80% of European rivers are affected by water pollution, water removal for hydropower and irrigation, structural alterations and the impact of dams, with 12% suffering from impacts of all four. There is no doubt that human activities have harmed marine environments, however there are a number of conservation success stories where ecosystems have recovered from serious degradation. What isn’t always clear is how long recoveries took, how much of the damage was repaired and what factors helped drive the recovery.

A study, partly funded by the EU THESEUS project has identified five strategies for successful recoveries: raising public and political awareness, legal action and enforcing management plans, reducing human impacts, protecting or restoring biodiversity and complex ecosystems, and long term planning, as recoveries can take many decades.

The researchers found that between 10 to 50% of marine species and ecosystems showed some sign of recovery, although rarely to former levels of abundance. Recoveries tended to take longer for longer-lived species and for more complex ecosystems. For instance, many finfish and invertebrate stocks take three to 30 years to recover after depletion and slower-growing corals and sponges can take up to eight years to recover after bottom-trawling has ceased, compared to less than one year for faster-growing polychaete worms. Recovery can also take much longer if a species or ecosystem had been completely lost from an area, and sometimes depends on managed reintroductions to be successful.

Source: Lotze, H. K., Coll, M., Magera, A. M., Ward-Paige, C., & Airoldi, L. (2011). Recovery of marine animal populations and ecosystems. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 26(11): 595-605.

Figures due to be released by the Marine Stewardship Council show that the number of fish and seafood products in the UK certified as ’sustainable’ has increased by 41% since 2010.

What fisheries minister Richard Benyon has described as a ’seismic shift’ in people’s attitudes towards the fish they eat has led to a significant increase in consumer demand for seafood products bearing the MSC logo. This certification ensures that products have come from sustainable fish stocks where fishing rates are controlled below the rate of replenishment so the population is not depleted. This move towards more sustainable fish consumption is welcome as currently, 85% of fish stocks globally are exploited to their maximum capacity or overfished.

Upcoming reforms of the EU common fisheries policy are also hoped to contribute to the protection of dwindling fish populations by changing EU fishing practices.

Living with Environmental Change(LWEC), a consortium of 22 organisations that fund, carry out and use environmental research and observations, has launched a new strategy to drive collaborative research into how to manage the risks to life and property posed by flooding and coastal erosion in the UK. Across the country, it is estimated that 6 million properties are at risk from all sources of flooding or from coastal erosion; this number is only likely to increase due to climate change and extreme weather events. The LWEC ‘UK Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research Strategy’ marks, as stated by the document, ‘a major shift’ in the UK’s approach to tackling this significant economic, social and environmental issue.

Research priorities are grouped under three themes within the document: ‘understanding risk’; ‘managing probability’; and ‘managing consequence’. To take the first: managers of risks from flooding and coastal erosion need to synthesise data from multiple sources and assess the quality of these data in order to make informed decisions. The development of decision-support tools will be necessary. Secondly, the management of engineered and natural flood and coastal defences (see the blog post on Natural Flood Management from earlier this week for a brief overview of natural flood defences and the potential issues in making greater use of these) can be improved by research. This is an area where a small amount of investment may yield dividends for the UK. Finally, raising awareness and understanding of flood risk in order to influence the behaviour of individuals and communities in response to flooding and coastal erosion events is important, and an area where research into behaviour change can contribute. Also included within ‘managing consequence’ is the need for greater research so that forecasting and early-warning systems can be improved, alongside multi-agency emergency planning.

The LWEC strategy, it is anticipated, will lead to greater coordination of research effort amongst LWEC partners, whilst efforts will be made to translate the outputs of research into practice. LWEC will commission collaborative research projects, including at local scales, and will promote early collaboration between academics, industry researchers, service providers, the beneficiaries and end-users of research. Over the next 20 years (the timescale considered by the Strategy), the outcome should be the improved understanding and management of flood and coastal erosion risk for the benefit of millions of people.

More natural means of managing flooding are desirable and should be brought foward by the Government in a new White Paper on water. So commented Anne McIntosh MP, Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Commmittee and of the All Party Group on Flood Protection, at a parliamentary event attended by the BES Policy Team yesterday evening. The well-attended meeting was organised by Oliver Pescott, the most recent BES-funded Fellow at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), to launch the POSTnote he authored on ‘Natural Flood Management’.

Natural flood management (NFM) is defined in the POSTnote as ‘the alteration, restoration or use of landscape features’. One of the four speakers, Dr Paul Quinn, Newcastle University, made it clear that NFM is not about taking a system back to a natural state but working with and engineering natural processes. Dr Quinn presented work in which he had been involved within the town of Belford, in which residents have faced six major flooding events within the course of seven years. During extreme events, huge amounts of rainfall can be observed running off farmland; this can be tackled effectively, Dr Quinn suggested, by ‘catchment systems engineering’, which seeks to ’slow, store and filter’ water. Farm tracks, specially engineered to store water behind them; dams which ‘leak’ slowly to control water flow; and the use of woody debris (’beaver dams’) to perform a similar function can all help to attenuate run-off.

Dr Wendy Kenyon, James Hutton Institute, highlighted the importance of working with land-managers if those wishing to control flooding wished to work with natural processes as stated. Dr Kenyon’s team have conducted a number of semi-structured interviews with farmers, revealing that first and foremost, farmers are concerned with the viability of their businesses. Dr Quinn had presented results showing that 10 – 20 storage ponds could make a significant difference to the peak water flow; Dr Kenyon argued that the presence of this number of ponds on agricultural land could begin to have a significant effect on the farmer’s bottom line and so the viability of this proposal would need to be considered carefully.

It is important to ensure too that farmers are able to access funding to support their efforts to implement NFM. Fifty eight percent of farmers questioned by Dr Kenyon said that they would be encouraged to introduce NFM measures if there was more funding available to do so and if it could be applied for easily. This is significant as under the Common Agricultural Policy, money is already available to support NFM but, according to Dr Kenyon, farmers have not been accessing this as a source of funds. We need, Dr Kenyon suggested, to work with farmers to find out why.

The issue of the scale at which experiments are undertaken and from which conclusions can be drawn is a highly significant one. It became clear through the presentations that there is a great deal of uncertainty concerning the robustness of conclusions which can be drawn about flood attenuation at the catchment-scale through NFM, based on small-scale experiments. Dr Neil McIntrye, Imperial College London, suggested that although strategic tree-planting can have an affect on ameliorating flooding at a local scale, this beneficial effect is likely to be marginal at regional to larger scales. The true benefits of such interventions are only likely to become apparent, Dr McIntyre suggested, once further research has been undertaken to understand catchment-scale interactions.

The case was therefore made for greater investment in field experiments and better modelling to understand the benefits of NFM. Anne McIntosh MP questioned why the science had not yet revealed these benefits, to which the scientists responded that the high cost of studying natural processes over time and the uncertainty created by extrapolating the results from one study site to another, where geomorphology and hydrology may be very different, constrain the ability to draw robust conclusions. Dr Quinn suggested that scientists would do best to measure at an appropriate scale and then build confidence in extrapolating conclusions, for example through better models.

Funding the necessary experiments and modelling approaches, alongside funding NFM interventions will be a challenge. Anne McIntosh suggested that there was little appetite in Government to pass the cost of NFM projects, including efforts to monitor the efficacy of these projects, onto the consumer through higher water bills. Ms McIntosh, and others, suggested that Payments for Ecosystem Services could be one mechanism of paying for NFM, although here the beneficiaries (presumably the consumers) would still need to pay for the NFM interventions implemented by land-managers (the providers of the ecosystem service of flood alleviation).

There should be scope to deliver NFM alongside other services as part of a framework of multi-functional land-use. Speakers did not touch on this to a great extent and it would have been interesting to have heard more from this perspective. Dr Quinn mentioned that buffer strips planted at the sides of agricultural land can slow the flow of run-off, indicating both a biodiversity and a NFM benefit. Dr Quinn also mentioned the need for multiple stakeholders to come together (eg as in Belford), including ecologists, land-managers and residents, to discuss and agree a shared vision for a catchment. South West Water is investing a great deal of money in NFM measures but for water quality reasons (eg reducing sediment load in the watercourse), with consequent benefits for river ecology. However, overall there was little discussion of the ecological benefits, or disbenefits, of NFM approaches.

In opening the meeting, Anne McIntosh informed attendees that in a meeting of the Liaison Committee (involving all Chairs of Parliamentary Select Committees), members had extracted from the Prime Minister an undertaking that a Water Bill would be published early in the next Parliamentary session. The BES will watch with interest to see whether NFM is incorporated into the Bill when drafted.

Applications for the next BES Fellowship at POST are now open and close on Thursday 5th April. If you are in the second or third year of your PhD in ecology at a UK institution, consider applying. Find out more from the BES website.

Oliver Pescott, current BES Fellow at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, has published a POSTnote on ‘Natural Flood Management’. This will be available shortly on the BES website.

Flood risk management today uses a range of approaches to reduce risk, including structural works, such as hard flood defences, and non-structural approaches, such as improving flood warning systems and land-use planning. The restoration, alteration and use of natural landscape features are also receiving attention as potentially cost-effective ways of reducing flood risk that can provide other environmental benefits, such as water quality improvements or carbon storage.

The POSTnote will be launched formally in Parliament on Tuesday 17th January, from 4 – 6pm. The event will be chaired by Anne Macintosh MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Flood Protection and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee. Presentations from a number of speakers will discuss key issues in Natural Flood Management:

– Martin Whiting, Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management, Rivers & Coastal Group Chair
- Dr Neil McIntyre, Reader in Surface Water Hydrology, Imperial College London
- Dr Paul Quinn, Senior Lecturer in Catchment Hydrology, Newcastle University
- Dr Wendy Kenyon, Senior Researcher, James Hutton Institute (Land and Natural Resource Use Research)

To register your interest in attending, please email postevents@parliament.uk or call 020 7219 8377.

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production sector but there is still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding it’s environmental impact and how this is likely to change into the future as the sector expands to meet global food demands. A new report published by Conservation International and the WorldFish Centre investigating the aquaculture sector has identified some of the challenges in ensuring that the sector minimises adverse impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services whilst maintaining high growth to respond to global food shortages as population size increases.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimate that around 84% of the world’s fish stocks are already over exploited indicating that fisheries will not be able to meet the protein demands of a rapidly growing population. Fish farming is becoming increasingly common (the sector has grown by 8.4% per annum since 1970) particularly in Asia and Africa, and now accounts for around half of all the fish we consume reducing pressure on natural fish stocks.

To identify the main sources of environmental damage in the industry and establish opportunities for increasing sustainability into the future the researchers investigated several different methods of aquaculture, measuring their inputs (fertilizers, energy, land and water) and outputs (carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and phosphorus) and then estimated the impact of the enterprise on ecosystems and biodiversity (acidification, eutrophication, and climate change).

Perhaps unsurprisingly the enterprises producing the largest quantity of fish had the highest environmental impact. The type of fish reared also has implications for the sustainability of the fishery, for example rearing carnivorous fish such as salmon and rearing shrimps and prawns which are highly dependent on temperature control decreases the efficiency of the enterprise and increases emission of nitrogen and green house gases. Seaweeds, oysters and mussels were found to have the lowest environmental impact.

A comparison between sectors was also included in the report, showing that aquaculture has a much smaller demand on fresh water and energy than poultry, pig and cattle farming, and has lower outputs of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus.

By 2030 the sector is expected to double in size, producing 110 million tonnes of fish and seafood and the associated environmental impact is also expected to double. The report makes a series of research and policy recommendations to ensure that the sector is sustainable in the future, whilst simultaneously meeting the global demand for meat.

These include research into innovative methods to increase sustainability and improve efficiency, establishing regional networks to help improve efficiency in developing countries and promote best practice, and a variety of legislative measures to monitor the sector and promote compliance with environmental standards. The report also emphasises the importance of preventing new enterprises from establishing in important carbon sinks such as mangrove swamps

The report suggests that aquaculture may be the best solution to the global demand for meat as requirements for energy water and land are only a fraction of that for pig, cattle and poultry farming. Aquaculture will most likely be able to produce the most meat for the least demand on ecosystems, and the report indicates that fish farming should be promoted in policy to slow expansion of the other meat production sectors.

Sustainable eel fishing may start to increase in the European Union following the development of a new labelling scheme by the Sustainable Eel Group. The group, whose members include scientists, NGOs and policymakers, have developed a new standard (the Sustainable Eel Standard) to identify and promote best practice in the eel fishing industry. The development of the new standard is part of a move in the EU to put pressure on caterers and retailers to purchase eel only when they can be certain that it has been sustainably caught.

Eel populations have declined dramatically since monitoring began. A variety of factors have contributed to this decline including habitat destruction, pollution of waterways, disease, blocking of migratory pathways, and the complexity of the European eel lifecycle. These problems led to the eel being listed as endangered in 2008, after numbers had declined by as much as 90%. The new standard will start to tackle these problems by creating wetland habitats, monitoring water quality, and making alterations to the blocks in migratory pathways to allow eels to pass.

The new standard outlines key actions that the fishery must undertake in order to obtain a green score. These include:
• To achieve 40% escapement of eels, and minimise mortality during fishing
• To be licensed and provide accurate logbook data
• To use only legal gear
• To cause only negligible impacts on bycatch species or rare and protected species
• To cause on negligible impacts on habitats
• To active contribute in research and monitoring
• To develop and implement an eel management plan for restocking, and monitor the success of restocking
The report also contains recommendations for reducing the environmental and ecological impact of cultured eel and recommendations for animal welfare. Although these recommendations will ensure progression towards sustainability in the eel fishing industry the report also recognises that the fishery can not yet be called sustainable, as recovery of the stocks has not been sufficient.

The Sustainable Eel group is working with the Environment Agency to ensure that these recommendations are implemented in line with an EU Eel Management Plan

Spanish officials today seized over £4 million worth of illegally caught fish landed in the Canary Islands. It is thought the move is the start of a new EU scheme to prevent to deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing after new regulations were introduced last year. The fish seized, weighing over 1100 tonnes, were destined for sale in Europe.

Illegal fishing of the coast of West Africa is a serious problem for local people, who rely on fishing for employment and as a source of protein. EU officials estimate that Sierra Leone loses around $29 million per year as a result of illegal fishing. Declines in fish stocks can increase pressure on other natural resources such as bush meat. Environmental Justice Foundation, the organisation to which the illegal fishing was first reported, said that the EU needs to take more responsibility for policing it’s waters. Among the species illegally caught were octopus, squid, sole, shrimp, and grouper some of which are known to be endangered or have depleted stocks.

Three boats involved in the illegal fishing, owned by South Korea, Panama, and China, were apprehended in the port of Las Palmas. Fish were taken from waters off the coast of Sierra Leone which are reserved for use by local fishermen under international fishing agreements. Other allegations were also made against the vessels, including use of child labour, damage to the local fishermen’s equipment, and even assault. EU officials noted that illegal fishing often goes hand in hand with other criminal activities.

This move is the most drastic action the European Union has ever taken on illegal fishing and a second strike is planned for later this year. Europe is currently investigating the activities of over 70 vessels from both member states and other countries. If vessels are found to be involved in illegal fishing they can be banned from landing fish in any European port, excluding them from the world’s biggest market for fish. Europe is also demanding answers from the Panamanian authorities who provided certificates to show that the fish landed were caught within international fishing agreements which protect certain areas for use by local fishermen.

See Fish worth £4m seized in EU crackdown on illegal fishing by Robert Booth for more information.

2,700 scientists in over 80 nations have collaborated to create the first ever Census of Marine Life (CoML). In a 64 page report, the highlights of over 10 years of marine biological research are presented, with some groundbreaking findings, including the discovery of over 200 new species. The census will contribute substantially to knowledge of global marine biodiversity and marine ecosystem function. It also includes reference to changes in species distribution across European Seas –the Baltic, Atlantic and Mediterranean- which indicate considerably high levels of threat to biodiversity in these waters.

An original paper, which describes the full inventory of life recorded was published as part of a special edition of PLoS ONE in August 2010. The CoML is widely welcomed, ahead of the final TEEB (Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) report, to be published shortly with support from the European Commission, as part of it’s vision for Sustainable Devlopment

Source: Costello, M.J., Coll, M., Danovaro, R., Halpin, P., et al. (2010). A census of marine biodiversity knowledge, resources and future challenges. PLoS ONE. 5(8): e12110.

According to a report published on 4th February by the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology and Pond Conservation, 80% of ponds in England and Wales are in a ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ condition, thus failing to provide vital habitat for aquatic plants and animals. These findings are particularly worrying given that reports by the Environment Agency last autumn showed that 75% of UK rivers will fail to meet new European biological standards. Although large numbers of new ponds are created each year in the UK, many of these ponds are located in agricultural areas and suffer from pollution by nutrient run-off. This eventually results in overgrowth of vegetation and stagnant water. In contrast, the report found that ponds close to rivers, streams and other wetlands are in much better condition. These results highlight the importance of developing future ponds in areas that are protected from pollution, in order to protect Britain’s future freshwater biodiversity.

Pond Conservation Press Release: First national survey shows Britain’s wildlife ponds are in a ‘terrible state’