Category Archives: Environment

Conservation, Environment, Natural History, Wildlife

Clouds of Butterflies … in London

Essex Skipper on Ragwort
Essex Skipper on Ragwort

Well, what an exciting day in nature. In London, too. The meadows are now as dry as we’ve ever seen them; and they’re full of butterflies. The Small Skippers have flown; in their place are plenty of Essex Skippers, on an increasing amount of Ragwort.

An obliging Gatekeeper, wings open
An obliging Gatekeeper, wings open

They are accompanied by clouds of Gatekeepers: we must have seen 100 of them, with 35 counted on one leg of the Butterfly Transect alone (going along to the beehive behind the Anthill Meadow). And good numbers of Meadow Browns (a dozen or so) and Small Whites; with twenty or thirty Holly Blues, they were high in the woods, visiting leaves, even on the ground.

Male Sparrowhawk
Male Sparrowhawk

A male Sparrowhawk perched on a dead branch above the pond boardwalk.

Oak bush dying of drought
Oak bush dying of drought

Signs of drought were everywhere: the pond is really low, but the brief rains of the last few days have brought levels back up a little. We spend a while giving 7 barrowloads of water to the planted birches on the embankment, and even rescued a few small oaks that were really suffering. The holm oaks, from the Mediterranean maquis, however looked perfectly comfortable: presumably with their waxy leaves and closed stomata, they are barely growing in the dry season.

Girl power: fixing a batten for trellis on green hut
Girl power: fixing a batten for trellis on green hut

We fixed up a trellis on battens bolted to the extremely hard steel of the green hut; it took forever to pierce the metal, but after that it was easy to do up the bolts and screw the trellis to the battens.

Yes! We saw a Purple Hairstreak!
Yes! We saw a Purple Hairstreak!

And yes, the butterfly transect was crowned by a confirmed sighting of an insect we’d felt sure must be here: a Purple Hairstreak. One sat on a low-hanging Oak leaf for us to check with binoculars and shaky camera. The streaked wings with their tiny tails could not be mistaken. The conservation officer was … visibly pleased. We also saw what seems to have been a Beautiful Carpet Moth – again, the photo was distant but we all saw it with binoculars.

It was hot and humid, and we worked quite hard, but it was a beautiful and memorable day.

Conservation, Environment, Natural History

Sussex Coastal Geography in the Spring

Cuckmere Haven with bar, lagoon, and wave-cut platform
Cuckmere Haven with bar, lagoon, and wave-cut platform

Down in Sussex for a few days, we walked the Seven Sisters from Cuckmere Haven to the Birling Gap.

We had a taste of the scale of human interference with the world’s climate in the shape of a thick haze of pollution trapped by an anticyclone: on the Weald approaching Lewes, we could see the thick haze below the level of the South Downs, and taste the acridity on our tongues. On the coast itself, it was less noticeable in the sea breeze, but the visibility was much reduced with the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry quickly fading into the murk. The BBC warned of high local pollution (worst near Hastings) and an expert advised against strenuous exercise.

The photo of Cuckmere Haven had to be enhanced as it actually looked all washed out in the haze. The geography is interesting: the Cuckmere River emerges (as a dark horizontal line) through what looks from this viewpoint like a continuous shingle bar across the mouth of the valley. The ‘lagoon’ on the landward side of the shingle is part of a former meander of the river, now cut off as if it were an oxbow lake; the current watercourse is canalized with artificial embankments. In the background are vertical sea-cliffs of chalk, with softer (brown) sands above, eroding at a shallower angle. At the base of the cliffs is a white line of fallen chalk rubble, and a dark horizontal surface, a wave-cut platform of chalk (with dark seaweed). In the foreground is the slope of chalk grassland and (left centre) two wartime concrete pillboxes defending the haven.

Seven Sisters - coastal cliff erosion
Seven Sisters – coastal cliff erosion

Gingerly approaching the cliff edge at a crawl, I took this photo, showing a large cave in the chalk: the waves fracture and undercut the cliff at high tide, causing progressive and often sudden cliff falls. The coastline recedes by about 70cm per year, but this bland average conceals a very different reality: the cliff edge barely changes from one year to another, until in some specially violent winter storm, perhaps three to five metres of chalk grassland and hundreds of thousands of tons of chalk suddenly collapse all at once into a gigantic white heap on the beach. The cave in the photo has created an overhang of more than 10 metres; it will certainly collapse one day in the next few years.

The walk was constantly accompanied by the song-flights of Skylarks, and their darting duels low over the grass. A few Ravens flew about the cliffs, and many Jackdaws; a pair of Carrion Crows mobbed a Raven; a few Magpies brought the number of members of the Crow tribe up to four.  Near Birling, Chiffchaffs crept about an orchard, and Blackcaps dived into gorse bushes. Hundreds of Brent Geese flew Eastwards in V-shaped skeins or long lines half a wingspan above the waves. Four or five Little Egrets darted about the Cuckmere Haven lagoon, spearing small fish: a century ago they were hunted to local extinction for their plumes, used for elegant ladies’ hats. The RSPB was founded partly as the “Fin, Fur and Feather League”, a women’s campaign against the cruel and pointless use of animals in fashion that became a major force in bird conservation. In the last thirty years or so they have quietly returned to the south coast and are increasing in numbers.

Environment, Wetlands

Blanket-weed Sprouting in January

Blanket-weed (Spirogyra) covering pond in January
Blanket-weed (Spirogyra) covering pond in January

We’re all getting used to the local effects of global warming − garden crocuses and primulas coming up earlier and earlier (they’re flowering already in my garden).

This past fortnight I’ve realized that my efforts to earth up the rhubarb to protect it from frost weren’t working, as frost or no it was cheerfully and energetically pushing up new leaves on long thin red petioles, the leaf-stalks that greengrocers see as  rhubarb.

But I’ve never seen a pond growing over with blanket-weed in January before. Generally it’s an effect seen late in summer, the tangled green mat forming in a rather nutrient-rich (eutrophicated) lowland pond. Each green thread is a flexible cylinder consisting of a single row of plant cells inside their thick cellulose cell walls, with amazingly elegant green spiral chloroplasts inside, hence the apposite and beautiful name of the genus, Spirogyra, drawn and carefully labelled in millions of high school biology exercise books. The strands grow like crazy in warm ponds and ditches, benefiting from the excess of nutrients from runoff in agricultural areas or indeed from towns. The blanket can blot out light from the deeper parts of a pond, killing other organisms living there. But warm enough for blanket-weed in January? That’s something new.

Conservation, Environment, Politics

Ah, the Irony: Prime Minister Bitten By Own Green Committee

Ah, the irony. Do you remember when Cameron used to talk about leading the “greenest government ever”? (It was Friday, 14 May 2010, to be exact.)

Yes, that was just as he came to power.  Since then he’s done next to nothing for nature, and plenty against  (silencing Natural England from protesting about anything, giving planning authorities a presumption in favour of “sustainable” development – i.e. intentional unfairness of process, to name but two; but I digress).

But on coming into office, he did keep one small promise. He set up  a Natural Capital Committee to look into the value of nature to the economy. In the dismal jargon of political bureaucracy, the committee had to investigate what the natural environment would be worth as if it were an investment of money — capital — by adding up what it contributes each year to the economic benefit of the country, considered as a financial return — interest.

So, for example, if we had an acre of woodland and it allows a class of schoolchildren to do a bug-hunt for which the school pays the wood’s manager £100, the woodland has earned £100 per acre. At 5% interest, that would value the acre of wood at (at least) £2000. If ten school classes can visit each year, the value jumps up to £20,000. If we can now find other ways to value the wood — perhaps it helps to clean the air in the city; perhaps it provides a place for a beehive full of hard-working pollinators; perhaps it allows city-dwellers a relaxing walk — then we can add those “services” (I told you the jargon was dismal) to the interest earned, and tot up the “natural capital” value.

Whether it makes the slightest bit of sense to try to put a price on Nature (no, of course not – see George Monbiot’s The Pricing of Everything) is not questioned by either Cameron or the Committee. Anyone who thinks about it for a minute can see that treating nature in this way is absurd. How can we add up the value of all that is, all around us? We depend absolutely and totally on the “environment”, in other words the world, the universe. We have “only one Earth”, “one small planet”. Its value is infinite. But I digress.

Anyway, the young, fresh-faced Cameron of five years ago set up the said Committee, presumably with the general intention of kicking the green issue into the, ahem, long grass, and instantly forgot all about it.

Now, five years later, the Natural Capital Committee (Cameron: Eh? What’s that?)  has reported. It says that the “natural environment” is in deep decline (yeah, what a surprise) and the “natural goods and services” it can provide: clean breathable air; clean drinkable water; food; recreation (i.e. fun) are all in steady long-term decline too.

The good Committee, noting that food, water, air and fun are pretty much all the essentials of life, wrote a truthful report saying that investing in nature for say 25 years would give returns as good as any Cameronian mega-infrastructure project like high-speed railway lines (and be a lot more popular, but they tactfully didn’t mention that).

They pointed out truthfully that

  • cutting air pollution would save the NHS tons of money on respiratory diseases;
  • restoring peat bogs and making new wetlands would save the environment agency bulldozer-loads of loot by preventing floods;
  • improving fishing waters and green spaces would save the country zillions of days off work by improving physical and mental health.

Labour (in the form of Maria Eagle, who hopes to become Environment Secretary) jumped on the bandwagon to remind Cameron of his broken promises and the continued decline of nature in Britain. She conveniently forgot to mention that it had declined all through Labour’s time in government too, and promised that Labour would “make public access to green spaces a priority” and that she would “take real steps” (is there any other kind of step?) to “give communities power” (what’s a community? a local authority perhaps?) “to protect and improve the natural environment”.

Anyway, here we have the amusing sight of Cameron being confronted with some truths about nature, and his own broken promises, as a result of an investigation that he ordered. And of Labour talking up the value of nature, which they ignored while in office, and have pretty much forgotten in their election campaigning too.

Ah, the irony.

Environment, Politics, Quotation

Joan Walley MP on Fracking

How nice to come across a politician who actually understands about human impact on the environment:

Ultimately fracking cannot be compatible with our long-term commitments to cut climate-changing emissions unless full-scale carbon capture and storage technology is rolled out rapidly, which currently looks unlikely.

Joan Walley, MP, chair of Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee.

Sure enough, a specially-tamed pro-fracking scientist, Quentin Fisher, accused the Committee of  “putting the ‘ill-informed views of anti-fracking groups’ ahead of evidence-based scientific studies.” Quite what evidence he thinks he has for believing that carbon emissions don’t contribute to climate change is unclear. Of course gas is not as bad as coal, but since coal is on the way out in the UK anyway, the comparison is spurious: the choice is gas, nuclear, or renewables.

Conservation, Environment, Politics

2009 Prediction Correct: 2015 Catastrophic Drought in Brazil

“Brazil’s most populous region facing worst drought in 80 years” screams the BBC News headline. The three states with the largest populations, Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais are all desperately short of water.

Bad luck? A natural disaster? Act of God?

None of the above. It was simple bad planning, and failure to heed loud, clear, accurate warnings.  Back in November last year, the area was correctly said to be “sleepwalking into water crisis“. What got done about it? Nothing. The journalist, Wyre Davies, asked rhetorically “So how does a country that produces an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water end up with a chronic shortage of this most essential resource – in its biggest and most economically important city?” He was too polite to say “By a lot of politicians shoving their heads in the sand.” This isn’t just Brazil. Brazil’s politicians are no different from your politicians or my British politicians. ALL OF THEM have their heads in the sand. Climate change isn’t some vague, aesthetic, dilettante bit of academic test-tube arm-waving with a wussy computer model that probably proves something-or other. It’s happening now, and it’s frankly disastrous.

But surely, you’ll observe, Brazil could hardly have done much between November and January, however hard the politicians had tried. You’re right. But they were told FIVE YEARS AGO.

Back in 2009 the Brazilian climatologist Antonio Nobre announced that deforestation in the Amazon would within five years cause severe drought in South-eastern Brazil. He predicted that the lack of forest-created cloud (water is sucked up by the trees and evaporates in huge amounts forming clouds every day) would change the region’s climate.

It did.

Nobre warned that if deforestation continued, there would be disastrous water shortages.

It did, and there are.

The meteorologist Jose Marengo called the huge clouds of water vapour that stream from the Amazon rainforest “flying rivers.” They are drying up.

We – you, me, your neighbours – are by our daily choices – flying, buying petrol for cars, buying teak garden furniture, buying cosmetics made with palm oil grown where rainforest used to be, eating meat and buying petfood from cows grown on grass where rainforest used to be – causing disaster in one region after another. The Amazon. The Sahel. Sumatra. Borneo. Sounds faraway? The climate where you live is warming up. The wildlife where you live is vanishing. Not so faraway now, maybe?

 

Environment, Nature Reserves, Politics

Showing Rupa Huq (Labour) Around a Nature Reserve

Showing Rupa Huq (Labour) around Gunnersbury Triangle Local Nature Reserve
The new warden, Netty Ribeaux, and me showing Rupa Huq (Labour) around Gunnersbury Triangle Local Nature Reserve

Having lobbied the sitting Member of Parliament for the local constituency, Angie Bray, a few weeks ago, I thought I’d invite the Labour candidate, Rupa Huq, and see what she thought about nature.

She came along to Gunnersbury Triangle, together with two of her supporters to take some pictures and video clips of the occasion. I did my best to fit what I wanted to say into short bursts – I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to do soundbites before, but perhaps it will come in handy when anyone asks what I think about nature and politics, or for that matter to put into a few words what my book is about. (It’s about how crazy the English are about nature, and why.)

We talked about why nature matters and the benefits it brings (votes, of course; human wellbeing in an age of e-gadgets; education; mental health; knowledge of climate change; the value of the wild gene pool… ), and I suggested some topics that it would be nice to have as party policy.

Tiny Frogs (and a slug) hiding under a mat
Tiny Frogs (and a slug) hiding under a mat

We walked around the reserve, saying a little about its history, its current uses (school visits, corporate bonding days, volunteering, talks, picnics, family visits, bug-hunting and pond-dipping, days out for the mentally handicapped). We saw the variety of habitats, enjoyed hearing the Robins singing even on a chilly day in January, and looked under a mat at the tiny frogs sheltering there. Rupa certainly left with a deeper understanding of what nature can do for people and why it matters; and of the possibilities that the Gunnersbury Triangle reserve, at least, has to offer for her constituents.

Environment, Politics, Quotation

Stanley Johnson on Naomi Klein on Climate Change

In her new book she [Naomi Klein] turns her guns on capitalism’s role in climate change. She argues that “we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because these things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism… We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and would benefit the vast majority – are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”

On this central point, Klein is undoubtedly right.

Stanley Johnson, This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, review: ‘undoubtedly right’, The Telegraph, 7 October 2014.

Klein advocates

  • local activism
  • disinvestment in earth-destroying corporations
  • respect for the rights of indigenous peoples
Environment, Politics, Quotation

Jenny Turner on Naomi Klein on Climate Change

But it’s difficult to spot climate change as it happens, because it moves so spasmodically and is by its nature “place-based”. What do I know about the mines of Nauru or gas flares on the Niger Delta? What can I do about flooding in the Maldives or New Orleans? “Sacrifice zones” is what Klein chillingly calls the places most depredated: “Poor places. Out-of-the-way places. Places where residents lack political power, usually having to do with some combination of race, language and class.” But even in the rich world, most people don’t notice the dwindling of nature in their parks and gardens; or if they do, they are so sickened, they have to stop noticing right away. Which is why Klein sees the living wage as a climate issue. The main reason so many people are so careless is because they are worn out.

Jenny Turner: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein – review. The Guardian, 19 September 2014

Turner also mentions Is Earth Fucked? —in which Geophysicist Brad Werner says yes, definitely, unless (Klein adds) citizens seriously oppose capitalism (and yes, that’s really the title of his paper)

Environment, Love of Nature, Wetlands

A Fabulous Winter’s Day at Wraysbury

After a chilly grey start, the clouds dispersed and it turned into a brilliant winter’s day, the sky crisp blue, the air clear. I grabbed the telescope and went down to Wraysbury to see if the winter ducks had finally arrived.

Snapped tree (Poplar) over path
Snapped tree (Poplar) over path

The first thing I saw was a sign of the violence of the recent storms; a Poplar, always a fast-growing and short-lived tree, had snapped off and fallen over the path. But a way had already been cut beneath it.

Soapy Pollution in River Colne
Soapy Pollution in River Colne

The next sight was a sad one: for the first time I can remember, the River Colne was obviously polluted, with lumps of foam drifting rapidly by, or caught on branches in the normally clean water. The river supports Kingfishers, wagtails and assorted waterfowl, so I hope the cause is a brief one-off event.

On the lake were four or five Goldeneye, the males waving their heads up and down to signal to the females – or to warn off rival males – the bold white patches on the sides of their heads visible without binoculars.

A little further on was a small party of Goosander, a male and two redhead females, their long serrated hooked bills and distinctive long bodies instantly recognisable, a sign of winter in this part of the world as they come down from their chillier breeding grounds.

Then, just as I was moving on, the bold whiteness of a male Smew caught my eye. With him was a redhead female, both ducks far smaller and shorter than the rather big Goosanders. A few grebes and tufted ducks vied unsuccessfully for my attention.

Ramalina lichen on Poplar
Ramalina lichen on Poplar

Some of the poplars, half-fallen, offered normally out-of-reach branches for close inspection. Along with the usual Common Orange Lichen and the grey leafy lichens (Parmelia sulcata and such) were a few bristly tufts of Ramalina, easily told for being rather stiff, slightly forked, and the same grey-green on both sides. You’ll probably have seen the genus on rocks just above the high-tide mark by the sea, or on big old stone-age megaliths. It’s a lichen that demands clean air, so it’s rather a nice surprise to see it so close to Heathrow Airport. Perhaps the prevailing Westerly winds keep most of the atmospheric pollution away. There is no doubt, though, that London’s air quality is far better than it was a generation ago: hardly anyone burns sulphurous coal any longer, and while there are hotspots of nitrogen oxides (Heathrow for one, Oxford Street for another) and diesel particulates, these aren’t as harmful to lichens as sulphur dioxide was.

DSCN2908 Red Kite over Wraysbury
Red Kite

Around the corner into the area of wet grassland and scrub, I was delighted to be surprised by two Red Kites circling silently overhead against the brilliant blue, their long wings and forked tails a welcome sight that would have been familiar to Shakespeare but was missing until their recent reintroduction to lowland Britain. There was plenty of professional angst about whether the new Chiltern population should be encouraged to interbreed with the remnant Welsh population: but in the event, the birds easily dispersed the couple of hundred miles involved, and soon the gene pools mixed all by themselves.

DSCN2910 Ponies and Hay
Ponies and Hay

Up on the smooth green hill that was the old rubbish mountain and is now home to a dozen ponies and horses, the distant chack-chack of Fieldfares drifted to my ears. At least fifty of them were standing, watchful but constantly feeding, on the bare grass, flying up and chattering at the least warning. A solitary Mistle Thrush stood big and grey with its boldly spotted breast among them; a flock of a hundred Starlings moved flightily between trees and grass. A Wood Pigeon panicked and all the Fieldfares flew into the trees, still chacking. I splashed through the ankle-deep mud and puddles on the somewhat flooded path to the road.