One million seabirds need our help.

The National Trust for Scotland have reported that Avian flu has devastated global seabird populations – just at a time when the birds are already struggling with threats such as dwindling food stocks and storms that are getting worse.

What will happen in 2023? 

The National Trust for Scotland reports that about 20% of all seabirds breeding in Scotland breed at their places – and it’s members support which helps make this happen.  The Trust cares for miles and miles coastline – all vital to our seabirds.

St Kilda's, for example, is the UK’s only marine World Heritage Site, and a quarter of the world's gannet population nest here. 

Find out about the National Trust for Scotland's Marine and Coastal Policy

Even though seabirds are far away from land a lot, they need to come back to the coast and cliffs in order to breed.  So the Trust has a huge responsibility in preserving these areas to ensure the seabirds’ survival.

And there are a number of things we can all do that the National Trust for Scotland has identified to help protect birds such as puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and storm petrels as the breeding season starts.

The National Trust for Scotland’s rangers and other staff will be working hard to give seabirds the best chance of survival – and the chance to thrive, too – in their colonies.  One of the things they do is to count seabirds to give us an idea of the marine ecosystem – seabirds reflect changes in marine habitats and can give us a lot of understanding and insight into what is happening to the sea.

Find out about volunteering with and working
for the National Trust for Scotland here.

Conservation experts and volunteers watch the seabird colonies, both counting numbers and monitoring breeding patterns and trends.  This is invaluable information, because it shows the Trust which species are doing well and which are declining – it’s a bit like the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch in that respect! 

So who breeds on the properties of the National Trust for Scotland?  Well, they have a list on their website – and amongst the breeds there are sure to be some we all recognise, such as the Atlantic puffin, guillemots, gulls, gannets, kittiwakes, storm petrels, the Max shearwater, terns and skuas.

How we can help seabirds in Scotland

Check, clean and close.

If you’re visiting colonies such as St Kilda, Canna or other islands, it’s vital that you clean your boots or shoes with disinfectant, and keep food containers tightly closed.  Left open, they can attract stowaways on board or into bags.

Give seabirds space.

Make sure you keep a good distance from nests and birds who are feeding.  Don’t disturb nests or burrows and please keep dogs on a short lead or close to heel where ground-nesting birds breed and feed, especially during the breeding season (1 April to 30 September).

Join a campaign.

There are a number of campaigns focusing on seabirds aiming to persuade politicians to support higher levels of environmental protection, biodiversity and stewardship.   The impact of fishing practices which damage the seabed and health of some fish stocks is of special concern.  The National Trust for Scotland wants better protection for inshore waters, so that marine life can recover and thrive.

Get busy – become a citizen scientist!

Help in the research and monitoring of seabirds!   Between May and August, the National Trust for Scotland will collect images from the public of puffins taking food to their chicks.  Trained volunteers will analyse these pictures, to try to spot problems puffins at Trust sites have to feed their tricks.  The website will have lots of advice on how to get photos without disturbing the puffins and also on how to submit them online.

Become a member of the National Trust for Scotland!
 
As well as seabirds, the Trust also cares for places which are a birdwatcher’s paradise, with eagles and ospreys in the Highlands, garden birds in lowland areas, and black grouse and capercaillie in the pinewoods.  You can support their efforts by becoming a member.  


Find out more about the wildlife the National Trust for Scotland protects here.


Images © National Trust for Scotland

It’s back!  Starting at 7pm UK time on Sunday 16 April 2023, Our Changing Planet returns to our screens in this two part series.

In April 2022, six presenters visited various destinations around the world to investigate the impact of accelerating economic development and the impact of climate change.  They were on a mission to make repeat visits to places and habitats under extreme environmental threat, and the aim was to see how communities, conservationists and scientists are altering the narrative.

The series is documenting the second year of what is a 7 year project to save the endangered ecosystems on our planet.

In the first episode on the 16^th April 2023, Chris Packham is in Greenland to look at the rate at which snow and ice are melting (and the implications beyond the Arctic), and Steve Backshall is in the Maldives where climate change is threatening the corals.   The episode also features schemes to protect the forests of California; Liz Bonnin is there finding out what is being done (enter the beavers and ancient forest management techniques).

Ade Adepitan, Ella Al-Shamahi and Gordon Buchanan feature in the second episode, in Kenya, Cambodia and Brazil respectfully.

This series should be thought provoking and hopefully it will also give us all ideas of ways we can help. Hopefully, it will give us hope for the future too.

Visit the programme’s website here.

Madagascar:  A Forest for the Future

The World Land Trust is fundraising to raise £586,250 so that their partner, MGB-Madagascar, can protect the last home of lemurs in the Vangaindrano District of Madagascar.

SUCCESS!   Find out more from the World Land Trust
9 June 2023

Donations towards this appeal will:

• Protect 200 hectares
• Restore those 200 hectares with 500,000 trees
• Fund new rangers to patrol and protect Ankarabolava-Agnakatrika for a minimum of five years.

The MGB-Madagascar will be able to both protect and restore a new area around the forests of Ankarabolava-Agnakatrika. 

Introducing the forest

The area is home to the Critically Endangered White-Collared lemurs and over 50 other threatened species.  There are 295 flora species, and six types of lemur.

Amongst the species include the critically endangered Dypsis elegans palm trees, the endangered Noronhia densiflora and the endangered Sylvichadsia grandidieri legume.

The Antesaka people who live in the forest rely on it for food and medicinal plants, for the materials they need to build their homes, and the water for their crops, as the video shows.

The Missouri Botanical Gardens’ Madagascar Programme (MGB-Madagascar) has helped to protect this forest since 2009.  And the Ankarabolava-Agnkatrika Protected Area was established in 2015 and stands at 1,562 hectares in size. They now want to add to that with another 200 hectares.   They are a partner with the World Land Trust, and their efforts so far have already halted lemur hunting in the area.

For deforestation has been growing ever closer to the area as a result of demand for timber and charcoal – tree feeling and fire is getting closer and closer to the forest boundary.  Cyclones can really damage the forest. So it is vital that action is taken quickly to save the last of the natural forest in the district.

You can help to secure the future of the forest by making a donation.   The appeal, if successful, will bring 1,000 jobs to the area, and it will give 30 staff nursery training and the protection of the forests they rely on for water, medicinal plants and food.  You can provide an income for farmers whose land is no longer productive.

Lemurs are essential as seed dispersers.  They are the largest fruit eaters in Madagascar – and they have the ability to swallow the seeds that small bats and birds cannot, so they are the only seed disperser for many plant species on the island.

Let’s give the lemurs more forest to call home and to roam in.  They can help expand it with seed dispersal!

Please donate to help the lemurs, the Antesaka people and to protect the forest for the future.

There’s very exciting news from English Heritage.  They are creating and/or restoring 100 wildlife meadows for King Charles III’s Coronation!

In the UK, we have lost about 97% of our wildlife meadows since the 1930s and the arrival of post-war modern farming practices.    Before this, meadows, road verges and lawns would have had far more diverse flowers and plants than we have today.

Meadows require cutting for hay and English Heritage are going to enhance and create 100 meadows at their palaces, prehistoric stone circles, abbeys and castles!  This will establish flower-rich grasslands across England.  It will restore the lost meadows and enhance those already in existence.  This is a pledge from English Heritage to King Charles III.

100 sites will have meadows restored or enhanced!

The King has done his own wildlife meadow at Highgove, and Boscobel now has a wildflower meadow. 

This will help bees and butterflifes and all sorts of insects and birds, but it will also help people, as grasslands that are in good shape are able to tackle pollution and lock atmospheric carbon below ground.  It will mean there are more natural spaces at the heart of the English Heritage properties that are one of the 100;  visitors will be able to get an idea of what it was like for those who lived there before.

English Heritage are hoping that local communities will get involved too and help transform their local heritage sites into meadows rich in flowers, thereby improving the quality and diversity of local grasslands.  

Plantlife are involved in this amazing initiative -
find out about #NoMowMay campaign here

The plan is to source seed from meadows in the area to make sure that viable local species of wildflowers can be introduced to each site.  This should also mean that a special range of landscapes on with different soils and geology will be produced, such as damp acid grasslands and dry chalk grasslands.

The list of meadows is here

Plantlife are supporting this wonderful transformation by providing expertise, resources, skills development training and the opportunities to change knowledge as things progress. 

Amongst those sites on the list are Boscobel in Shropshire (famous as a place where Charles II hid from the Cromwellians after the Battle of Worcester), Down House in Kent (home of Charles Darwin), Stonehenge in Wiltshire, and Barnard Castle in County Durham.

Find out more from English Heritage

Find out more about Plantlife

As members of the Woodland Trust – a charity very close to my heart – I just received their spring edition of Broadleaf, bringing me all the latest news and updates and of course, ways in which everyone can help.

They also took the opportunity to tuck in their Annual Review, One Big Year – and with it an impressive array of things that had been going on, and in particular the ways small groups (some not so small) are changing things for the better.

Watch the Woodland Trust's You Tube Video
Inside Britain's Rainforests

With so much negativity in the news, I thought I’d share just some of their successes with you and ways in which small, different groups of people can create change.

1. In Belfast, visitor jumpers have leapt from 10,000 (before Covid) to a whopping 78,000 in 2021 – the Trust doubled its size and added access trails.  Meanwhile at Belfast Hills at Glas-na-Bradan, 1,300 volunteers dug in 47,000 saplings – and this has created a new reserve.  It will give vibrant new habitat to marsh fritillaries and meadow pipits and more.
   
   
2. Woodland Trust supporters have dug deep to the tune of £600,000 and as a result, Yonder Oak Wood will be the biggest new wood in Devon for years!  Situated in a valley, it has copses, streams and veteran oaks, and in time the hope is that dormice, adders and nightjars.  A mile long trail is being for wheelchairs and 60 locals have already volunteered to help!
   
   
3. In Greater Manchester, the BollyFit fitness club added 400 saplings to Stockport’s Mellor Rec last winter.  The 30 mums contributed to the Northern Forest project, the aim being to plant 5 million trees.  Last year, this project really took root in a major way, thanks to £23 million from Defra’s Nature for Climate Fund.  It means that the Trust and its partners from the Community Forest Trust can fully fund planting schemes from Liverpool to Hull!
   
   
4. There’s the Woodlands for Water – this is a £2.7 million masterplan to revive landscapes nationwide.  It is targeting 6 pathfinder catchments from Cornwall to Cumbria, including the Wye and Usk.  The Trust and its partners will be persuading landowners about the gains trees can bring to over 3000 hectares of waterway. 
   
   
5. Trust members and supporters enabled the Trust in Scotland to buy the Couldoran Estate, stretching across 18 square kilometres.  It was a shooting ground before, and £770,000 was donated by willing donors.   The plan is to scatter about a million trees there, and connect up fragments of ancient Caledonian pinewood.  The wildlife will have a field day!
   
   
6. The Welsh Government are bankrolling a £1.4 million drive to give every  household in Wales the chance to plant a sapling and watch it grow.  The spring pilot saw 5,000 oaks, alders, cherries and crab apples given out at five hubs nationwide, and 200,000 were available last November.  Get planting in Wales!!
   
   

Become a member of the Woodland Trust and support their work


There's plenty we can all do to get involved and help.   
Join in the bigger effort!
Be part of a group making changes for the better!

Sign the petition asking the Government to take better care of our trees.

You could donate your Nectar points to the Woodland Trust

Spotted an ancient tree?  Add it to the Ancient Tree Inventory!

 
All images ©Woodland Trust