From The Conversation

From the packaging our food comes in to the clothes we wear, plastic is everywhere. We know that seabirds eat it and get tangled in it, but we are only just beginning to explore the impacts this has on their health and survival. This is really important, particularly in the UK and Channel Islands where many species, such as the northern gannet and Manx shearwater, breed in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world.

Many seabird species are in drastic decline. A recent report found that in the last 18 years, the UK population of European shags has fallen by 24%, kittiwakes have reduced by half and Arctic skua populations have shrunk by 70%.

But what is behind these declines remains something of a mystery. Overfishing and climate change are thought to be key drivers, but despite knowing that plastic is widespread in their environment, we currently lack even the most basic data on which seabird species are affected by this pollution and how.

Before we can effectively deal with any threat posed by plastic pollution, we need to understand the scale and type of effects it’s having. A new study is a first step towards this, uncovering evidence that Scottish seabirds are not only ingesting plastic, but they appear to be accumulating it in their nests.

Unpicking the impact of plastic

The study looked at five European seabird species – cormorants, European shags, great black-backed gulls, herring and lesser black-backed gulls. The latter four of these are of “Conservation Concern” in the UK according to the RSPB, while cormorant, shag and herring gull are included in Jersey’s ‘red list’ due to their declining or vulnerable populations.

Plastic pollution was intimately intertwined with the nesting behaviour and daily lives of these species, possibly affecting their breeding success and survival. 32% of herring gull nests, 53% of great black-backed gull nests and, worryingly, 80% of European shag nests contained plastic. Even worse, 39% of herring gull pellets – regurgitated bits of indigestible food – also contained plastic.

Plastic in nests is known to ensnare adults and chicks, often with fatal consequences. For some species, the nest must keep the egg warm and dry. It’s not clear whether plastic could be altering how well the nest warms its occupants or allows liquids to drain, but any changes could affect hatching success. Equally, the range of colours plastic comes in may affect the nest’s camouflage, making eggs and chicks more vulnerable to predators.

The study found clear differences in the type of plastic in herring gull nests from that contained in their pellets. This may reflect differences in where this species collects its food and its nest material. The ingested plastic was a variety of colours and types, including fibres, packaging and hard fragments, suggesting it might be found in an urban environment or in a landfill. But the nest plastic found was only sheet packaging, the sort more likely to wash up on the shore closer to their home.

This kind of information can help us begin to understand how effective different efforts might be. If the plastic used for making nests is collected from the shore before nest building begins in early spring, like during beach cleans, it could limit the impact on particular seabird species.

As nationwide lockdowns have eased during the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented levels of plastic waste have been left on UK beaches. We’re only just peeling back the surface on how this pollution harms wildlife. But as the evidence mounts, the urgent need to prevent plastic entering the environment becomes ever clearer.

The study The prevalence and source of plastic incorporated into nests of five seabird species on a small offshore island can be seen here

From EurekAlert

Climate change and an increase in disturbed bee habitats from expanding agriculture and development in north-eastern North America over the last 30 years are likely responsible for a 94% loss of plant-pollinator networks a new study has found. Despite this study being from North America it is hard to imagine that Jersey has fared very differently.

The researchers looked at plant-pollinator networks from 125 years ago through to the present day. The networks are comprised of wild bees and the native plants they historically rely on, although most of those have now been disrupted.

About 30% of plant-pollinator networks were completely lost, which translates to a disappearance of either the bees, the plants or both. In another 64% of the network loss, the wild bees, such as sweat or miner bees, or native plants, such as sumac and willow, are still present in the eco-system, but the bees no longer visit those plants. The association is gone.

The remaining 6% of the plant-pollinator networks are stable or even thriving with pollinators such as small carpenter bees, which like broken stems for nest making.

“There are several reasons for the losses in the networks. Climate change is likely the biggest driver. We know that over the last 100 years or so annual temperatures have changed by two and a half degrees. This is enough to alter the time when certain native plants bloom,” says author Professor Sandra Rehan.

“For a bee that’s out for months on end or is a generalist pollinator, this isn’t such a critical mismatch, but for a bee that’s only out for two weeks of the year and only has a few floral hosts, this could be devastating.” An increase in non-native species of bees and invasive species of plants, which have displaced some of the native species, is another reason for the decline in networks. “We are getting a lot of invasive species and new records of invasive species every year. This is usually accidentally through trade and through ornamental plants,” says Rehan.

A lot of these bees live in stems, so it’s easy to import plants with non-native bee species without knowing it. “We can actually show routes and means of invasion biology,” she says.

These bees are following shipping routes from one continent to the other around the world, including North America through ornamental plants for our gardens.

The researchers say an increase in habitat restoration and native flowering plants in agricultural landscapes are critical for improving wild bee biodiversity, but also food security for humans.

Bees and other pollinators are worth hundreds of billions of (US) dollars globally by pollinating the crops we eat, and wild bees are at the top of the list believed to pollinate more than 87% or 308,006 flowering plant species. Many of these are economically important commercial crops, such as apples and blueberries.

“There is an urgent need to gain a deeper understanding of the environmental circumstances affecting these wild pollinator populations and their specialised, evolutionary relationships with plant communities,” says Rehan. “Plant pollinator webs are dependent on changes in the landscape, so knowing how these networks are shaped is important for all regional habitats.”

Previous recent research by Rehan and team looked at 119 wild bee species over 125 years and found 14 declining and eight increasing species. All of the wild bee species in decline are native (to North America) and over half experienced significant range (latitude and elevation) shifts.

Paper Wild bee declines linked to plant-pollinator network changes and plant species introductions

From Rare Bird Alert

Less than 70 years ago, ponds were a common feature of the farmland landscape, and were routinely managed just like hedgerows. Since the 1950s, many ponds have been filled in to reclaim more land for farming; however, a large number have been left unmanaged, meaning they have become overgrown with trees and bushes, making them dark and uninhabitable to many species.

Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust has been working with the Natural History Museum and University College London on research that shows reinstating traditional pond management methods, of tree and mud removal, can benefit not only pond species, but also farmland birds.

Ponds restored by the Norfolk Ponds Project, were compared to neighbouring unmanaged and overgrown ponds; restored ponds contained twice as many bird species and almost three times as many birds, as the overgrown ponds.

Bird species at the restored ponds included skylark, linnet, yellowhammer and starling, all species that are Red Listed in the UK because they have declined drastically in recent years.

There were 95 sightings of these four species in and around the restored ponds, which compared to just two sightings of yellowhammer and none of skylark, starling or linnet at the unrestored ponds.

The total number of birds visiting was also greater at restored ponds with almost three times as many birds attracted to the restored ponds. This was shown to be linked to the abundant insect food resources emerging from restored ponds.

According to lead researcher, Jonathan Lewis-Phillips of UCL’s Pond Restoration Research Group:

“Restored ponds are teeming with insects, and because different ponds have insect peaks on different days, birds can move from pond to pond, and get the food that they need. A network of high-quality ponds is, therefore, brilliant for birds in the breeding season.”

With a network of restored ponds across the landscape, birds were able to move between insect emergence events, providing an ongoing insect food resource during the breeding season.

The research comes at a time when farmland birds are under huge threat, having declined by 55 per cent in the last 50 years, largely due to changes in agricultural management to increase food production, according to the recent State of Nature 2019 report.

As well as providing a beneficial habitat for woodland birds, farmland ponds also provide an important landscape feature, and act as stepping-stones for other wildlife including frogs and dragonflies.

Despite their importance, according to a report published by the RSPB, WWF and the Wildlife Trusts, there are no plans to protect them included in the UK’s new Agriculture Bill.

“Our research shows how important it is to restore and manage ponds in farmland. Here in Gloucestershire, preliminary evidence suggests we have lost around two-thirds of our farmland ponds since 1900. That’s why we have been working with Farming & Wildlife Advisory group (FWAG SouthWest) and local farmers to restore a number of ponds across different farms on the Severn Vale.”

“Even following long periods of dormancy, overgrown farmland ponds can quickly come back to life, with plants, amphibians and insects starting to colonise them in a matter of months. That is why this research could be an important pointer of where the UK’s environmental and agricultural policy should focus post Brexit.”

Carl Sayer of University College London Pond Restoration Group said: “The research on birds was inspired by Norfolk farmer Richard Waddingham. His constant belief has always been that farming and wildlife can co-exist and with wildlife declining at an alarming rate, at no time in history do we need to make this work more than now. Restoring farmland ponds is clearly part of a positive way forward.”