Blogs

An EU red kite Action Plan has been written by the RSPB (on behalf of BirdLife International) with input from raptor experts across the continent. 

It fingers poisoning as the main reason for big declines in the populations in Spain, France and Germany.  Most European red kites travel down to Spain and Portugal in winter  - so poisoning there affects not just the large Spanish population but also the red kites living elsewhere in Europe.

Last week I was in Spain and heard that poisoning is often associated with shooting estates where red-legged partridges are the main quarry species.

Many years ago a group of us travelled to Spain from the UK to help with a winter survey of red kite numbers.  I was based in northern Spain, in Zamora, in January, and with a colleague travelled around counting red kites from roads and tracks.  It was great fun! 

The fortunes of red kites have waxed and waned over the years.  About 20 years ago they were listed as globally threatened species as their numbers had declined dramatically, but then they recovered, and now it looks as though their numbers are dropping very sharply again.

Of course, in the UK, thanks to reintroduction projects, red kites are now getting commoner and commoner, and spreading to new areas all the time.  The reintroductions into the UK used birds from Spain and Sweden.  Maybe we'll be providing red kites to fuel reintroductions to parts of Spain in future?  I hope that won't be needed - but it would be fitting if we could repay the favour that Spanish conservationists, and Spanish kites, did us back in the 1980s.

And unfortunately, red kites are still poisoned in the Uk - the Scottish reintroductions have worked less well than the english ones partly because of poisoning - but poisoning is a risk for red kites in Northern Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland.  Such activity is totally illegal - but continues - so please sign our bird of prey pledge.

Last week the Marine Bill received Royal Assent and metamorphosed into a Marine Act. 

The legislation applies to UK waters and inshore waters around England and Wales so there is further to go with devolved legislation in Northern Ireland and Scotland (Scotland's Marine Bill will be the next to become law and we look forward to celebrating that too).  And in England and Wales there is a lot of work still to be done to make sure that the Act is implemented fully and quickly rather than slowly and poorly - so there is more work to do.

The Act is not perfect.  But it is much much much better than nothing.  And it represents the fulfilment of a promise from the Labour Government.  Thank you!

The RSPB has worked particularly closely with three other organisations to lobby for this legislation - the Wildlife Trusts, WWF UK and the Marine Conservation Society.  

And RSPB members responded magnificently each time we asked you to sign petitions, write to MPs and lobby Parliament.  Thank you too!

The RSPB bought Hope Farm ten years ago.  Our aim was to manage a bog-standard arable farm (in Cambridgeshire) as a commercial farm but at the same time to increase its bird numbers.  And it has worked!

I'm glad it has worked because it felt as though we were sticking our necks out quite a long way - what if we didn't increase bird numbers?  wouldn't we have looked foolish?  Well, perhaps, but the results have been very impressive.

Over ten years, most of the bird species used by the government in an index of the ecological health of the countryside have increased in numbers at Hope Farm - and wheat yields have increased too.

But one species has been a complete failure and another has been frustrating.  The failure has been the house sparrow - we started with eight pairs around the farmyard but now have only one.  This is puzzling as other similar species have done so well.  The frustrating species has been the corn bunting - one pair nested on the farm in the second year (and we thought we were made!) but none since.  And this is despite the fact that there are corn buntings just down the road from the farm (I often see them on telegraph wires as I drive to or from the farm) and they are frequent winter visitors - it's just that they don't settle down to breed.

Having admitted our disappointment and failure, the list of successes is long.  Lapwing, turtle dove, grey partridge and yellow wagtail have all returned to nest on the farm - we started with no grey partridges but in year five we had our first pair and now there are five.

But skylarks, linnets and yellowhammers have increased from 10, 6 and 14 pairs to 44, 33 and 39 pairs respectively.  Those are big increases and all have been achieved largely through sensible use of the agri-environment schemes which are available to all farmers in England (and in different forms, in Wales, Northern Irleand and Scotland too).  And have been achieved with no predator control (see yesterday's blog).

What has happened at Hope Farm could happen on many other farms across the country if farmers sign up to agri-environment schemes, choose the right management options and get the right advice.  The NFU and CLA Campaign for the Farmed Environment (which we support!) is trying to turn lots of farms across the countryside into Hope Farms - and we hope that it works because it isn't that difficult really!

Charlie Brooks (we've crossed swords with him before - see blogs of 17 and 24 July) wrote a wickedly wrong-thinking article in the Daily Telegraph at the weekend suggesting that the Campaign for the Farmed Environment was doomed to failure unless predator control was part of the solution.  This is just nonsense and, worryingly, might undermine the effectiveness of the NFU's and CLA's efforts.

Now there is no doubt that sometimes killing predators can aid the recovery of threatened species - we carry out predator control (ie we kill them!) on a small proportion of our 200+ nature reserves - mostly of foxes and crows.  But for us it isn't where we start - it's a measure of last resort rather than of our first resort.  But that's our choice just as it is the choice of other land managers to do more widespread predator control.  Of course, if you are looking to shoot pheasants or partridges then each fox that is around is reducing the number of birds you can kill in the autumn so shooting estates generally carry out massive levels of predator control of foxes, stoats, weasels, magpies and crows.  And that is entirely legal.

Mr Brooks's article has provoked some correspondence in the letters page of the paper including a letter from the RSPB.

Our success at Hope Farm shows what can be done - farmland bird numbers have increased very dramatically over a 10-year period because we have made the right relatively small tweeks to the farming practices - without predator control - and these measures have allowed impressive increases in bird numbers.  Maybe they could have been even greater if we had spent money on predator control - but our results show how unnecessary that spend would have been.  I'll bring you up to date with this year's bird numbers at Hope Farm tomorrow.

I spent Monday evening with a group of c25 local farmers.  It was fun. 

I can't remember turning down an invitation to talk to a group of farmers (unless I am already engaged in some way) as I always find these meetings good-humoured and stimulating -  I always come away with some new ideas.  And I always find that there are some people in the audience who say that their view of the RSPB changed as a result of meeting me (hopefully for the better!).

There was a great example of this on Monday.  A farmer gave a vote of thanks for my presentation (it was much more a discussion than a lecture actually) and said he'd left home without looking to see who was speaking.  When he was fingered to say a few words at the end he said OK and asked who was speaking.  When he heard it was a guy from the RSPB he said 'expletive!'. But he said that he'd actually enjoyed the hour and a half and felt much warmer to the RSPB as a result - well that was worth doing then!  And the meal was very welcome too.

And I got this in an email from the meeting organiser:  'I am sure from talking to several people , their attitudes towards the RSPB were changed during the evening, and as you said it is now up to us to make sure we deliver the goods.' and '...in the mean time keep up the good work.'.

So, that was a very nice evening with farmers and an evening with very nice farmers!

For those farmers who would like to see what the RSPB advises on helping farmland birds then follow this link www.rspb.org.uk/farming  It would be great to get feedback from farmers on whether this stuff is the right information or whether we have pitched it wrongly.  And Sooty - what do you think as a retired dairy farmer?

I´m still in Madrid and I´ve spent today discussing conservation matters with staff from the BirdLife International partner in Spain - SEO.  The RSPB is the UK BirdLife partner, and we are proud to be part of such a network and partnership of wildlife conservation organisations right across the world.

SEO is a great organisation - much smaller than the RSPB but doing a great job for the Spanish environment and its nature.

I spent the morning with SEO´s President, Eduardo de Juana, an old friend and a keen and expert birdwatcher.  So it won´t surprise you, perhaps, to hear that our discussions took place while watching great bustards, black-bellied sandgrouse, azure-winged magpies, calandra larks, crag martins, red kites, griffon vultures, Sardinian warblers etc etc (am I making you envious yet?) just outside Madrid. 

We talked about the European Birds and Habitat Directives that have helped to protect Europe´s wildlife, poisoning of birds of prey in both our countires, wind tubines, the problem of introduced species (and amazingly an American mink appeared before us about 10 seconds after we mentioned mink - that was really spooky!), agriculture policy (again through the EU), biofuels, marine protected areas, how to influence politicians, our hopes and fears for Copenhagen - and of old friends and of our love of nature.

I also met and talked with SEO´s Director General, Alejandro Sanchez, (another old friend, so some of that time was spent eating sweets and then drinking beer - does it sound like a tough day?) and I´m looking forward to more discussions tomorrow.

The RSPB once acted as a mentor to a growing and developing SEO but now we talk as equal partners with shared worries and hopes.  Our different experiences and perspectives are shared between ourselves and other BirdLife partners and should make us all stronger.  I know that it makes me feel more determined to get a good deal for nature when I see how much our colleagues in Spain are achieving. 

Yesterday evening I took part in an event in Madrid which is part of a science week and the ongoing celebrations of the Charles Darwin´s 200th birthday.  The event was organised by the British Council and I´d like to thank them (and especially Belen Fortea) for inviting me and looking after everything so well.

I, and a distinguished Spanish scientist, spoke about climate change and birds.  The event was a cafe scientifique and so was very informal, open to all members of the public and all the more enjoyable for the tapas and beer that accompanied the talks and subsequent discussions.

There was a good turn-out of people and we had a lively discussion that covered a range of issues that had little to do with climate change - like why are there so many house sparrows in Madrid and so few in London (none of us knew!)?

I spoke briefly about the results from a Spanish-UK collaboration which involved scientists from the University of Durham, the RSPB and a Spanish publisher - Lynx.  Briefly (!), this is not a coffee table book but it is fascinating reading.  Every breeding bird species in Europe was looked at and its current distribution matched to climate information to describe the types of place it lives at the moment.  The models work surprisingly well.  Then the predicted climate at the end of the century was put into the models to predict where each species might live in future.  The results are striking - we expect the average European bird species to shift its distribution 550km northwards and to lose about 20% of its range, and its new distribution to overlap its current distribution by only 40%.  If true, nature really is on the move and will be for decades to come.  This is such an interesting and important study I will come back to it some time.

But I illustrated the point to this audience by pointing out that the Dartford warbler, whose world range is concentrated now in Spain and Portugal will be almost gone from those countries at the end of the century.  It will be much commoner in the UK (if the right habitat is there for it!) but the expected and welcome (if not certain!) gains in the UK are greatly exceded by the losses in Spain and Portugal.  Whether you think that the Dartford warbler gains or loses from climate change depends on where you live - but if you ask all the Dartford warblers, they would say that they are going to lose out.  And that is the general prediction for our bird species.

Not the cheeriest of messages but we also talked about parrots in parks, London being flooded, central Spain becoming less suitable for agriculture, those house sparrows, growing wine in England, how warm it is in Madrid at the moment and lots of other things.  It was a fun event!  And I was pleased to play a part in it.  And pleased that the UK Government helps set us such events through the British Council.  I´m sure that David Miliband, such a strong supporter of action on climate change is pleased that the British Council is spreading information on this subject and has been for many years.

Yesterday I participated in a discussion in the European Parliament building about biofuel policy, and then afterwards attended a dinner to continue the discussion.  In attendance were officials from the European Commission, MEPs from across the continent, farmers, academics and environmental organisations like ourselves.  The RSPB was there as the UK partner of the BirdLife International partnership.

My last blog sums up pretty well what I thought about biofuels on my way to Brussels and that hasn´t changed over the last day.  What has changed is my concern about the EU (and UK) policies on the subject - my concerns have grown!

We heard from some distinguised academic and knowledgeable speakers that current policies could allow (and indeed encourage) the destruction of half of the world´s remaining rainforest by the end of the century, that biofuel production will raise food prices and worsen food shortages and that the greenhouse gas savings are variable and depend crucially on biofuel production not fuelling the destruction of carbon-rich habitats.  The technical accounting rules are not even sorted out properly yet.

These issues, concerns and problems have been known for years, they are accepted widely by decision-makers and yet the EU ploughs on with policies that encourage biofuel production at accelerating rates over the next few years.  Most people know that when they are in a hole they should stop digging but I fear that when 27 government hands are on the spade it is more difficult to stop.  And decision-makers often fall into a terrible error of wishful thinking - they assume that where it is possible for the right thing or the wrong thing to happen then the right thing will happen.  Does that sound like real life to you? 

I was talking to Tim Searchinger about this at the event yesterday, he is an American academic who thinks more clearly about biofuels than just about anyone else, and speaks with admirable clarity too.  I like his style (and that is only partly because he and I agree pretty much completely on this subject!).  He calls the ability of decision-makers to hope for the unlikely good to happen their believe in a reverse-Murphy´s Law - however many times you give the toast the opportunity to fall on the buttered side it will always fall the other way!

I am, personally, a committed European.  My culture is the culture of Beethoven, Voltaire and Picasso as well as Elgar, Shakespeare and Turner, and of AC Milan and Real Madrid as well as Rushden and Diamonds and Bristol Rovers.  And EU environment policies have generally served wildlife very well across our continent, but our policies, our European policies, on biofuels are wrong-headed and lead to a severe loss of natural beauty far from our own territorial borders.  We are vandals at a distance because we now know how wrong-headed these policies are.  We cannot say we are acting in ignorance - quite the opposite - we are acting despite knowing the consequences of our actions.  How can that be right for a cultured continent?

I am writing this blog on my new iPhone sitting on the Eurostar heading to Brussels (see PS). I'm going to a meeting about biofuels and other types of bioenergy in the European Parliament.

The car which I drove to the station this morning is fuelled by fossil fuels (diesel derived from the bodies of long dead plants and animals) with a, currently, small splash of biodiesel (about 2.6%, derived from the bodies of recently grown plants such as oil seed rape or palm oil). The apparent advantage of biofuels is that the ground that grew the plant that was converted into biodiesel can now grow another plant which sucks up the carbon dioxide emitted from the first plant's burning in my car's engine.

So you can see that if the process were totally efficient this would represent carbon recycling and the atmosphere would not get more CO2 as a result. Well it's not a perfect system but you can see how it might help.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Because you can sell biofuel crops there is an economic incentive to cut down rainforests to make biofuel profits. Rainforests and other habitats threatened by a spread in biofuel production are great carbon stores and it makes no sense to destroy them on carbon grounds alone. But they are also full of wildlife and provide the homes and livelihoods for millions of people. And it's not even that simple either!  Growing biofuels in the UK clearly doesn't use land that used to be rainforest but it will use land that used to grow food - and we still need that food on this crowded planet so where do we get more land for food production? Back to the chainsaw in the rainforest.

So that's why I am off to Brussels.  The RSPB has campaigned ceaselessly to reduce the impacts of EU and UK biofuels policy on the natural world. Remember the rainforest. - you may be putting a tiger in your tank.

PS  This was written on the way to Brussels yesterday morning - but the technology defeated me so it is posted after the event now! 

I have a new iPhone which looks as though it might replace my much-loved Blackberry.  One of its advantages is that I can write and manage this blog whilst on the move. 

iPhones come with 'apps' - applications.  These packages come with the phone or can be downloaded at a small cost or often for free.  One of my free apps tells me how stock markets around the world are behaving so I can tell you that the FTSE 100 share index closed 17 points up on Friday at 5,142 - in fact 5,142.72 to be ridiculously precise.

And my app tells me that the Dow finished up on Friday too, and the Dax did well as well. And I've already heard the value of the London Stock Market mentioned on the radio this morning.

These financial numbers are an every day part of our lives - they are in the newspapers, on the radio and often form part of the tickertape of news on the TV.  Yet I don't have any real understanding of what they mean.  I have a vague understanding that a rising FTSE means that something called 'the economy' is doing well (and it does mean that my FTSE share-tracker ISA has made some money for me).  Economists tell me that these figures, updated in real time, have no real significance at all.  It's a bit like the farmland bird index - if we could tell you how many birds there were every few seconds of the year then maybe we might - but it wouldn't mean anything at all.  It's the seasonal and annual and long term changes that are significant.  But with financial numbers - we can tell ourselves what's happening every few seconds and so we do.

At a deeper level I refer you, again, to that speech by Bobby Kennedy which pointed out that financial numbers can go up when the world gets worse, and down when the world becomes a better place. And then there is that great phrase that 'the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment'.  If you would like decision makers to take account of the natural world when spending your money and shoring up the economy then please sign the RSPB's Letter to the Future.

Today's Times regards today's launch of the Campaign for the Farmed Environment as a last chance for English farmers to adopt green measures - wow!  That sounds a bit harsh really - given the good work by so many farmers already!

But Peter Kendall, the NFU President, is quoted as saying '“Many farmers do a lot of valuable work at their own expense. But we know, too, of the cynical minority who have never been involved in agri-environment schemes and it is our task to get them involved.” . 

Those are tough words to come from an NFU President and demonstrates the seriousness with which the NFU and CLA are taking the task.  Good for them! 

And the RSPB is keen to work with farmers who want to do even more for wildlife on their land - or who want to take their first steps in that direction.

Back in the spring and summer we were lobbying for set-aside to be replaced with a mandatory set of actions for farmers to implement to benefit wildlife.  That didn't happen, instead Defra went for a voluntary option for farmers.

The NFU's and CLA's Campaign for the Farmed Environment, their response to that challenge from Defra, will be launched at the farm of NFU President Peter Kendall later today.

We wish the CFE every success - in fact we have been working hard with lots of others to make it a success.

A key target will be the doubling of the area of in-field options implemented under agri-environment measures.  This includes options such as beetle banks, skylark patches and nectar-rich field margins.  If implemented then such measures will do a great deal of good for farmland wildlife.  We know skylark patches work very well on our own Hope Farm in Cambridgeshire.

But these possibilities have been open to farmers all along, so the question is - how will the CFE encourage more and more farmers to join in?  Well, Peter Kendall will have to be using his persuasive talents to the full (it's a good job he is very persuasive), travelling to NFU groups around the country no doubt, to sell the messages to his membership.  He will be backed up with advice from many other organisations and regional coordinators that have cost the taxpayer £1.5m (there - you didn't know that the voluntary approach meant that you had volunteered the money did you?).  In fact, as a taxpayer and consumer you have many stakes in this - I hope you want wildlife to flourish in the farmed environment, you are paying farmers their Single Farm Payments, you are funding agri-environment schemes, you have now funded regional coordinators and you go out and buy British food (I hope).

But Peter must be a bit worried about whether he can pull this off.  It was he and the CLA President, Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, who persuaded Defra down the voluntary route - now the ball is in their court.  If they don't manage to enthuse farmers and land owners then they know that government might impose stricter and more onerous measures which would apply to all farmers. 

But let's look to the bright side - the farming industry have been given a chance to shine.  A chance to deliver the goods without being forced.  Many farmers are doing their bit already - will they be able to transmit their enthusiasm to those farmers who have stood outside the agri-environment schemes or who, so far, have implemented the schemes in a minimalist way?  Let's hope so, because our countryside wildlife is a precious and threatened resource.

I found these two extracts of a speech by President Kennedy on 10 June 1963:

Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.

and

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal.

JFK was talking about  about peace but his words seem to apply perfectly to the problem of climate change.  How big can world leaders be in Copenhagen in December?  Will Man's reason be applied to the problem?  We all breathe the same air and we are all mortal.

I'm told that the Government Chief Scientist, Prof John Bedddington, was interviewed on BBC TV last night and on the shelf behind him was a copy of State of the UK's Birds - a joint publication by RSPB, BTO, WWT, CCW, NE, NIEA, SNH and JNCC (alphabet soup!).

You can read it here without being Government Chief Scientist

The autumn colours this year are lovely - last weekend's winds put a lot of leaves on the ground but there are still many leaves on the trees near where I live and I'm looking forward to more weeks of greens, golds, reds and browns.

Before next autumn's colours delight us, a general election will have taken place and we will certainly see cuts in government spending and perhaps a reorganisation of government departments and agencies.

So what about the Forestry Commission if we are thinking autumn colours?  Set up in 1919 to ensure a strategic reserve of pit props for the mining industry the Forestry Commission is now a non-Ministerial government department whose aims are to protect, expand and promote the sustainable management of woodland and increase its value to society and the environment. 

My experience of FC staff is that they are a very enthusiastic bunch, and good on delivering on the ground, but their enthusiasm is sometimes greater for expanding and promoting the management of woodland than for delivering the wider public benefits which could come from the land under FC's management.  There are many, many exceptions to that generalisation but, if anything, the wider vision of what Forestry Commission England can deliver has narrowed in recent years. 

I found this description of what the Dutch Forest Service, Staats bos beheer, does very interesting.  At least in words, this seems a more rounded and progressive definition for what a state forest service should do.  There are real questions about whether the state has a part to play in growing commercial timber crops - since we don't have a state fishing fleet, or state farms, and we no longer need that strategic reserve of timber for the mines, isn't growing trees just a business like growing wheat, oil seed rape or potatoes?

The Dutch model seems pretty relevant to the English situation.  Both are crowded countries with high population densities and have suffered great losses of biodiversity-rich habitats in recent  decades.  Staats bos beheer manages 250,000ha with c1000 staff and Forestry Commission England manages about 260,000ha with about 800 staff.

FCE already has a large area (c60,000ha) of non-forest land under its management (including a large heathland estate - but FCE has been a bit slow in contributing fully to the government heathland recreation targets) and is converting another large area (c50,000ha) back to restore native woodland on ancient woodland sites where conifers were planted in the past.  So we are already getting on for about half of the land area being committed to wider wildlife, landscape and other public goods rather than hard-nosed traditional forestry.  This is good - that's probably what a state forest service should do although the Dutch model is far clearer about the direction of travel and, I guess, the direction leads to a much closer fit between what the Forestry Commission does and what Natural England does. 

Whatever comes out of the next twelve months before we see the autumn colours again, we should seek to ensure that the really special areas of land currently managed by FCE remain protected for their wildlife and landscape value.  A time of financial cuts and government reorganisation is always a dangerous time for the natural world (which is why we'd like you to sign the RSPB's Letter to the Future please!) but a secure future for the wildlife that has been protected by  the Forestry Commission for so many years needs to be part of that future.