Managing Wildlife Habitat
Free Lectures, The Lady Lisa Sainsbury Lecture Theatre, Jodrell Building, Kew Gardens
18:00 to 19:30 on February 13th, 27th and March 12th 2020
Ecology & Conservation Studies Society with Royal Botanic Garden Kew
Recently, we have come to see areas protected for wildlife as small and isolated, wasting away in unfriendly surrounds of intensively-managed land. In those isolated areas, much of our management of land harked back to traditional practices. When we coppice woodlands, mow meadows and harvest reeds, we hope that returning to the tradition would make places better by recovering the diversity that had been lost in neglect or in modern, intensive land management. This use of traditional practices included the grazing of heathlands, but rewilding harks much further back to prehistoric times. Then, humans were hunter-gatherers and the natural landscape was shaped by large grazing animals, their numbers controlled by their food and by large predators. As just one of those predators, human involvement was minimal.
In a large enough area, we can try to mimic those prehistoric landscapes by allowing large grazing animals, or beavers, to interact naturally with their habitat. Leaving aside rewilding, large areas of land may also be needed simply because the target species require large areas of habitat, just as bitterns and marsh harriers need large reedbeds. To overcome the limitations of size, we need bigger areas, or to join them up. So, in his review, "Making Space for Nature", John Lawton included the existing aim to make places "better", but added "more, bigger and joined". As part of the joining up of nature sites, John went also for reducing the pressures on wildlife by improving the wider countryside.
Countryside Stewardship schemes aim to do just that, but there is international controversy over whether it's better to do this, and spread action for wildlife habitat widely across the map (land sharing) or to put intensive biological conservation effort into a small amount of priority land, allowing intensive agriculture across the rest of the landscape (land sparing). Recent work suggests that the land sparing may be the best strategy, thus questioning the recent UK approach. If we return the emphasis to land sparing, we need actions that will make the best of our existing wildlife sites.
These three lectures explore some of these issues of land use and management for biological conservation.
February 13th Conservation trade-offs: reconciling food production, wild spaces and farmland wildlife. Tom Finch, Conservation Scientist at RSPB.
February 27th Bringing Beaver Back: The return of beaver to SE England. Chloë Sadler, Head of Wilder Landscapes, Kent Wildlife Trust.
March 12th. Making Space for Nature: past, present and future. Sir John Lawton.
These lectures have been organised by the Ecology and Conservation Studies Society. We are most grateful to Kew Gardens, and particularly to Dr Elaine Porter for providing the facilities of the lecture theatre. The lectures would not be possible without this assistance. For further details contact the Society at ecssoc@gmail.com
