A Call to Amateur Naturalists - your note books are Needed
- 12 Oct 06, 05:04 PM
The second show in our series is looking good with some big stories coming out. This show is about how wildlife is shifting about in response to climate change. On land, life is certainly on the move - it's not all bad news, so read on. But the trend is not good. What comes out of this is the value of long term observations, only then can the trends be seen.
We went to Sweden to talk to naturalist and conservationist Tom Armbon about foxes. He told us the news that red foxes are on a relentless march north and up in Sweden. By up, I mean up the mountains. With warming temperatures the tree line is moving and with it the red fox population. In Europe there are only 50 Arctic foxes left, and these small Tundra adapted creatures are being spooked by the prospecting reds. It's not long before mainland Europe will be devoid of this iconic creature of the Arctic. The Red fox is doing well and so are, Tom tells us, all the deer species - including Moose. These horse-sized deer are shifting their whole range north with the tree line. Another great beneficiary, it is predicted, is the elusive Euro Lynx. Serious big cat.
Fantastic work is going on in the Yosemite National Park (California). This stunning mountain range reaching 14,000 feet looks like one of the great frontiers of seeing the effects of climate change on wildlife. Field bio's there are doing meticulous transect work catching small and medium sized mammals. Mountain squirrels, Pika's, Chipmonks, Golden Mantled squirrels - And various other mammals are all ascending thousands of feet looking for colder climates. As the bio's told us "......they will soon run out of real estate". It's extraordinary data which can be compared directly to survey work done decades ago by other biologists.
In New York we hear of work done over 60 years definitively showing that selection is preferring fruit flies adapted to warmer temperatures dominating the mini-insect scene in the colder northern states. It's not so much ecological significance here - although there might be a very big one - it's the fact this is evidence of major genetic change occuring across the whole of latitudinal North America.
I've written before of our findings that Gelada Baboons are sitting on the tops of mountains in the Ethiopian Highlands waving to each other, but not meeting: isolated on their peaks - their preferred protein rich grass now having ascended to the plateaus of many of the mountains.
And in Britain, the Chequered Spotted Skipper - once restricted to hot chalkalnds in Southern England is every where. Not only that, only 20 years ago it was found largely living on south facing slopes, but now they are found on every angle of slope, including north because the ambient temperature has risen. But for most butterflies it's chaos as the life histories of themselves and their food plants goes into meltdown.
There are so many of you out there who have been keeping records of your local patch over years. All over the world you amateur naturalists are at work. You are hugely important people. You could hold the key of change. The fruit fly work, the Yosemite work, the UK butterfly work - the work on Geladas can only be shown because dedicated scientists have tirelessly recorded the observations - but there aren't that many of them.
Your note books are needed!
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I do not have any notebooks but some personal photos I could send.
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Hey Roberto - hang on to them...all records are important to monitor change. An ecologist told me from Washington University that change is like a slow moving river...you can bearly see it mnove. Only if you observe for a long time at the same point will you be able to monitor it. This bio also went on to talk about rapid step-changes (just written a blog about step change). The river analogy is going over a water fall - the rapid event and point of no return - or a very long and difficult return. My point was note books of observations are invaluable.
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Climate change is certainly affecting the behavour of some garden birds in the UK. Yesterday Sunday 26th of November at 15.45 GMT a Blackbird was in 'full flow' singing its spring terratorial song. I have heard the songster in late December but never this early !!
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