Writtle Wildlife Watch, June 2015

One of the joys of being a lecturer on the Conservation scheme here at Writtle is that you get to visit some wonderful places. And this year we took our first and second year students away for a week to the glorious area of the south coast, the New Forest. 

 

Maiden Castle, Dorchester

During what the Two Ronnies might have called ‘a packed programme’, (goodness, that makes me feel positively antediluvian!) we went all over Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire, visiting some great sites and talking to people working in a huge variety of Conservation jobs. 

 

For me though, the mini-highlight was on the Thursday when we stopped off to have a look at Maiden Castle, a magnificent Iron Age hillfort just south of Dorchester. Always impressive and giving beautiful views over the surrounding countryside, it is a particularly good spot for finding various birds such as Linnet, Skylark and Corn Bunting. And I thought that was all we were going to find but on the way down, student Jimmy suddenly stopped and said ‘Alan, what’s this funny beetle?’. 

 

Oil Beetle at Maiden Castle

Now, many species of insect are special but then there are others which really have the ‘wow’ factor. And Jimmy had found one of the latter – an Oil Beetle. 

 

Oil Beetles are peculiar and charming in equal measure. They are rather odd to look at, with an elongated body and narrow head, but have an exquisitely glossy sheen of black, violet and blue. They are totally reliant on solitary bees for the completion of their lifecycle, with the beetle larvae climbing flower-stems and waiting in flowers in order to hitch a ride on a passing bee. Back in the bee’s nest the larvae of the beetle feeds on its eggs, as well as the stores of nectar and pollen before emerging as an adult. 

 

We have lost three of our species in recent years and now only five are left. They favour flower-rich grasslands of the type found at Maiden Castle but sadly, we have lost many of these sites in recent decades, making an encounter with an Oil Beetle even more special.

 

Yes, we did see a Corn Bunting as we left but somehow it wasn’t the best wildlife sighting that day.

 

 

Written by Alan Roscoe

Balancing the need for new homes with wildlife protection (October 2014)

This entry comes from the fantastic Writtle conservation team and looks at modern issues surrounding wildlife and the demand for new homes.

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Conservation is a hugely diverse and interesting subject and Essex has recently been at the forefront of one of the most discussed initiatives of recent years.

People are familiar with the approach to conservation taken by organisations such as the RSPB who are probably best known for nature reserves, which are specially managed, often for rare species.

But that does not mean that even the land immediately adjacent to your own home might not have wildlife interest, for example, reptiles, butterflies and unusual plants. Consideration of the wildlife on any site has been an integral part of the planning process for many years and has come to the forefront as we face the needs to build new houses. 


The Government has been keen to get the economy moving and meet the demand for more houses and, consequently, has been piloting a concept known as 'biodiversity offsetting'. This is a method whereby damage to or loss of wildlife habitat is 'offset' by creating habitat elsewhere as part of the planning agreement. Essex, arguably one of the most biodiverse areas in the UK, has been one of six areas piloting the process.

On the face of it, offsetting seems like a pragmatic solution to a problem which is felt especially keenly in counties such as ours and its supporters claim it offers the benefits of larger and 'better' sites for nature. But the idea has run into some hostility from those in the conservation community and it has been suggested that offsetting cannot work for a number of reasons, among them the fact that natural communities of plants and animals are complex and take time to develop. 

The main issue for everyone is how to balance one set of values against another. For example, last year a huge housing development in Kent was rejected (although planning application submitted by the developer remains in place) due to the extraordinary number of Nightingales found on the site. Was this a "good" decision or a "bad" one? The problem seems to be that we want everything - we demand housing but we also want our wildlife protected. 

So before you think that conservation is something which happens only on a nature reserve, remember that one of the most heated wildlife arguments for many years is currently being acted out right on our doorstep.

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