A growing number of studies are providing evidence that a suite of anthropogenic stressors — habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, invasive species, climate change and overharvesting — are seriously reducing insect and other invertebrate abundance, diversity and biomass across the biosphere. These declines affect all functional groups: herbivores, detritivores, parasitoids, predators and pollinators. Insects are vitally important in a wide range of ecosystem services of which some are vitally important for food production and security (for example, pollination and pest control). There is now a strong scientific consensus that the decline of insects, other arthropods and biodiversity as a whole, is a very real and serious threat that society must urgently address. In response to the increasing public awareness of the problem, the German government is committing funds to combat and reverse declining insect numbers. This funding should act as a clarion call to other nations across the world — especially wealthier ones — to follow suit and to respond proactively to the crisis by addressing the known and suspected threats and implementing solutions.
Click here to read the rest of the article.: International scientists formulate a roadmap for insect conservation and recovery | Nature Ecology & Evolution
A promise to do more to protect the soil will form part of a vision for the UK farm industry being unveiled by the government later.
The American coot is a somewhat drab water bird with gray and black feathers and a white beak, common in wetlands throughout North America. Coot chicks, however, sport outrageously bright orange and red feathers, skin, and beaks. A new study explains how the bright coloring of coot chicks fits in with the reproductive strategy of their less colorful parents.
Unfortunately, yet another mass poisoning incident occurred in Africa, ending 2019 on a sad note for vulture conservation. Two days before Christmas in Northern Zululand, 16 vultures met a tragic fate. The continuation of such poisoning incidents are causing alarm for the region’s diminishing vulture populations fearing that they could face extinction. This has been an overall unfortunate year for vultures affected by poisoning in Africa, with more than 1,200 vultures estimated to have been deliberately poisoned across Southern and Eastern Africa, according to the Endangered WildLife Trust (EWT).
Almost a third of the world’s oceans and land should be protected by the end of the decade to stop and reverse biodiversity decline that risks the survival of humanity, according to a draft Paris-style UN agreement on nature.
The main topic is what pond creatures, such as the pond oilve mayfly, do to survive the cold in winter, and give some tips on how to look after your pond when it freezes over.
Extremely acute vision and the ability to rapidly process different visual impressions — these two factors are crucial when a peregrine falcon bears down on its prey at a speed that easily matches that of a Formula 1 racing car: over 350 kilometres per hour.
The bobbing white blooms of snowdrops fluttering on the road verge or carpeting the woodland floor put a spring in the step of us all during the bitter winter months…”
HS2 risks dividing and destroying “huge swathes” of “irreplaceable” natural habitats, including 108 ancient woodlands, a report has warned.
England’s first beavers to live in the wild in 400 years are positively affecting the community and the environment, experts have said.
Dave Goulson, author of The Garden Jungle, reveals some of the best plants you can grow to give garden pollinators a helping hand.
After the darkness of winter, snowdrops are a welcome and early sign that spring is on its way. Our snowdrop guide looks at the best snowdrop walks in the UK, snowdrop facts and how to grow your own.
Species on the verge of extinction have been handed a lifeline as £7.4million from The National Lottery is awarded for nature projects across the UK.
Short winter days may restrict your birdwatching time, but if you’re canny you can just wait for the birds to come to you. Use this guide to improve your roosting bird ID skills.
As we head into January we look forward to our upcoming talks. Please do get in touch to book your place(s) or use the “Book Now” tabs to book online to benefit from our member discount. I look forward to seeing you at an event soon!
Gall formation by plants is a commonly-seen phenomenon that occurs in response to foreign entities (here called “gall-inducers”) such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, etc. In this review Harris and Pitzschke set out criteria for what is and is not a gall;
A year ago, as I set out to explore the life of Alice Balfour and her moths, I didn’t give much thought to what I might find or where it might lead. I wanted to discover more about the moths she encountered and was interested to learn more about the pursuit of natural history in the Edwardian era, but mostly I was starting ‘a project’ to add purpose to my own everyday moth recording in East Lothian. Making lists of moths from different sites is all very well, but it is much more rewarding to put these lists into some sort of context. Scientific or otherwise.
The world’s rarest wader has been thrown a lifeline after two Spoon-billed Sandpiper chicks hatched at WWT Slimbridge in Gloucestershire.
2019 has seen extraordinary sightings of minke whales and bottlenose dolphins in UK waters, restoration of vital saltmarshes and conservation action by thousands of marine and coastal volunteers.
Making a beetle stack is a way of providing beetles and many other insects with shelter through the winter. This stack is simple to make and costs next to nothing, but will make a world of difference to garden wildlife.
This post is by Tony Juniper CBE, chair of Natural England and Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency.
The team from the award-winning podcast No Such Thing As A Fish have collated some of this year’s craziest animal stories, including tardigrades on the moon, dead alligators being dropped into seas and rhinos being provided with emotional-support humans.
The end of the summer marked the beginning of an exciting new chapter for over a hundred young pool frogs released into the wild in Norfolk this year. The pool frog (Pelophylax lessonae) became extinct in the 1990s in the UK but thanks to collaborative efforts by Natural England, the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (ARC), Norfolk Wildlife Trust, ZSL and partners, the species persists in protected areas where ancient ponds have been restored to provide optimal habitat.
A planned new airport that will serve Lisbon threatens the future of internationally important flocks of waders and other waterbirds. These same birds pose safety concerns for the passenger aircraft that will fly through the airspace that is currently reserved for them.
Natural England has now uploaded baseline survey data on great crested newts (GCN) to create a map of where they are across the whole of England. The project – which took three years to complete – is the largest ever survey of its type for GCN across England, and was funded by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
Non-native plants are providing new habitats for British insects affected by human-driven environmental changes, a new study has found.
In 2019, the various campaigns and operations coordinated by Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) once again saved countless migratory birds from doomed fate being killed, caught or prematurely destined for a cooking pot. As ever, our main field campaigns focused on the bird poaching hotspots in the Mediterranean region, with CABS teams active in Italy, Malta, France, Spain, Cyprus and Lebanon during the migration period. The primary aim of our fieldwork is the same everywhere: Take direct action to stop poachers, document illegalities and to persuade authorities to intervene, with public support and international political pressure.
In 2019 we completed a project to help the Small Blue Butterfly on the Surrey Downs. The project has helped to create an extensive network of sites between Guildford and Box Hill, with individual butterflies now more able to move between different areas and sites, enabling the creation of a strong and sustainable metapopulation.
Butterflies fluttering, a kittiwake diving into ice-blue waves and the sweet song of skylarks first thing in the morning. These sights and sounds are becoming even rarer with 41 per cent of species in decline since 1970. We need to act now to stop this loss, creating more homes for wildlife and calling on governments to introduce stronger environmental protections.
‘Eagle health strike force’ may protect America’s national emblem.
As our climate increasingly warms, the UK’s peatlands are put under ever greater pressure.
The scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew have published their 10 highlights of new species discovered in 2019.
New research shows that for every £1 invested in pollinator monitoring schemes, at least £1.50 can be saved, from otherwise costly independent research projects.
Short-eared owls appear to be nomadic, breeding almost prolifically in suitable habitat in some years, yet in others appearing to be absent. Adults owls can be seen flying during daylight hours when they have dependent young, but at other times they can be largely nocturnal, making the population hard to monitor. The best evidence that we have suggests that the population has declined, perhaps by as much as 50%. The reasons underlying these changes are poorly understood, but recent advances in technology have presented new opportunities for research.
Human-made global warming is bringing new species of moths to Irish shores, a new atlas suggests.
Our work seeks to help the development of new land management support schemes by combining the latest scientific evidence and Butterfly Conservation’s practical experience of working with farmers and land owners on the ground.
Six new species of dragonflies that lived about 50 million years ago (early Eocene epoch) have been identified from fossils found in the Okanagan Highlands, an elevated hilly plateau area in British Columbia, Canada, and the U.S. state of Washington.
At the end of the summer, vast numbers of waders leave Norway, Sweden and Finland, heading southwest, south and south-east for the winter. In a 2019 paper by Lindström et al, we learn what is happening to these populations of Fennoscandian breeding species, as diverse as Temminck’s Stint and Curlew. The news for the period 2006 through to 2018 is basically pretty good – most populations have been stable and there are even some that have increased – but there are worrying signs for Broad-billed Sandpiper, Red-necked Phalarope and Whimbrel.
The State of European Cetaceans is ORCA’s report series, documenting the results of its survey findings, and more importantly, drawing conclusions about what this means for whales, dolphins and porpoises in the wild.
The start of December, and a dip in temperatures, has seen the first ‘swanfall’ at WWT Slimbridge, with more than 50 majestic Bewick’s swans arriving at the end of the final leg of their migration. This year’s ‘swanfall’ was bang on time, as it traditionally heralds the beginning of winter, which officially started on 1st December.
HS2 has apologised to the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) for undertaking work on the Calvert Jubilee nature reserve without permission.
From midges and flies to beetles and bees, various insects are essential to the reproduction of at least 15 Christmas dinner ingredients.
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Introduced house mice on the UK Overseas Territory of Gough Island in the South Atlantic have been seen attacking adult albatrosses for the first time.
The BTO’s BirdTrends report is a one-stop shop for information about the population status of the common breeding birds of the wider UK countryside. The report is based on data gathered by the many thousands of volunteers who contribute to BTO-led surveys.
The Natural History Museum data team have just completed a major Data Portal upgrade which includes a new look, faster response times and more complex search capabilities.
The finch family boasts many popular garden birds, including Goldfinch, Chaffinch, Greenfinch and Bullfinch. More recently, a growing number of people have been able to add Lesser Redpoll to this list. Results collected through the year-round BTO Garden BirdWatch survey show a 15-fold increase in the use of gardens by Lesser Redpolls during early spring over the past five years.
If you walk around a woodland in the winter you may be forgiven for wondering where all the birds have gone. In fact, there are likely to be plenty of birds about, but instead of being evenly spread throughout the area, several species group together in a loose, mixed feeding flock. Flocking together in winter improves the chances of locating food and huddling together during the critical night-time period helps conserve body heat.
You can do your bit for insects by growing lots of foliage in your garden, a study has found.
Autumn and winter is when most female grey seals haul themselves ashore to give birth.
Starlings in the UK
Using new technology including robot cameras which can be remotely controlled by humans to look at plants in remote places, the show will treat audiences to a “mind-blowing” look at an “unseen” world.
An acoustic camera has captured never-before-seen footage of the endangered fish setting off on its journey from the Gloucestershire wetlands to the Sargasso sea. This success story comes at a time of turning fortunes for the mysterious and fascinating animal.
Unlike mammals and birds, butterflies and moths rely mainly on external sources of heat to warm their bodies so that they can be active. Although many are adept at increasing their body temperature way above ambient air temperature by basking in sunshine or shivering (vibrating their flight muscles), when their surroundings are really cold, most butterflies and moths are forced to remain inactive.
For 24 hours only we are offering one year’s free membership of Butterfly Conservation
1 hedgehog was admitted to an RSPCA rescue centre, on average, every 2 hours throughout October.
Jurassic butterflies disappeared a full 45 million years before the first caterpillar decided to grow up and become a beautiful butterfly—again
Butterflies are rather like Goldilocks, preferring conditions to be neither too hot nor too cold, but “just right”. Under climate change, the temperature at any given time of summer is, on average, getting warmer, leaving butterflies (and their nocturnal cousins, the moths) with the challenge of how to remain in their optimal temperature window.
Nitrogen in the air is one of the greatest threats to our wild plants, lichens and fungi, yet few people have even heard about it. Plantlife’s new report We need to talk about Nitrogen raises the alarm about its devastating impacts.
Anyway, after some fun time with my Dictionary of Entomology, (which is much more of an encyclopaedia than a dictionary), and of course Google, I have great pleasure in presenting my one stop shop for those of you who wonder how insect orders got their names. Here they are, all in one easy to access place with a few fun-filled facts to leaven the mixture.
There are around 650 species of spider in the UK alone. That’s a lot! Some spiders can be identified by eye, others require hand lenses and many even require microscopes to correctly identify them to species level. Most people find spiders creepy though, so never get close enough to identify them in the field, let alone choose to look at them down a microscope. Earlier this year, however, I attended the Tomorrow’s Invertebrate Recorders course run by the FSC Biolinks team during which I chose to spend a whole day learning microscopic identification of spiders.
Stephen Moss has written a round-up of nature books for many years and this is the second year when it has appeared here on this blog. Stephen is course leader of the MA Travel & Nature Writing at Bath Spa University.
Juniper, a rare conifer which is used to flavour gin, is making a comeback in southern England with the help of a conservation rescue mission, Plantlife has said.
An ‘unnoticed apocalypse’ may have killed half of the world’s insects in the 50 years since 1970, according to a new study.
Since 2019 is the Year of the Fly I thought it was time to dust off my boyhood interest in flies and see how many families of flies I could see through the year. Each time I see one from a new family I will write a post, and by the end of the year I hope to know my way around them.
Latin America’s mammals could be the next to suffer under palm oil production, warns charity.
The days are shortening and the temperature is falling. This is a signal to deciduous (broadleaf) trees that it is time to close down for the winter, conserve energy and prevent it from losing precious nutrients.
Plankton-feeding manta rays and whale sharks may accidentally ingest harmful microplastics in Indonesian oceans.
