Dominic Couzens - Save our species : endangered animals and how you can save them

A Bird a Day

100 Birds to See in Your Lifetime

Wild and Free

Britains Mammals

Songs of Love and War

The British Wildlife Year

Extreme Animals

Top 100 Birding Sites of the World

Tales of Remarkable Birds

Birds: ID Insights

The Secret Lives of Puffins

The Crossley ID Guide, Britain and Ireland

A Patch Made in Heaven

Garden Bird Confidential

Atlas of Rare Birds

Extreme Birds

Secret Lives of Garden Wildlife

Secret Lives of British Birds

Secret Lives of Garden Birds

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

FIRST EDITION

Text HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

Illustrations Sarah Edmonds 2021

Cover design Sim Greenaway HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Cover illustrations Sarah Edmonds 2021

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Dominic Couzens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008438616

Ebook Edition April 2021 ISBN: 9780008438623

Version 2021-03-08

Britains nature is in serious trouble. Thanks for being part of the solution. You care about nature, and that is incredibly important. Our wildlife needs you on board desperately. With enough people on its side, nature in this country has a chance to thrive again.

Nature can be resurgent if we let it happen. It requires political will and action but, more than anything, nature needs advocates, people who care about the issues and want solutions. Nature needs serious, knowledgeable people who know that they will lose some battles but can also gain ground. The UK will never return to its primal state, full of vast tracts of unsettled wilderness and hardly any people. But some areas can be rewilded; it even makes economic sense to do so. And a great deal can be done to ameliorate the destruction of our wildlife, which, particularly since the 1950s and 1960s, has been horrendous.

This book is designed to play a role, however small, in that process. It contains the stories of 30 animals and plants that have declined in our country, setting out the reasons why they are in trouble. But it also makes suggestions as to how we can help the species.

It also presents ideas about how you and I can help wildlife in general, starting now. A lot of these, surprisingly but encouragingly, start in gardens and neighbourhoods. Many people dont realise how important their personal contributions are. They are important because they signify a person won over. If enough people are won over, and convinced that their voice can be heard, conservation can still do great things.

First, though, we need to get an idea of the problems.

Our countrys biodiversity is falling rapidly, by almost every measure. Each year, a partnership of more than 50 conservation and research organisations brings out a report called State of Nature, and the most recent version makes typically grim reading:

• The total number of breeding birds in the UK fell by 44 million between 1967 and 2009.
• The abundance of butterflies in Britain has shrunk by 16% since 1976 and the abundance of moths has fallen by 25% since 1970.
• A sample of 696 typical terrestrial and freshwater species of all kinds shows a decline in average abundance of 13% since 1970; even more alarmingly, the same sample shows a 6% decline in the last ten years alone.
• A measure of species for which there are reliable population criteria, totalling 8,431 in all, suggests that, of these, 1,188 (15%) are threatened with extinction from Great Britain, while 2% have gone already.

Within these complex figures are many individual stories. For example, skylarks have declined by over 75% since the 1950s and hedgehogs could be down 90%. Some species have increased, of course, such as red kites, bitterns and pine martens. But what really stands out is the number of familiar species that have suddenly dropped and are in danger of becoming history. This is where the damage to our wildlife becomes personal. Those of us who love listening to the glorious songs of skylarks and the chirping of sparrows cannot bear to think that their world and ours is now so diminished.

There is barely a corner of Britain, or a type of habitat, excluded from the grim tally. In Britain, all manner of wildlife-rich habitats have been lost to development, not just recently but for centuries. Chalk downlands, heaths, bogs, freshwater marshes, seacoasts, estuaries, Caledonian pine forests and meadows are all examples of habitats that have shrunk vastly in area as human reach and exploitation has expanded. We have, for example, lost 97% of our flower-rich meadows since the 1930s.

It could be suggested that development for housing and industry was the biggest driver of destruction up to the war years. But since then, a newer crisis has emerged on Britains farmland, which covers 70% of our surface area. Farmland was once a good habitat for many birds, invertebrates, flowers and much else, animals and plants benefiting from a share of production and space. But spurred by the need to produce more food, farms became much more efficient and intensive. Hedgerows were grubbed up (c.50% of pre-war levels remains), ponds drained, corners evened out, stubbles removed. The soil was subjected to a barrage of chemicals, and still is. There was a wide switch from spring to autumn sowing. Everything became cleaner and more efficient, but at a terrible cost to biodiversity.

At the same time, there has been industrial-scale persecution of wildlife. Predators were culled in enormous numbers, fish stocks were depleted, and animals and plants abused. Gardening followed farming into a weird type of intensification, with tidiness in vogue and perfection a sort of creed. Other ills the environment suffered included pollution, changes in hydrology, the introduction of harmful non-native species and, more recently, the creep of climate change.