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Has a bird conservation organisation every done something that'S REALLY WOUND YOU UP! (1 Viewer)

Songkhran

Songkhran

Well-known member
sic - ''Ever done something'' when I was at Uni in Kent I remember what Grove Ferry was like in its embryonic state. It was basically a mini Biebrza, even before it opened there was a Long-billed Dowitcher and in that particular year off the top of my head there was breeding Spotted Crake, numerous Pecs, BB Sand, Slender-billed Gull, loads of passage waders, Purple Heron, i remember one evening watching the Ballion's on one side of the boardwalk and turning round and watching a WWB Tern on the other. Could they have managed this site to keep those kind of species coming back every year - yes but instead they build it up into one big reed bed to meet their Bittern booming targets and it was all about blooming Bitterns, Bitterns, blooming Bitterns!
 
How is optimising a site to pick up passing vagrants anything to do with conservation?
 
The same thing happens here in Florida in the US. Lots of conservation work going towards restoring wetlands, but it all ends up being perennial wetlands chock full of reeds that provide no habitat for passage migrant shorebirds (=waders over your way) and the like. The best shorebird areas continue to be newly plowed agricultural lands, that are full of toxic pesticides and such. The shorebirds passing by here have little safe habitat now, aside from intertidal habitats, and not all shorebirds use that habitat.
Andy
 
Mono said:
How is optimising a site to pick up passing vagrants anything to do with conservation?
Click to expand...

Breeding Spotted Crakes matter too!

Kratter said:
The same thing happens here in Florida in the US. Lots of conservation work going towards restoring wetlands, but it all ends up being perennial wetlands chock full of reeds that provide no habitat for passage migrant shorebirds (=waders over your way) and the like. The best shorebird areas continue to be newly plowed agricultural lands, that are full of toxic pesticides and such. The shorebirds passing by here have little safe habitat now, aside from intertidal habitats, and not all shorebirds use that habitat.
Andy
Click to expand...

Same here - the managers just don't seem to 'get it' that wetlands need random intermittent heavy disturbance from large herds of large grazing mammals, ideally elephants / mammoths / mastodons / giant rhinos. Its what they all used to get for millions of years until humans wiped out the large mammals just a few thousand years ago. Look up "mammoth steppe" ecology :t:
 
Yes, all new nature reserves of this nature (scrapes) seem to get a really good flush of rarities with good numbers of commoner waders too initially... then ... something (everything?) to do with disturbance and invertebrates. (Eg Rainham Marshes and what it was getting before it even opened officially)

To stop succession on the small scale you have to refresh ... or manage properly, yes - large herbivores like the right kind of cattle.

Re Grove Ferry - presumably there are still the wet fields in the middle between GF and Stodmarsh?? (Last time I was there was when a Black-winged Pratincole was kicking about in those fields, so been a while perhaps ... )
 
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How is optimising a site to pick up passing vagrants anything to do with conservativisation?
 
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Songkhran said:
How is optimising a site to pick up passing vagrants anything to do with conservativisation?
Click to expand...

"conservativisation" = Conservative Party policies?? :eek!: They have NOTHING to do with attracting either vagrant birds, or enhancing for wildlife in any way possible! :C
 
All I'm saying is that after the first year at Grove Ferry, I would have liked to had a say in do we want to continue managing the marsh in order to attract a varied array of scarce breeders and vagrants or do we just want to maintain the status quo
 
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