"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead, American anthropologist, 1901-1978
Chris Packham and a team of wildlife experts spent a year exploring every inch of a series of back gardens in Welwyn Garden City. The gardens are all interlinked, and Packham and the team want to find out how much wildlife lives beyond our back doors, and how good is wildlife for the British garden?
Amongst other things, Chris meets a family of foxes and a ball of frisky frogs.
By the end of the year, Chris will find out how well our gardens support wildlife and how many different species call our gardens home.
A team from London’s Natural History Museum are among those who are involved in the programme.
The World Land Trust is a conservation charity that works with local conservation partners all over the world. It is an amazing charity and one of my favourites.
One of things it has is an Action Fund. This is something people who care about conservation can donate to, and what it enables the Trust to do is to put the donations into action fast if a piece of vital wildlife habitat is in danger of being lost. The Trust can work with partners on the ground and ensure that the habitat is purchased and saved for wildlife and for local people living in the area.
The Action Fund was put into action recently; and as a result, there’s a natural safe habitat for the incredible 1,000 mature black-and-chestnut eagle. There are fewer than 1,000 of these left in the world, so very few indeed.
But they now have a natural safe haven in Ecuador!
Scientists have already recorded 344 plant species, 152 bird species, 57 amphibian, 47 mammals and 11 reptiles in the area so it is full of wildlife.
It expands a key corridor- the Sangay-Podocarpus Connectivity Corridor – and it sits between two national parks in Ecuador. Last year the corridor became Ecuador’s first corridor – is covers 1.4 million acres of diverse, fragile ecosystems, and includes a bit of another reserve – the Podocarpus – El Condor Biosphere Reserve. WLT works here with NCE. Animals such as the jaguar and bear will be able to roam safely.
The connections go further, because north of the corridor is 200 mile long spine of reserves and national parks along the eastern Andes, connected by reserves backed by the World Land Trust in the llanganates-Sangay Biological Corridor with Fundacion Ecominga.
The networked protected areas cover about 4 million acres!
How was this money raised to buy this 34,000 acres? In part, by World Land Trust supporters who donated to the Action Fund. It really does make a difference.
Beavers can be quite controversial animals in the natural world; personally I admire them for their incredible engineering skills.
About 400 years ago, beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK but they are being re-introduced (with caution) in the hope that they will help restore our wetlands to their natural state and also reduce the impact of flooding.
Forestry England has produced this video showing why beavers build dams. Their teeth are really quite something (the beavers, not Forestry England.)
Now, a number of the UK's Wildlife Trusts have beaver appeals and they are Dorset, Derbyshire, Devon, Cheshire, Cornwall and Kent.
The Wildlife Trust's website describe beavers as the engineers of the animal world and looking at the video above, it's easy to see why.
To support the Wildlife Trust's conservation efforts, you could Adopt a Beaver either for yourself or as a gift for a nature lover! You could also buy them this Give a Dam t-shirt:
This t-shirt is made from 100% organic cotton and it's printed in the UK in a renewable energy powered factory. £19.00 Find out more about it
Of course you should also take a look at the Beaver Trust. I hope they won't mind me quoting their very exciting mission which is:
"to recover Britain’s waterways and landscapes through the rapid and widespread re-establishment of beaver wetlands across whole river catchments."
Their belief is that beavers are a practical, low-cost solution for long-term restoration. They can help revesse the trend of extinction of British wildlife. You can see from their map where beavers are in the UK.
Furthermore, the Beaver Trust reports that in the US West, land managers and scientists hare using beaver dam analogs to do three things:
And the project is an amazing example of nature restoration. Boar, deer, beaver, storks, the nightingale and purple emperor butterfly all call it home.
But this biodiverse area is under threat.
There are plans for a housing development of 3,500 right next door – and the fear is that if this goes ahead, wildlife won’t have the freedom they need to roam about.
The new houses would effectively cut off the Knepp estate from both St Leonard’s and Ashdown forests. The estate would, in short, be a wildlife land in a sea of housing.
The Buck Barn development would also increase the traffic and pollution at the Buck Barn Crossing where the A24 and A272 meet. This is a busy junction already. I would mention that another developer has put in plans for 10,000 homes just east of it.
The Government keeps banging on about being environmentally friendly and how keen it is on being green, but that means nothing if it allows councils and developers to build on key wildlife corridors.
Last year, white stork chicks hatched on the Knepp Rewilding Project for the first time in 600 years.
In Defense of Animals say that wildlife specialists and conservationists are concerns that some of Montana’s most loved species such as grizzly bears, grey wolves nad bison are threatened with extinction.
For back in January, Montana’s legislature introduced ten bills which experts are saying is really a #waronwildlife.
Best estimates suggest there are about 5,000 wild bison, 1,000 grizzly bears and 850 wolves in Montana. But, say In Defense of Animals, lawmakers are pushing through bills which are politically driven. They will harm individual animals with unethical and old fashioned hunting practices.
Amongst other things, the new bills are proposing:
To allow wolf snaring
To lengthen the wolf trapping season by 30 days
To reimburse hunters for time they spend hunting or trapping wolves
To allow the killing of all wolves in the state until only 15 breeding pairs remain
To stop the relocation of bears who go out of protected areas (so the bears will be killed if they wander off course)
To allow hunting dogs to be used in the hunting of bear during the full span of their waking lives, outside of hibernation
To establish that hunting, fishing and trapping is the preferred manner of managing wild animal populations across the state (as opposed to scientific conservation based strategies)
So what can we do to help these bears, wolves and bison
Please join In Defense of Animals in calling onGov. Greg Gianforte to veto these bills to protect wild animals and ensure that Montana’s reputation as a wilderness and wildlife paradise stays intact.
In Defense of Animals says there are a number of things we can all do, including:
2. Comment on Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte's Facebook page and ask him to veto the current slate of anti-wildlife bills.
3. Comment to Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the U.S. Department of Transportation on Twitter - there's a message they have put together that you can tweet
