Bringing back the field cricket

You don’t need me to tell you that we are having a rather severe impact on our planet. Climate change is something which threatens our future – but species are disappearing right now as a result of habitat loss, a much more immediate threat.

One of those species is the field cricket – down to just one colony in the 1990s and until last week still only present at four sites in the country. This flightless insect has suffered as a result of the loss of heathland and acid grassland in recent decades. So we are particularly proud to have been part of a project to reintroduce them to two more sites at our Farnham Heath reserve in Surrey and Pulborough Brooks reserve in Sussex.

Radio 4’s Today programme visited Farnham recently and featured the project on the show this morning – you can listen again here. Later on they continued discussing the wider story as part of their coverage of the launch of the UN’s latest Global Biodiversity report. You can hear our Director of Conservation Mark Avery being interviewed here. On the show Mark predicted that the number of signatures to our Letter to the Future campaign would top 200,000 today – and he was quickly proved right!

The field crickets now have a growing fanbase and you can follow their exploits again on Radio 4 tomorrow (Tuesday) on Saving Species which is on at 11am. If you miss it then visit the show’s homepage afterwards where you can listen again.