Award for Friends of Skokholm and Skomer

Skokholm photo by Sid Howells

At a ceremony in London on 29th October, The Friends of Skokholm and Skomer were awarded the Marsh Award for Local Ornithology in recognition of the huge amount of work they have done to put Skokholm Island back onto the British ornithological map. The award was presented by The Duke of Edinburgh at a ceremony hosted by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) at the Mall Gallery in London.

Skokholm Island, off the coast of Pembrokeshire, is home to internationally important wildlife populations, and is particularly well known for its seabirds. It was the first Bird Observatory in Britain, but lost its Observatory status in 1976. The island was bought by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales in 2007, by which time the buildings and ‘birding’ infrastructure were in complete disrepair and non-functional. Thanks to the Friends this is no longer the case. The work took four years to complete and almost 20,000 hours of voluntary labour.

The Friends are incredibly important to the islands of Skomer and Skokholm and since 1981 the membership has grown to over 400. Members help finance essential work through their subscriptions, but more importantly, many have taken part in voluntary work parties to help bring Skokholm back to its former glory and its return to official Bird Observatory status in 2014. Some of The Friends often act as voluntary wardens on both Skomer and Skokholm, helping with practical maintenance tasks, wildlife recording and research studies and are currently engaged in digitising the daily bird logbooks which date back to 1933. Well done all you hard workers!

Kim Atkinson Art Exhibition

New Exhibition - Kim Atkinson

Gweithiadau Newydd - Kim Atkinson

3 Tachwedd /November-6 Rhagfyr/ December 2014

Natur Cymru is very pleased to feature original works of art on its covers, and we've been lucky enough to have Kim's art on four Natur Cymru covers in the past. If you're near Bangor in November, now's your chance to see her work 'in the flesh', and enjoy a cup of tea or coffee at the same time! Her work will be on display at Kyffin Cafe, 129 High Street, Bangor.

Heathlands – walking the talk

During the morning of 8^th October, in a jam-packed Rhiw Village Hall, we heard lots about heathlands, as you’d expect in a seminar titled ‘Heathlands for the Future’. Then in the afternoon and the following morning we got to walk the talk; seeing and experiencing some of the work underway to restore 5 coastal heathland sites in Llŷn. This is part of 26 projects within the much larger HLF Llŷn Landscape Partnership (Partneriaeth Tirlun Llŷn). 

Euros Jones of NRW and Arwel Jones, the project manager for Partneriaeth Tirlun Llŷn, explained that what started off 10 years ago as a conservation project has now taken on a community and economic dimension with a diverse range of partners. The initial funding of £500K from 2004-09 was followed by £1.7m from 2009-15 and hopefully there will be more beyond. Listening to the speakers it sounds as though Llŷn, the triangle from Nefyn to Pwllheli to Bardsey, is ahead of the game in ‘integrated natural resource management’, the new wave of conservation strategy. The partners are pursuing an ecosystem approach and have demonstrated great achievements; but ecosystems need long-term nurturing and now is the time to drive on with it. You can get a flavour of the diverse range of projects from the Llŷn AONB website.

Jan Sherry, heathland ecologist for NRW, and Hilary Kehoe, the heathland project co-ordinator, set the heathland scene. Coastal heathlands, and their dependent species, are in decline due to changes in land use and farm economics. What’s left on Llŷn is a narrow strip of varying quality constricted by improved land; but things here are getting better. 522 Hectares of land have been embraced by the project achieving improvements in vegetation structure through cutting and grazing. Instead of a dense mass of leggy heather and gorse there is now a varied structure which not only looks good but benefits prized species such as chough, linnet and the adder. 

Burning the heath was investigated as a possibility but the conclusion was that the gorse returned rapidly at the expense of heather and other vegetation. Cutting with a flail was better and even more so after a low cut when the cuttings were removed.

Seedbanks varied from site to site; whereas Mynydd Tir Cwmwd had lots of heather seeds Mynydd Bychestyn had barely any. Seeds were collected and spread with the help of local schoolchildren – what looked like a Somme battlefield two years ago has regenerated with masses of heather and minimal gorse. As if to prove a point an accidental fire on a nearby patch had the opposite effect and has seen a resurgence of gorse.

3 year old heathland bedding

As well as agreeing plans for reduced burning and more grazing, which benefit nature, there has been a lot of work to investigate how to improve the economy of the farms. To add local value 19 farmers undertook training in food hygiene and butchery and 5 of these have gone on to process and market their own produce. By-products from the heathland management include heathland bedding which saves time and money and you can read more about this here.

After the tea break Sharon Parr wowed us with what’s going on in the Burren LIFE Project on the west coast of Ireland. There are many parallels with the work here on Llŷn with lots of common sense ideas for making things work on the ground - you can read more about this here.

Fortified with sandwiches and cakes galore we heard a short presentation from Reg at the RSPB about the UK chough survey and the importance of Llŷn which is home to 14% of the UK population. Llŷn chough do not exist in isolation and their destiny is inextricably linked to the populations in Snowdonia and Ynys Môn. The extent of the research and conservation work is immense – this is truly a landscape scale species. You can read more about this here.

Lichenologists don't mind a drop of rain

As the storm clouds gathered we wrapped up in waterproofs and headed across the road to Mynydd y Graig and Penarfynydd Farm. Unfortunately Thomas Jones the farmer was unable to show us around and by the time we reached the trig point on Penarfynydd the lightning was all around with heavy horizontal rain lashing us. Some descended quickly back whilst others plodded on to see the Golden Hair Lichen. The large rocks on which it grows have been fenced in to prevent the ponies getting too close and in particular to stop them scratching their flanks on the extremely rare Lobaria Amplissima.

It wasn’t quite the dream day to visit this stunning farm but you can learn more about it here and see a film of Thomas Jones talking about different aspects of the farm.

Before dinner we all had a chance to look around the excellent £1m Porth y Swnt visitor centre which opened last June and is home to the 2 tonne optic recently removed from Bardsey Lighthouse. Dinner in Tŷ Newydd was complete with ‘son et lumière’ as the thunderstorm continued and high tide waves rolled up to the hotel.

Tim Jones from NRW had the challenging task of talking to us after the feast of local produce. Key points he made were the need to get community and economy into environmental projects and this was clearly the case on Llŷn. Instead of looking at sites in isolation we need to look at and work on whole landscapes and the newly announced ‘area natural resource management trials’ at Dyfi, Tawe and Rhondda were looking to learn from Llŷn.

Some hours later we were back in the same restaurant for breakfast and once more the tide was up, with big waves rolling in. No surfers but a seal, treading water, bobbing up and down whilst looking into the hotel, just metres away. Earlier some guests had seen a baby seal on the slipway – presumably the only safe place to be parked while mum got on with the fishing.

We took the O Ddrws i Ddrws Llŷn Coastal minibus to Bryn Poeth where Kevin Roberts talked to us about heathland bedding and then walked around the coastline to see the Ryetec flail collector in action. Along the way we saw areas where the heath had been improved, areas where bracken used to be rampant and which were now clear of it thanks to initial spraying and subsequent grazing by cattle. There was a marked difference between the two sides of the fence where cattle can and can’t graze – the side without the cattle was a dense mat of vegetation, several inches deep and not receptive to seeds. As we walked into another field it was explained how this used to be heathland up until the 1970s but that it had been ploughed up just days before being designated as an ESA (Environmentally Sensitive Area) – ironic that legislation to protect should be a catalyst for damage.

Compared to the Pembrokeshire heathlands, Llŷn has few plants that are given the chance to flower, due to the uniform grazing of sheep, but there had been a big increase at Bychestyn this summer through grazing with cattle. It was great to see the Welsh Blacks on the edge of the coast with the wild sea and Bardsey beyond. Obviously it was the wrong time of year for us to see flowers but we did get to see Prostrate Broom on the edge of the windswept cliff at Pen y Cil.

Our walk ended on Mynydd y Gwyddel which is farmed by John Williams. The top of the mountain is popular with people coming from the nearby car park to enjoy the view and maybe have a picnic. It’s also where you can see the Spotted Rock Rose, very rare, found just here and on Anglesey. The mountain is grazed only by sheep at present but if the fencing and water supply was improved, then John would graze it with cattle from October to July taking them off for calving and bulling during the busiest time for visitors.

John explained that he would not be going into Glastir as the rules prescribe just 37 sheep during the winter whereas he has a flock of over 150; at this stocking level the unit would not be viable and the site would become overgrown. 37 might be an appropriate stocking level for inland, mountainous areas, but Llŷn has its own climate with resultant vegetation growth; what we need is an area-based approach as opposed to a ‘one size fits all’. The intention of Glastir is to improve the landscape but if John followed the rules he would be rewarded for damaging it! This is one of those situations, as in The Burren, where farmers need to make the decisions and be rewarded if and when they deliver a positive outcome such as species rich grassland. An arbitrary number at an arbitrary date makes no sense in this situation. This site would benefit from a higher level scheme that would reward positive management, such as the scheme in place on Penarfynydd.

Putting structural diversity into the heath

Back at Aberdaron, after sandwiches and soup, we wrapped up the seminar with a discussion. 64 people had signed up for the seminar and most of them had been able to attend at least part which goes to show that ‘heathlands for the future’ is a popular topic. Jon Hudson from NRW said that he had plenty of ideas that he wanted to take back to Pembrokeshire.

Glastir was discussed and we agreed that we needed to lobby for positive change through farmers and if possible take a roadshow to Cardiff. Having said that we felt it would be a good idea to get Carl Sargeant to visit while he is new in post. There was agreement that the partnership should be using the work as a case study to show to politicians and to help shape and influence future environmental schemes.

Ongoing funding for Llŷn was discussed. The ecosystem approach has been trialled and now we need a long term project to drive this agenda forward. Landscape management is not only good for nature, it can also help develop the tourism offer and contribute to maintenance issues around the coastal path. What we’ve got is ‘ready to go’, a solution and not a pipedream.

There had been promising words from the Fund for Nature but nothing concrete yet. LIFE funding had been considered and this may be a sensible route for future funding. Interreg was discussed without much enthusiasm – it’s a shame that The Burren is not on the east coast.

It was felt that Llŷn should aspire to having a Pembrokeshire level of branding; this is slowly happening through the #Ecomuseum brand. See also www.ecoamgueddfa.org

All in all an excellent seminar, a catalyst for networking bringing many parties together, well organised by Hilary Kehoe and members of Partneriaeth Tirlun Llŷn (Llŷn landscape partnership).

A 'new' boat for the Aberdaron regatta

Dafydd a Guto a 'Gwylan'

I had the pleasure of meeting Dewi, Guto and Dafydd in a barn at Felin Uchaf, not far from Aberdaron, where they were restoring an 80 year old wooden-clinker boat. They explained that it was built by John Thomas, builder of something like a hundred boats, and that he made them in about 20 days.

This particular one, ‘Gwylan’, had been built to carry passengers from Porth Colmon to Bardsey but after just a few trips was sold and used as a fishing boat working out of Tudweiliog. In recent years it has been lying on a beach like a wreck but is now getting a new lease of life.

It’s slow and painstaking work, removing the broken or rotten planks, creating a template for new ones, making and fitting the replacements. It looked to me like 30% of the plank-work was new. The wood of choice is larch which, with the help of steam, can be bent into the right shape - so much more satisfying than working with fibreglass! Until recently it has been hard to get hold of larch but there’s now a glut as whole plantations are felled to limit the spread of Phytophthora Ramorum.  

The restoration project, part of the Llŷn Landscape Partnership, will continue through the winter and students on the boat building course at Coleg Meirion Dwyfor will be joining in. If all goes to plan Gwylan will be taking part in the Aberdaron regattas next summer. You can hear Dewi, Guto and Dafydd talking about the boat on Sunday’s (26^th October) Country Focus. 

Dewi Alun Hughes has made an interesting film about the local fishermen and their boats. The link below is to an English synopsis:

State of the choughs 2014

It’s 10 years ago since the last UK census of choughs and they’ve just been counted again. Are things getting better or worse? Reg from the RSPB presented some of the survey findings at the Heathlands for the Future seminar on 8^th October.

Two thirds of the UK population are in Wales and Llŷn is a very important component, home to 14% of UK choughs. Numbers in Scotland and Northern Ireland have declined and Wales is showing signs of decline with a 48% reduction in Snowdonia and disappearing in Montgomeryshire. In Llanberis there used to be over 65 birds but now they number just a few. On Llŷn there are between 53 to 60 pairs and numbers here are starting to reduce. The only habitat where there are signs of increase is in the sand dunes.

We are fortunate to have the passion and dedication of Adrienne Stratford and Tony Cross who have been ringing and recording choughs in mid to north Wales for the past 23 years. In that time they have ringed 5,000 nestlings, 150 adults and recorded 130,000 sightings. Within Llŷn 1,280 nestlings and 38 adults have been ringed.

Adrienne and Tony have written a report which hopefully will be published soon. One part of the analysis records the first year movements from Llŷn showing long distances of up to 60km – the adults take their youngsters back to the flock or roost from which they themselves originated.

On average males travel 10km from their place of birth to where they breed and the females travel 23km. By spreading themselves out they reduce the risk of in-breeding.

Another analysis looks into their feeding habits with soil and dung invertebrates a key component. After breeding and around July the birds head up into the mountains to feast on bilberries coming back down from August to October to feed on leatherjackets, the larvae of crane-flies. It’s the cow-pats (and pony-pats) that provide the best larder during the winter months.

In late spring I had the privilege of meeting Adrienne in a disused quarry building on the north Wales coast where last year she’d installed a nesting platform from bits of old planks.

A pair of choughs had taken up residence, added heather, lined it with sheeps’ wool and produced two beautiful chicks. They were plucked from their nest into a pillow case, brought down a ladder, ringed, sexed and weighed before being returned to the nest. A couple of times the adults came and shouted insults at us but it was as if they knew the score; it’s that time of year again. As for the chicks, they were quite chilled out and happy to beg food with their plaintive cries and open beaks.

I was surprised to see the tangerine orange colour of their legs. Eventually these and the beak will turn to red.

To Adrienne the choughs are a long running soap opera. She knows their relationships and family histories and 2 of them are now 19 years old. 

Farmers; not scapegoats but partners in conservation

Common sense is a great thing; when you hear it, you know it makes sense. That’s how I felt, listening to Sharon Parr explain how they farm for conservation in the Burren. It’s a vast area of limestone pavement in the middle of the west coast or Ireland, home to a profusion of wild flowers from March to November, including the Irish Orchid. It’s a hotspot for walkers and tourism and the jewel in the crown of Irish wildlife. Lots of invertebrates and archaeology abounds from Mesolithic to the enclosures era.

Half of it is designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and 6% is a ‘national park’ (with just one member of staff!) but almost all of it is privately owned by farmers who have eked out a living on what is now considered ‘marginal’ land. Whereas in Wales we used to send stock to the uplands in summer and to the lowlands in winter, the Burren farmers traditionally do the reverse, leaving the uplands, with all their flowers, fallow through the summer.

Modern techniques such as feeding silage are not good for the Burren; the consequent pools of slurry around the feeders pour through the limestone karst into the aquifers below. Also, cattle eating silage have less need to roam around grazing the vegetation and in particular the hazel scrub which is prolific here.

Since 2005 the Burren has received significant EU LIFE funding which has harnessed the knowledge and enthusiasm of farmers to operate in a way which is good for farming and good for nature. Whereas the local agri-environment scheme penalises you, for not implementing a meaningless activity (e.g. a 30 metre exclusion zone from monuments which might be relevant on arable farms but serves no purpose in the Burren), the Burren LIFE scheme rewards positive farming. It’s not about the number of stock or the grazing days, it’s about delivering a product and the main measure is species rich grassland. It’s up to the farmer to decide how he delivers the product, if he achieves it through grazing elephants, that’s his business!

Each field is scored (by Sharon or a colleague) from 1 to 10 with the higher score generating more money. 2 or less earns nothing, 3 earns €36 per hectare and 10 is worth €120 per hectare. There is no rule that says you can’t use silage but if you do, then that field will not be eligible for any reward. In recent years silage consumption has dropped by 61% and the trend is towards higher scores for the fields.

The shift away from silage has been helped by the creation of Burren LIFE feed; a concentrate with all the right minerals designed following an investigation of local vegetation. Cattle are given a couple of handfuls each day after Christmas, when grazing becomes less good, and it takes them just a few minutes to eat and lick out the trough as opposed to prolonged sessions at a silage feeder. In this way the cattle are put into good condition for spring calving.  Not only do the cattle get all the essential minerals, but the feed also stimulates them to even more grazing.

There are other possibilities to receive funding for agreed improvements such as scrub control, for gates, internal walls, water supplies etc. These all contribute to the bigger picture of bringing more land under management through appropriate grazing. For these works the farmers fund 25% to 75% of the total cost.

Does it work? The results have been spectacular and the Burren project is held up as an example of best practice – hopefully there will be an ‘afterLIFE’ when the current funding finishes in 2015.

Unlike Glastir in Wales, which has not been taken up by as many farmers as hoped for, the Burren project has been oversubscribed; 345 farmers applied but there was only room to accommodate 159. Those in the scheme have received on average €7,500 per year with the maximum payout €15,000.

I met a Llŷn farmer the following day who told me that under Glastir he would be expected to reduce the number of grazing sheep to just 37 of his flock of over 150. In his view this would be totally impractical and result in the land becoming overgrown and good for no-one. Fortunately farmers like this one have been able to receive targeted items of funding via Partneriaeth Tirlun Llŷn which seems to follow the common sense approach of Burren LIFE!

It also makes sense that these two projects are learning from each other. Sharon Parr was one of the speakers and participants at the Heathlands for the Future seminar held near Aberdaron on 8th to 9th October 2014.

There's a very informative website for the Burren which includes a short atmospheric film. 

Heathland Bedding

Delegates at the Heathlands for the Future seminar 2014
on heathland near Aberdaron

Cutting and collecting heathland scrub, full of gorse and leggy heather, is a tough job tackled by the Ryetec flail collector. It’s a key tool in bringing overgrown heathland back into good condition; better than burning, which results in a profusion of gorse, and better than just cutting. By cutting so low and exposing the earth it primes the ground to receive incoming seed or to allow seeds within the seedbank to get established. And by removing the cuttings the heathland avoids the build-up of nutrients that would encourage the ‘wrong’ sorts of plants.

But what to do with the cuttings? Despite the prickly nature of the gorse it does in fact make very comfortable bedding for cattle. Kevin Roberts, who works for the National Trust during the day and then runs a farm near Aberdaron, swears by it. For the past three years he has been laying a bed of cuttings in his cattle shed and a depth of 30cm, topped up every month, has proved the right sort of formula. He reckons this saves him 10 to 15 minutes a day compared to using straw and the annual savings in buying straw are worth £2,000. It seems a no-brainer that this practice, which benefits both the economy and nature, should be encouraged more widely. Or is there a hidden snag?

An initial concern was that spreading manure, mixed with the bedding, might lead to the spreading of gorse; but a trial has shown that after six months there was no germination. As the herd of cows looked on, Kevin crumbled a handful of the material from the pile in the field that had been left a couple of years to rot down. Analysis has shown that it has a pH of 8.2 i.e. very alkaline despite being harvested from acidic ground. He is spreading it onto fields that have been ploughed but not onto pasture as there are quite a few stones in the mix.

Heathland bedding is one of many pioneering and practical projects undertaken by 

Partneriaeth Tirlun Llŷn. If you would like to find out more please contact Arwel Jones or Hilary Kehoe.

The rough, tough Ryetec, with its set of 48 flails, does pick up stones and the National Trust archaeology team has clearly marked out the ancient monuments, hidden in the heath, that are to be avoided. The driver also takes care to avoid demolishing ant hills. If you’re watching the Ryetec in action it’s best not to stand too close! 

Natur Cymru at the Unknown Wales Conference

This year’s Unknown Wales conference was held on Saturday (11^th) at the National Museum in Cardiff; it is a joint event with the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales and is sponsored by the Welsh Government. Entry was free and the seven 30-min talks ranged widely over a variety of topics, from the diatoms and dung beetles of Wales, reintroduced sand lizards on Welsh dunes to the Barry Triangle where rare deep-sea fish suddenly turn up! For the full programme, see http://www.welshwildlife.org/unknown-wales-2014/

Natur Cymru was well-represented, as shown in the photo taken by a helpful bystander; from the left Geoff Gibbs (North Wales), Ken and Delcie Simkin (Mid Wales), Jane and Ivor Rees, and Kate Gibbs (all North Wales). Everyone in the audience (around 200) was handed a bag of goodies including a back number of Natur Cymru, and during the lunch-break we recruited five new subscribers.

It would be good if this conference could be more accessible to a wider audience throughout Wales – would people be happy to sit in a venue in Bangor or Aberystwyth to watch the event on a screen if all the speakers were in Cardiff? In any case, we can heartily recommend the event as a great day out for anyone interested in Welsh wildlife and environment; roll on next year!