species-scape – how best can landscape-scale activities save species from decline and extinction?

51 MATT SHARDLOW SPECIES-SCAPE

Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 48 (2012)

SPECIES-SCAPE – HOW BEST CAN LANDSCAPE-SCALE ACTIVITIES SAVE SPECIES FROM DECLINE AND EXTINCTION?

MATT SHARDLOW

Although I am Chief Executive of Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust, but I am not going to focus just on bugs but on all species and how they are integrated into countryside management.

Much of our landscape is not of great biodiversity value. In our depleted countryside, we don’t often find things like Avocets, species that people travel from all over Britain to Suffolk to come and see. As naturalists, we know that it is the places where these things live that are of greatest interest to us. The species are indicators of the quality of the landscape. They tell us that one bit of landscape has a biodiversity value greater than another bit of landscape. Not only are species great at telling us where the most important places are for biodiversity, species are also important as motivators for the public. People go out in the countryside because they want to see species and interact with them. It is at that fundamental level that people engage with nature.

There has been a rather unhelpful and unconstructive debate in recent years; that there is some sort of juxtaposition between species and habitats, that there is one way, the ‘right way’ of doing things and there is a ‘wrong way’. It can become a distraction, in some cases this hypothetical dichotomy is created by people who are in positions where they would rather ignore the species. Some messages from DEFRA, where they are saying they are going to deliver nature through habitats not through species, are very unconstructive. A couple of years ago, Hilary Benn, at the time Secretary of State for the Environment, said that we ‘valued ecosystems, not the components of

Figure 1. Marsh Fritillary Butterfly Euphydryas aurinia. © Matt Shardlow

ecosystems’. Which to me is a bit like saying we ‘value clocks but not the components of clocks’. There is a level at which it is the services that the ecosystems provide that are actually of greatest value, for example to the urban dwellers that Chris Baines has described, but in terms of making sure it works, someone has to take an interest in the cogs. Someone has to understand what it is about this environment that makes it special and why a particular place, a particular landscape, is special.

As an example of the cogs and how they mesh together in quite intricate ways, take the Marsh Fritillary (Fig. 1). It is a species with particular habitat requirements, it feeds on Devil’s-bit Scabious.


Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 48 52

Fritillary (Fig. 2). If we save the marsh fritillary, we also save this little wasp. So looking after one thing automatically looks after other things as well.

A rather unusual situation where parasites were found to be absolutely fundamental to understanding how an ecosystem was functioning relates to a new game reserve that was set up in Kenya where they introduced the White Rhino. They raised a captive population and then introduced them

Figure 2. Cocoons of the parasitic wasp Cotesia bignelli. © M. Shardlow

The larvae live in tents which effectively act as little green houses, heating the larvae up so that they can go and forage properly. If the field they are living in gets grazed too heavily, or cut at the wrong time of year, an entire population of marsh fritillary can be destroyed. When they emerge, the adults need a different set of flowers to feed on. This one species has a whole set of complex requirements. Once we s tart to understand those requirements we understand what it is that is making that meadow special, not just for the marsh fritillary, but also for the other organisms that inhabit that field. So by understanding the marsh fritillary and its requirements, we know what we are valuing and what makes this habitat special. Another species that benefits is Cotesia bignelli – a species-specific parasite on Marsh

Figure 3. Rhinoceros ticks. © Roger de la Harpe

onto the new game park. The rhinos did not do very well and, some time later, they were losing weight, were generally rather unhealthy and were not breeding. They took some of them back into captivity and found that they had skin infections and mites infesting them. They did a bit of observation with the rhinos out in the park and found that they weren’t being visited by the oxpeckers. The Yellow-billed Oxpeckers were all over the Giraffes and Water Buffalo, but not on the white rhinoceroses! Because there weren’t any of these birds on the white rhinos, they weren’t keeping down the populations of mites and other infections which were making them unhealthy and unable to breed. They



realised what the problem was. When they had taken the rhinos into captivity they had cleaned them and removed all the ticks and mites and other parasites. These big ticks (Fig. 3) are far grander than any British tick. The Rhinoceros Tick has huge mouthparts that are necessary to get through the thick skin; when it fills up with blood, the oxpecker comes along and has a big meal. While the oxpecker is there, it tidies up other things that are going wrong with the rhino. If there are no ticks it is not worth their time visiting the rhinos. So they introduced the rhinoceros tick onto the rhinos, and hey presto, along came the yellow-billed oxpeckers. The rhinos started to thrive and to breed perfectly well. Even the most apparently insignificant and superfluous species might be of crucial importance. This is just one example of the complexity of ecosystems. Looking at how the species function within them is absolutely essential to understanding the quality of that landscape and how that landscape works.

Here is some information about invertebrate population trends: • Ground beetles: Environmental Change Network twelve sites sampled –

data on ground beetles 1999, declines apparent – Arable field studies show that big species in particular trouble

• Butterflies: 71% of British species in decline. Wetland, forest and grassland species declining across EU

• Moths: 67% of British species declining • Riverflies: 66% decline in abundance • Bumblebees and other pollinators: Six UK species down by at least 80% in

last 50 years. Pollinators in international decline • Hoverflies: Decline in abundance in two gardens – nationally distribution

change can be detected in 1/3 of species – 66% declining and 33% increasing

Wherever we have data, we see that about two thirds of the species are declining and about one third increasing. There is a massive imbalance in what is happening with our bug populations in the British countryside. When we want to work out how the countryside is working, we can’t really understand everything. We need to be realistic. So we have come up with a way to abbreviate this by using the Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) list. The BAP list is a way of saying that we can’t understand all of those declines, but perhaps, if we pull out the top 1% of those species in decline and work out what is going wrong with them and fix that, hopefully that will also fix the problems with all the other species on the premise that they are affected by the same factors that are affecting the top 1%.

An example of this can be seen in what happened to birds of prey in the 1950s. Organophosphates were shown to decrease the eggshell thickness of the Peregrine Falcon. Once the organophosphates were banned, it fixed the problem peregrine, but it also fixed the problem for a lot of other species where these chemicals were going up the food chain, concentrating higher up the food chain concentrating in predators and damaging the ability of animals to survive and breed. So tackling the problems faced by one species fixed a very big generic problem.



The Great Yellow Bumblebee Bombus distinguendus has undergone a massive decline. It has gone from much of Britain except for the north western fringes of Scotland, almost exactly the same decline and distribution as the Corn Crake. We don’t know the reason for this, but if we did, we would be closer to understanding the decline of other species that have shown a similar pattern of decline across Britain.

On the BAP list there are 70 species of moth which have declined massively. For instance, the White-line Dart Euxoa tritici has declined by 92% in the last 35 years. It is not a rare moth; there are still White-line Darts all over Suffolk, but in tiny numbers compared with how many there used to be. We don’t know why, but if we did, we might understand how to fix a lot of the problems that other moth species are facing as well. The real imperative here is for people to study species ecology - from basic natural history, understand where they are laying eggs and what the larvae are doing, right the way through to population dynamics. We need to continue to build on

the knowledge. Eventually, we will have a much better knowledge base about those components of ecosystems and how they are functioning.

Groups like the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society have a really important role to play. The fantastic tradition of studying natural history is where a lot of our data and information has come from. We are still relying on the Victorians and the naturalists who have followed in their footsteps

When we understand species better, we can understand the landscape better. We can look at a meadow (Fig. 4) and see that it is not just a couple of cows in a green field. We start to see the flowers that the pollinators will be using, the bank that they will be nesting in, the shrubs that might be

important for moths and the wet areas adding further resources. We start to pick up on the anthill, the cowpat and all the other important components of this habitat – each with its own threats, each with its own dilemmas, all needing to be catered for in any landscape-scale management approach.

Big landscapes are really important and connecting habitats together is great. However, we shouldn’t forget that the old problems haven’t gone away. The Distinguished Jumping Spider Sitticus distinguendus is a species only found in Britain on two sites, both of which are threatened currently with development proposals. The Roman Snail Helix pomatia is a species that

Figure 4. Meadow by Ian Jackson © Buglife



we have managed to get protected from collecting under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. A number of its populations around Bristol have been collected to extinction by people selling them into the restaurant trade. The native White-clawed Crayfish Austropotamobius pallipes is threatened by the fungus that lives on the Signal Crayfish Pacifacstacus leniusculus, an invasive species imported from America. These are examples of species where a landscape-scale approach in itself won’t actually fix their problems. Some of the landscape problems aren’t just about habitat management. The sheep dip Cypermethrin was polluting at least 1600 km of river and killing billions of invertebrates in Britain. It was found that walking a dipped sheep through 9 cm of water two weeks after it had been dipped, washed off enough Cypermethrin to cause a measurable pollution incident in a river! We are still putting chemicals into our environment in irresponsible ways that are damaging the environment; Buglife is very concerned about neonicotinoids. These pesticides were introduced within the last 20 years and are now very widely used. They are called systemics – you treat the seed, it stays in the plant and goes into the flowers. There is a lot of laboratory research evidence which shows that these pesticides have an impact on the fecundity, activity and the foraging ability of bees. We are still using these in Britain despite bans from those sorts of uses in Germany Italy, Slovenia and France. Buglife is trying to get the government to apply the precautionary principle, because no-one is funding independent research to determine whether they are damaging the environment. We are relying instead on the research that has been done by the pesticide manufacturers as part of the European assessment process. Some of the industry’s studies rely on just two days worth of field data - not long enough to show a chronic sub-lethal effect - but these studies are then used to say that the laboratory studies can be discounted because they haven’t shown a field impact. One million hectares in the UK are treated; much of the oil seed rape that you see in the countryside has been treated with neonicotinoids which sterilise the soil, go into the pollen and nectar and are subsequently taken up by pollinating insects.

It is interesting to look at some of the recent extinctions and think about what may have been the cause. The Essex Emerald moth Thetidia smaragdaria subsp. maritima is probably a case where a landscape-scale approach would have helped. It was found in upper parts of saltmarshes, areas that are often heavily compressed between sea walls and rising sea levels. The work on managed retreat for instance, if it had happened earlier, might have saved this species from extinction. The Sussex diving beetle Laccophilus poecilus was common in ditches on the Lewes Levels in the 1970s, but steadily declined and was last seen in 2002. It was probably lost when the source of water for the ditches was polluted by the runoff from a new road. Ivell’s Sea Anemone Edwardsia ivelli occurred in a little saline lagoon in Shoreham. We don’t know what caused its extinction, but it might have been linked with sewage going into the lagoon from houses built alongside it. Would the current approach to landscape management have saved the Sussex diving beetle or Ivell’s Sea Anemone?



Conserving Biodiversity in a Changing Climate, a really key document that was produced by DEFRA in 2007, looked hard at the question of climate change. It concluded that the highest priority for us was to conserve existing biodiversity. The second highest was to reduce sources of harm not linked to climate change and to develop ecologically resilient and varied landscapes. It is interesting that the top two things are actually making sure that we look after what we have got as best we can. If we lose those little fragment reservoirs or we don’t get their management right, then the risk is that the species will disappear before we have restored the landscape to a condition that would ensure their viability. Some species though are able to respond to climate change. Roesel’s Bush Cricket Metrioptera roeselii for example, is normally short-winged but it has a more mobile, long-winged form. This is a species that has been able to respond to climate change and move around a lot. We have to think about how we design landscapes in the future to cope with the changing distribution of species.

Dungeness I always think of Dungeness as being Britain’s landing pad for species. This is where animals land from hotter dryer southern climes to take up residence here. The number of new arrivals from Europe is quite amazing, and as the climate changes, we are going to have to think about incorporating them into the British fauna. In this regard we are looking at brownfield sites which often have the sort of open ground, bare mosaics that are absolutely critical for a large proportion of the biodiversity that is disappearing in the wider countryside because of pesticides and fertilisers. We have to think about designing a future landscape that has enough bare open ground in it to ensure that species are able to move around. It is not just the ‘classic’ woodland and wetland habitats that we have to think about, we have also to think about alternative habitats that will be needed in future to cope with changing flora and fauna.

Some species, like Desmoulin’s Whorl Snail Vertigo moulinsiana (or Adder or Great Crested Newt) are very poor at dispersing. They do not ‘fly’ and colonise new sites. To help species like these, we also need to think about connectivity and the corridor issue. We might not be thinking of the ten-kilometre wide American scale that Richard Mabey has spoken about, but I do agree absolutely that in nature conservation we have been complacent and unwilling to think out of the box and be sufficiently forthright about what is actually needed to ensure that wildlife is conserved.

Britain has lost a vast quantity of flower-rich grassland – three million hectares since the second world war; only 100,000 hectares of our flower rich grassland actually remains. Meanwhile, agri-environment schemes have only created 6,500 hectares of flower-rich habitat. That is a rather generous figure because it includes a lot of the little strips you see along field edges that are rather temporary grassland habitats. We have only recreated about 0∙3% of the lost habitat; a tiny amount for 20 years worth of work. Compare that with America, where last year alone they created 16,000 hectares of flower-rich grassland and now have a budget in the region of a billion pounds per year for wild flower habitat creation. We are falling behind other countries in terms of progress towards putting life back into the countryside.



B-Lines (Fig. 5) This is a new project that Buglife has got involved in the last couple of years. It has a lot of support from the Co-op, Britain’s biggest farmer and various other organisations as well. The concept of B-Lines is that you put back field-scale strips of wild flowers into the countryside. Not little margins, but full fields of wild flowers, making them into the sorts of habitat that pollinators, reptiles and amphibians are going to love to live in, and connecting them through the countryside. If we put two B-lines in each county, one going east-

Figure 5. B-Lines (illustrative only!) © Buglife



west and the other going north-south, we could create a network throughout Britain of B-Lines linking together flower-rich grassland which already exists, buffering woodlands and SSSIs it could be a fantastic resource. If we created them to an average field width of about 300 m wide, we estimate a length of around 5000 km would be needed, then this would create 150,000 hectares of flower-rich grassland, doubling the area of flower-rich grassland in the UK.

It would not cost a lot. We estimate that it could be maintained for about £40 million a year, which is only 2∙5% of the agri-environment budget. It would also do something particularly good that a lot of agri-environment schemes currently don’t do, by creating something tangible. If you put connected strips of wild flowers into the countryside, that is something people can see and appreciate. It is something they may walk along. It can become an access route, getting people back into the countryside, seeing wild flowers and pollinators, experiencing a countryside that is full of life again. It is something that if a politician struck a line through the budget, people would actually get angry about. When we got rid of set-aside there was barely a whisper from the public. In the future we need to have agri-environment schemes that actually deliver something the public appreciate and want, not just something that helps the farmers to deliver to the country’s biodiversity objectives. We call them B-lines – that could be bees or biodiversity; they could contribute a lot to a future with wildlife in it.

In Yorkshire, (Fig. 6) a pilot project is going very well and we have a lot of partners on board. On some of the draft lines, we are already getting farmers contacting us wanting to put their land into the B-lines. This is without any

Figure 6. B-Lines in Yorkshire. © Buglife and Natural England



incentives, there is no scheme - no offsetting or agri-environment payments. Imagine what it would be like if we could put wild flowers back so that people can access them, so that our children can experience the sorts of places we can remember from our childhood; those flower-rich meadows full of butterflies, the buzz of bees and the chirp of grasshoppers – such a rare experience now in the British countryside.

Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs) are the great hope of the Natural Environment White Paper. £7∙5 million has been allocated. There are only twelve opportunities, but there have been 76 applications – which gives you some idea of the eagerness there is out there for this landscape-scale work. The question is, as Richard Mabey said: is this going to be a small number of isolated places? Or are we going to get wildlife back throughout large areas of the countryside?

Putting species into the landscape Here are ten things we need to do to properly integrate species into how we manage and plan future landscapes:

1. Systematically define and address the needs of Biodiversity Action Plan Priority (NERC Act s.41+s.42) species. We have got that list of 1% of species that are declining fastest and are of greatest global importance. We should systematically define and address the needs of those species. We must think about the sustainability of those populations, about the ability of people to experience them. It is about commonness as well as about rarity.

2. Set targets for species (other than not being extinct!). Targets aren’t popular with everyone but without them, how are we going to know where we are going and if we have got there? We need to set objectives for the conservation of these species.

3. Assess progress, generally and for NIAs and wildlife networks specifically, through the changing status of BAP species. With NIAs, species will have to be the final arbiter, of how they are working, have their key species stopped declining.

4. Appoint BAP Lead Partners – including statutory ones. We need partners who can keep an eye out for species, monitoring them, subsequently advising the NIA organisations as well as farmers so that they can go out and deliver for these species.

5. Secure funding to ensure that the needs of species are incorporated into habitat management and landscape delivery. That expertise is going to need funding.

6. Research into the ecology and threats to BAP species. We need to carry out research on species that are declining, those 70 moth species for example, to understand why we are losing biodiversity. No matter how many grand schemes we come up with, there is no guarantee that they are going to fix the problem if we don’t know what the problem is.

7. Place greater priority on protecting rare and threatened BAP species from inappropriate development. Development is still an issue – we need to make sure that we stop destroying the most valuable wildlife sites.



8. Develop and strongly deliver HLS packages for BAP species and declining pollinators. We need to develop specific HLS packages that aren’t just focused on farmland birds but also on wildife like pollinators, so that they also have a place in the countryside.

9. Restart a programme of species status assessment and Red Data listing. We have stopped producing red data lists and status reviews of species. We need to get back on that. There are some positive signs that we will be doing that, this is a key part of assessing how well species are doing in Britain.

10. Ensure that the SSSI series ‘safeguard for the present and future generations the diversity and geographic range of habitats, species and geological features’. The SSSI series is very good for birds, pretty much every nationally important population of birds is on an SSSI and there is also good coverage for plants, but when you get to invertebrates there is nowhere near as good coverage. We need to fill the gaps in the SSSI series so it delivers that formal objective.

In conclusion, the species will keep the landscape-scale work honest. It is by judging what effects landscape initiatives have on species that we will know if they are working or not. We must not be afraid, there is a lot we don’t know, but not knowing shouldn’t stop us from taking action and also shouldn’t put us off developing the knowledge we need to make a better case for conserving our biodiversity. We must expect conservation organisations, and the government, to actually report on the success of landscape-scale projects, particularly NIAs.

Matt Shardlow Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust Bug House Ham Lane Orton Waterville Peterborough PE2 5UU

Matt Shardlow is Chief Executive of Buglife – the Invertebrate Conservation Trust. Buglife is the only organisation in Europe committed to saving all invertebrates and whose priorities include the sustainable management of brownfield sites; saving endangered Biodiversity Action Plan Priority species; putting bees and flowers back into the countryside; saving key sites for bugs from destruction and improving the health of freshwater ecosystems. Matt is chair of the Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL) Legal Strategy Group and is a Country Diary columnist in the Guardian. Before leaving to set up Buglife in 2002, he was at the RSPB overseeing the management and monitoring of non-avian biodiversity on the RSPB’s nature reserves.

species-scape – how best can landscape-scale activities save species from decline and extinction?

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