From within CEH Monks Wood
Taken from a newsgroup posting:
Yes, it's very dark days here at CEH Monks Wood! The impact
for UK ecological research is going to be enormous, as not
only is it the 'biodiversity' sites that are closing, but
many of the staff that are left will be unable/unwilling to
relocate, and over the 4 years transition period it is
certain that the skills base, customer base and
collaborations will be greatly damaged. Eastern England will
no longer be practical for ecological fieldwork - the
backbone of research - and many research sites, such as
Monks Wood NNR, Norfolk, Suffolk, will be largely abandoned.
That brings 50 years of continuous research here to a close.
The woodland birds work (tits, Marsh Tits, woodland
fragmentation) is probably going to stop completely. The
Marsh Tit work, which I run, is the only such study actually
looking into the species' ecology and decline. The lab
facilities at Monks Wood are also the best in Europe, and
10m of the 45m transition budget will be spent recreating
those to a lesser spec at Oxfordshire, meaning a net loss of
functionality. These labs run the predatory birds monitoring
scheme - the raptors and pesticides work of DDT fame. Also
based at Monks Wood is the UK phenology network, on which
BBC's springwatch was based, the Biological Records Centre
(collates records for all species except birds) and the
National Biodiversity Network (which puts this data and
others on the web for public use). Many of the key staff
involved with this will be leaving, which will seriously
jeopardise the activities.
To spend 45m to make savings of 1.2m pa seems ludicrous. The
strength of CEH is its national reach and network of
long-term study sites. To contract and put many of these
sites out of reach, and ending long-term associations, will
compromise what research we can do as a country - there
really is nobody else to fill the gap. Climate change work,
woodland birds work, biodiversity on agricultural land (eg
bumblebees), restoration of habitats (including Great Fen),
pesticide work, wader research on the Wash, national
recording networks, it will all suffer a great deal and some
of it will stop completely.
On a personal level, it's not the end of the world for me,
as I am young and flexible enough to do something else, so
that's not why I'm worried. But many people in CEH the top
people in their field, Europe-wide, and they are not
able/willing to relocate. When we lose those teams that have
built up and evolved over decades, and when we lose those
sites and the research reach we have, it will not be recreated.
Another factor is the effect on Cambridgeshire. In this
county, we have CEH, JNCC, English Nature, Environment
Agency, British Antarctic Survey with RSPB, BTO and Defra
within an hour's commute. Its the UK's environmental
hotspot. The ease of travelling makes collaborations,
meetings, workshops, much more likely and possible. Taking
CEH Monks Wood, with its 100 staff, out of this mix will be
a big blow.
If anybody wants to do something, I'd urge them to
contribute to the public consultation, either as an
individual or as part of a body. Deadline is 15th Feb
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/publicconsultation.html