Food, health and wildlife security

It is remarkable to think that the Covid-19 pandemic that is causing so much personal, political and economic disruption stems from a food market the other side of the globe.  Virus transmission from wild animals to people has highlighted the trade in wildlife for food in other parts of the world.  While the mode of transmission from wild species to people remains uncertain, there is clear evidence that this trade in species such as pangolins is unsustainable. The fact that such trade is now in the spotlight can only strengthen conservation efforts for these species, although this is dependent on secure income and food supplies for the people who would otherwise be doing the trading. The pandemic makes that more difficult to achieve.

Let's be clear though.  The justification for cessation of trade in endangered species for food is not that we find the consumption of wildlife culturally abhorrent. To follow that argument would lead us onto a slippery ethical slope.  It might also lead us to question the consumption of abundant species such as deer, rabbits and woodpigeons whose control is important to protect food crops and wildlife habitats in the UK, while also providing a source of food in their own right.

In fact, as well as reminding us of the moral imperative for conservation of our own wildlife species, food shortages associated with the pandemic have brought into question our food system and highlighted the need for domestic production at local, regional and national levels, alongside international trade.  The need to understand the relationship between food production and environmental objectives, including wildlife conservation, has never been greater.

Gemma Fox and team prepare for water infiltration assessments in our grass plots

Despite the national lockdown, our research into economically and environmentally sustainable farming methods continues, strictly within the constraints imposed by social distancing.  Where data collection requires more than one person to conduct fieldwork at the same time, we have been fortunate in being able to recruit other members of the same household to help out.

There have been numerous other challenges to overcome though.  With the implications for food producton of the 2018 drought still fresh in our minds, the intense rainfall over the most recent autumn and winter was exceptional. The very wet ground conditions completely precluded the establishment of autumn-sown crops, preventing food production from our land, creating economic problems for our farm business and for many others across the country, and leaving us with no arable experimental plots for research.  Fortunately, it has been possible to drill some spring-sown crops this month, albeit under difficult conditions.  Our research is increasingly focusing on these climate related challenges.

While potentially distracting from the over-riding need to address climate change, in common with climate change mitigation objectives, the Covid-19 pandemic highlights the need to act individually and collectively, locally and globally to address the challenges that affect us all.

New clean water ponds increase landscape scale aquatic biodiversity

We have just seen the publication of another journal paper from the Water Friendly Farming project, our collaborative project with the Freshwater Habitats Trust. The paper demonstrates for the first time the effect of creating new ponds on the number of aquatic plant species present in the landscape.

Creating new clean water ponds in low input pasture in 2013

Following discussions with land owners, we created twenty new ponds in one of our two 'treatment' catchments in 2013.  We selected sites very carefully so that the new ponds were in low input pasture or open areas of woodland where runoff into them was not affected by domestic or agricultural sources of nutrients. The selection of these non-productive areas also made the ponds aceptable to farmers; in fact the introduction of ponds onto farms was regarded as improving the landscape and creating additional interest.

Freshwater Habitats Trust researchers conducted a rigorous annual census of aquatic plants, not just in the new ponds but across multiple other small ponds, ditches and streams within the 3,000ha study area to provide a comprehensive understanding of the plant species present and their distribution across the various habitats.

Ponds generally proved to be a key habitat.  Adding our new clean water ponds brought substantial benefits: increasing total-catchment plant species richness by 26%, and the number of rare plant species by 181%. Populations of spatially restricted species also increased. Creating clean-water ponds specifically targeted for biodiversity could therefore hold considerable potential as a tool to help stem, and even reverse, ongoing declines in freshwater plant biodiversity across agricultural landscapes.

You can access our journal paper as a free pdf for a limited period here.