Over the 20th century and to this day, several wildlife trusts have taken charge of separate tracts of land to help them recover lost green cover and certain animal species. These trusts and other independent organisations are doing ground-breaking work in helping the UK and other countries maintain their ecological framework, primarily by working to save endangered animals and birds. The following section highlights some of them and the peerless work they do.

Take a look at some of the local efforts to save endangered animals in the UK:

* The PTES (People’s Trust for Endangered Species) works with the vision of protecting and saving endangered animals in the UK and around the world. They do this by working closely with on-ground organisations and locals in affected areas to save endangered animals from extinction. They also fund extensive research in wildlife conservation and provide financial grants for those working in the area of conservation (researchers and experts are often selected for these).
How you can help: Donate to them or volunteer with local organisations that partner with them.

* The Natural History Museum does a large amount of work in the area of awareness and community education to shine a spotlight on endangered animals and birds in the UK. Thus far, it has successfully participated in campaigns to save animals and birds on the brink of extinction, from the Peregrine falcon to the sea otter, and from blue whales to Fisher’s estuarine moths. They also work extensively for flora in the UK.
How you can help: Stay in touch with their programmes on their website and support their team of 300 scientists and their research via donations.

* The Wildlife Conservation Society has offices in several countries, including the UK. The organisation collaborates with local communities in every area of its work to shape their future and take their help in preserving and conserving wildlife. It works for global conservation of endangered plants and animals, proper maintenance of zoos and aquariums, and towards mitigating climate crises and pandemics.
How you can help: You can donate for their work or volunteer in their target areas in your home country. Corporates are also encouraged to tie up for several conservation and awareness programmes.

What you can learn from their efforts

Saving endangered animals in the UK is not the sole responsibility or purview of a few committed organisations and the Government. Indeed, the Government announced a £220 million biodiversity fund to save endangered animals, in 2019. But these efforts can get a considerable boost with the active participation of every individual in the UK.

It’s quite simple to do, too: engage with the local wildlife conservation communities, abstain from purchasing products and services that use illegal animal parts or employ animals for laboratory testing, visit local parks to help wildlife tourism and donate to several related causes. Above all, do spread the word about the issue in your local community at every opportunity, be it by organising seminars or engaging the youth in fun events aimed at animal protection and conservation.

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“Are you sure this is the way?” said Alfie, scrambling up the hill after his sister.
“I don’t know alright?” replied Eva sharply, staring at her phone as she strode on ahead. “I’m still trying to get a signal.”
“That’s what you said, like, half an hour ago.” said Alfie, holding up a chubby wrist. “We should have stuck to the path like I said. Then we wouldn’t be lost!”
“We’re not lost.” retorted Eva. “Look, we’re nearly at the top of the hill. There’s bound to be something on the other side.”  

But there wasn’t. There were only more trees, thickening into an impenetrable distance.

“Great!” sighed Alfie. “What now?”   
“I dunno,” replied Eva, uncertainly. “Keep going until we get signal, I guess…” 
“But what if we don’t?” asked Alfie.
“We will.” snapped Eva. “This is Wales, you know, not the end of the world!” 

The forest seemed to grow darker here, more gnarled and the children were quieter as they went, nervously looking up at the great oak trees that surrounded them. With their wrinkled old trunks and branches bearded in moss, the trees looked like sentinels, silently watching as the children passed deeper into the forest.

“Evie,” said Alfie in a small voice after a while. “I’m a bit scared.” 
“Scared? What’s there to be scared of? It’s only a bunch of old tr… ” began Eva but then she stopped. Standing in front of them was an old man. 
“Where did you come from?” exclaimed Eva, staring at him in astonishment. He was, in fact, an extremely old man with a tangled white beard and even whiter hair and he was carrying a wooden staff. 

“From the forest.” replied the man in a melodious voice. “Where did you come from?”   
“We were on our way to the seaside but our parents got lost!” said Alfie excitedly. “So they parked up to look at the map – only they can’t read maps so they started arguing! And me and my sister went to check out the forest – then we got lost!” 
“You do not live in the forest?” asked the man. 
“We live in London!” replied Alfie, grinning confusedly. 
“Who lives in the forest?” said Eva, staring at the man.
“Once upon a time, we all lived in the forest.” replied the man and his eyes, which were a brilliant azure blue, seemed to darken with the weight of the loss. “Once, forests like this one covered the entire country.” 
“Right…” said Eva, frowning. “And…do you live in the forest?” 
“As long as there is a forest, I shall live here.” replied the man. 
“Great! Then you must know the way out?” said Alfie briskly. 

The man bowed wordlessly, gesturing for them to follow him through the trees. 

“So do you, like, live in a tree-house?” asked Alfie.
“I have no house.” replied the man. “The trees provide my shelter. The leaves, comfort. The wood, warmth.” 
“Is that why you’re not wearing any shoes?” asked Eva suspiciously. 
“What need have I for shoes when the forest provides such a carpet?” he replied and the children saw that up ahead, the floor of the forest was sprinkled with thousands of tiny blue flowers, glowing like fairy lights under the darkened canopy. 

They followed the old man through the flowers to a tinkling stream that led off down the hill.

“Ah, we’re back here.” said Eva, looking around. Then she frowned. “But how did you know where our parents were parked?” 

The old man pointed to the canopy and through the leaves, hanging behind them like a painting, the children could see fields, great dazzling squares of green rolling one after another, into a cobalt sea.    

“What you were looking for?” he said. 

They followed the stream down the hill until the children spotted a splash of yellow paintwork and then their parents, hunched over the bonnet of an enormous 4×4. Amazingly, they were still arguing.    

“So much for mum and dad being mad.” snorted Eva. “They haven’t even noticed we’re gone!”
“But they must of! It‘s been, like…” began Alfie. Then he stopped. 
“What?” asked Eva. 
“My watch says it’s still two!” replied Alfie, staring at her. 
“Two? As in the time we left mum and dad?” exclaimed Eva. “You must be looking at it wrong!”
“No I’m not!” said Alfie indignantly. Then he turned to the man. “Have you got the time?”
“Time passes differently in the forest,” he replied.
“But we’ve come out at the same time?” said Eva, frowning perplexedly at her phone. “The same time, although we’ve been walking for ages! How is that even possible?” 
“Think of the forests… as a way into the past.” replied the man, closing his eyes. “You may enter them in your time but if you keep on walking, who knows where you will end up. You may end up in my time – or some other time entirely. But what I do know is that without the forests, there is no way back.” he went on, opening his eyes and looking directly at Eva. “That is why you must protect them.” 

Eva was staring at the old man but then she heard her parents, distantly calling their names. Alfie set off down the hill, waving excitedly, but Eva turned to the man.

“I‘m sorry – what did you say your name was?” she said. 
“My name is Myrddin.” replied the man, his face crinkling into a kindly smile. “But in English, you would say Merlin.” 
“Merlin?” repeated Eva incredulously. 
“Come on Evie!” called Alfie from the bottom of the hill. 
“I’m coming!” shouted Eva. Then she turned back to Merlin. But he had disappeared into the forest.

Author: Tim Davies, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Sacred Groves Founders’ images of Coed Rhyal

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Carmarthen Bay in West Wales is much loved for its broad, peach-white sands, its migratory birdlife and its sweeping sand and mud flats and salt marshes. It’s the birthplace of the Arthurian legend of the magician Merlin and one of the landscapes that inspired celebrated Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. In 2009, the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee listed Carmarthen Bay and Estuaries as a Special Area of Conservation, for the presence in the Bay of and its saltmarshes of sea rush (Juncus maritimus) and marsh-mallow (Althaea officinalis), rare invertebrates  and the twait shad (Alosa fallax), a threatened migratory fish.

Coed Rhyal – an ancient oak woodland – occupies a northwest-facing slope overlooking Carmarthen Bay. Whilst the inland Bay is less visited than its coastline and marshes, and certainly less studied, ancient deciduous woodlands such as Coed Rhyal, a recent acquisition by Sacred Groves, are also key to the region’s rich ecosystem. At Coed Rhyal, a closed canopy of ancient oaks provides both the moisture and shade for a host of symbiotic flora and fauna, from honeysuckle climbers, to edible bilberry, primrose and ferns and the bluebells that explode in a glowing counterpane of mauve each early spring.

“Coed Rhyal has some wonderful ancient woodland indicators, such as wood sorrel and campion,” says woodland and forestry manager Marc Liebrecht, custodian of Coed Rhyal for Sacred Groves. “There are veteran trees and, crucially for biodiversity, there is deadwood with plenty of friendly cracks and crevices for bats and birds to nest and floor as well as deadwood that’s great for fungus.”

A permissive path [a route designated by law for use by the public], thought to be an old horse and cart path, runs through the woodland and dog walkers and runners often use the route. On his last visit to the wood, Liebrecht met a local dog walker there who was pleased that Coed Rhyal – which translates as Rhyal’s trees – has been acquired to be kept wild for posterity. 

“Rewilding is usually appreciated by local communities who want to preserve their natural heritage,” Liebrecht says.

Although improvements have been made since the end of World War One, when woodland covered less than five percent of Wales’ landmass, today woodland only covers 14 percent of the current land surface in Wales (in comparison to a European average of 37 percent), and as of 1998, only 38 percent of Welsh woodland was composed of native species such as oak (Welsh Assembly Government, 2013). Wales’ ancient woods are worth preserving. Ancient woodland is the UK’s richest and most complex terrestrial habitat: home to more threatened species than any other natural environment. Centuries of undisturbed soils and accumulated decaying wood create the perfect home for communities of fungi and invertebrates, as well as specialist species of insects, birds and mammals.

Back in Coed Rhyal, as the path ascends, the route passes abandoned coal works and gaps in the canopy open out to glimpses of the estuary and Carmarthen Bay. These snatched vantage points make Liebrecht privileged to be able to visit this ancient wood. 

“The path meanders up the slope and has such a nice feel about it,” Liebrecht explains. “There is a viewpoint where you have unbroken views of the estuary and its setting in the wider landscape. It’s breathtaking and also somewhat soothing as you feel so cool under the forest canopy.”

WHAT IS FOREST BATHING?

Forest bathing became part of a Japanese national public health program in 1982 when the forestry ministry coined the phrase shinrin-yoku and promoted topiary as therapy. Shinrin-yoku, or is defined broadly as “taking in, in all of our senses, the forest atmosphere”. The program was established to encourage Japanese to get out into nature, to literally bathe the mind and body in green spaces, and take advantage of public-owned forest networks as a means of promoting health. Some 64 percent of Japan is occupied by forest, so there is ample opportunity to escape the megacities that dot its landscape. Now there’s scientific evidence to bolster the claims of shinrin-yoku,with phytoncides, compounds released by plants and trees, have been shown to reduce the stress hormone cortisol and activate the immune system. 

Tommy Carr, leader of Welsh forest bathing group Mindful Walks (@mindful_walks) on Wales’ ancient woods:
“Old woods differ from younger woods for me in terms of a feeling of being something greater than just trees, there’s a sense of the whole ecosystem and the sheer size difference which affects light and shade. Younger woods can have their own quality but it’s the ancient woods I love. Walking together in these woodland landscapes I think that people cannot help but build a greater appreciation and love of them. Though it isn’t always explicit that we talk about the woodland and conservation itself, taking people who rarely walk in nature and reconnecting them to their own nature is crucial. There’s been a big increase in small woodland ownership in Wales since the pandemic and lockdowns. I hope that the increase in interest and desire to protect these habitats will continue and we can recognise the true natural resources of Wales.”

Monisha & Vikram Krishna, Co-Founders Sacred Groves:
“As we walked down the path less trodden at Coed Rhyal, we felt that we had been taken back in time to the world of Enid Blyton and her incredibly imaginative stories set in the backdrop of the enchanted woods. We dedicate Coed Rhyal to the children of Wales and hope to support many more such treasures in the future. We have miles to go and many promises to keep!”

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Founders, Sacred Groves

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In spring, the woodland in Blean, Kent, is rich in fresh greenery and soundtracked by trilling birdsong. Soon, this will also be a place where you could glimpse an animal that hasn’t been seen here for 6,000 years. In the distance, you might see a furry brown bison rubbing its vast form against a tree to scratch an itch, or taking a crashing dust bath.

European bison are regarded by conservationists as a ‘keystone’ species, missing from UK landscapes; animals whose natural behaviours are invaluable for woodland ecosystems. Bison help to kill off some trees by eating and rubbing up against their bark, which allows light and new vegetation to come through; and stir up soil by taking ‘baths’. All of this can boost an area’s biodiversity, having a significant positive impact all the way up the food chain. And destroying some trees and plants, bison can even help to kill off some invasive, non-native species. 

“Most English woodland is in a really bad ecological state,” says Evan Bowen-Jones, chief executive of Kent Wildlife Trust, which is behind the reintroduction of bison to Blean in spring 2022. “Everywhere in the UK, biodiversity has been plummeting, and one of our big risks nationally is that our ecosystems are so simplified that we are vulnerable to collapse under climate change,” he explains. “We need to create more ecologically resilient landscapes – and bison are animals that are ‘ecosystem engineers’, that will do the work for us.”

The UK’s leading conservation charity, Kent Wildlife Trust owns almost 2,500 acres of ancient woodland in Blean. Its ‘Wilder Blean’ rewilding initiative will see, initially, a small herd of bison released to roam in 1,000 acres of it, safely fenced off from public footpaths. The landmark £1.2m project will be carefully monitored and if successful, has the potential to be replicated more widely. 

Initially, a herd of just six bison will be released, with the hope that they will breed. The trust has not yet revealed where the animals will come from, but similar projects include one in Zuid Kennemerland National Park in The Netherlands [some members of which are pictured here]. UK animal licensing laws mean that the initial herd can’t exceed ten animals, but when they do, a second herd can be created in another part of the woodland, as well as in partnerships with charities that own more nearby woodland. The areas in which bison are present will be contrasted with those in which they are not, creating a new body of data to demonstrate the transformative impact of bison on English woodlands. This could be leveraged to help persuade lawmakers to lessen the costly legal and financial restrictions on managing bison, which are – arguably illogically – categorised as dangerous wild animals in UK law, and require more safety infrastructure and spending than in other countries. 

For this reason, the Wilder Blean bison project, including multiple layers of specialist fencing and tunnels, has cost more than £1.2m (sourced primarily from a lottery grant).

Kent Wildlife Trust’s plan was inspired by the success of bison reintroduction in The Netherlands, where there is two decades’ worth of evidence to support bison as a conservation tool. “In Europe they are further ahead with this,” says Bowen-Jones. “We need to re-prove everything in the UK context, and we accept that, but the learning from Holland is clear.”

Given that bison would naturally have roamed across a wide variety of landscapes, their reintroduction is an ecological tool that might, in theory, be widely replicated across the UK; Bowen-Jones mentions sand dunes in Cornwall and national parks in the north of the UK as examples. More data from what happens once the bison are ensconced in Blean will help prove what the reality of their presence means for today’s United Kingdom. 

“Their natural behaviours will have all sorts of effects, some of which we know about and some of which we don’t,” says Bowen-Jones. He has seen evidence from The Netherlands that bison themselves are a versatile conservation tool, but he emphasises that the financial and legal  constraints on bison reintroduction limit the application in other contexts.

That said, Bowen-Jones is heartened by the prospect of these great bovines grazing the garden of England. “Bison would have roamed over massive areas; they are a missing component from the vast majority of habitats in this county,” he says. Blean, he hopes, will be key to making the case for bison as a conservation icon for a new era of rewilding.

Author: Sophy Grimshaw, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Banner image and 1. Ray Lewis, 2. Tom Cawdron, 3. Evan Bowen-Jones

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A Welsh folk poem dating back to the 14th century Derwen Ceubren yr Ellyll, or ‘The Hollow Oak, Haunt of Demons’ tells of an ancient oak that bears witness to the betrayal of Welsh revolutionary Owain Glyndŵr by his cousin and English royalist Hywel Sele, supporter of King Henry IV. The cousins embark on a deer-hunting trip, when Hywel turns his sword on Owain, who has suspected his motives and worn chainmail. In a fight to the death, Hywel is vanquished by Owain and:

“Pale lights on Cader’s rocks were seen,
And midnight voices heard to moan;
‘Twas even said the Blasted Oak,
Convulsive, heaved a hollow groan…”

Owain conceals Hywel’s body in the old oak’s great trunk and never tells of the murder, only bespoken by the oak, which grows gnarled and twisted in its dark knowledge until, many years later, Hywel Sele’s widow leads a band of men to split the oak’s great bole to find her husband’s body within, a rusting sword clutched in its skeletal hand.

Hallowed by the Celts, great oaks traditionally served as meeting spots and boundary-markers to Welsh wayfarers in an era when upland oak woodland – dominated by sessile oak (Quercus petraea) and local pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) and typically supporting 500-plus plant and animal species as well as other trees such as alder, ash, birch, hazel, holly, and rowan – covered much of Wales’ landmass.

These days woodland only covers 14 percent of the current land surface in Wales (in comparison to a European average of 37 percent), and as of 1998, only 38 percent of Welsh woodland was composed of native species such as oak (Welsh Assembly Government, 2013). This process of gradual deforestation is thought to be down to many factors, including destruction of woodlands during English King Edward I’s seizing of Welsh territories and the hunting-to-extinction of apex predators such as the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), European brown bear (Ursus arctos) and the grey wolf (Canis lupis) from the early to late middle ages (700s to 1500s) resulting in an irruption of herbivores that devoured emergent tree saplings.

The final crisis point for many of Wales’ upland oak woodlands were the World Wars, when a rapacious appetite for timber led to upland oak woodlands being force purchased by the British government’s Forestry Commission, felled and in many cases replanted with non-native fast-growing conifers.

One woodland’s tale: Gigrin Prysg

I’m standing in a stretch of upland oak woodlands in a region of mid-Wales whose fate charts the turbulent fate of Wales’ upland oak woodlands. From its slanting escarpments are visible the brooding blues of the Cambrian Mountains and the sheening dams and reservoirs of the Elan and Claerwen Valleys; brushing my ankles as I walk along the woodland’s steep-inclined pathways are mauve heather, fronded ferns and bushes of bilberries, a tiny dark berry that makes a fine late summer pie.

“Those are good indicator species that this is ancient woodland,” says Marc Liebrecht, a Sustainable Forest Management specialist who maintains Gigrin Prysg for Sacred Groves. “As are the lichens that you see on the oaks over there, such as wood bristle-moss and old man’s beard lichen.”

An 11.8 acre stretch of mature oak woodland, Gigrin Prysg translates as ‘Gigrin’s grove’, for an 18th century local farm owner. Its ancient trees were felled, Liebrecht believes, for World War Two timber and have since grown back and reseeded naturally from dropped acorns, in higgledy piggledy patches and clusters of oaks.

The oaks also support the growth of rowan and birch trees in the gaps in the canopy left by this natural dispersal of saplings. Deadwood left to rot on the site provides a home for species including blue ground beetle (Carabus intricatus) and crane fly (Lipsothrix errans).

The lack of ruminant grazing on the site will allow further trees to grow from the tender saplings at our feet, Liebrecht says, as Sacred Groves plan to leave the woodland to rewild and reseed naturally, with the help of supporters.

Regenerating Wales’ lost woodlands is, Liebrecht admits, a long game. Easily felled, oaks grow slowly (at around 50cm a year), and it’s hard to predict if pests or erratic weather conditions borne of climate change will threaten the viability of this native species, as has been seen with Ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus), a fungus that arrived on British soil in 2012 and which is predicted to kill 80 percent of native ash trees (including a patch on the western edge of the Gigrin Prysg site).

“For dynamic resilience you need mixed wooded ecosystems with different species and ages of tree, and you need time,” says Liebrecht, gesturing at Gigrin Prysg’s boughs. Gigrin Prysg’s venerable Welsh oaks will live, he predicts, to witness other tall tales.

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Sally Howard and Hollow Oak illustrations out of copyright

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Think of the Cotswolds countryside and what springs to mind? Green, sheep-dotted fields? Honey-stone cottages? Neatly tended gardens with flower beds in full summer bloom? What about lawns and verges that sprawl unmown as they sprout daisies, clover and that most reviled of gardeners’ weeds, the shock-haired common dandelion?

One Cotswolds village has challenged British gardeners to cast aside their famous prediction for neatly trimmed lawns and rigorous weeding of unwanted plants. Tysoe’s journey began in spring 2019, when a handful of its residents refrained from mowing their lawns during May, the month when emerging bumblebees and hoverflies are feeding on the rich nectar of wild plant species such as dandelion, bluebells and cowslips. The campaign, dubbed #NoMowMay, was first proposed by British wild plant conservation charity Plantlife in 2019, as a way to protect endangered species as well as the fast-disappearing natives that feed on wildflower nectar and whose populations are threatened by factors including global warming.

In Tysoe, locals took to it with gusto: sowing wild flower seeds, refraining from mowing and installing Brian May, a scarecrow who inadvertently resembled the legendary guitarist with British rock group Queen, to deter birds from pecking at wildflower seeds and shoots.

“The effort has been growing every year since,” Rosemary Collier, one of the project’s local coordinators and an entomologist at Warwick University. “The idea to make space for nature came from members of the church and we first rewilded parts of the churchyard. Then the parish council came on board and we re-wilded some of the parish’s verges. We also harvested seeds from local native wildflowers and sowed these alongside yellow rattle, which is semi-parasitic and suppresses grass, allowing other wildflowers to grow.”

Tysoe villagers are part of a broader citizen-led British green volunteering trend that’s been dubbed ‘ungardening’, which urges Britons to let 30 percent of their gardens and public spaces grow wild for the benefit of native wildlife. The trend can present a challenge to British tastes, admits Shirley Cherry, who coordinates a conservation campaign to turn Tysoe into a year-round wildlife-friendly village that’s sprung from the village’s rewilding efforts, Tysoe Wildlife.

“You won’t win everybody over because some people like primness in their gardens,” Cherry says. “Nature likes things messier: curving lines rather than straight lines, plants left to grow.”

On a mild day this May, Tysoe’s verges bloom with daisies, buttercups and wild violets as bees fly in busy arabesques and passersby quizzically stop to read the signs erected to explain the thinking behind the villages’ unkempt verges. Collier, who studies insect counts in her work at Warwick University, says that quantitative analysis of the impact on Tysoe’s insect life is tricky but that she had noticed more bees in the village this year, as well as a greater range of insect species.

Any good news is much needed. A 2019 study found that a third of British wild bees and their pollinating relatives, the hoverflies, are in decline, with habitat loss and climate change thought to be the principal causes of the insects’ demise.

Collier has enjoyed the flowers that have sprung up on her village’s unmown verges, including nectar-rich wildflowers such as oxeye daisy, field scabious and knapweed. She’s also pleased that dandelions, unsung kings of the pollinating world, are being rehabilitated, in Tysoe and beyond.

“People get annoyed with dandelions because they’re so good at dispersing their seeds but they’re amazing pollinators because they’re composite flowers with lots of little flowers in their head,” she says. Collier hopes such efforts will lead to a renewed appreciation of the environmental benefits of wildflower such as dandelions and nettles and the important role they play in supporting insects and animals higher up the food chain.

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Unsplash, Rosemary Collier and Sylvia Davies

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The scars of the ice age may be carved into Cumbria’s sweeping valleys and fells, but that’s not all that remains of the era.

Ennerdale Water, a glacial lake in the western Lake District, is home to England’s last migratory population of Arctic charr. Landlocked here since the ice retreated, now the fish emerge under cover of darkness each November to spawn in the adjoining river instead.

Yet that instinct has proven problematic, exposing this threatened aquatic species to water pollution in an environment where the gravel the fish use as their spawning nests was in short supply. Gareth Browning of Forestry England explains that the Ennerdale population had plummeted to around 20 spawning charr by the end of the 1990s. Having outlasted the glaciers, the charr was about to disappear from the lake forever.

At that point, local landowners stepped in to form the Ennerdale Arctic Charr Restoration project. It remains a collaboration between the Environment Agency, Forestry England and other Wild Ennerdale partners.

Unfortunately, they didn’t know much about the fish at first. “It was very much initially a discovery project,” Browning says – and this was its own challenge and led to a process of trial and error.

The team’s first intervention was to replace a crude pipe bridge on the River Liza, which was blocking water flow, hoping this would once again allow the charr to swim upriver to spawn; disappointingly, however, the population didn’t respond. It took a broader survey to discover a second bridge at Woundell Beck was blocking the flow of gravel for charr nests.

The improved river flow also helped another issue that was threatening the fish: riverine needle litter from the conifers planted beside the water courses after the Second World War. “Conifers are very good at stripping pollution out of the atmosphere,” Browning explains, “but that pollution’s quite acidic.” Allowing the Liza to flow freely reduced these harmful pH spikes as did replacing conifers in the surrounding area with native broadleaves, juniper and heathland. At the same time, the Environment Agency undertook an off-site breeding programme to boost fish stock, taking eggs from local fish, and returning the hatched fry to the River Liza.

In 2020 over 700 charr spawned in the River Liza and other once-threatened species are unexpectedly blooming too, such as the formerly extinct Marsh Fritillary butterfly.

Dr Ian Winfield has studied the link between climate change and the cold-water charr, he believes that tracking the population health of species such as the charr is key to understanding the impacts of climate change. Milder winters, he says, pose a risk to the incubating eggs of a species at the southernmost limit of their natural territory.: “They really need water temperatures similar to those of a domestic fridge in order to survive well,” Winfeld says.

The humble Arctic charr’s fate is also a barometer for the health of the Lake District, a much-prized natural environment that sees 15 million visitors each year. “If the population is doing well then the lake is doing well,” Winfield adds.

Author: Ruth Bushi, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Ennerdale banner image: Kreuzschnabel/ Wikimedia Commons, 1. Gareth Browning, 2. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 3. Dr Ian J. Winfield
(Wikimedia License – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)

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Cheshire Wildlife Trust’s Kevin Feeney was submerged in a chilly watercourse, welly tops breached, when he had a revelation. “I was laboriously trying to build a dam and I thought: surely beavers do a much better job of this? And without the polluting fuel-use and chainsaws, too.”

It’s a big year for a humble semiaquatic rodent. Beavers are native to mainland Britain, but were hunted to extinction in the 18th century by traders seeking their fur, meat and scent glands (which were in demand for perfume-making). The loss of these industrious herbivores – who dam rivers to raise the water level, enabling them fell trees – led to the loss of the mosaic of lakes, meres, mires, tarns and boggy places that were architected by their damming.

Feeney’s project to restore beavers to Hatchmere, a wooded lake area in northwest England, is one of a number of experimental beaver reintroductions due to be carried out across Britain in coming years. They include the release of beaver families and pairs in Dorset, Derbyshire, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and Nottinghamshire; many of these beavers being sourced from parts of Scotland where residual ancient communities exist, and overpopulation can lead to flooding. At Hatchmere, says Feeney, the ambition was to improve water quality and to clear the shading tree cover that disinhibits diversity.

“In old woodland there’s no sunlight and no moisture on the ground, so you get a lack of plant diversity and a knock-on effect on the number of invertebrates that can thrive,” Feeney says. “When beavers fell trees they let the light back in.”

Beavers’ skills in damming and coppicing are part down to their lowly position on the food chain. “When you’re predated the water is a safer place to be,” Feeney explains. “So beavers need the trees to come to them; and they also need the power of the water to be able to easily shift and trap massive logs.” He adds that the record for the longest beaver-built dam goes to a rodent family in Germany, who built a 168-metre long dam over several generations. Beaver-dammed watermasses also provide homes for otters, water voles and kingfishers.

The downside in beaver reintroductions is overswing: if they dam too efficiently, or in the wrong places, they can flood farmland and roads. Such problems can be overcome, however, with innovations such as the ‘beaver deceiver’, a plastic pipe inserted in a dam that lets water flow through.

Feeney describes the day of the beaver couple’s release into Hatchmere as ‘magical’. “The female jumped out of her cage into a duck pond and started swimming in perfect circles [see footage],” he recalls. “We had to coax the male in, but then he gave a big tail splash and looked right back at our camera.”

The couple also greeted each other with a spot of light paw boxing ‘like kangaroos’, but were found a week later curled around each other on a patch of bramble. Locals have been asked to submit potential names for Hatchmere’s new residents to the Cheshire Wildlife Trust, with a christening due next month.

“There are a lot of puns so far,” says the CWT’s Rachel Bradshaw. “But ‘Justin Beaver’ probably won’t make the grade.”

The Wildlife Trusts have launched a £30 million appeal to kickstart natural recovery across 30 percent of the UK’s land and sea by 2030 wildlifetrusts.org/30-30-30

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images and Video Credit: Cheshire Wildlife Trust

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How do you track something as shifting and ephemeral as global bird migrations? Use the might of the great British twitcher [bird watcher], that’s how.

BirdTrack is an online citizen science website, operated by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in partnership with the RSPB, BirdWatch Ireland, the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club and the Welsh Ornithological Society that allows birdwatchers to record the names and numbers of birds seen in a specified location anywhere in the world.

BirdTrack’s community of 34,000 active users has, to date, uploaded 1.1 billion entries of data, logging everything from species location and behaviour to birdsong and mating behaviours, says the BTO’s Scott Mayson.

“We get simple entries that say ‘I saw X bird at X location’; but then we will get really precise references such as that a male was singing to a female a specific ordnance survey grid reference and it was a mating song. In our world, though, all records are useful.”

The data – which feeds into similar data inputs from the European Commission-funded Eurobird portal – allows the real-time mapping of bird migrations across the European continent and, crucially, charts how these avian flows are changing year-on-year.

“We find that some birds, such as the willow warbler, are migrating further northwards,” Mayson explains, “and that species such as the chiffchaff and blackcap which used to winter on the continent are now wintering here.”

BirdTrack’s vast data pool, Mayson adds, acts as an early warning system that species might be under threat, whether that’s as a result of global heating, pollution or of habitat destruction. “We now know that bitterns, a kind of small heron, are dwindling as their reed-bed habitats [thickly vegetated and waterlogged zones between water and land] have been drained; so there are efforts to restore these habitats that have come directly from this data.”

It’s thanks, too, to BirdTrack data that the RSPB is running mass surveys of species that appear to be under threat, including the lesser-spotted woodpecker and fabled turtle dove.

Andrew Sims, 74 and based in Lincolnshire, has been a twitcher since the 1970s and an enthusiastic BirdTracker for the past eight years. Sims enjoys a daily birding walk along the same looped route from his home and religiously submits his sightings into BirdTrack’s app as he strolls. “By submitting at the same spots every day through the years I know I’m doing my bit to help record population trends,” he says. “It feels like a service as well as a pleasure.”

Little egrets, rare when he began twitching, are now a common sight, Sims says, as his much-loved woodpeckers have slowly disappeared from his patch. He hopes that data such as his will make an argument for government interventions in climate change. “I love that BirdTrack gives you a personal record of your sightings over time as well as the bigger picture,” he adds.

An obvious risk with mass citizen science projects is spotter error: what if an unschooled birder identifies a chaffinch for a sparrow; say? BirdTrack, says Mayson, flags up an entry if a user chooses a species that is unexpected in an area at a given time of year, to make such mis-identifications less likely.

BirdTrack has seen its usership increase 23 percent since the pandemic as we feel a renewed appreciation for outdoor environments, and their feathered residents. BirdTrack has also realised, in this strange time, the potential of its data to protect both avian and human populations from disease. “We can look at the movements of reservoir species such as geese, for example, to predict where the next outbreaks of bird flu might happen,” Mayson adds.

Author: The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and Eurobird

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“It was an insect apocalypse,” James Mawle says of the moment, last Spring, when he realised that two decades of conservation work on his North Yorkshire sheep, hay and grouse farm had paid off. “The mayfly had hatched and the air was so thick with insect life you barely see. It was like a moment from a David Attenborough documentary.”

When Mawle’s father bought Coverhead in the 1980s, the river from which the farm derived its name had been reduced to a dribble, insect life was largely absent and the land was prone to regular flash floods, or ‘spates’, which washed away smaller river rocks and turned larger rocks, as Mawle evocatively puts it, into ‘grinders for aquatic life’. Mawle was amazed to hear that someone had once offered to buy the farm’s salmon-fishing rights. “What salmon?,” Mawle says, wide-eyed. “How could our poor parched river support salmon?”

The chief culprit was ‘gripping’, the 20th century practice of digging moorland drains to speed up runoff and dry out the ground. Britain’s 1946 Hill Farming Act encouraged it, offering farmers up to 80 percent of the cost of digging the 18-inch deep, foot-wide ditches it was believed would increase agricultural yields (a subsidy that continued into the 1980s). Coverhead’s legacy was a five-mile chain of grips, which had drained the top-level peat and routinely led to juvenile animals such as lambs and grouse chicks getting trapped in its depressions. The flash floods caused by the grips also increased the risk, in an era of unpredictable rainfall, of flooding of communities down-river.

The clincher for Mawle, however, was the discovery that moister peat is carbon-storing peat. “Blocking the grips became the obvious thing to do,” he says.

Mawle took over the farm in the early 2000s and began blocking the grips by forming small peat dams downhill of the drains. He completed plugging Coverhead’s hundreds of grips in 2009,and his farm was thriving.

“Where formerly the [river] Cover was a raging brown torrent or a dry boulder field it was not slower flowing and clear,” Mawle says, “vegetation had returned to the edges and smaller stones were settling in the riverbed; peat was blooming on the moors. Trout and insect life had returned too!”

Rewetting, however, can be a fine balance, with the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust warning that greenhouse gases can temporarily increase from bog habitat as soils rewet.

Buoyed by his rewilding successes, Mawle, with the Yorkshire Dales River Trust, has begun work on his next project: restoring the river Cover’s meander. The Cover, as many rivers, was historically straightened to expose fertile farmland and divert flow to watermills. A healthy river, however, traces a curving route across the landscape, slowing its flow and allowing flora and fauna to bloom. The new project has help from some four-legged friends.

“We’re weaving willow around posts sunk into the riverbed to create something like beaver dams in the hope that beavers will come and finish the job for us,” Mawle says, adding that the new snaking route might entice back Cover’s long-lost wild salmon, “wouldn’t that be nice?”

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust

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