a broadcast call for parents to ‘get children outdoors’ runs an even greater risk of going nowhere useful for real engagement with nature. We need to do something much more ambitious if Britain’s children, and their parents, are going to become genuinely more connected to nature.

If we do little or nothing Without large scale campaigns of the sort that led to a change in public attitudes to smoking and drink-driving, and taught people road safety, we are on a sure slide to national nature ignorance.

Being blind to nature means not being able to read or discern the quality of your own country, your own place, heritage and environment, and that means being unable to protect nature, or help it recover.

If we cannot see that a local verge is a remnant of ancient grassland rich in native plant species, not just an artificial monoculture of rye grass, how will we know to intervene if we see it being sprayed or re-turfed? And if we have never heard a nightingale, how will we recognize that a local nightingale copse is being destroyed by deer or development?

Starting from where people are at I don’t mean steam rallies or Truckfest but we do need to engage people starting where they are at, for example their interest in their homes and gardens. A ratings scheme for how nature-rich your garden is, would be a good idea. Some German towns offer the equivalent of rate rebates to home-owners who build in nesting places for swifts, and grow creepers on their walls. How would your home and garden rate?

Nature ability needs communicating in ways that fit with leisure time and aspirations.

Unlikely as it may seem, those of us who care about nature could learn from the wine marketers. In the 1980s the wine industry and supermarkets educated the British public to understand that there are more than just three varieties (red, pink and white), which was the default assumption in Britain when I grew up. Or we could learn from the architecture lobby. Back in the 1960s the Civic Trust taught 7

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people the difference between real and mock Tudor buildings. We now need to equip Britons with the ability to see the diversity of nature, not just types of wine and houses, before we become a nation of lovers of nature-on-TV, living in a green but nature-free land.

Connect with values Let’s go back to that survey in which 85.2% said they agreed it was ‘vital’ to introduce young children to nature. We also asked the same people a set of questions which segment them by motivational values6 as well as age and sex. The insights this generates go some way to show why conservation groups keep on reaching the same ‘converted’ subset of the population, why so many people are not ‘connected with nature’, and who those people are. They also suggest the terms on which we have to engage, if it is to make a difference.

These particular values unconsciously inform our opinions, shape our behaviours and give us our own version of ‘common sense’. These ‘Maslow groups’ are Pioneers (inner directed), Prospectors (outer directed) and Settlers (security driven).

The brief descriptors for the three Maslow Groups are: People with a PIONEER orientation often have the following characteristics: • Trying to put things together and understand the big picture.

As a variation on geocaching and orienteering, ecoteering as illustrated here offers young people a challenge to discover more about the natural world they are visiting.

Photo: Chris Rose

• Concerned about the environment, society, world poverty, etc.

• Like new ideas and new ways.

• Always looking for new questions and answers.

• Generally optimistic about the future.

• Strong desire for fairness, justice and equality.

People with a SETTLER orientation often have the following characteristics:

• Self-assured and sense of self-agency.

• Family and home, and caring for them, tend to be at centre.

• Generally positive about change, if it is worthwhile.

• For those living alone, friends take the place of family.

• Cautiously optimistic about the future.

• Tradition and family structure are important.

People with a PROSPECTOR orientation often have the following characteristics:

• Naturally conservative (with a small c).

• Success oriented.

• Security conscious - wary of crime, violence and terrorism.

• Welcome opportunities to show abilities.

• Supportive of tough punishment for criminals.

• Take great pleasure in recognition and reward.

• Wary of change, especially for its own sake.

• Will take opportunities for advancement and professional networking.

• More comfortable with regular and routine situations.

• Trend and fashion conscious.

• Concerned about what the future holds.

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Matching propositions to values Pioneers are satisfied with doing something for ‘big picture’ reasons and because it is ethically right, they don’t feel much need to ‘get anything’ for activity to ‘have a point to it’, a ‘result’. They also positively lap up ‘issues’ and complicated ideas.

ECOS 35(2) 2014 5. Such a campaign would also need nature-engaging activities that match lifestages and lifestyles: for example courses for the time-rich (retired ?), and activities and opportunities which entertain children and time-poor parents.

6. A nature-literate Britain must become a widely shared political objective.

That does not appeal to Prospectors. Their idea of a good day out is more having fun and getting a result, for example in terms of looking good, being seen at a ‘recommended’ venue, and their children achieving something. A walk around a wood to look at nature might be ‘boring’ but winning a competition to find ‘treasure’ species might be more interesting. Making or buying something that other people will envy, to take home, would add value.

This is why you find a lot of Prospectors among the people outdoors doing physical exercise, such as jogging (get fit, look good), mountain biking (with special kit) and in competitive orienteering. If you inserted nature-ability into such activities (as we did in Ecoteering), you’ve made nature something to be good-at. Otherwise ‘nature’ will just remain a background factor, not a must-have.

Settlers love tradition and continuity. Steam rallies and railway days out will be heavily supported by Settlers but they also like family-days-out and nature-as-itwas. There are many ways to tune nature to fit with people’s values.

The problem conservation groups have is that care-for-nature has been promoted mainly on ethical grounds, and closely associated with ‘issues’. This appeals to Pioneers but not the others. Consequently the current ‘base’ for nature, as represented by membership of and active support for UK green and conservation NGOs, is very skewed to Pioneers. This makes it a politically and socially limited base: the converted.

7. To achieve such political backing, nature ability and quality must become aspirational, for example by being attached to popular past-times like gardening, and being seen as a desirable feature in gardens and homes.

References 1. Wildlife alien to a generation of children. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/article-1356398668159/ 2. Balmford A. et al. Why Conservationists Should Heed Pokémon; Science 295 (5564): 2367b 3. http://artplantaetoday.com/2011/11/04/plant-identification-environmental-literacy/ 4. www.fairylandtrust.org 5. www.projectwildthing.com/thewildnetwork 6. www.cultdyn.co.uk Links to key reports and some images mentioned in the article are at… http://threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org/?p=375 http://threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org/?p=367

Chris Rose is Director of Campaign Strategy Ltd. He runs the campaign planning website www.campaignstrategy.org and is author of numerous books and papers on communications, campaigns and the environment.

Steps for reconnecting to nature 1. We need a national programme of campaigns and initiatives to reconnect people to nature by enabling them to become nature-literate. This has to involve adults, not just children.

2. Such a campaign requires the sort of marketing and communications skills and methods that have been used to promote sports, anti-drunk driving and anti-smoking campaigns, equal opportunities and anti-discrimination, and commercially, the promotion of a public appetite for better cooking and wines.

3. Conservation groups need to recognize that simply getting children outdoors, is no guarantee of connection with nature. Government and voluntary-funded projects intended to connect children with nature should measure outcomes in terms of nature literacy and ability, not simply time spent out of doors, or general attitudes to nature.

4. Effective engagement beyond the narrow ‘conservation base’ (maybe 1 in 20?) will require activities and opportunities that appeal to the psychological groups Prospectors and Settlers as much as Pioneers.

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Ecoteering fact cards.

Photo: Chris Rose

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The rise of citizen science How can community research help nature?

Citizen science is a popular way of gathering data and involving the public in science projects; from bird counts to spotting solar storms. But what are the benefits: is it a fad or here to stay, does it contribute to scientific progress and what makes a good citizen science project?

KAY HAW The term ‘citizen science’ is used for studies covering a range of research areas.

Although generally led or supported by scientists or scientific organisations, it involves volunteers collecting information which contributes to expanding our understanding of the world.1 Citizen science is not such a modern concept. In the 17th century a Norwegian bishop set up a network of clergymen to collect and send him samples, and the ecologist Linnaeus benefitted from amateur scientists sending him specimens. In fact, most people involved in science before the late 19th century would have been hobbyists, amateurs and enthusiasts, as you couldn’t really make a living out of it before then.

Some projects have been running for a long time and gathered large bodies of data. In January 2014 the 114th Christmas Bird Count concluded. This annually attracts thousands of participants and supports studies on the long-term health and status of bird populations across North America. There are also the well-known UK biological monitoring schemes like the British Trust for Ornithology’s Breeding Bird Survey and Butterfly Conservation’s Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey that require skilled volunteers.

However, the ways in which we can all get involved in science has grown phenomenally over the past decade – perhaps due to the advance of worldwide communications and technology. We’re now helping in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, transcribing specimen records written before data was digitally stored, hunting down invasive species and identifying animals caught in camera trap images in Africa.

Millions of people have been involved with citizen science projects, but what value do these offer to science and society? Is the quality of data collected worth the project investment? Does involvement in citizen science projects actually have a 12

Seed Collection Champions gather hornbeam seeds at Ashenbank Wood for Kew Millennium Seed Bank’s UK National Tree Seed Project. The Woodland Trust are partners in this project and use citizen scientists to collect seed in Woodland Trust woods.

Photo: Raymond Winslow

positive impact on participants – are recorders of phenological events more aware of climate change and does this affect their lifestyle? And is there a conflict of interest between keen citizen scientists and experts trying to earn a living from similar activities? Here’s an insight into a number of key projects:

OPAL In 2007 Imperial College London launched the Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) network through the Big Lottery Fund. This year a further grant enabled it to expand into Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its surveys are open to anyone and cover areas such as soil pH, air pollution, invertebrate diversity and tree health.

Seven years has seen 850,000 individuals get involved, and over 2,000 schools and 1,000 organisations. They have produced 270,000 survey packs and now have over 53,000 records in their database. From an engagement perspective, OPAL is certainly helping to raise awareness of important environmental issues challenging society. In terms of policy, the Tree Health Survey is being used by Government departments to augment their monitoring of tree pests and diseases.

The development of simple survey materials has been a major OPAL success and provided a good model for others to follow. The survey packs can be used by just 13

ECOS 35(2) 2014 about anyone, with minimal ‘expertise’ required. The results they produce can also be quality controlled.

On average, 10 per cent of survey packs sent out are completed and reported. While this still accounts for a significant amount of data, OPAL is looking at how to get a better return for its investment. An MSc project through Imperial College London is investigating the underlying reasons and the potential use of an accreditation scheme to motivate more participants and give others more confidence in the quality of data collected.

Nature’s Calendar The Nature’s Calendar project was launched in name in 2000, but some of the records included in the database are much older. In fact, the data set stretches back to naturalist Robert Marsham in 1736 and contains more than 3 million records – thought to be the longest written biological record of its kind in the UK. In 2013 alone, volunteers recorded 60,000 observations.

A key reason for participation is ‘concern for the countryside’. Many Nature’s Calendar recorders are members of one or more conservation organisations and carry out other environmental surveys, as they are active citizen scientists with a passion for the natural world and its future.

In the short term global temperatures have remained fairly stable since around 1998. But ebb and flow in the climate must be viewed over longer time scales, which show global temperature rising since the 1880s, albeit that some of this is acknowledged as natural, including by bodies such as the IPCC. Data collected by keen nature observers indicates the changing climate is having a noticeable impact on phenology (the timing of seasonal events). To date, evidence shows spring events like tree budburst getting earlier, late autumn events such as leaf fall being delayed and the period of active plant growth each year lengthening.

Nature’s Calendar data was recently used by the University of Cambridge. The study showed that plants and trees in the UK are responding to climate change by either moving range north or flowering earlier. However a number of species appear to show no response, which may suggest an inability to adapt to change.2 This is just one of a number of studies using the data and all findings are communicated to recorders to keep their interest and increase their awareness of climate change.

Nature’s Calendar participants are skilled but aging and younger generations sadly show less interest and expertise in biological identification. The project has also struggled to keep pace with newer projects. For example, people now want to upload photos to websites or record on the go using an app – this could also encourage more tech-savvy youngsters to get involved. These opportunities are currently being explored by the team.

ECOS 35(2) 2014 The UK is considered by experts to be one of the best countries in Northern Europe for its ancient and veteran trees, and the specialist biodiversity associated with them. But too little was known about their distribution, condition and future needs – the ATH sought to remedy this.

Since it started in 2006, the project’s database has amassed nearly 140,000 individual tree records. Over 150 partner organisations contributed to the fieldwork, with 80 per cent of records coming from them and their members/staff/volunteers. Records can be made by any individual, but all are then verified by more expert volunteers to ensure accuracy of the data. Many of the project’s verifiers have been involved since the very beginning and are still active and keen.

The rapid progress of technological advancement has been a problem. Initial funding provides a level of infrastructure available at the time, but new technologies are developed at such a pace these days that further investment is needed for longer term projects – a cost that’s not always easy to factor in. However, an app is in the pipeline that will help verifiers in the field check records more easily.

More recently the project changed its name to the Ancient Tree Inventory, although trees are still being found and recorded. This reflects the evolution of the project, with the data now being used to identify ancient tree hotspots around the UK that can be targeted for protection. Only one other European country, Sweden, has a comprehensive dataset of trees of special value.

Citizen science’s contribution Citizen science can engage non-experts and experts alike in some of the major issues facing the world today, such as climate change, and make those issues locally relevant. This can raise awareness of scientific matters among participants and encourage changes in attitudes and actions. Like a ripple effect, those engaged can then pass knowledge and ideas onto others. This word of mouth from trusted peers can be more powerfully effective at changing mind sets than top-down government campaigns, and can have a significant impact on society.

A study of the French Garden Butterflies Watch project “examined the ways increased knowledge or strengthened beliefs or ideas about biodiversity can foster pro-conservation attitudes and behaviour”.3 Its three important conclusions were: “(1) conservation issues must be integrated into a wider network of social relationships; (2) observing everyday nature often makes people consider its functional and evolutionary characteristics; and (3) scientific knowledge seems necessary to help people to develop their own position on ecosystems”.

Ancient Tree Hunt

Data gathered can also contribute to scientific advancement, as long as it’s robust enough to be reliable. OPAL’s Air Survey showed how effective lichens are as indicators of air pollution – there were significant relationships between lichen patterns and nitrogen and sulphur pollutants on trees.4

The Ancient Tree Hunt (ATH) was a joint venture between the Woodland Trust, Tree Register of the British Isles and Ancient Tree Forum. Its aim was to create a living database of ancient, veteran and notable trees across the UK.

At a more policy level, OPAL’s Tree Health Survey is supporting the work of the UK’s small number of tree health inspectors. More eyes searching for and reporting on

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incidents of tree pests and diseases is vital for better understanding of the problem and development and targeting of solutions. It can therefore also contribute to creating effective government policies.

Fad or future science?

Citizen science is certainly a buzz phrase on the tongues of many organisations, but is it here to stay and is there a limit to how much it can contribute? Underfunded government agencies and academic institutes, individual organisations, and dwindling numbers of paid experts can only hope to cover the ground that an army of enthusiastic citizen scientists can. They can also sample in places out of bounds to scientists, like their own private gardens.

There’s a limit to the tasks that can be carried out by non-experts, but this shouldn’t prevent them supporting and adding to the work of scientists. Laboratory testing may not be something everyone can carry out in their shed, but collecting samples to send to the labs is very achievable by anyone keen for a bit of fieldwork. At the end of the day, even experts send samples to labs – there’s no shame in it.

The number of citizen science projects running seems to be sky rocketing and this may cause issues in the future. We may well reach saturation point, where the number of motivated people willing and able to be involved reaches full capacity.

Or perhaps new innovations will entice a wider audience. But projects could end up being duplicated and essentially compete with each other for resources and participants. So does there need to be more coordination within the citizen science world to make sure it’s as successful as possible?

More recently groups have been set up to pull citizen science initiatives together.

Last year saw the launch of the European Citizen Science Association, supported by organisations from over 10 EU countries. The British Ecological Society also has a citizen science special interest group that provides a forum for people to share experiences and expertise.

An issue of credibility One problem with citizen science can be the lack of support and credence it sometimes gets from the academic world and policy makers. Some still view citizen science data as second rate and not something they want in peer-reviewed journals.

There needs to be a step change in the academic world that makes this data more accepted and therefore more used – this may encourage more participation in its collection. There also needs to be better evidence of the impact citizen science data already makes to the scientific world, which may help engender a change in attitude towards it.

There’s a difference between more broad and shallow schemes, that collect large volumes of data but where individual records may not be 100 per cent accurate, and narrow and deep projects, that attract specialists who are very knowledgeable and therefore produce more reliable data. But data can be weighted for its quality and can be verified by experts. Also, small numbers of inaccuracies in large data sets 16

The ‘hug’ method for measuring trees was very popular for the Ancient Tree Hunt. Records are verified for inclusion in the Ancient Tree Inventory.

Photo: WTPL/C.Mars

can be compensated for during analysis. Nature’s Calendar data is highly valued by Government and UK and international scientists, and used in various studies.

Jean Combes isn’t an expert ecologist, yet she’s kept a record of the date of bud burst on a single oak tree every spring for over 50 years. Her data trend shows bud burst getting increasingly earlier, to almost a month ahead of when she started. This is valuable data, that’s evidence of the impacts of climate change, collected by an interested amateur who received an OBE for her ‘services to phenology’.

Careful project design can help tailor the skill level to the citizen scientists involved and ensure quality data is collected. Volunteers can also be trained and upskilled to enable them to effectively complete more complicated tasks. Whereas other citizen science volunteers are already experts in their fields, they may be retired and keen to stay involved or early careerists wanting to consolidate and expand their knowledge and abilities.

OPAL set up a buddy scheme for their Tree Health Survey. Experts support nonexpert sightings of tree pests and diseases. Volunteers submit their sightings online with a description and image that Forest Research and FERA can then verify. With 17

ECOS 35(2) 2014 only a small number of tree inspectors around the country this helps cover more ground more quickly.

A German citizen science project wanted people to send in samples of mosquitoes.

They came up with a simple project design: catch it, freeze it and send it in. They found two non-native species unrecorded in Germany before, this may well not have been possible without amateur help.

Good value, but not free As with most things in this world, money’s needed to keep projects alive and kicking.

Even with its successes, OPAL was nearly lost from the citizen science world when its initial funding came to an end. Luckily they secured three more years of lottery funding that’s allowing them to expand across the UK, but will they continue to be able to do this?

Funding’s needed initially to set a project up, for the resources needed to carry out tasks, for ways to promote the project and garner interested participants, to provide support and training, and some also cover volunteer expenses. Then there’s the funding needed to maintain and manage the data collected and the website or web pages, and the staff time needed to manage and communicate with volunteers.

There’s lots of underlying infrastructure that supports a citizen science project and it usually doesn’t come for free.

ECOS 35(2) 2014 chasing the same motivated and/or skilled individuals. While enthusiasm may be high at the beginning of any project, this can quickly wane – the speed of this can depend on the focus of the project itself. As we all know, some tasks can rapidly become tedious.

The importance of valuing citizen scientists and making them feel that value cannot be emphasised enough. Simply saying ‘thank you’ is a good start, but maintaining their interest really needs much more.

Training to upskill volunteers not only supports the collection of reliable data, it also demonstrates a commitment and interest in their personal development. Providing materials can be useful for delivering the project’s objectives, but can also give citizen scientists tools for the future. As a participant of Plantlife’s Wildflowers Count you receive a handy identification booklet that can be used over and over again to build your knowledge of some of the UK’s flora.

Feeding back results on a regular basis shows them their efforts are being used and their contributions respected. Staying in contact with participants keeps them interested; this can be done through regular newsletters or emails. Some projects also organise events that bring volunteers together. This not only shows your commitment to them, it also enables them to meet other like-minded individuals, share ideas and build enthusiasm.

Government has said it wants help with data collection and scientific involvement.

It publicly recognises citizen science projects, which can directly link to government policy, and offer good value for money.5 But more support and funding are needed to ensure projects succeed and continue where necessary and useful.

Minimal budgets can limit the support and resources available to volunteers, but personalised emails can be a cheap and effective method of engaging individuals.

As can simple awards/certificates of participation or achievements.

To sell or not to sell?

Get involved

Citizen scientists collect data for free, although it does cost the organisation to manage the project, set up and maintain infrastructure, develop and distribute materials, train volunteers, etc. So should the data be freely available for all to use or should organisations have the right to sell it to scientists and government bodies?

Science is no longer a mysterious entity confined to universities and laboratories or purely a pursuit of the wealthy; it is out in the real world for everyone to get involved with. Long may it stay that way if it increases our understanding of nature and connects people to the wider natural world that supports all our lives.

There are mixed views on this. Some support the idea that the data was gathered freely by the people and should therefore be freely available to the people – whoever they may be. Others see the selling of data as a way to help fund the existing project or support future work. There’s also the opportunity to sell the data to commercial organisations or others that may make a financial profit from it, but make it freely available for scientific research and non-profit organisations.

Citizen Science surveys The table below shows a selection of natural history and environmental citizen science projects to take part in.

Project

Lead organisation(s)

Launched

If data’s free to use, as OPAL’s is, it can widen the number of people able to access it. Larger numbers of fresh eyes can look at and evaluate it, and the potential for something new to be discovered is greatly increased.

Ancient Tree Hunt

Woodland Trust

2006

Bat Detective

University College London

2012

Motivating and maintaining participants

BeeWatch

Bumblebee Conservation Trust

2012

An issue that’s often encountered in the citizen science world is how to retain the interest and commitment of participants. There are many more projects now 18

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Big Butterfly Count

Butterfly Conservation

2010

Snapshot Serengeti

Serengeti Lion Project

2012

Big Garden Birdwatch

RSPB

1979

Swifts Survey

RSPB

2011

Breeding Bird Survey

British Trust for Ornithology

1994

The Harlequin Ladybird Survey Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

2005

Conker Tree Science

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology University of Hull

2010

Whale FM

Scientific American

2011

Wildflowers Count

Plantlife

2010

Dragonfly Recording Network British Dragonfly Society

2008

Great Nut Hunt (dormouse)

People’s Trust for Endangered Species

1993

Great Stag Hunt

People’s Trust for Endangered Species

1998

Hedgehog Hibernation Survey

People’s Trust for Endangered Species & British Hedgehog Preservation Society

2013

National Amphibian & Reptile Amphibian and Retile Recording Scheme Conservation

2007

Nature’s Calendar

Woodland Trust

2000

Notes From Nature

Natural History Museum

2013

Oil Beetle Hunt

Buglife

2011

Open Air Laboratories (various surveys)

Imperial College London

2007

Plankton Portal

University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences

2013

PlantTracker

University of Bristol

2012

Recording Invasive Species Counts

National Biodiversity Network Biological Records Centre

2010

Seafloor Explorer

HabCam & Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

2012

References 1. Tweddle, J.C., Robinson, L.D., Pocock, M.J.O. & Roy, H.E. (2012). Guide to citizen science: developing, implementing and evaluating citizen science to study biodiversity and the environment in the UK. Natural History Museum and NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology for UK-EOF. Available online: www.ukeof.org.uk 2. Tatsuya, A., Freckleton, R.P., Queenborough, S.A., Doxford, S.W., Smithers, R.J., Sparks, T.H. & Sutherland, W.J. (2014). Proceedings of The Royal Society B, 281, 1779.

3. Cosquer, A., Raymond, R. & Prevot-Julliard, A.C. (2012) Observations of everyday biodiversity: a new perspective for conservation? Ecology and Society, 17 (4): 2.

4. Seed, L., Wolseley, P., Gosling, L., Davies, L. & Power, S.A. (2013). Modelling relationships between lichen bioindicators, air quality and climate on a national scale: Results from the UK OPAL air survey.

Environmental Pollution, 182, 437-447.

5. Defra (2014) Protecting Plant Health - A Plant Biosecurity Strategy for Great Britain (PB14168).

Kay Haw works in the Conservation Team at the Woodland Trust, which runs a number of citizen science projects. Thanks are due to David Slawson (OPAL), Jill Butler (ATI) and Kate Lewthwaite (Nature’s Calendar) for their valuable input to this article. Kayhaw@woodlandtrust.org.uk Participants in the OPAL Tree Health Survey.

Photo: OPAL

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The benefits of engaging with nature through learning in natural environments Learning in the natural environment has a number of direct and indirect benefits. So why are so many children denied opportunities to engage with nature?

JUSTIN DILLON There is substantial evidence that learning in the natural environment (LINE) has direct educational, health and psychological benefits for children and indirect benefits ranging from social to financial. However, despite increasingly robust evidence of these benefits, many children are denied this learning experience. For example, nowadays 10 per cent of children play in the natural environment compared to 40 per cent of adults when they were young.1 This ‘extinction of experience’2 has a detrimental longterm impact on environmental attitudes and behaviours. Worse still, children from low socio-economic groups, especially those living in deprived urban areas are particularly disadvantaged.3 A cultural shift is required, both at home and at school, before the situation can be reversed. Such a cultural shift requires ambitious evidence–led policy and significant improvements in the scale and targeting of services that directly tackle the current levels of inequality of opportunity.

In May 2010, the Prime Minister, David Cameron announced that he wanted the newly-elected administration to be ‘the greenest government ever’ and a year later, Caroline Spelman, the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, presented to Parliament the first white paper on the natural environment for over 20 years. The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature, known almost universally as ‘NEWP’ (Natural Environment White Paper), outlined what appeared to be an ambitious new approach to address the inter-linked issues including biodiversity loss, the threat of climate change and a decline in young people’s engagement with the natural environment. A key section stated: “We want more people to enjoy the benefits of nature by giving them freedom to connect with it.

Everyone should have fair access to a good-quality natural environment. We want to see every child in England given the opportunity to experience and learn about the natural environment”.4 Two months later, I was present at Camley Street Natural Park, near Kings Cross, in my role as trustee of London Wildlife Trust, to witness the Secretary of State launch 22

Engaged on the riverside with early experience of using field guides.

Photo: Justin Dillon

Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services. One of the Strategy’s four key outcomes was that “By 2020, significantly more people will be engaged in biodiversity issues, aware of its value and taking positive action”.5 In terms of what engagement might look like, the strategy provided some illustrations: “Many people in England are already very supportive of conservation efforts and make an important contribution through a variety of activities, for example, through management of their land, environmental volunteering or simple activities such as feeding birds in the garden”.6

Identifying the evidence base In the autumn of 2010 I was commissioned by Natural England to summarise the benefits and barriers of Learning in Natural Environments (LINE). As part of that commission I identified where the evidence gaps were, so that Natural England could help to prioritise the strategic research requirements to inform solutions to the challenge of reconnecting children with the natural environment through schools. Underlying the commissioning of this work was a belief that: “The level of direct contact with nature is a factor in influencing attitudes towards it suggesting that the more we can stimulate interest in and access to nature, the more people will be willing to contribute to its protection and enhancement”.7 The two reports were published in 20108 and 20119 and, together with an evaluation of the economic benefits of learning in the natural environment10 formed the basis of Learning in the Natural Environment: Review of social and economic benefits 23

ECOS 35(2) 2014 and barriers published by Natural England in 201211 and which has influenced government work in this area over the past two years. The rest of this article is an abridged version of the benefits report.

The benefits of LINE The term learning in the natural environment (LINE) encompasses a range of provision, including: • activities within a school’s or college’s own buildings, grounds or immediate area; • educational visits organised within the school day; and, • residential visits that take place during the school week, weekends or holidays.12 Evidence of the benefits of engaging with the natural world has been collected for decades. However, for much of that time, the focus has been on outcomes which were fairly easy to measure. Researchers have been encouraged to provide simple answers to simplistic questions such as ‘does LINE raise standards more than learning in the classroom?’ More recently, researchers have looked at a wider range of benefits and impacts.

The most authoritative survey of research into outdoor learning was carried out by Rickinson et al. in 2004. The review concluded that: “Substantial evidence exists to indicate that fieldwork, properly conceived, adequately planned, well taught and effectively followed up, offers learners opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills in ways that add value to their everyday experiences in the classroom”.13 The Rickinson et al. review identified four areas of impact on students: cognitive, affective; social/inter-personal; and physical behavioural. Many of the outcomes are inter-related and mutually reinforcing. In a seminal study of the impact of residential fieldwork on upper primary school students, Nundy identified a positive impact on long-term memory due to the memorable nature of the fieldwork setting as well as affective benefits of the residential experience, such as individual growth and improvements in social skills.14 Nundy also reported reinforcement between the affective and the cognitive outcomes which resulted in students being able to access higher levels of learning.

Nundy’s findings are supported by an Ofsted report which stated that “learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils’ personal, social and emotional development”.15 Many of the benefits do not occur in isolation and, indeed, a class of 30 students exploring their local surroundings may well have 30 different individual experiences resulting in a set of personal outcomes which is complex and hard to measure.

The benefits accruing from LINE can be reduced remarkably easily by a lack of adequate preparation, weak guidance to pupils and inadequate follow-up back in school. Fredericks and Childers note that “Effective field trips require planning, 24

ECOS 35(2) 2014 preparation, and follow-through upon returning to school as well as coordination between the host site, school, and chaperones”.16 A study of the value of LINE in England found that benefits included educational attainment, attitudes to other children, awareness of environment and natural science skills, behavioural outcomes and social cohesion, health benefits, school staff morale, and a more attractive school (aesthetically and to prospective parents).17 Furthermore, complementarity between these benefits means that the overall value of LINE to society is probably greater than the sum of these parts. The qualitative evidence linking LINE to such benefits is compelling, however, quantitative evidence linking LINE and changes in these benefits is lacking. Even in the absence of such quantitative links, the costs to society of the problems that are encountered in the absence of health, community cohesion, higher educational attainment and so on range from tens of millions to billions of pounds.

Knowledge and understanding The vast majority of research findings focus on the impact of LINE on participants’ knowledge and understanding. Specifically, students in schools with an environmental focus perform better in reading, mathematics, science and social studies and show greater motivation for studying science.18 In a comparative study in the USA, Randler et al. found that students aged 9-11 who had taken part in conservation action "performed significantly better on achievement tests" and that pupils "expressed high interest and well-being and low anger, anxiety, and boredom" compared with students who had been taught using more traditional methods.19 The impact of visits to the Eden Project in Cornwall has been reported by Bowker who examined pre- and post-visit drawings of tropical rainforests made by 9-11 year-old children. Bowker reported that the “post-visit drawings […] demonstrated far greater depth, scale and perspective than the pre-visit drawings”.20 In an earlier paper, Bowker (2004) interviewed 72 children from eight primary schools about one month after they had been on a one-day school visit to Eden.21 He reported that the children’s “opinion of plants changed, they understood the link between plants to their own daily lives and took delight in finding out where chocolate came from”. In another study, Hamilton-Ekeke compared three groups of Nigerian school students.

Students who were taught ecology by taking them to the school farm, pond, and nearby stream performed better than a matched group who were taught only in the classroom.22

Developing skills A broad range of skills ranging from the technical to the social have been identified as outcomes of LINE, particularly when it is integrated with the everyday school curriculum. In a major report on the work of outdoor education centres, Ofsted found that participating students “develop their physical skills in new and challenging situations as well as exercising important social skills such as teamwork and leadership”.23 Peacock’s evaluation of the National Trust Guardianship scheme, which involved students making multiple trips to sites, was that participating students developed social skills such as tolerance, caring, group awareness and self25

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discipline as well as research skills involving understanding and management of the natural environment. Specific skills were developed which ranged from gardening and cooking to using digital cameras and microscopes.24 Relatively few studies have looked at the experience of early years education. However, Jones reported on the development of children aged 3-5 on a school programme in Minnesota, USA. Jones noted that the “children learn to work collaboratively, socially construct knowledge, and develop social skills while cooperating, helping, negotiating, and talking with others”.25 Possick reported on a small-scale study involving her kindergarten class and another first-grade class. A month-long project culminated in turning their school hall into a ‘forest’. The project “was based on observing, questioning, taking field trips, conducting library research (including the internet) and asking experts”. Possick reports that the children in the two primary classrooms “developed skills in forming questions about what they thought they knew, wanted to know, and had learned”.26

Changing attitudes and behaviours There is much evidence of the positive impact of LINE on a range of attitudinal and behavioural dimensions. Environmental-based education makes other school subjects rich and relevant and gets apathetic students excited about learning.27 Research has identified such impacts resulting from a range of experiences including school gardening and environmental improvement; visits to local parks; farm visits and residential visits.28 Coskie et al., for example, describe the impact of a five-week intervention in which students aged 8-10 were taught how to write a field-guide to identify plants in a small area of woodland near to the school. The authors found that students “came to understand and care for the natural world in their immediate environment”.29 Relatively few studies have been able to look at long-term impacts of LINE. Farmer et al. evaluated Parks as Classrooms, an environmental education programme in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, USA. The programme focused on the impact of non-native species and humans on local biodiversity. The primary school participants were aged 9-10. 15 of the 30 students agreed to be interviewed a year after their visit. The authors reported that “many students remembered what they had seen and heard and had developed a perceived pro-environmental attitude”.30

Heath and well-being benefits Links between contact with the environment and personal health are wellestablished. Studies have shown that exposure to the natural environment can lower the effects of various mental health issues that can make it difficult for students to pay attention in the classroom. In particular Kaplan proposes the Attention Restoration Theory – the theory that exposure to nature reduces directed attention fatigue, restoring the ability to concentrate at will.31 The symptoms of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder are less severe when individuals (both children and adults) are regularly exposed to natural outdoor environments.32,33 The publication in 2005 of Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv, was influential in the US and elsewhere. Louv described a ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ which was 26

Fieldwork concentrating young minds.

Photo: Justin Dillon

meant to be a way of thinking about a society-wide problem of disconnectedness with the natural environment. The book stimulated the formation of a ‘No Child Left Inside’ movement which has had substantial success influencing policy makers.

For example, environmental literacy appeared in the US Department of Education budget for the first time in 2010.

Children are more likely to have hands-on contact with the natural environment during their time at primary schools than while they are attending secondary schools.

A study in Australia found that hands-on contact with nature in primary school “can play a significant role in a cultivating positive mental health and wellbeing”.34 Bird identified more than 100 studies linking improvements in mental health and time spent in the natural environment.35 In 2009, following a study of sustainability education in schools, Ofsted recommended that schools should "ensure that all pupils have access to out-of-classroom learning to support their understanding of the need to care for their environment and to promote their physical and mental well-being”.36

Self-efficacy and self-worth The mental and physical health benefits are closely linked to other impacts such as improvements in feelings of self-worth and self-efficacy. Swarbrick et al. report on a forest school initiative in Oxfordshire.37 Although acknowledging that research into the project is in its infancy, the authors do report that a questionnaire sent to schools and individuals using the forest school approach “revealed that the project was viewed very favourably by participant adults”, adding that they mentioned the 27

ECOS 35(2) 2014 “increased ability of quiet children to express themselves, an increase in confidence, and positive participation from disruptive children”. There was also evidence of increased speaking and listening skills during the one-year involvement in the forest school programme. Amos and Reiss’s evaluation of the 2004 London Challenge Residential Initiative, which involved 51 schools from five relatively deprived London boroughs sending groups of 11-14 year-olds to field centres found that pupils “surpassed their own expectations of achievement during the courses, and both pupils and teachers felt that the general levels of trust in others and the self-confidence shown by the pupils on the courses were higher than in school subjects”.38 An unusual and very thorough approach to evaluating the impact of an outdoor experience was reported by Whittington.39 The participants in this doctoral study were a group of adolescent girls who took part in a 23-day canoe expedition as part of an all-female wilderness programme in Maine, USA. Whittington interviewed the girls twice following the expedition, once 4-5 months afterwards and the second time after 15-18 months had elapsed. Whittington reported that the experience enabled the participating girls to challenge conventional notions of femininity in diverse ways including: 1) perseverance, strength, and determination; 2) challenging assumptions of girls’ abilities; 3) feelings of accomplishment and pride; 4) questioning ideal images of beauty; 5) increased ability to speak out and leadership skills; and 6) building significant relationships with other girls. Implications of these results for programme planners of all-female programs are discussed in the study.

Benefits to schools, teachers and the wider community The evidence suggests that teachers benefit from LINE, becoming more enthusiastic about teaching and bringing innovative teaching strategies to the classroom.40 Schools also benefit from teachers taking more ownership and leadership in terms of changing school culture. Several of the studies mentioned above have already highlighted possible benefits of LINE beyond those felt by the individual. These inter-related benefits include social, economic, health and crime reduction.41 In an Australian study, Davidson, described the experiences of schools that took part in the ‘Sustainable Schools Initiative’ which focuses on waste, water, biodiversity, school grounds and energy management.42 One of the most well-know examples of cross-community education aimed at intergenerational mentoring is the Garden Mosaics project. Kennedy and Krasny describe the mission of the project which is “connecting youth and elders to explore the mosaics of plants, people, and cultures in gardens, to learn about science, and to act together to enhance their community”.43 In the UK, the National Trust’s Guardianship scheme involved school-age students paying multiple visits to sites. An evaluation of the long-term benefits of the scheme, which involved over 100 schools, found that they saw great benefits from having a ‘classroom in the park’. Headteachers reported a development of ‘community spirit’ and valuing what was ‘in their own back yard’ as a result of the scheme.44 A rarely reported finding was that the scheme resulted in an increased willingness of parents to come into school for events and meetings.

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Benefits to the natural environment community The evidence suggests that the more that young people engage with the natural environment, the more they appreciate and care for it.45 Schaaf describes how four classes of primary-aged children engaged with a water quality project. By the end of the year-long project the students had not only learned how to monitor water quality but they had raised salmon in the classroom for release into the river.46

Natural Connections We still have a long way to go before the Coalition Government’s wish to see every child in England given the opportunity to experience and learn about the natural environment. Natural England has been keen to pull together the evidence base to support LINE and to understand why some schools promote it and others do not.

Armed with that knowledge, DEFRA, Natural England and English Heritage are funding the Natural Connections Demonstration Project (2012-2015) which works in more than 200 schools across the South West of England. The outcomes of Natural Connections might point the way forward to addressing the national disgrace that sees the majority of UK children denied sustained high quality access to nature as part of their education.

References 1. England Marketing. 2009. Report to Natural England on childhood and nature: a survey on changing relationships with nature across generations. Available at http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/ Childhood%20and%20Nature%20Survey_tcm6-10515.pdf. Last visited 19/8/14.

2. Pyle, R.M. 1978. The extinction of experience. Horticulture, 56: 64-67.

3. Thomas, G. and Thompson, G. 2004. A Child’s Place: Why Environment Matters to Children. Available at http://lx.iriss.org.uk/sites/default/files/resources/A%20child%27s%20place.pdf. Last visited 19/8/14.

4. HM Government. 2011. The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature. The Stationary Office. p.3 5. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). 2011. Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services. DEFRA. p.14.

6. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). 2011. Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services. DEFRA. p.14.

7. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). 2011. Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services. DEFRA. p.15.

8. Dillon, J. 2010. Beyond Barriers to Learning Outside the Classroom in Natural Environments. King’s College London.

9. Dillon, J. 2011. Understanding the Diverse Benefits of Learning in Natural Environments. King’s College London.

10. eftec. 2011. Assessing the Benefits of Learning Outside the Classroom in Natural Environments. Final Report for King’s College London. eftec.

11. Dillon, J. and Dickie, I. 2012. Learning in the Natural Environment: Review of social and economic benefits and barriers. Natural England Commissioned Reports, Number 092. Natural England. Available at http:// publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/1321181. Last viewed 19/8/14.

12. Ofsted. 2008. Learning Outside the Classroom: how far should you go? Ofsted.

13. Rickinson, M., Dillon, J., Teamey, K., Morris, M., Choi, M.Y., Sanders, D. and Benefield, P. 2004. A Review of Research on Outdoor Learning. Field Studies Council.

14. Nundy, S. 2001. Raising Achievement Through the Environment: a case for fieldwork and field centres.

National Association of Field Studies Officers.

15. Ofsted. 2008. Learning Outside the Classroom: how far should you go? Ofsted.

16. Fredericks, A.D. and Childers, J. 2004. A Day at the beach, anyone? Science and Children. 41(9): 33-37.

17. eftec. 2011. Assessing the Benefits of Learning Outside the Classroom in Natural Environments. Final Report for King’s College London. eftec.

18. National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (NEETF). 2000. Environment-based Education creating high performance schools and students. NEETF.

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ECOS 35(2) 2014 19. Randler, C., Ilg, A. and Kern, J. 2005. Cognitive and emotional evaluation of an amphibian conservation program for elementary school students. Journal of Environmental Education, 37: 43-52.

20. Bowker, R. 2007. Children’s perceptions and learning about tropical rainforests: An analysis of their drawings. Environmental Education Research, 13(1): 75-96.

21. Bowker, R. 2004. Children’s perceptions of plants following their visit to the Eden Project. Research in Science & Technological Education, 22(2): 227-243.

22. Hamilton-Ekeke, J.-T. 2007. Relative effectiveness of expository and field trip methods of teaching on students’ achievement in ecology. International Journal of Science Education, 29(15): 1869-1889.

23. Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). 2004. Outdoor Education: aspects of good practice. Ofsted.

24. Peacock, A. 2006. Changing Minds: the lasting impact of school trips. University of Exeter.

25. Jones, N.P. 2005. Big jobs: Planning for competence. Young Children, 60(2): 86-93.

26. Possick, J. 2007. An artful forest. Science and Children, 44(6): 30-32.

27. National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (NEETF). 2000. Environment-based Education creating high performance schools and students. NEETF. 28. Malone, K. 2008. Every Experience Matters: An evidence based research report on the role of learning outside the classroom for children’s whole development from birth to eighteen years. Report commissioned by Farming and Countryside Education for UK Department Children, School and Families, Wollongong, Australia.

29. Coskie, T., Hornor, M. and Trudel, H. 2007. April. A natural integration. Science and Children, 44(8): 26-31.

30. Farmer, J., Knapp, D. and Benton, G.M. 2007. An elementary school environmental education field trip: Long-term effects on ecological and environmental knowledge and attitude development. The Journal of Environmental Education, 38(3): 33-42.

31. Kaplan, S. 1995. The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(3): 169-182.

32. Taylor, A.F., Kuo, F.E. and Sullivan, W.C. 2001. Coping with ADD - the surprising connection to green play settings. Environment and Behavior, 33(1): 54-77.

33. Kuo, F.E. and Taylor, A.F. 2004. A potential natural treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: evidence from a national study. American Journal of Public Health, 94: 1580-1586.

34. Maller, C. 2005. Hands–on contact with nature in primary schools as a catalyst for developing a sense of community and cultivating mental health and wellbeing. Eingana, 28: 16-21.

35. Bird, W. 2007. Natural Thinking - Investigating the links between the Natural Environment, Biodiversity and Mental Health. RSPB. 36. Ofsted. 2009. Education for Sustainable Development. Improving schools – improving lives. Ofsted.

37. Swarbrick, N., Eastwood, G. and Tutton, K. 2004. Self-esteem and successful interaction as part of the forest school project. Support for Learning, 19(3): 142-146.

38. Amos, R. and Reiss, M. 2006. What contribution can residential field courses make to the education of 11–14 year-olds? School Science Review, 88(322): 37-44.

39. Wittington, A. 2006. Challenging girls’ constructions of femininity in the outdoors. The Journal of Experiential Education, 28: 205-221.

40. National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (NEETF). 2000. Environment-based Education creating high performance schools and students. NEETF. 41. Connexions Coventry and Warwickshire (2009). Connexions NEET’s Bushcraft Project in partnership with Groundwork – Evaluation Report. Connexions.

42. Davidson, G. 2005. Sustainable Schools-Practising what they preach. Eingana, 28(2): 23-26, 43. Kennedy, A.M. and Krasny, M.E. 2005. Garden Mosaics. The Science Teacher, March, 44-48.

44. Peacock, A. 2006. Changing Minds: the lasting impact of school trips. University of Exeter.

45. Coskie, T., Hornor, M. and Trudel, H. 2007. A natural integration. Science and Children, 44(8): 26-31.

46. Schaaf, S. 2005. How clean is the river? Science and Children, 42(5): 18-22.

Justin Dillon is professor of science and environmental education at King’s College London and a trustee of London Wildlife Trust. justin.dillon@kcl.ac.uk

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Closer to the natural world?

The achievements of Access to Nature grants The Access to Nature programme helped nearly 950,000 people experience nature, many for the first time. This article looks at the degree to which the grants helped to create positive outcomes for those who became involved.

HELEN BOVEY Community connections to greenspace and nature Access to Nature was a grant programme funded by the Big Lottery Fund and run

by Natural England. Opening for bids in April 2008, Natural England distributed £28.75m through a total of 115 grants to projects. At its foundation was a belief that engagement with the natural environment was an inherently ‘good thing’, supported by a growing evidence base about the impact that good quality green spaces have on people’s lives. They provide people with important opportunities for recreation, relaxation and exercise, whilst also offering communities a safe space for social interaction, social integration and strengthening of neighbourhood ties.1 The emerging evidence also shows key health benefits for many people as a result of spending time in the natural environment. For example, being in the natural environment can contribute to recovery from stress, encourage exercise participation, stimulate development in children, and provide opportunities for personal development and a sense of purpose in adults.2 The 2011 Natural Environmet White Paper declared that “Nature is good for human health”.3 Consequently, Access to Nature focused on the engagement of people with little or no previous contact with nature, and funded a diverse set of projects from local community based schemes to large-scale England-wide initiatives. Activities were wide ranging and included volunteering and educational opportunities, site improvements, and the provision of new facilities or equipment to enable access to the natural environment.

Each funded project was trying to achieve outcome 5 below, as well as at least one other.

Outcome 1: A greater diversity and number of people having improved opportunities to experience the natural environment.

Outcome 2: More people having opportunities for learning about the natural environment and gaining new skills.

Outcome 3: More people able to enjoy the natural environment through investments in access to natural places and networks between sites.

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Outcome 4: Richer, more sustainably managed, natural places meeting the needs of communities.

Outcome 5: An increase in communities’ sense of ownership of local natural places, by establishing strong partnerships between communities, voluntary organisations, local authorities and others.

The evaluation process for Access to Nature, undertaken by consultants Icarus, was a formative approach, where the evaluation was ongoing and fed back into management and planning processes to inform the development of the programme as it progressed.4

What has been achieved…

As a result of Access to Nature grants, nearly 950,000 people took up the opportunity to experience and enjoy nature, many for the first time. Investment in local green spaces, many of them in the heart of communities, was substantial; access improvements were made at over 2,800 sites across England and improvements to the quality of the natural environment were undertaken at over 2,500 sites.

This opened up the potential for those sites to reach new and wider audiences, and the aggregated figures show that nearly 640,000 people used the improved access opportunities at the various locations, and over 800,000 benefitted from the improvements to the quality of the different environments and green spaces.

The programme also enabled people to move on from their first encounters with the natural environment, offering them the chance to learn about nature and apply that learning through practical work in natural places. Over 640,000 people undertook a learning activity through Access to Nature, and nearly 42,000 people took the next step in their learning by participating in a training or development programme.

This in turn generated commitment, leading to over 34,000 people volunteering to regularly give their time in caring for and maintaining natural places.

These opportunities to engage with the natural environment generated substantial impacts in three areas; wellbeing, learning and ownership, while simultaneously improving the quality of access to local natural places.

Wellbeing benefits The wellbeing benefits created by Access to Nature came about through the emphasis on the provision of new opportunities. As projects hooked people into their first encounters with nature, they gave the chance for people to explore and discover new environments, and all they have to offer. This led to people describing and reporting a range of benefits, all of which have enhanced the wellbeing of participants.

• Children found new places to play and developed their social skills.

• Adults discovered nature first hand (and things about themselves).

• People were more active, felt calmer and more relaxed.

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An Access to Nature Project proving it's never too late to brush up on bird identification.

Photo: Natural England

• New friendships and connections were formed.

• Family relationships were strengthened through the experience of doing things outdoors together.

Access to Nature succeeded in providing people with a first connection with nature, and in helping people to feel confident to take the next step, often through the simple act of making it easy for people to know where they could access nature, how to get there, and what they could do at the location.

Learning benefits As people came into contact with nature, the programme gave them chances to learn. A success of Access to Nature was its ability to use the outdoors as a classroom, where people gained an understanding of the natural world, how it works, and how it can be managed and supported. The mix of simple learning opportunities combined with practically applying skills and knowledge in the outdoors alongside others was an effective strand of the programme.

The programme gave people new knowledge that was brought to life by being involved in improving local natural places, and encouraged many to move on to gain a formal qualification. It also supported mainstream learning for children and built a body of people in schools, children’s centres and community organisations who are now confident outdoor learning practitioners. This means the programme substantially added to the volume of people in England who know enough about their local green spaces to enjoy and appreciate them, to conserve and maintain them, and to help others to learn about them.

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Ownership benefits The relationships built through Access to Nature were critical in achieving a sense of ownership and commitment among participants towards nature. The programme provided strong evidence that, for people with limited experience of nature, a first encounter is not enough to change the way they feel about or use the natural environment, although building on first encounters can bring about those changes.

Access to Nature fostered a sense of ownership of greenspaces by local people through a ‘stepping stones’ approach which works at the pace of the people involved. It encouraged an empowering style that gives people the chance to grow and do things themselves, and a belief in offering people the chance to work on projects that matter to them. The time now being spent by people outdoors, the new groups formed to care for local sites, the new activities being hosted by local people, and the new learning about the natural world, are all indicative of a step change in how people have come to regard the natural environment.

Benefits for natural places The achievements of the programme were possible because of the focus on improving quality and access to local sites, and the willingness to offer people the chance to discover, learn and care for places close by. The combination of well targeted investment and people volunteering their time and skills learnt through Access to Nature meant that many natural places are now more visible, easier to access and navigate, better used, better managed, cleaner and more hospitable for wildlife habitats. The programme also contributed to increased wildlife value that will only be fully realised in years to come.

The shifts in knowledge and ownership achieved by the programme suggest that increases in quality and access will be lasting, as people use their new-found enthusiasm and skills to continue to conserve and manage natural places. In this way the programme created a substantial legacy in the volume of people in communities who now know about, care for and have an active role in conserving the natural places around them.

Visitors photographing a smooth newt at Blashford Lakes in the New Forest. Their trip was arranged by the Mosaic project which helps black and minority ethnic communities experience English National Parks.

Photo: Natural England

people and nature is dependent on an ability to adapt and respond to participants’ needs and ambitions as work progresses. Access to Nature has demonstrated the value of an approach grounded less in convention and more in adaptability, innovation and creativity.

What all of this has demonstrated is the dynamic inter-relationship between the outcomes brought about by the programme activities; the achievements associated with one outcome (such as learning) have shaped and influenced others (such as the development of ownership). This is not something that was obvious to many of the funded projects at the outset. It proved to be a significant aspect of their learning about engaging new audiences.

This engagement system has embraced a new way of working which blended the core knowledge and skills associated with working with nature with the relationship-building skills common to community development practice. Other key elements to the engagement system were the habit of forming good collaborations with organisations already on the ground in communities. These were important in overcoming barriers to engagement and creating resilient local structures and relationships. The need to make it easy for people to connect with nature has also been evidenced; for instance, by providing basic resources such as transport and suitable clothing.

As an ‘engagement system’, each component of Access to Nature contributed at different levels and across different outcomes for participants. Projects learnt to design and adapt their practice to respond to the situations, needs and aspirations of those they were working with in communities.

Natural England developed a role as an ‘enabling funder’ through the Access to Nature programme. It did so by balancing support and accountability within a spirit of learning for the various projects receiving funds. This has fostered reflective and enquiring practice from projects.

The evidence has shown the importance of purposeful rather than passive relationships, where good engagement starts with a sound knowledge and understanding of the people to be engaged and that building relationships between

Access to Nature projects – some summary examples

An engagement system

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Set out below are a snapshot of the Access to Nature projects. Details of many more are at the case stories section of the Access to Nature pages on Natural England’s web site: 35

ECOS 35(2) 2014 Countryside Mobility South West project Living Options Devon enabled people with limited mobility to adventure and explore outdoors through the use of ‘Tramper’ all-terrain mobility scooters and wheelchair accessible ‘Wheelyboats’.

Sowe Valley Project Warwickshire Wildlife Trust promoted the Sowe Valley to engage and train local people, many of whom may have failed to even notice its presence within the community. The engagement and the training has resulted in local people undertaking practical conservation tasks along the river corridor to manage and improve wildlife.

Setting the Scene for Nature This project, run by Community Forests North West, was set up to change local people’s perceptions of various greenspaces in the Merseyside urban fringe by engaging them in a series of events and activities designed to inspire them to value nature and develop a sense of ownership for the sites.

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The digital (conservation) age More than 70 scholars, policymakers and practitioners from around the world came together this May at the University of Aberdeen for the Digital Conservation 2014 conference. The event discussed developments at the interface of digital technology and nature conservation. The meeting was convened in recognition that digital technology increasingly shapes human interaction with nature, and that there is an urgent need to better understand this phenomenon.

GINA MAFFEY, KOEN ARTS, ANNIE ROBINSON, RENÉ VAN DER WAL The digital era

Example 1: Blogging Birds1

Let Nature Feed Your Senses Linking Environment And Farming (LEAF) and The Sensory Trust, England-wide ran the Let Nature Feed Your Senses project. It helped less privileged people to spend time in the countryside learning about food, farming and nature, with a target of 10,000 visitors.

Sharks are tweeting2, rhinos have Computing scientists and ecologists from the microchips in their horns3, and all University of Aberdeen have developed a tool manner of species are living out that allows real-time stories of birds to be told their lives in front of an international without human input. Raw location data from audience.4,5 Nature conservation reintroduced red kites (that have been satelliteis following the lead of other tagged by the RSPB) is supplemented with domains and entering the Digital environmental data provided by ecologists. This Age.6 In the last two decades the information is converted into readable text in World Wide Web and its associated the form of an automatically generated blog, developments (e.g. broadband, for example: “This week, Ussie was exploring Internet 2.0, the Internet of Things) a small area within his home range. Ussie’s have created new modes of business, foraging patterns during this week have been management, communication and varied while roosting largely on woodlands governance.7 The implications of around Dornoch.” The blog may enable local the Digital Age are far reaching for residents for example, to learn about kite daily life, but what does it mean ecology, and discuss kite activity on social media. for nature conservation? Here we Experiments indicate that computer-generated discuss the emerging field of digital blogs are deemed to be more informative and conservation and provide a tentative better written, especially when the red kites are classification of areas within that geographically wide-ranging. discipline. We also illustrate the article with some examples of the intriguing use of digital technology in nature conservation, and touch upon some of the barriers and opportunities in the field as discussed at the Digital Conservation 2014 Conference.

References

Digital conservation – what might it mean?

1. National Housing Federation, 2011. Greener Neighbourhoods. London 2. Bird, 2007; Barton and Pretty, 2010; NEA, 2011; Wilson, 1984; cited in Bragg, R., Wood, C., Barton, J., Pretty, J. 2013. Let Nature Feed Your Senses. University of Essex 3. Natural Environment White Paper 2011, page 46 4. A number of publications summarising the learning from Access to Nature are available at: http:// publications.naturalengland.org.uk/

Digital conservation refers to developments at the interface of digital technology and conservation. The examples shown in the boxes illustrate the breadth of such developments as presented at Digital Conservation 2014. Reflecting on both the presentations and dialogue at the conference and wider scientific publications and discussions in the (social) media, we tentatively distinguish several areas of digital conservation as listed below (see also Figure 1).

Discovery Quest Run by the Julian Housing Support Trust in Norfolk, Discovery Quest provides challenged outdoor activities for adults with severe and enduring mental health problems who live in deprived areas of Norfolk. A walking therapy programme was central to the project.

Mosaic Only about 1% of visitors to National Parks are from ethnic minority communities, although about 10% of the population is from an ethnic minority background. The Council for National Parks’ Mosaic project helps more people from black and minority ethnic communities get involved with our National Parks by linking 20 cities with England’s 9 National Parks.

Explore Moor - Geltsdale community outreach project The RSPB Reserve at Geltsdale is a wonderful upland Cumbrian landscape, yet there are many people practically on its doorstep who had little or no experience of it. This project created community outreach activities to get more people from all backgrounds, especially young people, to experience this wild environment on their doorstep.

Helen Bovey is a Director of Icarus and managed the evaluation of Access to Nature. helen@icarus.uk.net

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Current applications of digital conservation: • Information access – expanding and connecting databases; • Monitoring – the use of (digital) hardware and software to monitor for the purposes of collecting ecological information, preventing crime and informing management decision-making; • Public engagement – involving citizen scientists through digital platforms, for example e-learning, e-gaming and crowd sourcing; • Pseudo-nature – mediation of people’s relationship with, and understanding of the natural world through digital media, including virtual representations of nature; • Support – online decision-making and managerial support systems, including e-governance of environmental issues; • Mitigation – the environmental impact of electronic hardware used for conservation purposes; • Unknowns – what is currently being developed, or is to be developed in the future.

The areas may overlap to a large degree, sometimes even within the same project, such as with example 1, Blogging Birds. As pointed out for the broader information technology paradigm, “the growing convergence of specific technologies into a highly integrated system, within which old, separate technological trajectories become literally indistinguishable” seems to hold true for digital conservation as well.9

Example 2: Japanese cyberforest8 Acknowledging that contact with nature is often not possible for urban dwellers, a group from the University of Tokyo has developed a digital network to collect and share real-time audio-visual data from remote mountain forests and other natural landscapes. This allows any member of the public with internet access to see and hear nature from anywhere, and talk about it via an online forum.

There are also benefits for research: the network has resulted in the largest continuous dataset of forest bird songs ever collected in Japan.

In addition to ‘areas of application’, there are two further dimensions to digital conservation. One refers to the different agendas within the emerging field of digital conservation, and the other to the notion that a technological development is perceived and approached as a challenge, an opportunity, or both. We observed that notably practitioners seem to perceive technology as an opportunity. There is often optimism about the promise of more data, larger audiences, improved surveillance or more efficient management. Regarding the dimension of agendas, both those of practitioners and researchers can and often need to overlap to benefit concrete conservation on the ground. Furthermore, there is a strong need for researchers (as well for practitioners) to understand and measure the precise impacts that technologies may have on nature conservation. In the remainder of this article we pose some critical questions from a research agenda, and look at some barriers and opportunities within digital conservation.

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Figure 1.Three dimensions of digital conservation: areas of application; agendas; and perception and understanding.

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Is nature conservation learning from other domains?

ECOS 35(2) 2014 Example 3: Wild Time app 10 In his film ‘Project Wild Thing’, journalist and filmmaker David Bond observes that his children, like so many others, spend much of their time engaging with digital technology. What has followed is a campaign to get kids outside, and in an ironic twist, digital technology is employed as a facilitator in this campaign. One of the tools is the Wildtime app – which asks kids and parents to specify how much spare time they have. On the basis of that, suggestions of what they could do outside in that time period are provided.

NEIL BENNETT

Volunteer retention is challenging enough in nature conservation, but keeping volunteers interested when competing in a digital market as well, is possibly even more difficult.

The digital market moves quickly, and remaining in vogue requires a commitment from organisations to develop and evolve their digital communication strategy. However, it was pointed out by several delegates that conservationists are powerful innovators. Nature conservation is an area that has always been fighting for resources and conservation organisations often have to work with what is available – rather than what is desirable. The extent of digital innovation will largely be determined by the willingness of conservationists to engage with other disciplines, or to learn new skill sets. It was observed by several conference participants that digital applications in conservation are often a step behind digital applications found in domains such as healthcare, transport or education – and it is thus important that digital conservationists look beyond their domain to ensure that they are not reinventing the wheel. A move that leads us to ask - how should the conservationists of tomorrow be trained in the Digital Age?

Is it beneficial to have more data collection apps?

Many of the digital tools presented at the Digital Conservation conference ‘demo and practitioners day’ served very similar purposes, i.e. to collect more data. Yet, several of those tools were being developed in relative isolation, both from other organisations and from the targeted end-users, who were often citizen scientists. Consequently, there is a danger of creating tools that serve the needs of an organisation rather than of actual end-users.

There is, however, also a danger of developing tools within a competitive, consumerled market. It seems almost forgotten that in digital conservation applications do not need to follow competitive market rules. In sharing tools, creating cross-platform and developing cross-organisational applications that serve multiple purposes it may be possible to collaboratively serve higher conservation goals. In addition, this may reduce confusion for users and help to support the efforts of relatively small conservation organisations. Such organisations may not be able to keep pace with their larger counter parts when it comes to producing fancy apps and websites – despite the excellent work done by often very small technical teams, or even individuals, with very limited resources. There is a wealth of information and innovation to be shared, and it is vital that in creating all-singing all-dancing applications for data collection, organisations recognise that data collection is a first step, not the end point in nature conservation.

Is a digital disconnect being created?

While many of us may find ourselves in a globally digital community, there are also many citizens in the UK, in Europe, and globally, who do not have, or do not wish to 40

have, (reliable) internet access. Who is being excluded in conservation when modes of business, management, communication and governance11 are increasingly digital? To give a concrete example in relation to data collection – there are many individuals who have dedicated many years to collecting data for nature conservation without a digital platform, and the experience gained from this labour of love should not be ignored.

As Jeremy Wilson from the RSPB stated: “I want a devoted birder to be able to send me data on the back of envelope as readily as through using an app”. Indeed, Wilson reminds us that is does not need to be either-or; digital applications are tools that can be used alongside many other traditional forms of communication and management.

Does digital conservation have a role in sustainable international development?

The development of digital technologies contributes to issues of environmental waste. It is thus important to question at what cost encouraging engagement with (local) nature through digital platforms has on national or international contexts. Ken Banks from kiwanja.net forced delegates to look in the mirror and consider how this proliferation of digital components – which often have short life spans – impacts on international development. Banks also reiterated messages that have been long discussed in nature conservation more broadly: remember to start with the problem, work within the local context, and co-develop an appropriate, user-led platform to address the issue. Just like nature conservation, international development has long suffered from limited resources.

But, as the latter has shown, where there is resource limitation there can be innovation.

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Technology for nerds, or a vital new force for conservation?

ECOS 35(2) 2014 Example 4: NBN Gateway12 More than 150 British organisations ranging from volunteer recording groups to research institutes and government agencies provide data to the openaccess online platform of the National Biodiversity Network (NBN). Complete datasets can be browsed or downloaded freely by anyone with internet access, and maps of species distributions (and change over time) can be retrieved (there is also a NBN package specifically designed for researchers13).

The Gateway holds almost 100 million records of about 30,000 taxa. Download logs shows that the Gateway is, among other things, used by policy makers as a decision-making support tool.

History professor Kranzberg's First Law of Technology reads as follows: “Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral”.14 The sociologist Castells added to that: “It is indeed a force, probably more than ever under the current technological paradigm that penetrates the core of life and mind”.15 While ‘digital conservation’ is merely an umbrella term, it is crucial that the nature conservation community as a whole starts to think more comprehensively about the implications of digital technology on nature conservation. Digital technology is a force – not simply good or bad, but one that often shows an “ambivalent face, empowering and hindering at the same time”.16 It is a force that increasingly influences the way we think about, perceive and engage with nature. Furthermore, as Guillaume Chapron from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences stated: “we need to avoid BNFN – technology that is made By Nerds, For Nerds”. Nature conservation in general and conservationists more broadly should not ignore digital innovation but engage with it and help steer the changing nature of conservation in the Digital Age.

References 1. http://redkite.abdn.ac.uk/ 2. http://news.sky.com/story/1187066/australia-sharks-use-twitter-to-warn-swimmers 3. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/21/world/africa/kenya-rhino-microchips/ 4. http://volgdevos.nl/ 5. http://www.edgeofexistence.org/instantwild/ 6. World Social Science Forum 2013, Montréal, Canada, 13-15 October 2013 ‘Social Transformation and the Digital Age’.

7. Castells, E. (2010) The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society. (1st ed. 1996) Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell.

8. http://cyberforest.nenv.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ 9. Castells (2010) – see above, page 71-72.

10. http://wildtime.projectwildthing.com/ 11. See seven.

12. https://data.nbn.org.uk/ 13. https://github.com/JNCC-UK/rnbn 14. Kranzberg, M. (1986) Technology and History: Kranzberg's Laws. Technology and Culture, 27 (3), page 545.

15. Castells (2010) – see above, page 76.

16. Lanzara, G. (2009) Building digital institutions: ICT and the rise of assemblages in government. In: F. Contini and G. Lanzara (eds.) ICT and Innovation in the Public Sector. Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, page 38.

The authors work at the University of Aberdeen as part of the Natural Resource Conservation Group in the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub. Any questions can be directed to Gina Maffey: @ginazoo (twitter) or ginazoo@outlook.com

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BioBlitz: a growing movement in wildlife recording BioBlitz events are local wildlife surveys often engaging public audiences to identify and record as many different species as possible in a given timeframe. This article explains how the BioBlitz concept has been deployed by wildlife bodies in the UK, and reports on the achievements of BioBlitz events, based on the first formal assessments.

MATT POSTLES BioBlitz events are local wildlife surveys often engaging public audiences to find, identify and record as many different species as possible in a given timeframe. A BioBlitz usually combines the collection of biological records, as a form of contributory citizen science,1 with public engagement. Naturalists, scientists and volunteers work together with members of the public and school groups to create a snapshot of the variety of life that can be found in an area. This provides an opportunity for participants to learn together and share their expertise and enthusiasm for nature whilst collecting valuable information about the wildlife of their local area.

A brief history of BioBlitz The concept originated in the USA in 1996 when the United States Geological Survey ran an event at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, Washington D.C. in 1996.2 It was here that the term BioBlitz was coined and offered as an open source idea to be used and adapted by any group. A series of similar events derived from a Biodiversity Day at Walden Pond, Massachusetts led by Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson and Peter Alden.3 The terms Biodiversity day and BioBlitz have since become largely interchangeable. Various derived forms of BioBlitz events have taken place since then and the concept has become established in several countries including New Zealand, Spain, Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

The number of BioBlitz events taking place in the UK has increased since the start of the National BioBlitz programme in 2009, attracting large numbers of participants and gathering much biological data. A national support network is coordinated by Bristol Natural History Consortium (BNHC) which ran one of the first BioBlitz events in the country and founded the network alongside partners of the OPAL (Open Air Laboratories) project.4 As an open source concept, anyone can run a BioBlitz. The National BioBlitz Network functions as a community: supporting new events with guidance and resources5, sharing best practice and undertaking research into the outcomes of the event format.

The format offers a great deal of flexibility and the brand identity has been adopted into other related activities. For example, in 2013 London’s Horniman Museum was inspired by outdoor BioBlitzes to complete a major review of their Natural History Collections resulting in a 12 month project.6 As technology has advanced and online 43

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access to expertise has become more easily available, biological recording has enjoyed the opportunity to expand its repertoire of platforms from records submission websites to species identification mobile apps. In 2012 a group of environmental professionals capitalised on this, voluntarily establishing Garden BioBlitz. This new format invited enthusiastic participants to BioBlitz their own gardens, consulting expert naturalists and scientists online before submitting their records.7 BNHC and partners of the National BioBlitz Network have identified 264 BioBlitz events that have taken place between 2006 and 2013. These events have contributed an estimated 113,000 biological records to local and national databases and engaged an estimated 83,000 participants. Overall, the estimated total audience of BioBlitz events continues to grow steadily year on year.8

Recording wildlife Done well, an individual BioBlitz can make a substantial contribution to knowledge of a local site by providing a ‘biodiversity snapshot’. The high concentration of recorder effort and expertise in a single locality supports identification of a wide spectrum of taxa and rare species may be more likely to be discovered and recognised in these circumstances. Site managers can use this information directly to influence habitat management, inform interpretation signage or apply for protected site status.

Most BioBlitz event organisers also submit the collected data to a recognised environmental data repository for wider use through Local Environmental Records Centres (LRCs) and online recording platforms.8 LRCs have been collating biological records, from mostly volunteer and amateur recorders, since the 1950s and 60s with technological advances now slowly pooling regional data into national datasets such as the NBN Gateway.9 These data repositories have been established through a long history of amateur wildlife recording in the UK, and the contribution of amateur recording to our understanding of local wildlife populations and distributions is widely considered to be world leading.10 This knowledge is vital for informing conservation policy and land management decisions.11,12,10 In a political climate that favours economic development over environmental sustainability and conservation of wildlife, it is more important than ever that we have the knowledge and evidence to support protection of green spaces and wildlife habitats locally and nationally.

However, BioBlitz events are not suitable as a replacement for ongoing monitoring and survey effort. For example, a single BioBlitz event cannot take account of seasonal changes - almost all BioBlitz events in the UK take place in Spring and Summer. Yet by galvanising and concentrating recorder effort, such events have a role to play in maintaining and expanding the existing datasets as well as recruiting future biological recorders and citizen scientists.

Engaging people and building confidence Several recent reports have highlighted the importance of spending time in the natural world for health and wellbeing as well as environmentally positive attitude 44

An insect field guide gets pressed into action for a BioBlitz event.

Photo: Bristol Natural History Consortium

and behaviour traits, particularly among children and also shown that people are more and more disconnected from nature in their everyday lives.13,14,15 Outdoor events such as BioBlitz may help to break down barriers to engagement with nature by inviting exploration and discovery of local green spaces within the perceived security of a structured activity, thereby building confidence for people to experience the outdoors for themselves.

BioBlitz events encourage a diversity of audiences to take part, who have varying existing levels of engagement with the natural world. From the uninitiated such as families coming to enjoy a day out, to enthusiastic volunteers and experienced naturalists, a BioBlitz offers an opportunity to engage multiple audiences and facilitate informal learning between these groups under a common goal of discovering wildlife. Initial findings from an evaluation of BioBlitz events held in 2013 suggests that participants find this informal learning enjoyable and effective with around 90% of participants reporting newly gained skills or knowledge.8 Christmas, et al. identified different tiers of engagement with biodiversity issues from the oblivious to the highly active.16 BioBlitz events can and do engage participants from across these tiers providing an opportunity and a challenge to target messaging appropriately. If successful, BioBlitz events may have a significant role to play in shifting individuals into higher levels of engagement and positive action around wildlife and conservation issues, particularly biological recording.

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S. Droege (1996) Bio-blitz home page, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/blitz.html.

Walden Woods Project (2009) Walden Biodiversity, http://www.waldenbiodiversity.com/about/.

M. Postles, BioBlitzUK home page, (2013) http://www.bnhc.org.uk/home/bioblitz.html.

L. Robinson, J. Tweddle, M. Postles, S. West and J. Sewell (2013), Guide to running a BioBlitz, Bristol: The Natural History Museum, Bristol Natural History Consortium, University of York and Marine Biological Association.

Horniman Museum (2013) Natural History BioBlitz, http://www.horniman.ac.uk/about/natural-history-bioblitz.

Garden BioBlitz (2013) Meet the Team, 2013. http://www.naturewatched.org/meet-the-team. html#sthash.2UMyUyat.dpbs.

M. Postles and M. Bartlett, ‘The rise and rise of BioBlitz: biological recording and public engagement events in the UK’, in prep.

ALERC, Association of Local Environmental Records Centres, 2013. http://www.alerc.org.uk/.

R. Ellis and C. Waterton (2004) ‘Environmental citizenship in the making: the participation of volunteer naturalists in UK biological recording and biodiversity policy’, Science and Public Policy, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 95 - 105.

F. Burns, M. Eaton, R. Gregory and et al. (2010), State of Nature Report, The State of Nature Partnership, London.

Defra (2011), Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services, Defra, London.

S. Moss (2012), Natural Childhood, The National Trust, London.

J. Chen-Hsuan Cheng and M. C. Monroe, ‘Connection to Nature: childrens effective attitude towards nature,’ Environment and Behaviour, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 31 - 49, 2012.

Natural England, Annual report from the 2012 - 2013 survey (NECR122), Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment: The national survey on people and the natural environment, Natural England, London, 2013.

S. Christmas, L. Wright, L. Morris, A. Watson and C. Miskelly, Engaging People in Biodiversity Issues: Final report of the Biodiversity Segmentation Scoping study (B2020-004), Defra, London, 2013.

Matt Postles is Project Manager at the Bristol Natural History Consortium. matt@bnhc.org.uk Learning to use a pooter as part of a BioBlitz event.

Photo: Bristol Natural History Consortium

The same evaluation found that BioBlitz events are successful in attracting a diverse audience in terms of age range and existing knowledge and engagement with wildlife and conservation issues but are currently failing to engage members of black and minority ethnic communities where it seems further barriers need to be identified and addressed.8

BioBlitz participants study fungus up close.

Photo: BNHC

Challenges for BioBlitz and wildlife recording BioBlitz events have evolved and diversified in the UK as different local groups and organisations make use of the format for their own priorities of public engagement with nature and collection of biological records. BioBlitz events engage a growing audience in biodiversity issues and biological recording, providing opportunities for diverse audiences to gain knowledge and skills. However, these events are far from a silver bullet to the challenges of engaging people with nature. Engaging hard-toreach groups remains a challenge to be addressed and there is a question of legacy: how can we extend and amplify the positive outcomes which BioBiltz delivers, ensure the biological data is utilised to its best value, reconnect people with nature in their local community, and recruit naturalists for the future?

References 1. J. Tweddle, L. Robinson, M. Pocock and H. Roy (2012) Guide to citizen science: developing, implementing and evaluating citizen science to study biodiversity and the environment in the UK, London: Natural History Museum and NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology for UK-EOF.

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ECOS 35(2) 2014

ECOS 35(2) 2014

Green and pleasant heritage Ian Rotherham’s article ‘The call of the wild’ in ECOS 35(1) 2014 prompted some tangential thoughts: Why do we tinker ad nauseam with the status quo, while leaving more fundamental questions below the horizon? Must we continue to sell nature conservation via florid wildflower meadows and the iconic face of the tiger? Should the aesthetics of landscape have priority over the ecology of the land?

MARTIN SPRAY Back to the future Like the sage yokel, I would prefer not to have to start from here; but here is where we are… Here (this is all obvious) is the result of changes past, and many people are seeking ways forward for wildlife and environment that in a sense are backward looking, in that they are attempts to backtrack to a stage when what today we see as heritage was new, protected, and state of the art. This is far from all nostalgia.

An example of the latter would be the use of cattle to break up undergrowth that has established since the foot and mouth episode in 2001, ready for “the sheep to do their work”. The project deserves serious consideration. It is concerned with a long depth of history, and a territory larger than much of the sort of landscape-scale thinking that is currently being advocated amongst conservationists. It appears already to have widespread support, and to be much the sort of long-term project I have readily supported for years. And yet…

Using cattle to break up undergrowth ready for the sheep would be because undergrowth was not wanted in the forest, because (amongst other things) it reduces the abundance of sheep – not by its nature an obvious woodland beast, but an essential part of the Dean tradition. Sheep are an important ingredient of the cultural heritage, and many people see the reconstitution of a commoned2 sheep flock as essential to the Forest’s future. At the same time, the sheep owners would cooperate with groups such as the RSPB, to “safeguard wildlife and plant species”. Undergrowth is also not wanted by many of the Forest’s visitors, who like the extended views and the sometimes more park-like structure of the woods. It is rather as though this gives a feeling of being ‘close to nature’ for many visitors while keeping the safe familiarity of the aesthetics of the garden. This heritage focus would intentionally keep the ecology less developed than Nature itself perhaps would like.

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I have been wondering about a local example of such a seeking to go backwards into the future. An effort is being made to bid for substantial lottery funding for an ambitious project to preserve the unique heritage and landscape of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. If successful, the Dean would join the likes of Ben Nevis, Ironbridge, and the White Cliffs of Dover, with up to £3m to protect its distinctiveness. A focus is on a bid to fund ways to ensure that freemining and the commoning of sheep remain living traditions.1

Heritage(s) Heritage is Janus-like. In one way, it is comforting, anchoring, interesting, and inspirational. Looked at from another direction, it is annoying, intimidating, stultifying. The heritage represented by the typical English pastoral countryside is often a beautiful desert, sustained by wasteful management practices and our access to cheap imports. And it can be a scenery backdrop: for example an upland valley that used to support several hundred people, but today is the home (or second home) of a handful of families with incomes elsewhere. There are, of course, pockets where past land management has provided conservation opportunities not generally available, but these may be parts of the heritage we find difficult to maintain. One example that is sadly amusing comes to mind: the Adonis blue butterfly hangs on in southern England in a few places where, amongst other things, there is grassland facing south, and the sward is one to three centimetres tall. If the sward grows by a couple of centimetres, the species is in danger.3 Even without the butterfly, we find this habitat attractive. Our culture is one that puts a heavy emphasis on conventionally attractive countryside; on the aesthetics of the landscape rather than the ecology of the land. I know I am inclined to do this. For me, 49

ECOS 35(2) 2014 one of the most joyous landscapes, from childhood associations, is the impoverished, denuded, sheep-wrecked4 moors of the Pennines. We are inclined to accept and to like landscapes that literally ‘fit the picture’, though they are impoverished or polluted, or require an intensity of management that we can’t afford.5 A particular danger is that a picture contains less information, fewer details, than what it represents; and we do not really need all the details: we can pretend they are there. Or, more likely, as we literally know no better, we accept the situation.

A personal example: I took my young daughters to a place where when I was their age I had found at least twelve species of butterfly. They found six, and they were delighted. My memory is longer, and I wasn’t.6

He saw that it was good Since the eighteenth century, when the idea came into common philosophic use in Europe, “aesthetics has”, as David Harvey has somewhere written, “trampled over ethics as a prime force of social and intellectual concern”.7 Heritage does not equate with, and concerns very much more than; aesthetics. However, when a part of The Heritage is discussed, the thing that comes to our minds, after wondering how old it is, is what it looks like – in particular, how beautiful it is. It is difficult not to think of the land (or sea) as something seen; and it is very difficult to think of the ecological integrity of an area without rating it in terms of visual attractiveness.

I think we are breaking the habit of rating landscape as though it were paintings (etc.), though the common image of the Garden of Eden remains just that – a garden - and we still sell nature conservation via the florid wildflower meadow, the sumptuous multiplicity of the tropical forest, the beautiful melody of the songbird (or resplendent plumage even if the bird sings like a toad), the iconic face of the tiger. We do not sell it to many people via slugs or amorphous slimes, though they may be ecologically more important.8 A popular myth of a future ‘greened’ land, advises Paul Selman, is of “cosy farming practices, mellow building styles and graceful local energy production”; but the future for the countryside, even if miraculously we find ourselves with a True Green government, may be rather less than romantic. Necessity may make much “industrial in scale and visually heretical”. We have to “learn to love” our new landscapes.9 They would, of course, not be what we inherited. Paul adds a personal comment: “I now find much of the Scottish Highlands visually less attractive than I used to, because I know too much about the hardship, violence and injustice that produced the landscape we now see.” That is part of the heritage.

It is difficult to remain objective about heritage. Much of the thinking about what to protect is grounded in personal experience, family and group traditions, belief, and other things usually called subjective. Scientists are not immune. In 1945, looking towards a post-war Britain, Arthur Tansley, a leading plant ecologist and one of nature conservation’s founding fathers, published a slim “plea for organized nature conservation”.10 He begins his preface by quoting the historian G.M. Trevelyan: “Must England’s beauty perish?”, and the first page of his text includes “The present aspect of most of our British countryside is man-made” … “[The] combination of 50

ECOS 35(2) 2014 cultivation with half-wild country is one of the most precious parts of our national heritage….” … “How much of this unique inheritance can we preserve in the years of profound change that lie ahead of us?”

Tansley was seeing a heritage of land use and management that led to an attractive landscape, in which he also found a heritage of plant and animal communities that he and many of us think attractive. These have intrinsic interest, and their protection was sought. We now see some of them as backdrops to today’s activities that are contrary to wider environmental thinking. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that they are a popular focus for conservation for the public, although thinkers taking a wider environmental view question their significance. They are part of our cultural rather than ‘natural’ heritage.

Heritage as we know it The heritage we have is sometimes a compromise selection of what has been, and sometimes a very distinctly skewed preference. The rest is lost, some of it by accident, some by decay, some because its guardians couldn’t afford or no longer wanted it.

Now, can we afford what survives? Shall we tomorrow? The question is as applicable to the Yorkshire Dales or the North York Moors - or the Adonis blue - as it is to York Minster. The question includes such things as the cost of maintenance, and the shortage of skilled people able to do the maintaining, but it also has to accommodate knowledge that what was once desirable or essential is now considered by some an anachronism, or indeed altogether a bad thing. My example of the minster, of course, for some people represents just this ambiguity: its architectural and artistic treasures are enveloped in mediaeval miasma - yet their loss would be widely regretted.

One should not conclude from this that the public purse has to be emptied to ‘preserve’ such ‘assets’ – they could be funded by community ownership, private funding, and creating markets for access to such places and features – though that is the common result when an Establishment decides it wants them (beautiful old buildings, scenic landscapes, curious olde customs…).

This seems still part of the cultural heritage. For whatever reason we have it, where does it stand, in the face of several important Ifs? For example: If we need to safeguard and boost biodiversity….

If we need to maximise home-grown timber and fuel-wood….

If we need to increase our food-growing area….

If we need access to more nature-like landscapes….

If we need to promote iconic wild-living species….

In each such case, the priority would not give much attention to the survival of heritage artefacts, let alone a whole cultural landscape.

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Conversations within uncomfortable limits A small, parochial, event served to remind me how much of an uphill struggle is ahead, if there is to be any worthwhile success in discussing environmental and nature conservation issues – let alone dealing with them. Early in 2012, with about 40 other people interested in environmental matters, I attended a seminar arranged largely for the benefit of environmentally-oriented members and officers of the Forest of Dean District Council. The purpose was perhaps too big: to envisage the area in which the Forest sits as a ‘bioregion’, in a post ‘peak oil’ context, and to look into the economic worth of its natural resources.

ECOS 35(2) 2014 scale projects, rewilding, reintroductions, and so on - still seem to characterise much of the public image of conservation - qualified as nature or environmental. ECOS readers may see the task as otherwise, but the “green and pleasant land” image remains ingrained. Perhaps, in ways we are unaware of, we are perpetuating it….

In simplified terms, and with some grouping that you might disagree with, I see a choice to be made from several types of value that between us we give to the land.12 My list is below. Discussing such value choices, even when they are paraded as ‘services’ in much conservation policy circles these days, has hardly begun:

In small groups, we talked about the area’s environmental resources, its deficiencies, its productivity and products, and its ‘human resources’. It was soon awkwardly clear to some people there, that the overall level of discussion was, considering the green interests for which we were selected, too low and too narrow. Whereas a ‘peak oil’ situation was (then11) generally accepted, few participants seemed to have grasped the severity of its consequences if predictions about it were correct. The need for radical, core, changes was hardly mentioned, and certainly wasn’t given much time. Tinkering with the status quo rather than questioning society’s aspirations seemed to be as far as many wanted to go. Indeed, it was as though we were trying to find new ways to maintain the status quo. Relationships and conflicts between ecology, aesthetics, cultural heritage, nature conservation, productivity, consumption, recreation, and so on, were largely ignored. That is, I think, roughly where current joined-up thinking has got to, in the country as a whole. In this respect, in my experience, there would seem to have been little improvement in the past 50 years.

Cultural (the human heritage, including narratives, and symbolic uses)

This was disappointing for the organisers, Transition Forest of Dean, and to my mind rather alarming. But it was not very unexpected: several participants were aware that around the UK similar situations could be described, and that officialdom’s discussions on this theme are commonly at about the same level. A few also voiced the opinion that it is not much higher in some green organisations. It is partly down to hazy understandings, and I think in large part it is because the issues dimly seen are intimidating, and the either panicky or platitudinous official responses to them are often stultifying. A part of the problem is a reluctance to look towards the unknown or simply new, and away from the status quo and our heritage. Is it not because the first attempt is often to try to find new ways to maintain the status quo?

The choices can be painful, at least hypothetically. Do we (as it were – I know these examples are very abstract) fund a second high-speed rail route, or keep York Minster in repair? Or fund (say) opera, ditto? Do we fund (say) another, wilder, national forest, with some reintroductions, or keep York Minster in repair? Yet, again thinking parochially, although the cultural heritage of the forest on my doorstep is hugely important to many people, native and local or otherwise, and I, an incomer, find it fascinating, it isn’t important to much else that lives here, and it is not what I would ultimately defend.

Undiscussed questions This is a general, not a parochial problem. The sorts of questions not being debated are rather fundamental. Thinking of Britain, the image of conservation – qualify it as nature or environmental – seems to presuppose that the status quo landscape, our heritage in up-to-date form, is a thing to be preserved. It is beautiful (I agree), it is meaning-full, it is disappearing…. We discuss it ad nauseam, but the bigger, more fundamental, questions are left below the horizon. We can continue, for example, to import most of our food; we can knock down someone else’s forest and claim a shift towards biofuels, etc, etc…

I know that this characterises far from all conservation; that it applies to only some environmental movements. But it does – despite all our enthusing for landscape52

Human-ecological (the services) Productive (the resource, including various ways of harvesting it) Natural-historic (its ‘interest’, and scientific value, including of its biodiversity) Aesthetic (its beauty to the various senses) Recreational (its use for play, exercise, challenge) Psycho-spiritual (its use for recovery and recharge, and as a source of inspiration, admiration, and awe; and for those of a religious bent, worship).

Nature on unnatural foundations Ian Rotherham points out that we attempt (or want) to develop a more ‘natural’ Nature, by forms of re-wilding, but the environment we inherit is not natural. The desire has to build itself on ‘unnatural’ foundations. What we and Nature inherit is only part of what we would like. But we should not seek what is not there. Nature doesn’t.13 Ian sketches what to me is an important indication of a direction we might explore.

“Something lost from the recent discussions on re-wilding is the […] increasingly urban status of people and of Nature.” For Nature, this means eclectic, haphazard, untried communities, in novel habitats. The Wild may be there abundantly, but increasingly a part of Nature’s heritage is our cultural gift.

Should attempts at perpetuation of our heritage get our support? Yes - if we are sure when in the past we want the future to include; yes – if we are sure which aspects 53

ECOS 35(2) 2014 and elements from the past we want the future to hold. (Ye olde tea shoppe, but with clean modern loos.) Yes – if we can reach consensus on such things. And yes – unless we can replace it with something we feel is better. Can we, though, agree what might be ‘better’…?

It may be that we should rethink what ‘heritage’ is about, and in some cases reject it. The idea of heritage is, anyway, becoming quite clouded, in the flux of political and philosophical changes, the slowly growing influence of women, the increased clout and demands of youth-culture, and the fascinating but bewildering multicultural social mix. We may still need to ask “Whose heritage?”, but the answer is less obvious than it was, and the outcomes may need negotiation.

‘Heritage’ signifies different things to different people. It is qualified for each of us by our upbringing and our experiences. Sometimes, we see what we are told is our heritage, and we reject it. Sometimes, we shrink from it horrified. We need to check against our personal assumptions what the heritage means and offers to other people.

What does it mean and what does it offer, for example, to someone who is chronically disabled, or blind, to an immigrant or exile, to a devout Moslem, or an animist, to someone suffering agoraphobia, to a down-and-out, or to a victim of rape?

Notes 1 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

‘£3m bid to save Dean traditions’ Forester 9 August 2012. An advertisement by the Forest of Dean Landscape Partnership Scheme invited the involvement of local people.

Whether or not sheep are a commonable species is disputed.

Tom Brereton (2004) Farming and butterflies in Britain The Biologist 51(1): 32-36.

‘Sheep-wrecked’ is George Monbiot’s term, in Feral, Allen Lane, 2013.

Fitting the picture isn’t only English, or European, or Western. Eg. Maggie Keswick, in her forward to Ji Cheng’s early seventeenth century Chinese The craft of Gardens (tr. Alison Hardie, Shanghai Press 1988, Betterlink Books 2012), relays the comment of a twentieth century Chinese that “The question of reality will not really bother [the garden visitor], as soon as he ceases to be in the garden and starts to live in the painting”.

Martin Spray (1993) ‘Concerning little things’, ECOS 14(1) 37-41.

Discussed in Richard Dixon’s The Baumgarten corruption. From sense to nonsense in art and philosophy, Pluto Press, 1995.

Slugs, at least, have a champion: the Ugly Animal Preservation Society is actually a stand-up comedy act “dedicated to raising the profile of some of Mother Nature’s more aesthetically challenged children”. There is a lot to do…. ‘One minute with Simon Watt’ New Scientist 22 June 2013, p. 27; www.newscientist. com/article/mg21829220.300-forget-pandas--ugly-animals-should-be-protected-too.html#.U8wRaHnjjm4 .

Paul Selman (2010) Learning to love the landscapes of carbon neutrality Landscape research 35(2) 157-71, and online; (2007) What if sustainable landscapes aren’t always beautiful? Landscape Research Extra nr. 43: 5-7, and online.

Arthur G. Tansley Our heritage of wild nature, C.U.P., 1945.

This was before the relief offered by fracking. The ‘peak’ idea has always looked a controversial one, associated with fear of the future rather than an incentive to change direction, let alone with some sense of duty.

To the ocean, too.

That is a poetic way of expressing it. I do not see Hom. sap. as “outside Nature”. I do not imply that this is or isn’t Ian’s position.

Martin Spray is at spraypludds@hotmail.com

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A stormy idea: responding to rapid change in coastal ecosystems The management of protected areas in coastal environments requires an appreciation of ecological, climatic, socio-political, and economic influences on conservation, and often balancing these factors is problematic. This article looks at the storm surge of 2013, and asks what lessons might be learned from such an event, and how this might be of benefit to coastal conservationists in the future.

THOMAS PRYKE The storm surge that struck the east coast of England on 5-6 December 2013 had the potential to re-engage both conservationists and the wider public with an area that we, as an island nation, are defined by: our coast. As it transpired, this event was at the vanguard of the wettest winter recorded for the UK, with parts of southern England receiving unprecedented levels of rainfall.1 Headline-grabbing infrastructural damage in the south-west and the politicization of the extensive flooding of the Somerset Levels captivated public and politician’s alike2, 3, leaving discussions of the coastal storm event to ebb into the background.

Taking stock of the 2013 impacts In terms of storm events, this was undoubtedly a significant episode. A combination of low atmospheric pressures and high winds coupled with a spring tide resulted in the highest storm surge the UK has seen since the fatal event of 19534 (which commemorated its 60th anniversary last year5), even being recorded as having surpassed those levels in some coastal areas of East Anglia.6 Thankfully, the coastal defences ensured that this time around no lives were lost as a direct result of the storm surge effects, although extensive and damaging flooding was seen in Scarborough, Yorkshire, Boston, Lincolnshire, and Lowestoft, Suffolk. Also, at the village of Hemsby in Norfolk, several houses that were located on the low, sandy cliffs were washed into the sea.

However, what of the effects beyond the infrastructural and property issues that can dominate the discussions relating to coastal management? Numerous areas protected for conservation were severely affected at points all along the East Anglian coastline. Overtopping and breaching of natural features and protective sea walls alike resulted in large areas of this coast being inundated, with some of the flooding persistent. The RSPB’s 108ha Havergate Island reserve had, for a short period, almost entirely disappeared from view after the storm, and significant freshwater marshes such as Dingle Marshes (owned by Suffolk Wildlife Trust and RSPB) were flooded with sea water for a several weeks after the event.

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ECOS 35(2) 2014 It is possible that we are in a “period of change” in relation to storminess, but we cannot be sure of the present point of the trajectory. There are suggestions in the UK Climate Impact Programme’s 2008 Trends report7 that such shifts in storminess are linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), although at present this relationship lacks any quantifiable evidence and no such link was identified in the most recent IPCC report.8 Even with such uncertainty regarding predicted periodicities and intensities of storms, the surge event of 2013 might offer lessons for coastal conservation management, and perhaps challenge how we think about future storms as part of our planning for climate resilience.

Holding your nerve The National Trust reported that the December 2013 storm completely stripped away the dune systems from a large part of Brancaster beach on the north Norfolk coast overnight. However, within two to three months the sea had re-deposited the material and a significant majority of the dunes had been re-formed, according to the Trust.9 These dunes were almost certainly re-deposited in a different configuration, but nevertheless they had returned and were undoubtedly serving a protective function once again.

Further down the coast in Suffolk is another example of ecological change, where a leaking pipe allowed for saline water to back-flood a freshwater marshland that was part of the RSPB’s Minsmere reserve. In a recent interview (conducted as part of wider current research) a local conservation manager recalled the “shock and horror” this was met with by conservation managers, but also how, soon after the event, there was a realisation that the saline area was attracting a novel type of bird population there – effectively the “demons became heroes”. Although occurring prior to 2013 and not storm-related in this instance, one can easily imagine the same consequences being replicated by a breached sea or river wall following a storm event.

In both of these cases, there would have been a loss of natural features in the short-term. Demands to maintain these features, and corresponding pressures to maintain overall favourable condition of habitats in statutorily designated areas, are strong amongst planners and practitioners. Arguably, the consternation is predominantly generated by the uncomfortable feeling we get when facing the “loss” of features or habitats. This will often result in a call for “swift action” from conservation managers and recreational users alike, with management and intervention measures employed at pace to negate the perceived threats.

However, storm events are arguably a function of natural coastal processes and as the above examples show, in time, either the interest may return or new natural features will develop in place of those lost. There may in fact be wider benefits from staying passive before considering any intervention when a prima facie negative change is detected; from the more obvious aspect of reduced expenditure linked to maintenance works, through to the potential wildlife gains of a more transitional and dynamic system – a factor which underpins a lot of the rewilding advocacy, and which is addressed in the recent European Commission report on managing more wild areas in the Natura 2000 network.10 This will not be a viable course of action for every area, 56

ECOS 35(2) 2014 but arguably it is within the spaces that we manage for conservation purposes where we are perhaps more free to allow such coastal changes to be expressed.

A blessing in disguise?

Decisions about the current and future management of conservation areas often involve multiple management inputs coupled with predictive data that generate complex plans and strategies. The issue of sea level rise is the focus of innumerate studies11, and can be readily considered in strategies and plans because of the more long-term expression of its effects and the progressive nature of predicted change. Storminess, on the other hand, is more of a challenge to plan for, due to the unpredictability in frequency and size of future events7,8, and because of storm events’ high linkage and dependence on other factors, such as sea level rise, which carry the potential to shift the baseline for these events.12 The December 2013 storm surge caused overtopping and breaching of both natural and artificial defences as it tracked along the east coast. Natural England estimated that approximately 4,500 ha of designated coastal nature conservation sites in England were flooded.13 However, for some of these sites such an event might be viewed as something of a release of pressure, in more than one sense, as discussed below.

Hazlewood Marshes is a predominantly freshwater wetland site located behind an embankment on the River Alde in Suffolk, managed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust.

Concerns over how a changing climate may affect the site, and what measures might be taken to work with or against natural forces, had been discussed for some time and tentatively worked into the site’s management plan, yet overnight the storm surge had breached the defensive sea wall in two places causing “irreparable damage”.14 The once predominantly freshwater site began to be flooded regularly with the tide, gradually transforming it into an intertidal wetland. The game had clearly been changed, with nature alone dictating this new dynamic.

With respect to the complex management of such coastal areas, tidal storm surges and other similar events which bring about such drastic change may be thought of as something of a blessing in disguise. Such events may force people’s hands in terms of management choices for a given conservation area. A fatalistic attitude to storm surges may free up the prescriptive management that conservationists often feel locked-in to. There are, of course, certain obligations concerning statutory designations and corresponding legislation, and these are clearly important – but should they be striven for, not matter what the consequences? In this instance, the storm event itself has ultimately taken charge of our managed landscapes. If we accept that this is a natural function of coastal processes, then isn’t this the sort of change that should be encouraged to elicit more robust and resilient future ecosystems?

Exactly what will happen at Hazlewood Marshes remains undecided and the Suffolk Wildlife Trust has opened up the discussion to include other local stakeholers.15 What is promising, however, is the Trust’s decision to take time to consider its options and the apparent growing willingness to work with nature – a term which is gaining traction, particularly within environmental circles.

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ECOS 35(2) 2014 The subject of storms was certainly at the front of people’s minds in early 2014; but is the reason why we are not addressing storm events ostensibly due to the challenge they present to the culture of management prescriptions in conservation, or are there more fundamental problems with our attitude to change and acceptance of uncertainty that underpin this implicit resistance?

A change in mindsets?

One of the embankment breaches at SWT’s Hazlewood Marsh reserve.

Photo: M. Pratt.

Barriers at the shore So what is holding us back from thinking in this arguably more holistic fashion? And how might we get past this barrier?

Responses to interviews I conducted with coastal stakeholders shortly after the 2013 storm highlighted how some people find it difficult to think of physical coastal changes without these being amalgamated into concerns over issues related to climate change. This may well be an indicator of the broad knowledge held by respondents of the varied influences on coastal ecosystems and their interactions.

However, more concerning is the possibility that this conflation may indicate that the appreciation of how coasts naturally change is in fact masked by climate change – and this itself could well lead to the line of thinking whereby without climate change, the coast would, in essence, largely not be changing. Although unlikely to be explicit, this would certainly position changes due to storms as issues to be dealt with, rather than opportunities to work alongside natural processes.

Stakeholders seem to be largely appreciative of the long-term directional change and implications that a rise in relative sea levels may exert on certain parts of our coast (take the issue of coastal squeeze, for example). This has consistently been part of the contemporary coastal management dialogue for quite some time, and is clearly evident in the strategic-level Shoreline Management Plans (SMP), the second generation of which are now being slowly rolled-out for their respective coastal zones.16 The concern is, however, that this same respect has not yet been bestowed upon storm events, despite their potential to trigger significant ecosystem change over a rapid time scale. Like the events themselves, interest and thought about the effects of storms appear to manifest and pass in a relatively short period of time.

Thus how many storms would it take for the issue to take hold and become a consideration in the management process? And at what frequency?

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The critical element of these considerations is how we think about change. When considering management strategies, perhaps if we were to focus more on thinking about coastal processes and how these continually shape our dynamic coastlines and estuaries, it might aid appreciation of what is happening at the coast as well as shift attitudes towards how they change. Working with coastal processes does not have to undermine the “protect and preserve” approach to nature conservation, but provides those responsible for coastal conservation with another choice in their options for management. The Suffolk Wildlife Trusts’ handling of the storm surge impacts on Hazlewood Marshes indicates that steps are beginning to be made in this direction.14 Even if conservation managers and practitioners are now thinking more about trying to work with change and building this into management strategies, the success of this approach may well hinge on the ability to engage local stakeholders, who can be very influential at the coast and on estuary partnerships, with this new way of thinking. It is often the wider public who struggle most with understanding the coastal processes driving change and their implications, and importantly the first steps towards addressing these issues are being made. Touching the Tide, a three year Heritage Lottery Fund Landscape Partnership Scheme hosted by the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB, is an example of a program built around the concept of trying to connect the wider public with change at the coast. It looks at both historical and contemporary patterns of coastal morphology, to try and re-engage the idea that these areas have continually changed throughout history.17 To date, the predominance of risk-based studies in the literature concerning management in coastal environments has influenced the conservation management of these spaces, sometimes leading to overly-cautious advice.18 Where the issue of risk concerns people’s properties, this is to be expected. But more widely, there is the concern that we have become over-reliant on defence structures and the perceived stability they afford, and perhaps now is the time for a shift in thinking that allows us to deal with uncertainty more comfortably.

I sense that there is a genuine, emerging feeling that the era of controlling – or even arresting – change is gradually passing, and the growing influence of rewilding principles and the concept of allowing for natural processes in both European policy and the wider literature is testament to this. Adhering to a strict interventionist approach is challenging to deliver, and increasingly more difficult to defend as an attitude. There is the somewhat cynical criticism that reductions in budgets for coastal and estuarine defence are the main driver of the increasing call to accept more change in these environments, and perhaps this is right. Nevertheless, 59

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Dingle Marshes in flood, showing the southern breach 2 weeks after the initial flood.

Photo: T. Pryke

particularly when following such a significant storm event as December 2013, perhaps as conservationists we should use this small momentum as an opportunity to better engage with people in trying to re-think coastal change.

4. McRobie, A., T. Spencer & H. Gerritsen (Eds.) (2005) “The Big Flood: North Sea storm surge”, Philosophical Transactions, Royal Society of London A, 363, 1263-1270.

5. BBC News (2013): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-21264408 6. Spencer, T., S. M. Brooks, I. Möller & B. R. Evans (2014) “Where local matters: Impacts of a major North Sea storm surge”, EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 95 (30): 269-270.

7. Jenkins, G. J., M. C. Perry & M. J. Prior (2008) The climate of the United Kingdom and recent trends. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK. 8. Christensen, J.H., K. Krishna Kumar, E. Aldrian, S.-I. An, I.F.A. Cavalcanti, M. de Castro, W. Dong, P. Goswami, A. Hall, J.K. Kanyanga, A. Kitoh, J. Kossin, N.-C. Lau, J. Renwick, D.B. Stephenson, S.-P. Xie & T. Zhou (2013) “Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change” In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

9. National Trust (2014) “Near you. News and Events for summer 2014: East of England National Trust” (available on request via: eoenews@nationaltrust.org.uk) 10. European Commission (2013) Guidelines on Wilderness in Natura 2000: Management of terrestrial wilderness and wild areas within the Natura 2000 Network. Technical Report 2013-069. Accessible here: http://www.eurosite.org/files/WildernessGuidelines.pdf 11. Mcleod, E., B. Poulter, J. Hinkel, E. Reyes & R. Salm (2010) “Sea-level rise impact models and environmental conservation: A review of models and their applications”, Ocean & Coastal Management, 53, 507-517.

12. Wolf J. & R. A. Flather (2005) “Modelling waves and surges during the 1953 storm”, Philosophical Transactions, Royal Society of London A, 363, 1359-1375.

13. The Wildlife Trusts (2014): http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/coastalflooding 14. East Anglian Daily Times (2014): http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/hazlewood_marshes_storm_surge_ damaged_vital_wetlands_irretrievably_1_3163555 15. Suffolk Wildlife Trust (2014): http://www.suffolkwildlifetrust.org/reserves/hazlewood-marshes 16. http://www.suffolksmp2.org.uk 17. http://www.touchingthetide.org.uk/ 18. UK National Ecosystem Assessment (2014) UKNEAFO Work Package 4 – Coastal/marine ecosystem services: Principles and Practice – Summary. UNEP-WCMC, LWEC, UK.

Thomas Pryke is a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge conducting an interdisciplinary project on coastal conservation. tp363@cam.ac.uk

How we manage, steer, or tolerate change and more uncertainty in our lives and in the natural world, is an important contemporary conservation issue. Will we see more holistic thinking in how our coasts are managed? The previous storm of 1953 reasserted the general desire to control and exert dominion over nature at the coast, driving the reinforcement of the armoured coastline and fundamentally changing it at the same time. Might the 2013 storm be the event which shifted attitudes towards an era of working with nature at the coast? Whilst this decision is not entirely in the hands of conservationists, it is within our capabilities to lead the way on the issue, if we choose to…

References 1. Met Office (2014): http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/n/i/Recent_Storms_Briefing_Final_07023.pdf 2. Adams, W. M. (2014): http://thinkinglikeahuman.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/taken-at-the-flood/commentpage-1/#comment-487 3. Robins, M. (2014) “Drowning out nature on the levels”, ECOS, 35(1), 27-30.

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ECOS 35(2) 2014

ECOS 35(2) 2014

Devon waterways beavers stake their claim

Beavers' free services An assertion recently made that “millions of euros annually managing beavers and compensating landowners for beaver damage” are spent in Bavaria is incorrect.

In 2012 the actual cost was in the region of €500,000. Bavaria is however an intensively utilised landscape and throughout many other areas of their current range the annual cost associated with managing Beaver impacts is significantly less.

In 2014 the River Otter in Devon became better know for beavers. This article discusses the future for the River Otter beavers which have arrived on the scene.

DEREK GOW As ECOS goes to press, Devon Wildlife Trust is applying for a licence to capture and release beavers which have established themselves along the river Otter once they have been screened. Meanwhile, Defra has brought two traps down from Scotland but no decision has been made yet on whether to attempt to catch them. A legal challenge is being considered by a prominent NGO against Defra’s actions. Local community support for the retention of the beavers seems solid.

This article looks at the background to these events and discusses the policy context on beaver reintroduction.

The Eurasian Beaver (Castor fiber) is a former native species which once occurred widely in Britain. Beavers were hunted to extinction for their scent glands, fur and meat in historic times. The last record of a bounty being paid for a beaver's head was recorded from Bolton Percy near York in 1789. Although they have therefore been absent from Britain for at least 225 years this same gap in their presence also applied in most other European countries. Britain, Italy and Portugal are the only western European nations that have not reintroduced the species. The well wooded environments which are common on many English river systems are likely to provide highly suitable habitat for beavers.

Britain’s beaver landscape In 2008 Natural England commissioned an independent feasibility study which recommend that reintroduction trials of beavers should occur in England. In both Scotland and Wales the SNCO’s commissioned reports by different authors have produced the same result. The case for beaver restoration is firmly founded on extensive evidence from both Europe and North America which demonstrates that beaver generated activity and the environments they create afford an abundance of living space for a very broad range of associated wildlife.

The management of beavers in modern cultural landscapes throughout Europe is well understood. Beavers only live along the edge of water bodies. Their field signs are obvious and their presence is easy to identify. While certain beaver impacts in some cultural landscapes can conflict with human interests a range of pragmatic solutions to mitigate against undesirable dam creation, culvert blockage or burrowing have been developed. These techniques will be entirely applicable to English landscapes.

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There is a clear body of evidence which indicates that the complex wetland environments beavers create have a clear economic function role. Many studies demonstrate that beaver-generated environments sustainably provide a clear range of ecosystem services such as carbon capture, the prevention of erosion, the stabilisation of ground water levels, aquifer recharge, drought alleviation, silt and chemical retention. There is evidence that these habitats also function as natural regulators of flow. Efforts in the headwaters of catchments such as that of the Belford Beck in Northumberland to create landscapes with an abundance of Runoff Attenuation Features - field corner pools, bunds, leaky dams, coarse woody debris placed in the water course or on its banks - have proven successful in the provision of flood relief for properties and communities downstream. While these features and structures mimic the natural activities of beavers we know that the landscapes they create provide the same benefits. The key difference between their effort and ours is that they provide a constantly rising level of material and structural diversity while we are limited to maintaining what we create.

The interactions of beaver dams and fish are complex. The Salmon and Trout Association in a briefing paper make it clear that beavers “could greatly benefit our river ecosystems”. Many dams are temporary structures which if not maintained disintegrate in sections. The flow of water from above will always find a route past or through these structures and there is extensive evidence that game fish can pass through these environments with ease. A Norwegian salmon manager quoted in a recent report by Scottish Natural Heritage stated that although “the data are complex, as is the phenomenon; the preponderance of evidence so far is that beaver dams benefit salmonids”. Other studies indicate that beaver-generated habitats create a broad range of opportunities which fish rapidly exploit such as the creation of refugia for fry in submerged dead wood habitats, the provision of sheltered ‘lays’ for large game fish, complex underwater burrow environments which are utilised by stealth predators such as burbot (Lota lota) and overall a greater abundance of both terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates as a potential food resource.

The beaver health check It is likely that the beavers present on the River Otter are the offspring of accidental escapes over time from a nearby captive population. This source has received no directly imported individuals from central Europe since 2006. EM cannot be 63

ECOS 35(2) 2014 transmitted from beaver to beaver and so they cannot have EM if they are the result of a captive birth in Britain or a wild birth on the river itself. Only wild captured, imported beavers from certain central European countries can harbour this condition as it does not currently exist in the UK. Defra’s own vets are aware of this process and accept that this is the case. Their own risk analysis undertaken in 2012 makes it clear that the most appropriate strategy for beaver reintroduction projects in Britain would be to “source beavers from UK captive bred populations”.

The position therefore with regard to this disease in the River Otter beavers could be clarified through a combined process of genetic testing to determine their parentage, blood screening using the recently developed serological test developed

by Bern University and internal scans of their livers. In the event that any individuals harboured EM they should be humanely destroyed by a qualified veterinary surgeon and replaced with captive born individuals of the same sex.

A precedent has already been set with regard to the acceptance in England of a native species as a result of chance escapes. Wild boar (Sus scrofa) which escaped from specialist farms in the early 1980s were the subject of a Government Consultation process in 2005 which ultimately accepted their presence and produced a Species Action Plan in 2008. This action plan clearly stated in its executive summary that: “Defra’s underlying strategy for managing wildlife starts from the basis of no government intervention, with intervention only where there is a sound reason and evidence for doing so. Where conflicting priorities occur they need to be balanced to ensure the most appropriate outcome”.

Seeing through the contradictions The arguments given for beaver removal conflict with established government policy for wildlife including other former native mammals which have inadvertently reestablished through escapes. They are based on the calculated selection of evidence to give a misleading impression of the results drawn from the studies of beaver ecology, their impact on surrounding environments and their interactions with the communities and individuals who coexist with them in the modern, cultural landscapes they inhabit.

Derek Gow runs Derek Gow Associates, which specialises on water vole ecology and other ecological services. derekgow@aol.com

Book Reviews

WHERE DO CAMELS BELONG? The Story and Science of Invasive Species Ken Thompson Profile Books, 2014, 262 pages £10.99 Pbk, ISBN 978 1781251744 Ken Thompson is a botanist from Sheffield University, with a particular interest in seed biology and plant ecology. No less than three of Ken’s papers made the list of the 100 most influential articles published in the 100 year history of the British Ecological Society’s journals, putting him level with Charles Elton at the top of the league table. I mention this, because Camels is so controversial a book, that I expect some people to seek all means available to debunk it or pretend that it hasn’t been published. The fact that it is clearly and intelligently written and backed with 15 pages of notes and journal refs will only make their ire the greater.

Ken takes a long, hard, evidencebased look at the current levels of hyperbole and hysteria about invasive species, which “cost the USA 100-200 billion dollars per year” and “In other parts of the world as many as 80% of endangered species are threatened and at risk due to the pressures of nonnative species”. As he says, no-one bats an eyelid at statements like “invasive species are the second largest global threat to biodiversity”. Many scientists and NGOs make a good living out of it.

But what is the evidence?

A lot of the book examines the concept of ‘native species’. First discussed by H C

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ECOS 35(2) 2014 Watson in the Victorian period, the idea seemed simple - native species have found their own way to a place without human help. Native species ‘belong’.

But where does the eponymous camel belong? Most would say the Middle East, but camelids evolved in north America where they are now extinct, rose to maximum diversity in south America, and now are only found ‘wild’ (undomesticated) in Australia.

Our knowledge about climate fluctuations and the Pleistocene glaciations have thrown this simple idea into confusion.

Given that the Mandarin duck was present before the last glaciation in the British fauna, should it be considered native - or an alien fit to be on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act? The concept of native/alien has now eroded because ecologists are fond of conserving rare arable weeds like corncockle which arrived from the Middle East with early farmers from the Neolithic to Iron Ages.

These are now awarded ‘honorary native’ status and we have invented a neologism ‘archaeophytes’ to give them credibility. This term now means anything introduced before 1500, and so we can now consider walnuts, mulberries, asparagus, bear’s britches and many other garden plants as natives. This applies to animals too. We are desperately trying to conserve the white-clawed crayfish from its deadly alien American cousin. But the ‘native’ crayfish is itself an introduction from northern France sometime in the latest middle ages and not unequivocally recorded in England before 1586. One 1460 reference to “crevis dewe deuz” (from the French “crevisse d’eau douce” was sufficient to allow Holdich, Palmer and Sibley1 to give the animal pre65

ECOS 35(2) 2014 1500 ‘indigenous’ status (and so fit for conservation), while if later than 1500 it would be a mere alien.

The demonised nature of ‘alien’ species dates from Charles Elton’s 1958 Ecology of Invasions by animals and plants which was actually a non-academic work based on a series of radio talks. Nevertheless, native-good / alien-bad is now a mantra of ecologists, except when, as in the case of archaeophytes, we have decided they aren’t bad after all.

Ken mercilessly demolishes shibboleths of classic invasive species, like tamarisk and purple loosestrife by revealing the lack of supporting data. Only 135 species out of over 5,000 European alien plants have been implicated as a problem, and just 9 species account for a third of all the papers describing alien species’ impacts. The figures on the economic impacts are also very bizarre - influenza and other human diseases are considered as alien invading species and account for half of the $100-200bn dollar estimate for American alien costs.

ECOS 35(2) 2014 is a heavily protected and conserved species spreading to an island only 2 miles offshore from the main British centre of pine marten distribution. If they got there naturally it’s ok, but if not they must be investigated and managed as a potential menace. Damn lunacy Your Honour.

I ought to make it clear that Ken does not dismiss all impacts of alien species, far from it. But his message is that we must show some common sense and reason and if all else fails, look at the evidence.

Generally alien plants do not reduce but increase the net biodiversity of habitats, and they rarely can be shown to cause extinctions. Even the safest assumption of all - the invasive nature of Rhododendron is a myth. It was planted everywhere in the last century by game rearing landowners.

In ecologically similar Norway it isn’t invasive at all. In the light of forthcoming EU legislation on alien species control, we need to get some facts right, and keep off the lucrative bandwagon that waging war on alien species has become. Start by reading this book!

Steve Head

I feel we are particularly paranoid about these issues in Britain. The ‘common vole’ Microtus arvalis is no longer found on mainland UK having been present in the distant past, but as the ‘Orkney vole’ Microtus arvalis orcadensis, is common in and endemic to Orkney. But because it was thought to have been introduced

by Vikings, it is classed as an alien, although the subspecies evolved there and doesn’t live anywhere else.

A report released by Scottish Natural Heritage in April2 noted the threats posed by pine martens on Mull. As martens are not native to the island, it was feared they may have effects on native species through predation or competition. This 66

1.

David M Holdich, Margaret Palmer and Peter J Sibley 2009. The indigenous status of Austropotamobius pallipes (Lereboullet) in Britain. Pages 1-12 in Crayfish Conservation in the British Isles. Ed. Jonathan Brickland, David Holdich and Emily Imhoff 2. www.snh.gov.uk/publications-data-andresearch/publications/search-the-catalogue/ publication-detail/?id=2115

SOFT ESTATE Edward Chell The Bluecoat, Liverpool, 2013, 152 pages Case bound, £16, ISBN 978-0953899678 Soft Estate is Edward Chell’s latest exploration of the floral characteristics of motorways and their aesthetic

relationships with 18th century Picturesque landscapes.

Following an essay in Chell’s co-edited book In the Company of Ghosts: The Poetics of the Motorway (2012) and the exhibition ‘Eclipse’ (2013) Soft Estate handsomely extols the everyday and yet hidden beauty of the sweeping green verges skirting the country’s motorway network – the Highways Agency’s soft estate - 22,000 hectares of what Chell suggests exemplify an obvious example of Marion Shoard’s ‘edgelands’. These are choice pickings in view but out of reach; a plethora of blossoming exuberance atop gently curving banks, interplayed with the concrete, steel, tarmac, scruffy debris and noxious dust that both contains this managed wildness and interacts with it.

Soft Estate features essays by the author, Sarah-Jayne Parsons, and Richard Mabey, and is richly illustrated with photographs and prints. Chell, an artist and academic, plays a light and colourful touch throughout. There are prints of wildflowers made with dust collected from the roadside, gleaming chromium exhaust silencers etched with floral silhouettes, and stark white-on-blue ‘road signs’ of typical verge plants such as hemlock and common ragwort. Sumptuous portraits of columbine, spear thistle, common vetch and other roadside blooms help to route mark Soft Estate’s passage, as, like an eagle-eyed navigator, Chell seeks to mirror the modern motorway’s slipstream roll through the landscape to earlier and equally divided times.

He is struck by what appear to be strong links between the design of motorways and the engineered landscapes of the landed estates from the 1760s that helped to shape the places of their wealthy owners. Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and

Humphry Repton, key advocates of the ‘Picturesque’ ideal in landscape design, brought into play contrived approach-roads, structures to enhance impressions of size and grandeur, and incorporating both formal and naturalised elements in a picture-like way. Despite the artifice, the aim for the viewer was to see the landscape in a natural (i.e. ideal) state. These are, Chell claims, echoed in modern Highways Agency design manuals.

For the naturalist these relationships may seem arcane, merely reinforcing the point that our nature is rarely what it appears. However Richard Mabey’s essay brings us back to the main drag.

Reflections of his road writings in the 1970s and 80s serve to root Soft Estate in a modern idiom; a natural history that has learnt to celebrate – and maybe love – all that is awkward, noisy and modern about 21st century Britain.

Soft Estate is pleasantly punctuated with facts and anecdotes that serve to build a case for a more serious consideration for these edgeland habitats. An art book for the car and a flora for the service station explorer, Soft Estate adds another welcome narrative to the growing pantheon of contemporary natural history.

Mathew Frith

WILD LEWIS A Photographic Journey Frank Stark Acair Books, 2014, 160 pages £25 Hbk, ISBN 978-0861525072 This photographic safari has many images of ordinary, everyday subjects – that is for someone who lives in the Hebrides, where encounters with eagles 67

BACK COPIES OF ECOS

ECOS 35(2) 2014 and otters are not unusual. Frank Stark was just “sitting minding his own business” when a white-tailed sea eagle flew towards him, but reacted quickly enough to capture a remarkable shot as it wheeled away, squawking in surprise.

He says of the heron, “the secret of its all-over success is simply its unending patience” and adds, “I suppose the same could be said about the photographer”.

As “a daft photographer in the perishing wind”, Stark has enough patience to grow a wildflower meadow to attract birds and butterflies, and then wait for interesting things to appear in front of his lens. He has the perseverance to walk or crawl across moor, moss and machair, alert and attentive through long days in arduous terrain. No amount of fancy equipment – and he uses none – would add to his depth of knowledge and ability to see detail: hairs on a back-lit hempnettle; feathery antennae on a fox moth

struggling through grasses. Even when he knows a shot is impressive he’s modest about his achievement – the “redshank shooting past the lens at an unbelievable speed [was] all a blur at the time and I still don’t know how I managed it”.

The large-format book, with minimal text in both English and Gaelic, is arranged into five sections: Coastal, Freshwater, Croftland, Woodland, Hill and Moor.

Lewis may be wild, but, as Frank Rennie points out in his introduction, “it is not wilderness” and human activity over many generations has shaped the landscape and enhanced the “teeming assemblage” of biodiversity. This book is testament to that rich legacy. For Stark, “Lying still on a remote moor in the summer sunshine surrounded by nature, it just doesn’t get any better”.

Tess Darwin

BANC visit and AGM 2014 Sunday 9 November, Nature in Art, near Gloucester A chance to visit the world’s first museum dedicated to art inspired by nature.

The artworks are housed in a Georgian mansion just outside Gloucester, with all types of visual arts including sculpture and photography.

Nature in Art also has a wildlife friendly garden and a cafe. It will be hosting the first post-launch exhibition of the 2014 British Wildlife Photography Awards on the date of our visit.

Timings are as follows: 11.30: Arrival and view exhibitions at leisure 12.30: Lunch in Nature in Art cafe (or bring packed lunch) 13.30: AGM including election of BANC Council, a review of the past year, and a discussion about the plans for developing BANC and ECOS in 2015.

Gloucester railway station and Cheltenham railway station are both close by. We can provide lifts from these if required.

All members are very welcome. For more information or to reserve a place please email enquiries@banc.org.uk. If you are interested in helping BANC by joining Council, nominations are welcome before the event.

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The following back copies are available for purchase. Costs range from £8.30 (inc p&p) for issues from the current and previous year’s volume, to £5.30 for older issues.

Up to date prices and order forms for back copies are available at www.banc org.uk.

www.banc.org.uk BANC inspires innovation

o 35 (1) Flooding and drainage politics o 34(3/4) Biodiversity Offsets, Local

in conservation.

Nature Partnerships

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State of Nature; Rewilding; disease and culling

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Conservation & enterprise, Welsh agency change

Adrian Phillips

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Gavin Saunders

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Ruth Boogert

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o 34(1)

o 33 (2)

Defending land-use planning; Development pressures in middle England; Forestry Panel review;

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Lynx, Badgers, Bees & Beavers; Do we need new groups?

o 32 (3/4) The Woodland Edge -

John Bowers

Vice-Presidents: Marion Shoard

Other Members of Council:

essays from the wildwood

Emily Adams

o 32 (2)

White Paper review, Ecosystem Assessment verdicts, Red Tape rebuff

Mathew Frith

o 32 (1)

Public Forests Campaign, Big Society, Beavers, Big Birds

o 31 (3/4) Lawton Report, Big Society, Nature

Steve Head Alison Parfitt Lisa Schneidau Peter Taylor

in Austerity

o 31 (2)

Strategies for boar, big cats, dog owners, & wild goats

Scott West

o 31 (1)

Natural aliens; climate resilience; tips for the recession

Subscriptions/BANC membership

o 30 (3/4) Ecological skills; Getting started

in conservation

o 30 (2) Nature at our service? o 30 (1) 30 years back – and forward o 29 (3/4) New nature – old creatures o 29 (2) Nature’s tonic o 29 (1) Walking the talk in conservation o 28 (3/4) Climate Change adaptation –

Subscriptions for ECOS are: £25.00 for individuals £80 for corporate/institutional rate £15 for students (colour pdf file).

Subscriptions should be sent to: Hallam Environmental Consultants Ltd Venture House, 105 Arundel Street Sheffield, 1 2NT Tel: 0114 272 4227

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Editorial 1. Finding our way back to nature. Geoffrey Wain

Feature Articles 2014 issue 35(2) www.banc.org.uk

2. Navigating nature. How to heal our blurred vision of wildlife. Chris Rose 12. The rise of citizen science. How can community research help nature?

Kay Haw 22. The benefits of engaging with nature through learning in natural environments.

Justin Dillon 31. Closer to the natural world? The achievements of Access to Nature grants.

Helen Bovey 37. The digital (conservation) age. Gina Maffey, Koen Arts, Annie Robinson, RenĂŠ van der Wal 43. BioBlitz: a growing movement in wildlife recording. Matt Postles 48. Green and pleasant heritage. Martin Spray 55. A stormy idea: responding to rapid change in coastal ecosystems.

Thomas Pryke 62. Devon waterways - beavers stake their claim. Derek Gow

Book Reviews Where do camels belong?

Soft Estate Wild Lewis

2014 British Association of Nature Conservationists.

ISSN 0143-9073.

Graphic Design and Artwork by Featherstone Design Cheltenham.

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