Clare Topping – Page 17 – Enviro-Mentalist

Good news from UK wildlife

Amidst all of the doom and gloom it is refreshing to share some good news stories about UK wildlife that you may have missed over the last couple of days.

First of all it was fantastic to hear more news of the reintroduced Scottish Beavers. One of the three family units released earlier in the year (and previously reported on this site) has constructed a 5 x 2 x 7 metre lodge, hopefully a sign that they have settled into their new home. Although the reintroduction programme was the subject of intense lobbying by ecologists there is still some resistance to the idea from landowners and from some who think that the escalating price tag (currently at around £1.85 million) could be better spent elsewhere.

Also in the news today, a new survey organised by British Waterways has shown better than anticipated numbers of the under threat native Water Vole. Numbers of this little mammal (the basis of Ratty in Wind in the Willows) have dropped by an estimated 90% in 20 years, caused by pollution and attack from the non-native Mink. The survey asked people to submit sightings of any wildlife they saw along the network of canals and waterways. Use of the internet to submit sightings prompted a growth in responses from 6000 to 42000; this partly explains the higher numbers of water vole sightings (only 89, but how easy are they to spot?). Top of the list, as expected, was Mallard, followed by Canada Goose and Mute Swan.

The final story that caught my eye was the early arrival of a Bittern at the London Wetland Centre, the “early” possibly due to favourable winds helping it over from the continent. What impressed me had nothing to do with the timing of the arrival, but just the fact that there is the possibility of seeing (or at least hearing) one of these rare birds in London of all places. Surely this has to be good news for wildlife conservation, a bird as rare as a bittern in the UK, can overwinter close to the centre of London!

Lighting in Daventry.

A while ago (as outlined in Lighting – do we have too much?) I started to look at the amount of lighting on our Daventry site. For various reasons it has taken some time to make any meaningful changes, but at last we are beginning to make some progress.

Surprising discovery number one – we had no light switches for a quarter of our warehouse – even when no one was around we had to leave 3kW of lights on. Whilst this is only for a small proportion of the year it is still waste. The lights were controlled by a photocell, unfortunately somewhere along the line a Health & Safety survey had declared that the lighting was insufficient and, instead of changing the levels the detectors were covered up. This meant that other than tripping the circuit breakers, the lights could not be switched off; even on the brightest of days.

The first step was therefore to sort this ridiculous state of affairs out. We have now installed some new photocells which can be changed remotely if the initial levels are incorrectly set. The payback time on this is less than 12 months even if the light is only bright enough to switch them off for 4 hours each day. The only fly in this ointment is that H&S police have again determined that the light levels initially set were incorrect, and, rather than resetting to the correct levels, they have been turned to permanently on! A task for the next week will be to sort this problem out.

Other areas have been identified where lights are left on for no reason. Despite being only a few fluorescent tubes (relatively small in number compared to the aforementioned warehouse) they still represent substantial savings. The first of these areas was the Plant room – visited only by maintenance staff, and therefore it should have been better controlled. Unfortunately, unless you are in the room you can’t tell whether the lights have been left on; it was estimated that there were about 158 hours of extra lighting each week in this area.

The second area is a small office in the middle of the warehouse that has no permanent occupant and is subsequently visited by various members of staff, none of whom appears to be capable of turning the light off when they leave. This 200W of lighting is left on unnecessarily for about 144 hours every week. The answer to both of these has been the addition of PIRs (Passive Infra Red detectors) – motion detectors. I think that you can get too carried away with motion detectors and see them as the answer to everything, but in some cases, for example when there are lots of different occupants using a room, only some whom will regularly turn the light off, they can be beneficial. Both of these projects had estimated payback times of less than 12 months.

The final change that has been made has been a no cost solution and is the most obvious. A member of the maintenance team was asked to survey the lighting of the entire site and, in addition to the number, type and power of the lights, estimate hours of use and the amount of wastage. As a consequence it occurred to him that one of the areas was visited for approximately 1 hour per week but that all three of the 70W tubes were on permanently. He was usually the only one to visit the room and has now promised to turn the lights off when the room is not in use, a saving of 1800kWh per year.

Other areas have been singled out as needing a motion detector – these include the toilets, the tea room and the locker room, but I am having less success in getting these fitted – it is starting to become a bit of a mission!

I have now started to look at the rest of the sites within the business unit as part of the requirements for our participation in the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency scheme (CRCEE) and have learnt more about lighting than I ever expected. Details to follow..

Tinned Tuna

There has been a lot of publicity about the imminent demise of tuna in the last year. Whilst most of the attention has been on Bluefin tuna it opens a whole can of worms with regard to the tuna usually bought in UK supermarkets.

So, what are the different types of tuna and which ones do we commonly eat (fortunately Greenpeace has a helpful guide). There are 23 types of tuna, and, according to Greenpeace, 22 of them are vulnerable. The main market for the aforementioned Bluefin is Japan which takes 90% of the catch. In the UK we consume some Yellowfin Tuna (sold as steaks at the fresh fish counters and in some tins – to be avoided if it is not caught by sustainable methods) along with Albercore and Skipjack (also in tins). By far the most common is Skipjack which is also the tuna most likely to be found in ready meals and pre-prepared sandwiches. The UK is the second biggest consumer of tinned tuna (after the US) and so I will concentrate on this source.

Following on from the publicity, there have been declarations of never eating tuna again, no more tuna sandwiches, but is this entirely necessary. According to the Ecologist, it probably is, according to Greenpeace, on whose survey the Ecologist article was largely based, tinned tuna need not disappear from our collective menu.

So, just what is the problem with tinned tuna from a sustainability point of view (ignoring the potential problem of mercury in fish)? A lot of tuna is caught in large nets or by lines up to 100km long. We all remember the adverse publicity that came from pictures of dolphins caught in the net and the advent of ‘dolphin-friendly’ labels on tins of tuna. However, dolphins are not the only bycatch of the tuna industry, other marine species that are caught include several species of turtle, sharks, rays and young tuna. These together constitute about 10% of the catch with some fishing methods, which is where most of the problem with eating Skipjack tuna lies. Much of the tuna fish destined for the tinned market is caught using large nets (purse seines) with floats on to encourage the fish to gather together which is where this bycatch is at its worst.

What can we, as consumers, do about this? There are more sustainable methods of fishing, such as pole and line, which target the adult fish and therefore avoid much of the bycatch. These also tend to be smaller outfits that are more likely to support local projects and which will look after local fish stocks, being unable to move to other areas once a resource has been used up. Therefore, always look at the label to see what kind of tuna it is – if it is yellowfin, is there a skipjack alternative (these are more numerous than yellowfin)?

Next look at the method of fishing. Waitrose, have recently introduced an own label tinned tuna which is clearly marked as being caught by pole and line methods. If they don’t state on the tin, assume the worst – with the recent publicity it is in their interests to tell you if it is a sustainable method. John West and Princes are the two largest brands in the UK, they were bottom in the recent Greenpeace survey and do not seem too interested in changing their ways. I checked John West, in most cases they do not state either the type of tuna or the method of catching it. On the contrary, Sainsbury’s who came top in the original survey have gone 100% own brand pole and line and introduced a branded pole and line range. M&S are also moving to 100% pole and line for their own brands and are extending it to the tuna used in their sandwiches, salads and ready meals. The other supermarkets seem a little less responsive, maybe they will catch up.

I have recently written to Waitrose, my supermarket of choice (as I only have Tesco and Aldi as local alternatives) asking them to stop stocking other brands which do not conform to their own standards (ie John West), I doubt that they will do this, but, if sales of this brand were to drop relative to their own, more ethically produced brand, then maybe they will think again.

So, I don’t have to stop buying my tinned tuna, I just have to be a little discerning and boycott the larger brands in the hope that declining public opinion and sales will give them a reason to look at their social responsibility.

An afternoon at the Country Park

Sometimes it is hard to know what to do during a holiday in autumn, the weather is changeable, one minute the sun is shining, the next black clouds loom. The solution for me is to take my scope to the country park. With the lack of rain in September I was hoping the water level would have dropped and that there may be some waders about.

As you can see from the poor picture above (sorry about the quality, but impromptu digiscoping with my Canon Ixus was never going to produce stunning results) amongst the Lapwing and Coot there was a flock of Golden Plover. I saw these for the first time last year. There really is something special about a flock of these little yellow coloured waders, especially when the sun glints off their winter plumage. I spent some time watching them, scuttling about, dodging in between the gulls and ducks. Then, suddenly, they were gone.

I wandered further round, the usual suspects were all present – Pochard bobbing about, the sun highlighting their chestnut-coloured heads, Shoveler Ducks sifting the water, Tufted Duck diving, Coot, Cormorant gathering along the edges of the water and cramming together on the now vacated tern rafts. I could hear the little birds in the hedgerows, Long-tailed Tits burbling, Wrens and Robins with their alarm calls and Blackbirds swooping between berry-laden trees. Time to head back home.

But then, the sun came back out, a quick check through my binoculars showed the plovers had returned – time to set the scope up again; I may have missed something last time. Indeed I had, a couple of snipe were probing the mud (not too far away, I got a fantastic view through the scope), amongst the Wigeon (did I mention those?) there was a Shelduck – how did I miss a big white duck! I had never seen one before at the Country Park, in fact, I think the last time I saw one was during a visit to Martin Mere when I was much, much younger.

Then I looked again, there were other ducks there too, Gadwall, an understated and pretty duck and, there was the back end of another, different duck peaking out from behind a cormorant – not sure what it was. I moved the scope – better view, it was still asleep – wake up I thought – then another duck wandered into it and it looked up briefly – I thought I recognised it – it was a Pintail, I was sure of it – a new lifetime first for me. Then its head was down again – arse! Literally, all I could see was its bottom. Then, suddenly, the Cormorants were off, followed by the Wigeon, the Lapwing and the Plovers, and, the Pintail. I looked for it again, but couldn’t find it. Time for home before it rained – a Friday afternoon doesn’t get much better than this.

Baby Steps

Today is Blog Action Day, the theme this year is Climate Change, influenced no doubt by the upcoming Copenhagen summit. These days it is hard to go through an entire day without finding a reference to Climate Change or Energy Saving, the Energy Saving Trust even has an annoying advert on the television. I am not sure how much all of the reminders and the small snippets that appear on the news will make a difference. I think there are two major problems; firstly people get bored with hearing about how we are all doomed, there is often the feeling that there are enough things to think about in life as it is, why worry about climate change when there is nothing we can do about it anyway? It is everyone else that is causing the problem, besides, the worst will happen elsewhere in the world, and probably not in my lifetime.

Then we come to the second problem: what can you do about it that will make a difference? There is so much information out there, some of it conflicting, that it can be difficult to know where to start and who to believe, no matter which level you are at in terms of ‘green-ness’ it can be confusing. It is probably easier to not bother yet, better wait until more information is out there, until the ‘experts’ make their minds up.

The problem is, time is ticking and we all have a responsibility, why waste resources when it is just as easy not to, why waste money just because it is too much effort to turn a light out when leaving a room? If you can make the changes at home then take these good and virtuous habits to work – your example can make a difference, I have seen it happen.

So what practical changes can you make? How long have you got? Everything you use, whether it is energy, water, fuel, food, resources such as paper, they are all, to some extent, finite, we can’t replace them all at the same rate that we are using them, and the planet cannot absorb all of our activities as they currently stand.

Firstly, energy. Turn lights off, don’t leave things on standby, only leave your mobile etc plugged in for as long as it takes to charge (you’d be amazed at how many people leave them in overnight – they don’t stop drawing power because the battery is fully charged), turn your computer and monitor off when you leave work. One of the best things you can do is to buy an energy monitor – they will help you find where energy is being wasted. Want to think bigger – try switching energy supplier to one that uses renewables – they may not be the complete answer to our problem at the moment, but the more that is invested the bigger the improvements that will be made in the technology.

Water – old fact, but, 9 litres of water for every flush if you don’t have a dual flush toilet, put a bottle of water in the cistern to reduce the level down, save water and money at the same time. Fit a water butt to your drainpipe to use for garden watering – they may look a bit unsightly, but, lets face it, so do satellite dishes, but most of us find somewhere to put one. Don’t leave a sprinkler on your garden for hours – grass is hardy stuff, that’s why it is used for lawns, it doesn’t need constant watering and nobody else notices how green your lawn is!

Fuel – School run- why are there so many people dropping their children off? Can’t they walk, I worry more about people being run over by someone on the school run than about other dangers facing children today. How about just walking to work once a week for a change. I would suggest public transport, but in Daventry, unless you are willing to set off 24 hours in advance it is a little pointless. Planes – I love planes, I think they are a fantastic feat of engineering – but they are used too much and deliver their pollution to just the wrong place. I can’t go on one again, maybe you can, but just one return transatlantic trip would double our household carbon footprint for the year (in terms of gas, electricity and transport) – I don’t think it is worth it.

Food – one of my major worries. Why buy food only to throw it away? There is a lot of talk in the press about food security and can Britain feed itself. We probably can’t, we probably shouldn’t, our national income increased when we started trading with the world; there are some things that can be done better elsewhere. But there are things we are good at growing, and, if we stopped throwing so much away we could grow all the staples that we need. After all, the Romans didn’t invade us all those years ago because they were fed up of living somewhere dry and sunny!

Resources – whether it is paper in the office, packaging on our food, why is there so much that we are throwing away? Admittedly the levels of recycling have grown massively, and Daventry District Council should be applauded for its household recycling (although, if you are a business, tough, you have to sort that out yourself), but wouldn’t it be better to just use less. Does your broccoli really need a bag to make sure it gets home safely, does your Easter Egg need so much cardboard and plastic that your child could live in it? I don’t think so.

So, what has this to do with Baby Steps? If we all make a small change, one step at a time it will make a difference. Then, if we make the next step, and the next step who knows what kind of change we can make? There are so many resources out there if you need help. If, as recently reported, the onset of power shortages has been put back by 3 -5 years because of the recession, an unintentional change in our habits, what can we do if we really try?

Sweet Chilli Success.

For the last few years I have been trying, and failing, to grow and ripen chillis. The last two summers have been a complete wash out apart from a Prairie Fire plant that we kept as a pot plant that produced tiny weeny chillis. Even the summer of 2006 with all its sunshiny glory and bees and butterflies didn’t produce anything but some green chillis that were eaten by slugs.

This was to be the final year…look what happened.

The secret of my success is a tip that I picked up from the Alternative Kitchen Garden Podcast. Last year I had a couple of runty Heatwave chilli plants that I planted a little late and which did not grow. I potted them on and kept them in the house (much to James’s chagrin as we also had to find a home for some gerberas that I had grown) over Winter. Nothing much happened until the days lengthened in March when they put on a bit of a growth spurt. Flowers started to come in May at which point we put them outside. Chillis started to grow sometime in June, and there are loads of them. This is the first one to ripen, but there are some more that are just showing the signs. Once they start they seem to take only a week or so to become completely red.

Eagle Owls – Good Press / Bad Press

Eagle Owls (Bubo Bubo) are certainly impressive creatures, their six foot wingspan making them the largest owl in the world. They breed in many parts of mainland Europe and have reared young in the UK with intermittent success.

The latest copy of British Wildlife magazine popped through my letterbox yesterday with a feature article about these owls and a debate about the consequences of reintroduction. This is where a problem lies, these are not birds that have naturally bred here for more than 2000 years, if, they ever did. Why then, would anyone want to reintroduce them? It is not the same as reintroducing cranes or beavers, creatures that were native and doing very well until we killed them all for food or hats or other such essentials. These are birds that have never played a part in the food chain in the UK.

So, is there a problem with introducing them and how have they got here in the first place? To answer the second question first, the pairs breeding in the UK are thought to be escapees from captivity (one female has successfully reared 23 chicks in Yorkshire). According to the magazine article, there are over 3000 Eagle Owls in captivity in the UK, but they don’t need to be registered with at least 80, but probably many more, that are unaccounted for. To me, that is quite worrying, these are a top predator, and we don’t know how many there are or where they are. Equally worrying is the speculation that the breeding pairs may have been purposefully released in order to establish a wild population in the UK, however well-intentioned, there are too many unknowns in such a course of action.

The problem with having them loose in the countryside is that although they have a varied diet and tend to live mainly on rabbits, with which I am sure most people would agree we are amply supplied, they also predate other birds of prey and have prevented successful nesting of native birds such as peregrines and the rather rare (and recently showcased on Springwatch) Goshawk. The Eagle Owl also needs quite a large territory, I am not sure how many of those are available in the overcrowded UK, probably not enough to support a viable population, is it fair to release birds that don’t have much chance of surviving for more than a generation or two?

Then there is the press to contend with. No matter how you feel about such things, headlines such as the Telegraph’s 2008 “Eagle Owl terrorising village’s pets and children” does not do any good at all and may lead to someone going out with a gun and shooting the poor bird. (For the record the bird was an escapee, with jesses still attached, which was probably used to being around people, and as far as I can tell had not gone near anyone’s pets but had tried to land on a small child.)

But, is the debate a little late? If the birds have been successfully breeding in several areas of the UK for the last couple of decades, the latest being in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire where they have successfully reared chicks for the last couple of years, are they already here and likely to stay? Whilst I don’t want to see the release of flora and fauna that have never been native, I would hate to see them hunted down just because of a perceived threat. I would like to see more responsibility from the people that own these creatures in captivity and a little thought to go into their actions and their likely consequences.

Are all the white butterflies in my garden evil?

The short-ish answer is, if cabbage white butterflies are evil, then yes. OK, there are wood whites, and marbled whites, but I bet the ones that you have been looking at are either small white or large white butterflies.

What’s the difference I hear you ask – well, one is larger than the other! Other than that, the large white has broader wings which does make them easier to identify if you see them at rest (which is not very often as they range around looking for a mate). Other than that there are a couple of differences that will help identify them and I have provided some photos to help.

Large whites have black tips on their wings, the females have two black spots, the males do not have any. Small white man butterflies have one spot on their forewing, the lady butterflies again have two. The small white wingtips are also dark, but as far as I can tell are much lighter than their larger friends. A word of caution on this last point however, there are two broods of white butterfly each year and the markings on the July / August batch tend to be darker than those of the earlier brood – probably a bit like a sun tan. Oh yes, and, when the wings are closed, even the male large white appears to have spots.

In terms of their cabbage-destroying propensities, then they have different modes of attack. Large white butterflies lay their eggs on the outer leaves of plants of the cabbage family, and their conspicous caterpillars appear in large numbers munching all the leaves in sight. The small whites are more devious – they lay their eggs in smaller numbers in the heart of the cabbage where a single caterpillar will munch away the innards making them much more difficult to deal with.

There used to be a lot more of the whites in the UK, but a combination of pesticides and a virus drastically reduced their numbers (mmm… sounds familiar). Many of the whites seen in our gardens will have come over from the continent.

OK, I am not a farmer or allotmenteer, but I have had some brassicas attacked by caterpillars, but I think you have to agree that the world would be a sorry place if the pretty white butterflies were not perpetually on the move around our gardens. I will make sure I have some verbena and buddleia for them in my garden, I will even contemplate a brassica or two for their caterpillars.

Why should I care?

This is a question that my green conscience devil has been asking from my left shoulder whilst my green conscience angel is sitting on my right shoulder urges me towards more environmentally friendly ways and puts causes such as the World Land Trust and the plight of bumble bees in front of me. After all, I don’t have any children to leave the planet to, no one is likely to remember me when I am gone, and that is just fine.

He (I am assuming the devil is male) asked that question again this morning whilst I was listening to Farming Today. There was an interview with a dairy farmer who was thinking of leaving the business after the price they were being paid for their milk was reduced by 3 1/2p per litre. Over the last twelve months I have become increasingly concerned about the amount of food imported and the loss to the rural communities with the reduction in UK agriculture. I therefore studiously gaze at labels in Waitrose before making a purchase, buy British whenever possible (bananas are not an option in the UK so I buy Fairtrade) and don’t buy imported produce just because it is out of season here. Imagine my face when the lady in question admitted that when she bought cheese from the supermarket she didn’t look to see the country of origin! For goodness sake, if I can spend time looking at labels when there is no direct effect on my livelihood I expect that those in the industry would do their bit to support themselves and their colleagues. Hence my question, why should I care?

I had a discussion along similar lines with a work colleague today about air travel – I won’t see the worst of the effects of global warming, and I have no children, why am I trying to make a difference for his future generations. I don’t know the answer, I just know that if there is a choice I need to do the right thing, whether that is buying local food, supporting good causes or not flying around the world. I need to do the right thing whatever sphere it is in, because I have a choice whereas others around the world don’t.

I apologise if I am preaching, but if people directly affected don’t take the time to think about their actions, how are we going to persuade those who are not directly affected to change their actions, or at least think about them more?

In the news this week.

I subscribe to a lot of news feeds relating to wildlife and the environment, so here are links to some of the most interesting wildlife articles from this week.

The EU is apparently very miserly when it comes to protecting wildlife, spending a mere 0.1% of its budget on nature protection, leaving the threat of extinction hanging over a large number of species and habitats. Read more here…

Dormice in the UK are under threat, and in a bid to increase populations a number are being released in a secret location in Warwickshire. A few interesting facts about dormice and a very cute picture are included in the article.

Another and, arguably, less cute reintroduction story that has been widely reported on is the release of smooth snakes on the moors in Devon where they used to live until about 50 years ago. These non-venomous snakes are, at the moment, limited by suitable habitat to lowland heaths in Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset and Surrey.

You may also have heard the sad news that a Golden Eagle that had been fitted with a tracking device enabling its journeys to be followed over the internet by swathes of bird lovers has been found poisoned. The poisoning of birds of prey is still a problem, although this eagle may have been killed by poison left by a gamekeeper for other birds of prey such as hen harriers, white tailed eagles or buzzards.