IDENTITY HABITATS VERSION
LIFE ON OUR RESERVES
REPRO OP
WWT cares for more than 3,000 hectares of wetland habitat in the UK. Thanks to sensitive management and your support, our reserves teem with wildlife. Dominic Couzens discovers some of the ways we nurture these special places for you to enjoy
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Here be treasure ART PRODUCTION
also suggests that this treasure has been hiding in plain sight all along. Having such a new rarity in your care adds extra responsibility. “Now that we have found this small colony of tansy beetles,” says Leigh, “the team at Welney are continuing the work of the invertebrate specialists to carefully manage the expansion of their range.” It’s clear that the species is vulnerable to large-scale changes, such as grazing or wide-scale coppicing. “So there are no cows allowed,” says Leigh. “We’ve found this beetle along riverbanks with a good mix of light and shade, glorious messy marginal habitat with tall herbs and scattered osiers (a type of willow tree). So, rather than clear-fell any patch of osiers, we carefully manage a handful of 50-metre linear blocks along a 2km stretch, by cutting the trees close to the “This beautiful beetle is about 10mm long, and iridescent green with stripes of red and gold – it is lovely to see,” said Centre Manager Leigh Marshall
CLIENT WWT
We clear the osiers in small blocks to provide varied conditions for the beetles and many other wetland species
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here do you find treasure? It’s rarely in glamorous places, and more often in unexpected ones. Well, everyone was certainly surprised when, during a routine survey of WWT Welney’s outer reaches in 2018, we found treasure in beetle form. The tansy beetle Chrysolina graminis is a completely new record for the reserve. Not only is this species simply stunning to look at, with a brilliant, jewel-like iridescent green body flashed with a purple lustre, it is also very rare. Until that moment, the species had been known from only two other sites in the UK. “Apparently, the beetles hadn’t read the entomology books,” chuckles Leigh Marshall, Centre Manager at Welney.
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Waterlife
MARCH/JUNE 2022 2021
BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN
“The tansy beetle is supposed to depend on tansy, a tall yellow herb in the daisy family. That’s how it got its name. But here at Welney, we have virtually no tansy at all.” Instead, the beetles were feeding on water mint, purple loosestrife and marsh woundwort, which are abundant in the ditches at this huge site. “If this population doesn’t feed on tansy, it could mean the species has also been overlooked elsewhere,” Leigh points out. The only other populations in Britain are along the River Ouse in Yorkshire, where the beetle is reasonably abundant, and at Woodwalton Fen in Cambridgeshire. The latter population was rediscovered in 2014 after an absence of 40 years, which
