Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 34)
TUESDAY 16 MAY 2000
DR JEREMY
GREENWOOD AND
DR JULIET
VICKERY
20. So on reflection, would you say of those
it is the last one which is of considerably more importance than
the others or are you not able to balance them?
(Dr Greenwood) I suppose intellectually I should say
that the last one was the most important; emotionally I should
say that the first one, countryside experience, was the most important.
I feel depressed when I go out into fields and do not hear skylarks
nowadays. I believe I am not the only member of the British population
who feels similarly depressed.
21. Come to Banstead Heath in my constituency.
Do the current policies have enough teeth to deliver the biodiversity
goals?
(Dr Greenwood) Could you explain what you mean by
teeth?
22. For example, the Countryside and Rights
of Way Bill. Do you think that is going to make a useful difference
to achieving the goal of biodiversity in the United Kingdom?
(Dr Greenwood) I do not have enough expertise to answer
that one.
23. Some of the other witnesses who have given
evidence have commended the increased protection it will offer
Sites of Special Scientific Interest but they have then said that
it does not adequately improve protection for species outside
of SSSIs. I wonder whether in the experience of either of you
you have identified that as a problem.
(Dr Greenwood) That is clearly true in that the special
areas make up such a small proportion of the landscape that they
are only going to deal with species which are particular habitat
specialists, whose populations are concentrated in such areas.
Special areas are not going to protect the biodiversity of the
wider countryside and clearly the Countryside Bill does not address
the sort of issues about which I have been expressing concern
in respect of farmland birds.
24. Are you in a position to make a judgement
between what is the best relationship between the carrot and the
stick in helping to achieve biodiversity or sustain biodiversity?
(Dr Greenwood) It is probably outside the BTO's expertise
to comment on that.
Mrs Ellman
25. How do you think that UK biodiversity policy
can incorporate future environmental changes?
(Dr Greenwood) In general by being flexible. We are
in a constantly changing situation so flexibility is important.
We do not want plans which we expect to be constant year after
year after year. The element of environmental change which is
at the top of everybody's minds, quite rightly it seems to me
in the light of the scientific evidence, is climate change, which
is clearly going to eliminate some habitats. It is going to eliminate
some inter-tidal areas because there are places where managed
retreat is not possible and those areas will be eliminated because
of rises in sea level. It is going to shift the habitable ranges
of species. Species are going to be able to move north. It is
actually very difficult to make exact predictions because it is
not just climate of course which determines where a particular
species lives, it is the interactions with all the other species
and the way in which man is using the land. That is something
we need to keep an eye on. The fact that climate change is happening
and is going to continue needs either to be incorporated into
the plan or to be explicitly recognised as a major constraint.
Perhaps I could explain what I mean by constraint. If the climate
gets warmer then species such as the ptarmigan and the snow bunting,
which are specialists on the high tops in Scotland, are almost
certainly going to disappear. I should be distressed to see them
disappear but it is perhaps inappropriate then to try to create
conditions for them to hang on when there is some much bigger
thing happening which our own little plans cannot deal with. What
we should perhaps be focusing on is a species like the cirl bunting
for which the climatic regime will steadily become more appropriate.
What we can focus on is making sure that the agricultural system
is such as to allow that species to flourish.
26. Do you think the current plans do take account
of those changes?
(Dr Greenwood) Not explicitly. The fact of global
climate change and the certainty of the predictions which experts
are able to make were so much less at the time that the plans
were being drawn up, even though we were only talking about six
years ago, that it was not obvious at the time that perhaps that
should be explicitly recognised. It would be useful if it were
nowadays.
27. Do you think that the action plans should
be made statutory?
(Dr Greenwood) I commonly observe that government
officials do tend to pay a lot more attention to things which
are statutory duties than to things which are not. That is a matter
of common observation and from that you can draw an obvious conclusion.
I suspect that more attention is likely to be paid if things are
made statutory.
28. Do you think making them statutory could
have any bad effects? Could it damage any current relationships?
(Dr Greenwood) Not that I can think of but it is not
an area I have thought a great deal about.
Chairman
29. You dealt with this question of your enthusiasm
for the skylark and the question of the numbers but how should
we actually measure biodiversity?
(Dr Greenwood) The problem with biodiversity is that
it has various components and they are different. They do not
add up. There is the component simply of how much wildlife there
is in some gross sense and the number of skylarks may be an element
of that. There is the question of the diversity in one particular
place, how many different species there are in an area. Then there
are differences between places and that is something we should
not forget. We expect different places to have different levels
of biodiversity, quite rightly, and, for example, the top of the
Cairngorms is biologically very poor in the majority of species
and it jolly well ought to be, that is its natural state. Therefore
it would be bad to have a situation on the top of the Cairngorms
where, because of human intervention, other species were coming
in and they may well do because of crows and black headed gulls
coming up for litter. That would actually alter the natural state.
Although at that place there would be more species, it would make
that place more like the rest of the country. That applies on
a wider scale to differences between this country and the rest
of the world, which are an important component of global biodiversity.
Mr Donohoe
30. Has anybody done an audit of the composition
of the wild species in this country? How many sparrows there are,
how many cuckoos there are. Surely that would be the sensible
thing to do to try to work it out per mile and where they are
and just put a blueprint down and then you can revisit it every
five years and do another audit. Just as we do a human census
we could do an animal and bird census.
(Dr Greenwood) Yes. We do it for birds, with the emphasis
on the "we" because I am quite proud that BTO is the
lead organisation doing this. We do count all the commoner species,
a great range of them every year and we monitor how well their
breeding is going, how well they survive and so on. It is easy
to do for birds, there are lots of keen amateurs out there who
can identify them, they can go out into the field once and see
a whole range of species. When we think of other groups of animals,
it is a much more difficult process. They are more difficult to
identify, there are fewer amateurs about, individual species sometimes
require special techniques. We have to say that the most cost
effective approach is to pick out some groups which cover a range
of ecological circumstances and which are likely to be sensitive
to different sorts of pressures and monitor those rather than
try to do everything. If we try to do everything I suspect we
would dissipate our efforts in simply finding out what was going
on rather than doing something about it.
31. Are there any areas in the birds species
where there is an increase and not a decrease in their numbers?
Quite unscientifically, there are more seagulls around the gardens
of my constituency than there were when I was a boy and they are
now eating all the bread and anything which has been put out.
The poor wee sparrows do not get a look in. Is that right in the
scientific sense? Is that perception in my mind right?
(Dr Greenwood) Yes. Sea birds tend to go up and down,
many species of sea birds are doing better than they have been
in the past. Some agricultural species, birds associated with
agriculture, are actually doing better. The wood pigeons are an
example and that may be a result of the increased acreage of oil
seed rape which everybody knows about. Water birds in general
are doing reasonably well. If we look across the whole suite of
birds in the country, the situation does not seem to be deteriorating
too badly, but then if we look at particular habitats, we see
that there are problems. That is the advantage of using birds
as examples of monitoring, using them to get a hold on the whole
thing, because birds do cover a very wide range of habitats and
we have the data over that wide range of habitats.
(Dr Vickery) You will probably be aware of the Countryside
Surveys which are carried out every ten years, CS1990 and currently
the CS2000, which is led by a consortium from ITE, now CEH. This
year the BTO will be doing some bird surveys in the selection
of those random squares selected for the CS2000 survey. The tremendous
thing about that is that it will allow you to match bird distributions
and ultimately, if it is repeated, changes with very, very detailed
habitat data in a very cost effective way, which it is impossible
to get on such a broad scale using volunteers. That perhaps will
present a sort of framework where you could carry out a very targeted
audit of a certain number of indicator species based on this CS2000
framework. The advantage would be that you would know not just
what numbers were doing but you might be able to match that with
habitats and address why these numbers are increasing or decreasing.
Chairman
32. I am a little worried about these numbers
of skylarks. There is a certain amount of excitement about seeing
something which is rare. The first bluebells are very attractive,
but if you had bluebells all the year round, just as some of the
supermarkets now produce various vegetables all the year round,
it takes away a bit of that appeal, does it not?
(Dr Greenwood) Yes, that is right. It is, however,
true that the majority of species of birds are comparatively rare.
Obviously most of the birds you go out and see in the countryside
when you are walking the dog are actually the common ones. But
the majority of species are comparatively rare. I think those
who like seeing rare birds are getting plenty of buzz from this
background of the rarer species and those who simply like to see
birds around them are perhaps the people who are having a diminished
experience of the countryside.
33. Can you tell me anything more about the
national biodiversity network, how it is working, whether it is
going to be able to achieve what is required?
(Dr Greenwood) It is going to achieve some of what
is required. I believe it is currently in a position in which
it is seeking funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund and if it gets
those funds then obviously it is going to go ahead. It is a good
example of integration in this field where everybody has come
together to work together. It is probably less important for birds
than for other groups of animals and plants because we have a
good system for the centralised collection of data about birds
as it is. It will be very important for other groups. There are
some dangers with the NBN, things we should be aware of. One of
them is forgetting that it is just a means and not an end in itself.
The provision of good access to biodiversity data is there in
order to help us conserve biodiversity better. We want to make
sure that we do not focus simply on the process of making the
data available to the exclusion of actually being able to collect
the data in the first place or to use it when we have got it.
That is perhaps a problem that we shall need to bear in mind when
taking the NBN forward, but I do see that it is going to make
a useful contribution to the way in which we can provide a factual
background and an understanding to the nature of the problems
which the whole biodiversity debate is addressing.
34. Should someone have a duty to collect that
information? You do it for birds, do you not? You do not have
a duty to do it but you want to do it.
(Dr Greenwood) Yes. I suppose we do have a duty in
one sense in that our Memorandum and Articles say that that is
what we should be doing. Should there be a duty at a national
level? Yes, I think there should. We do routinely collect information
about a whole variety of things in this country and biodiversity
tends to have been delivered in a rather ad hoc manner
by a lot of people going around the countryside with notebooks,
binoculars and butterfly nets.
Chairman: On that note, may I thank you very
much for your evidence.
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