Back From The Brink ("BftB")
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I popped up to Windsor Great Park yesterday for the launch of a project called "Back From The Brink", or BftB. What a fascinating time I had.
Daisy and me and Stan the stag beetle
BftB is aiming to save 20 of our most threatened species from extinction. It's going to run 19 projects across England and involves seven of the country's leading wildlife conservation charities. This in itself is great news - this number of specialist NGOs working together is fantastic. Natural England are also involved, and the government seem keen too (it's free!). I was there with my Bumblebee Conservation Trust hat on. Daisy from the Trust is running a project to help the Shrill Carder Bee, which by a happy accident can be found - if you're very lucky - a few miles down the road from us in Somerset.
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow...
The day itself was very good fun. There were some excellent speeches, particularly by Sir Peter Luff, chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund, who are the main funders of the project. The presentations and then tree planting in the Park with schoolchildren reinforced two key elements of what programmes like Back From The Brink have to do. They have to connect and engage. David Lindo, the urban birder, was very good on this. We must demystify nature and use social media more effectively to get people to understand it's not something that just happens "in the country". It's all around them, and it's fascinating.
The kids loved the planting. It was hard not to wonder whether any of the oak whips they were planting would live as long as the magnificent Signing Oak overseeing us like an ancient guardian. This wonderful tree, with all its social history, seemed to represent the kind of legacy we must not lose.
Violet Click Beetle home?
After lunch on the hoof we adjourned to the forest, where in a section of ancient beech the Violet Click Beetle is hanging on. It's only found in three places in the UK, so "rare" would be an understatement. The Crown Estate is running a project to try to save it. It's a classic illustration of how tricky some of BftB's work is going to be. Violet click beetle larvae live inside the base of veteran beech and ash trees, of which there are very few left. Windsor forest has some lovely ancient beech, but there is a 50-100 year break in the continuity of trees. After the veterans then nothing until young, non-decaying trees. No decay, no Violet click beetle. What to do? Sarah Henshall explained two approaches - making an artificial decaying tree trunk, and for the longer term, fungal inoculation of younger trees to accelerate decay.
Back From The Brink's work is going to be as difficult as it is important. I hope too that it will serve as a template for conservation NGOs to work together under the same umbrella. It's so important that we don't just save some of our flora and fauna from extinction, but that we tell their stories too.