Wet!

This Trust puts volunteer and staff time and effort into monitoring and research partly because of climate change impacts on wildlife. We know we can no longer rely on previous research, and that ‘tradition’ is a less reliable guide to nature reserve management.  Things which worked in the 1980s and 1990s don’t work now. Gardeners know the first lawn cut has gradually moved forward, and the last has slipped back to November, December, even Christmas. The longer growing season applies equally to meadows and woodland rides. A reserve where 30 sheep for 6 weeks achieved an ideal sward may now need 40 sheep, or 10 weeks’ grazing in a typical year.

Did you notice my deliberate mistake there? With climate change there’s no longer ‘a typical year’! We’ve just experienced the wettest winter on record, a couple of years after the 40°C heatwave. Much basic management has been impossible this winter; many woods on the boulder clay have had to be closed; and paths have been flooded for weeks, in ways we’ve not seen before.

If you watch wildlife carefully, you’ll see changes every year, no two springs the same, and longer-term trends too. Wetter winters may be bad news for many of our woodland flowers which cannot cope with waterlogged soils. They may give wild garlic an advantage over bluebells. Mild, wet winters  are also not good for animals that hibernate - they use up too much of their stored energy reserves.

In warm, damp conditions, hibernating insects can be attacked by fungi. Dormice may struggle to survive a warm winter, and those who hibernate low down in the woods may have been waterlogged in the last few months. Bats woken up by winter warm spells will waste energy flying in search of insects that haven’t emerged yet. Hence it’s vital that we continue to monitor butterflies, dormice, bats and much else, so we understand the impacts and can work out how to help wildlife adapt.

Heat and drought

The other significant ‘losers’ to accelerating global heating and unpredictable rainfall are species that need it cooler, or which require just the right amount of rain at the right time of year for their reproduction. The former include species with a northern and western distribution, for which BCN marks the southern/eastern range edge. The attractive grassland click-beetle Ctenicera cuprea has been recorded from Northamptonshire, but not for a few years.  Keep your eyes open.

The shade and moisture loving wildlife includes most of our ferns, horsetails, mosses and liverworts. Several species have disappeared from our area in the last century, such as Lemon-scented Fern (extinct in Cambs and Beds, may still survive at one site in Northants), and others have declined and may disappear in the near future.

As Spring progresses, we’ll see which recent colonists are thriving, and which have been knocked back by the wet winter.  2021 was the first time that Violet Carpenter Bee was recorded breeding in our area: look for them visiting Spring flowers. Imagine the biggest queen bumblebee you’ve ever seen, with black, purple-shining wings – and called ‘carpenter’ because they carve their nests in rotting tree-trunks.  

Helping wildlife adapt

There will be new colonists in future years, and southern/eastern will spread. But the overall impacts of the climate crisis and extreme weather on previously stable habitats, such as ancient woodlands, fens and chalk downland, is to make them less predictable, favouring opportunist species and challenging those which require constant conditions for their survival.

With your help we’ll understand what is happening, and be able to safeguard our rarest species and manage our reserves to help all our wildlife adapt to the changes.