October 2008 - Posts
Well if you can’t, I have good news for you because we can. A bit like Bob the Builder, we can also fix it too, but that’s another story. A great deal of digging has been going on recently and the reason behind it is very, very exciting. Let me expand a little, which means going back a few weeks.
My esteemed colleague, Fraser Rush, has been noticeable by his absence from the office over the last few weeks. Not that I am one to talk – spotting me sitting at my desk in Knowle is as rare as seeing a white-phase gyrfalcon cruising over Exmouth pavilion, but I digress. Fraser has, as I said, not been about very much recently and to be honest I was getting increasingly intrigued as to what was filling up so much of his time. I knew that it was broadly to do with developments on the Axe Wetlands, but until today I had no idea just what we as a team were undertaking. I have to say it’s fabulous – truly wonderful.
Now, I don’t want to spoil the story here, as we are planning the full bells-and-whistles press launch in due course when the time is right. But if I can’t give you, my weekly column readers, a sneak preview of this new project, what is the point of my tapping away at the keyboard every week? Exactly.
So here we go, behind the scenes for the first glimpse of the new wetlands. Be careful as the paint is not yet dry, in fact the paint has yet to be applied, and there’s random holes everywhere, so watch your step. But use your imagination and try and picture the following scene in a few months time, full of water and full of birds.
Black Hole Marsh, just to the south of our current Local Nature Reserve, Colyford Common, is the site for all the commotion. It’s the next phase in East Devon District Council’s plans for the wetlands west of the river. A wonderfully evocative name for a wonderful place; a few weeks ago this was a slightly moist field with some interesting hedgerows, a few clumps of soft rush, and not much else.
However, armed only with two large caterpillar-tracked swingshovels, numerous trucks and trailers, several tons of concrete, complex laser-guided LIDAR data and a huge tractor called Bertha, Fraser and Co. have dug, scraped, piled and set the skeleton of a new nature reserve. This is going to be a bit different to the freshwater marshland of Seaton Marshes, which is a stone curlew’s throw away to the south, as it will be flooded on certain high tides by saline water from the estuary. This is going to be a salt marsh.
Here’s the geeky technical bit – pay attention as there will be a pop quiz later in the article.
The piece of equipment causing all the stir here is a special valve called a Tidal Exchange Valve, so important that it appears in Capital Letters. Through this tidal water will be allowed to flood, creating wonderful conditions for wetland birds and acting as addition flood defence on super high tides. So everyone’s a winner. The water can be controlled to flood in on very exact tide heights and, better still, when the water gets too high and too much fresh water might get onto the site – the system shuts itself off automatically. Cool.
A central tower hide will provide stunning views across a large saltwater lagoon, deep in some places and shallow in others, providing feeding opportunities for more of the wetland birds that have so enthralled visitors to our two current LNRs. Three kinds of island; grassy, muddy and gravelly, will provide safe roosting opportunities for the birds and could perhaps even see certain key species breeding in years to come. Here’s hoping! Another hide, accessed via a path between a huge old bank and a shiny new reedbed, will sit on stilts and overlook not only the new lagoon, but an area of the estuary which has historically never had much scrutiny. The hides are some way off – many, many months rather than weeks away - but the groundwork has been done and that is the key.
This is a long term plan for the wildlife, with some instant wins for the security of the local population. Wetlands such as this have been proven to be a very effective soft defence against flood events – which considering what we are doing is largely reversing man-made wetlands, to a more natural state – is hardly surprising.
There are two reasons why I am particularly excited by these developments: Firstly, the Higher Level Stewardship scheme, through which DEFRA contracts farmers to improve agricultural land for the benefit of the biodiversity which has disappeared in living memory, proves a National desire to see the reversal of wildlife loss. Secondly, and because this is a Local Authority scheme, the improvements will include ways in which you can enjoy this wildlife spectacle with access-for-all paths, screening and bird hides.
For those of us fortunate enough to live here, the quality of East Devon’s Countryside is regularly quoted as being of the utmost importance to our quality of life. A scheme such as this provides a way to enjoy this quality of life to the full.
Seems like there are spies at large out there in newspaperland. Today, amidst the swirling financial melee of banking closures and economic meltdown, the Daily Mail echoed the sentiments of an article I wrote a few weeks ago, by printing a large double-page picture of a bucolic English scene.
In all seriousness, I am willing to give the jobbing hacks at the Mail credit to be able to devise this simple premise under their own steam, but it does make you realise that in the current mess we’re in, the countryside and its inherent calm, gives some small measure of dependability, comfort and sanity; dare I say it, even reality?
The serendipity runs deeper still for me personally, as it coincides with my participation in the Devon Environment and Business Initiative (DEBI) awards, for which I have been asked to judge. We had an initial meeting to go through the award applicants and although I cannot divulge any specific details for obvious reasons, the quality of environmental business initiatives happening right here in Devon is hugely impressive. The problem was this quality made whittling down the short list a really difficult task indeed!
My work primarily brings me into contact with East Devon’s schools, and we are lucky to have many excellent schools in our area. Every teacher I work with understands the importance of putting the environment and sustainability at the heart of all learning and the amount of interesting and exciting work our local children get to participate in as a result is fantastic. A little pat on the back must now be given to the County Adviser for sustainability, David Weatherly, who is responsible in no small measure for Devon schools leading the way nationally in this field. Makes my work a little busier, but a lot more rewarding!
Awards such as the DEBIs are so important for raising the profile of businesses that take their environmental responsibilities seriously, and giving a ‘thank you’ to those who lead the way in their particular work area. However the long term aim of all such initiatives is to get to the point at which this baseline is the accepted norm and an award is therefore rendered superfluous. Paradoxically this may seem in itself unsustainable, however the bar will continue to be raised by local industry and what is considered cutting edge and inventive now, will in a few years time come as second nature to all but the most glacial of businesses.
This is the way in which all change must come about. Its human nature to resist change and put up barriers and reasons for it to fail. The truth is, once people get used to an idea, it quickly becomes part of every day life and we don’t think of it as odd.
Take for example the Orwellian prediction that in 1984 we would all have boxes in our homes that broadcast instructions and kept a track of our movements and behaviour.
No way!... Way??
George might have been a few years out with his premonitions, but I reckon he pretty much nailed the concept of multimedia internet, without specifically mentioning it as such.
So have a think about things you now do as a matter of course, which, when they were first proposed, seemed to be an interminable bore. Recycling, that used to be a hassle now its something we all do (I hope) as a matter of course. Going to the supermarket? Used to be the various ‘mongers would call at the house. People in 1940’s Britain would think it preposterous that doing your own shopping, packing your own bags and collecting your own groceries was more convenient! Of course, the internet has meant that home delivery is becoming more popular, so some things are destined, it would seem, to run in cycles.
One final thought on this tack before preparing to jibe: the prospect of twice weekly rubbish collection is a hot topic, which receives its fair share of public dissent. But I wonder if in a couple of years time, when we have all got used to the concept, it will be as normal as a weekly collection is today. And anything that reduces the quantity of material being buried in landfill is something we all have a responsibility to adopt.
Although October is officially the end of the cricket season, it would seem one little insect sees fit to buck this trend.
Yes, despite the best efforts of heavy plant grinding across the beach at Branscombe for the last couple of years (and how quickly did that become part of the landscape?) it would seem that the vulnerable scaly cricket Pseudomogoplistes vicentae has escaped intact at this site – one of only three in Britain where this peculiar animal is known to live.
The scaly cricket looks very different to the green bush crickets you might be used to, being more closely related to the wood cricket Nemobius sylvestris another UK rarity which breeds locally – this one can be found on the Exmouth to Budleigh cycleroute, well done Littleham!
The scaly is a small brownish cricket, which lives between the pebbles and shingle of beaches such as Branscombe and was therefore in perilous danger of being wiped out by the disturbance to the beach which occurred as a result of the Napoli grounding. But it seems that the run of relative environmental luck continued with this little chap too, as the cricket has recently been found by the National Trust ecologists, alive and well on the beach and now very fond of South African biscuits!
I say relative luck, as there was much to be grateful for about this incident – it could have been considerably worse. But that is no comfort to the thousands of seabirds which did succumb to the effects of its oil spill.
There’s always room for improvement when it comes to minimizing our impact on the natural world. As a species which has unconsciously moved out of the predator-prey food web, we now have a responsibility to ensure that we recognize this and make sure our ever-growing population does all it can to live in sympathy with the planet’s resources. We’re the only species on earth with the capability to consciously and totally remove another, therefore we have a moral duty to ensure we don’t.
The world is currently reeling from a financial body blow, while a more sinister threat is going on largely unnoticed. As the economy is going into a spin, and traders are realising that they can seemingly get away with anything, a potentially more serious threat to our existence is occurring in the United States and it comes in a far more disarming guise than fiscal shenanigans.
Bees, honey bees in fact, are currently facing an unknown threat, which has wiped out over a third of the American colonies of bees and looks in no danger of abating. “So what?” You might think, “I can live without fuzzy buzzing things and honey, I’ll survive”. But would you?
Albert Einstein, regularly acknowledged as a bit of a brain box, is said to have claimed that if bees were to disappear from earth man would follow suit in four years. Depressing stuff from the Austrian Physicist. Whether the great man really did say these words – and it’s hotly contested, I am going to use this as the beginnings of my article this week. Regardless of the accuracy of the quotations, more importantly the accuracy of the bee decline is something we should be very worried about indeed.
Bees belong to the order Hymenoptera, which includes wasps and ants, and come in a staggering array of shapes, sizes, social structures and colours. The yellow and black rotund figure from colouring books and cartoons is the honey bee and the most familiar to most of us, however recent estimates suggest there are more bee species on the planet than all the bird and mammal species COMBINED! Now that’s diversity.
But out of all these 1600 or so species, it is just one species Apis mellifera that we have come to rely on for pollinating crops, as well as providing us with sweet, invigorating honey. And over the pond, in America not Bystock, apiculturalists are experiencing sudden and inexplicable colony collapses, known as CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder. It’s a ‘disorder’ as no-one is sure what the cause is, various theories exist from viruses, fungal infections or mites to mobile phone masts and global warming, to a combination of all or any of these. People are somewhat stumped.
And it is a serious issue. All commercial crops which require pollination to fruit are pollinated by bee hives, placed within the crop. The largest greenhouse on earth, not the Eden Project but a tomato hothouse in East Anglia has bees living within it permanently pollinating the tomato flowers. So if honey bees were to decline and die out, our agricultural system would be in pandemonium. Crops would go un-mated and therefore not fruit, and at a time when we are balanced on something of a knife edge of global food production, this could be just the thing to tip us over the edge into global famine.
Now, CCD is currently only being recorded in the US, and only in honey bees. Bumble bees are in decline in this country and it is for a much more easily recognisable reason – habitat loss. There is plenty we can do for our thirty or so species of native bumble, and it requires a quick trip to the pet shop.
Back in the summer I wrote an article here about how to identify bumble bees, and seeing as you can log on to my Exmouth Journal blog and re-read that, I will not cover this ground again. Instead, I will explain how you can easily provide bumble bee homes for next summer, and give them a chance to settle in.
A bumble box can be any water tight container, with a suitably sized hole cut in the side, at the bottom of the box. Ice cream tubs are perfect, a marge tub if that is what is to hand, you can buy them from garden centres and pet shops, but its easy to fashion you own. The hole needs to be about the size of a ten pence piece, similar in size to a mouse hole – which is what it is going to pretend to be.
Bumble bees live in small colonies, which build through the summer, servicing a large egg-producing queen who is the only bee to have survived the previous winter. They use old mouse burrows as nesting holes and providing a couple of these in your boarders and under flower beds is no bad thing, especially if you have fruit trees to pollinate.
The secret ingredient is mouse wee. Seriously, no respectable bumble bee will nest without it. And the easiest way to collect this – oh dear I have a weird image in mind of me, a mouse and a tiny sample tube – is to ask for some old mouse bedding from your local pet shop. Pop this into the box, close the lid and place it out of the way. Remember where you put it and watch out for activity early next spring.
Threats can come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s often not the big, loud, expensive ones which do the most damage – the plague was carried by fleas! I suppose its what makes natural history so absorbing, studying the intricate links between everything that shares this earth. But bees typify the best form of sustainability. In foraging for their food they not only get a good meal for themselves and their progeny (or at least their sisters), but they add to next year’s nectar and pollen resource by fertilising the nectar creator. We could do well to emulate their behaviour, not sit idly by and watch their demise.