A new study published in Australia; “Nature of Living Species in Australia and the World”, suggests that almost 1% of the world’s 1.9 million recorded species are threatened, including 9.2% of major vertebrate species. The report was launched yesterday by the Australian Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, and was described by the Australian Government as ‘the only report in the world to document the planet’s known animal and plant species’.

The report shows that 87% of Australia’s mammals and 93% of its reptiles are endemic, found nowhere else in the world. However, in launching the report, the Minister acknowledged that more needed to be done to identify, record and conserve Australia’s biodiversity, stating that “[scientists] need this essential information to do a better job of managing…biodiversity against the threats of invasive species, habitat loss and climate change”.

Sir David Attenborough released a statement in support of the report, praising its contribution to the identification and naming of species and the fundamental step that represented in the path towards species conservation. “The identification and naming of species is the very foundation of the natural sciences. Unless we can be certain of exactly what organism we are considering, we cannot protect it, still less understand it. Listing species is the beginning of that essential process”, he said.

The report said that 20% of mammals were endangered globally, as were 12% percent of birds and 29% of amphibians. Almost 5% of reptiles were considered threatened, along with 4% of fish species.

Download the report at the website of the Australian Biological Resource Study

José Manuel Barroso, the newly re-elected European Commission president, has promised to review the use of scientific advice by the Commission. He has also announced that he will create a new post of Chief Scientist for Europe. The Chief Scientist will have “the power to deliver proactive, scientific advice throughout all stages of policy development and delivery”.

The commitment follows a campaign by John Beddington, the UK government’s chief scientist, and other research advocates, for the EU to have a scientific adviser who could act across the commission’s various directorates-general.

For further information, please see the Financial Times.

Hilary Benn, Secretary of State at DEFRA, is set to announce a wide-ranging year-long review of wildlife in Britain today, as part of the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. The review is expected to focus on re-wilding – returning the environment to a previous ‘natural’ state – and on the expansion of ecological corridors.

There is currently no information available on the Defra website but the imminent announcement was widely reported over the weekend. The Independent reported that the review was being driven by “general recognition…that conservation needs to be practised over larger areas” and the need for species to be able to move in the face of threats to habitat from climate change.

See further information on this story in the Independent and Farmers Weekly.

Water quality in England and Wales has improved for the nineteenth year in a row the Environment Agency announced today. Seven out of 10 English rivers and nine out of 10 Welsh rivers achieved what is termed “very good” or “good” status in terms of chemical and biological water quality in 2008. Wildlife has been returning to some of these rivers. 50 years ago, no salmon were seen on the River Tyne, but already this year more than 10,000 have been recorded migrating up river. Meanwhile otters have this year been recorded in both Greater Manchester and the lower Thames for the first time in 40 years. After moving into Sussex this year, otters can now once again be found in every English county.

However, only five of the 6,114 rivers in England and Wales are in pristine condition, and more than three-quarters are expected to fail new European quality standards. The European Water Framework Directive, which became law in the UK in 2003, sets even higher quality standards, using a wider and more sophisticated range of more than 30 different measures. Only 26% of rivers in England and Wales are classified as “good” under the new requirements, and only five satisfy the highest standards. These are in remote areas of Northumberland and Wales.

Under the new standards, 117 rivers are classified as being in bad condition, ranked on a par with the dirtiest rivers in eastern Europe, a further 742 are considered to be in “poor condition” and 3,654, or 60%, are in “moderate” condition. This presents a headache for the government because it is legally required by Europe to ensure that 95% of all British rivers are in “good” ecological condition by 2015. At the present rate of improvement, only a further 5% will meet the conditions by 2015. This could eventually leave Britain open to unlimited fines and court cases on a European level.

Lakes are faring no better, with only one out of 762 English and Welsh lakes considered to be of high status, and seven considered “bad”. None were named by the agency but it admits nearly 70% of lakes are in line to miss the targets.
It is estimated that it could cost £9bn to get 95% of UK rivers to “good” status by 2015. If, as expected, this proves impossible, the EU allows interim targets to be set for 2015 and 2021.

The government is currently preparing its River Basin Management Plans, which will be published on 22 December 2009. These will outline the targets and methods used to improve water quality in 11 catchment areas. A six-month consultation took place on the proposed plans earlier in the year. A coalition of major NGOs declared that the proposals showed ‘an unacceptably weak level of ambition’. Perhaps the EU will help the UK become more ambitious.

For further details, visit the ‘Our Rivers’ website.

A HEFCE report reviewing equality and diversity in relation to the latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) has revealed that men were 40% more likely than women to be entered in the assessment. Black researchers of both genders had a 40% chance of selection, compared to 60% plus for researchers from other ethnic groups.

The HEFCE analysis suggests that the gender and ethnicity gap persists even after taking into account subject area. The disparity in ethnicity is more pronounced than in 2001.

The HEFCE report states; “”As with RAE 2001, having accounted for other measurable factors, differences between selection of men and women continue to be observed over the age range 30 to 50, despite the changes between RAE 2001 and RAE 2008 to promote equal opportunities…While this behaviour may be linked to selection bias resulting from age and gender, it could equally be a result of deeply rooted inequalities in the research careers of men and women.”

Commenting on the findings in relation to gender, Annette Williams, Director of the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, said that the blame lay with the selection process for the RAE. A review just completed by the Equality Challenge Unit sets out recommendations for changes to the selection process for the new Research Excellence Framework, the RAE’s successor.

It is anticipated that the REF will mandate greater consistency in relation to panels and sub-panels’ application of equal opportunities guidance. The REF is also expected to provide clearer information to assessors regarding how career breaks should be entered into the assessment.

Original article by Zoe Corbyn, Times Higher Education, 17 September 2009: Unequal Opportunities in Final RAE

Yesterday the BES Policy Officer joined a group of academics, policy advisors, conservationists and professional horizon scanners at a workshop in Cambridge, aiming to identify a suite of issues which are on the horizon for the conservation community.

Following on from Professor Bill Sutherland’s (University of Cambridge) ‘100 Questions’ exercises, the aim is that the horizon scan will become an annual exercise and help to better inform, and enthuse, the ecological community about the benefits of taking a forward look. The list of issues generated are not meant to be exhaustive but are a representation of those issues emerging likely to have an impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The criteria for inclusion were that the issues should be interesting and, above all, informative: few in the conservation community should have heard of them. The paper will be published in TREE early in 2010.

The meeting was followed by a lecture delivered by Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for the Environment, delivered to mark the launch of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. The CCI is a collaboration between the university, conservation organisations and NGOs in the city and provides an innovative hub for dialogue and debate. Mr Benn delivered a rallying cry to ecologists, calling on them to contact him directly with ideas on successors to the 2010 biodiversity target. This is something which the BES certainly plans to follow up.

At the drinks reception afterwards there was an opportunity for the horizon scanning group to present the Secretary of State with the list of horizon scanning issues identified and to briefly talk him through each one.

If BES members would like to contribute issues and ideas for the 2010 horizon scanning exercise, please email Policy@BritishEcologicalSociety.org or contribute via the BES Forum section of this website.

The Natural History Museum today opened its new eight-storey Darwin Centre. The first phase of the development, which opened in 2002, houses 22m zoological specimens stored in alcohol. The new Centre brings some of the rest of the Museum’s vast collections into the public eye, displaying 17m entomology specimens and 3m botany specimens.

The Centre also has 1,040 square metres of laboratory space, thereby doubling the museum’s lab areas. These labs will also effectively be on display to the public, being glass-fronted and sometimes linked via intercom to the public gallery, enabling visitors to ask questions of the scientists about what they are doing. The building, covering 3,500 square metres, is the largest sprayed concrete curved structure in Europe. Entry is free to the public. For further information, please see here.

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In other Darwin-related building news, the Linnean Society of London, where many of Darwin’s papers were presented, will be open to the public this weekend as part of Open House London 2009. Visitors will be able to see the Meeting Room and newly refurbished Library, as well as to ask questions to staff, Fellows and Members of Council. The Society will be open from 10am until 5pm (last entry at 4.45pm) on Saturday 19th September. For further details, please see here.

Last week the BES hosted a fascinating workshop on the development of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), in conjunction with the UK Biodiversity Reseach Advisory Group (UK-BRAG). A morning of presentations and discussion were followed with lunch and an opportunity for networking, before break-out groups met to consider various aspects of this exciting new undertaking.

The NEA is the first analysis of the UK’s natural environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society and continuing economic prosperity. It is partly a direct consequence of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), for the Environmental Audit Committee recommended that it would be good to do a similar process for the UK.

Professor Steve Albon, Joint Co-Chair of the NEA, presented first, providing a very useful overview of how the NEA intends to go about its work. Working within the conceptual framework of sustainable development, the NEA will look at seven broad habitats (following the habitat classification used by the Countryside Survey) and four ecosystem services, and study how they all interact. The whole of the UK’s terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems will thus be covered, and there will then also be a biodiversity synthesis, as well as a UK, national and regional synthesis.

Some of the major questions to be addressed in the Assessment revolve around valuation. Dr Melanie Austen of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory outlined the results and lessons learnt from a valuation study of the UK marine environment. She gave examples of valuation, fishing for instance being valued at around ₤600 million, leisure & recreation at roughly ₤11.7 billion, though stressed that there are both monetary and non-monetary types of valuation which can be applied. Valuation methodology is still being developed, and it is rarely possible to capture all values accurately. Moreover, whilst monetary values are very useful in order to get policymaker attention, non-monetary values are very politically important- showing politicians that the public actually cares about the environment is crucial.

The final presentation of the morning session was given by Paul Morling from the RSPB, who surveyed the policy options which could be employed in the light of the NEA report. He suggested one of the Assessment’s most valuable contributions might be in terms of ‘trade-offs’, helping illuminate the often opaque trade-offs that policymakers must decide between. For example, if in order to restore a lowland heath it is proposed to remove the pine trees, whilst the biodiversity values will be positively affected, but the carbon values of the heath will be negatively hit. How can we decide between these values in an informed manner? The NEA will hopefully be help to shed some light on this and other difficult questions faced by policymakers, and may be particularly relevant given the upcoming focus on cost-cutting and efficiency savings which will undoubtedly preoccupy the next Government. It is hoped that the NEA will help highlight the place of the environment in any such debate.

The delegates have gathered, the vast array of speakers arrived, the sun is shining- the BES Annual Meeting 2009 has begun!

One of the highlights of our year, the Annual Meeting is taking place at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield. It began yesterday evening with a drinks reception and string quartet to welcome the delegates, before the full programme of events started in earnest this morning. There have been a fascinating array of talks so far, some of the most interesting ones I have managed to attend including:

- ‘Living with Environmental Change (LWEC)’ LWEC is a major programme involving 20 UK organisations funding, undertaking and using environmental research, with a budget for its first five years of activity being £1 billion. Andrew Watkinson highlighted the potential that such a programme offers for ecologists to really engage with effective policy-relevant research and its delivery.

- ‘Assessing the Impact of English Agri-Environment Schemes on Lowland Farmland Birds’ The first results from an assessment of the UK Government’s ‘Entry-level Stewardship (ELS) Scheme, a high-uptake, non-targeted scheme which currently covers 5 million hectares of UK farmland, involving 34,000 participants and costing £180 million a year in compensation costs. One major caveat to note in any assessment is that the scheme is only three years old, but indications are that at this stage, the ELS has had no influence on lowland farmland bird populations. Given that many of these populations have been severely reduced, the scheme should be boosting populations if it is to make a worthwhile difference.

- ‘Ecological Engineering Rock Pools onto Existing Seawalls’ A fascinating presentation sharing the results of an experiment in Sydney to increase the levels of biodiversity to be found on urban shorelines, where sea walls are frequently almost devoid of any significant biodiversity. By attaching flowerpots of various sizes to the sea wall at varying heights, the authors were able not only to increase existing species abundance but also to provide habitat for species which were previously unrecorded on the seawall tidal area.

- ‘Willow Tit Decline linked to Changes in British Woodland’ The Willow Tit has declined by 77% in the UK since 1994. Whilst stable populations have remained in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, the South has seen catastrophic population declines. Using surveys and habitat measurements, the authors found evidence confirming that the willow tit is a scrub specialist, and that patches containing scrub (especially willow, alder and hawthorn) were consistently favoured. The most important predictive factor for the presence of willow tit was a high amount of vegetation cover at the 2-4m level i.e. scrub. More studies need to be done, but it was proposed that there is less scrub in declining population areas. The causes for scrub decline are unclear.

What can you do to make your garden fabulous for wildlife? Today members of the public joining the BES in Guildford at the British Science Festival found out when Dr Ken Thompson, University of Sheffield outlined handy hints and tips to make urban green spaces biodiversity hotspots. Planting almost anything will attract wildlife to your garden, as long as you make use of the volume of the space; layering plants to create a garden as diverse and complex as possible. Dr Thompson debunked various myths in front of a varied audience at the Festival; a small garden is just as good as a large one at providing a home for wildlife and, in fact, invertebrates make up the majority of biodiversity in gardens. Don’t get caught up in attracting rare species, Dr Thompson said, concentrate on the invertebrates, from which all else will follow.

Dr Nikki Gammans, Project Officer at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, also delivered a very interesting talk, part of the BES panel discussion, ‘Gardening for Wildlife: can suburbia become Britain’s largest nature reserve?’. Dr Gammans is overseeing a project to reintroduce the short-haired bumblebee, declared extinct in the UK in 1988, to Dungeness in Kent. Dr Gammans will travel to New Zealand later this year to bring back short-haired bumblebee queens, encouraging them to breed once more on newly restored habitat, maintained by the RSPB, near Romney Marsh. A new technique has been found to rear the bees in captivity, making sure that the population has a viable chance of success on arrival in this country.

Our other speakers, Helen Bostock, Johanna Forster and Professor Dave Goulson also delivered extremely interesting talks. Johanna provided an overview of how gardens will alter in future due to climate change, and how gardeners can adapt to this. Extremes of temperature and rainfall will present challenges to gardeners in 2050. Helen Bostock introduced the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Plants for Bugs’ project, aiming to assess whether native, non-native or near-native plants are best for wildlife in gardens. Professor Dave Goulson chaired the panel and provided background on bumblebee declines in the UK: with 98% of the UK’s flower meadows now destroyed, bumblebees face a tough time; if gardeners could plant larger numbers of wildflowers at home, this would greatly help the bumblebees to survive.

The BES organised a press conference at the British Science Festival to showcase Dr Gammans’ work. Read more here.

Dr Ken Thompson was also inteviewed by the press at the event. See coverage here.