Every three months Natural Cambridgeshire hosts a Partnership Forum which draws together people from a wide range of organisations to hear from speakers who have news and information to share about local environmental projects and developments.
Our Forum on Wednesday 13 March 2024 included the following topics and speakers:
Chair: Pamela Abbott, Natural Cambridgeshire
1. Cambridgeshire Grasshoppers – Past, Present and Future
Pamela Abbott (Natural Cambridgeshire)
2. Tracking our summer migrant birds to understand population declines
Chris Hewson (British Trust for Ornithology)
3. A perspective on Cambridgeshire chalk streams
Rob Mungovan (Wild Trout Trust)
4. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Local Nature Recovery Strategy
Gabriella Yeomans (Cambridgeshire County Council)
To subscribe to our email list to receive news about forthcoming Forum events and other environmental information and updates which are likely to be of local interest, please email us at info@naturalcambridgeshire.org.uk.
Starting the recording um so welcome uh to uh the natural kisher partnership Forum today we have uh a variety of talks about species about habitats and about nature recovery and we’re hoping to have some rich discussions along the way so um welcome do pop yourself on mute um and
Uh so that we can make sure um body can hear hear the talk um today we have I’m actually chairing I’m Pamela Abbott I’m a director of natural Cambria uh I’m also giving a talk on grasshoppers um and then this will be followed by Chris
Houon from the BTO uh who’s going to be talking about tracking our summer migrant Birds to understand uh populations uh in uh the UK and then we’re also going to have Rob mongoven from the wild trout trust uh talking about perspective on Chalk streams and then Gabriela yans is going to update us
On where we are with uh local nature recovery strategy um and we’re going to have a lovely QR code for those of you who haven’t done our survey yet um I noticed this morning that the wildlife trust have sent it out on their social media which is great and we um will be
Promoting that to everyone and for those of you who have um a group um that you are part of we also have a group survey and Gabriella will be telling you about that that’s the end okay so I am first up and I’m just going to share my
Screen and now the little button is out of the way it’s always the way with these things yes there we are so I am going to talk about uh cambri grasshoppers past present and uh future and this is a a picture of one of the potential future
Um grasshoppers uh in Cambridge of the large Marsh grasshopper um just to give you a bit of a background here we were talking um just some of us as we joined about the the huge diversity of um Ortho which is um Embraces crickets Bush crickets small crickets Grasshoppers and groundhoppers
Um and um this in France there are 200 species in Spain and Portugal and Western Europe they’re kind of up to 800 900 species as you can see here even including all those other um species we or genus we have we actually have 34 and of the 14 grasshoppers that are found in
The British Isles um we have six in cambridgshire and one of those hasn’t been seen for quite a while um and I’m just going to go through um some of those uh grasshoppers that you can see listed here in black um the from kind of common to uh less less common and one
Which may be waking its way over the Border naturally from beder quite soon um and one to watch out for um and another one that is subject to a reintroduction project which is already um successfully re established them in Norfolk so here’s a little Grasshoppers and crickets moment um so at the top
Left we have um the wonderful um uh cricket house Cricket um which is sort of found in in buildings um throughout throughout the UK less common now than it used to be but actually um those uh basic everything is less common now than it used to be particularly in cambrid
And then you may have seen it I these have landed on my car and I’ve got quite excited about it the uh Oak Bush Cricket the bottom left SL um uh they’re they’re really quite um uh common and and the cricket omnivores The Grasshoppers are um uh herbivores and they have the ears
In different places and an interesting fact that I learned last night is that crickets um they kind of hold their legs apart so that their ears can get a stereo sound so that’s a bit like I don’t know if you ever hold your mobile phone up to your chin in order to get
Stereo sound or perhaps you just put your speakers a little bit further away but but crickets are doing this just where their body is really quite amazing so they have their kind of auditory temp them in their knees um and uh other uh grasshoppers have them in their legs
So so a little bit about the local species now um this is the mled grasshopper you could hardly see it could you in in the habitat there and I think the other thing to um to speak about grasshoppers is that they are really very varied so you might see
Something that really looks like a meadow grasshopper but it might be kind of one of the other grasshoppers in Disguise so they they’re really quite they’re really quite tricky into some um respects to telling a part but the mtel grasshopper is the smallest of species really quite variable and it is the only
One in Cambria that actually has the clubbed antenna um and there’s a little bit of a closeup here um it’s a male that has clubbed antenna and that is the right hand of your of your picture there and then we have the common field
And this has I don’t know if you can see it from the picture it has the the kind of rather hairy tummy and that’s one of the ways um that we can distinguish it it’s most widespread it’s a kind of pioner species um and it’s very variable
In color color it’s often to be found on lawns my suspicion is that if you have a garden with a lawn you will have the common field grasshopper in your garden um next is the meadow grasshopper and this one has tiny tiny wings if you can just see the Ws like their wings
Just above its abdomen they’re really quite small and the females are even more short-winged um and this is a female here um and it has quite dark ped legs the next one is the Lesser Marsh um which is rather similar to the meadow but it’s a bit larger it’s longer winged
Um um and then it has this parallel Keels the the markings on on its on its back and it can be found in any color from this sort of fa color here through to Green to Pink and to purple um so it’s a very kind of variable grasshopper
And then this is actually called the common green grasshopper but in cambrid it’s not common at all it’s a mainly a wetland species um and the uh this is a very green one the the female is very green it has a very distinctive song a bit like a freewheeling bike um that
Runs for about um 10 to 20 seconds um and it it’s on droves in Fen um so you might find it out there if you’re more Northern and easterly based um uh and it’s rather fine and the next one this is a keep an eye out for it if you are
Um out on a chalk grassland perhaps um Devil’s Dyke or or somewhere like that it hasn’t been recorded um and and and recently U it was definitely found until the 1970s my naturalist colleagues feel that actually there are still some populations in in Cambridge it would be
Really amazing if you could find it it has this very distinctive um ladder-like pattern on the wing if you can see it there and a little white comma on the wing as well um and it does a different way of um calling or stridulating than um the other grasshoppers they rub their
Legs up and down or their legs and their wings up and down whereas um this one it does alternate alternate swinging their um legs together so um quite exciting and then a final one which is not in cambrid currently but is just over the Border in Bedford chure and it
Would be really interesting if you looked out for it and if you were the type of person that maybe went on to I naturalist or one of those other apps and spotted it but again it’s it’s another one with the clubbed antenna but it’s a slightly darker form um and um it
Is also to be found on kind of south facing chalky ground um and so sort of Devil’s Dyke flam’s Dyke um it may be spreading along from the Chilton so it’d be really interesting um if we get any record of that and I’m I’m fascinated to know if
We if we do um so those are the ones that are kind of there present in Cambridge at the moment and um now I just want to to go on to talk about um one which is hopefully going to be reintroduced to Cambria as part of um our looking after species which is
Really threatened uh by climate change and and habitat fragmentation in its um current uh Native habitat and that is uh the large Marsh Grasshopper And I have to declare an interest here I chair a kind of rewilding organization called citizen zoo and this is one of the projects that we’re doing in
Collaboration with the wildlife Trust of um bedfordshire cire Northampton Shire as well as the wildlife Trust of uh norfol and also uh various um organizations in in Norfolk such as uh the Natural England sites and uh laterally um some sites on the broads and the idea is that you know
We’re looking to the past to inspire a Wilder future um and I I think this is not just looking to the past and reintroducing species that had no chance of of continuing because there were reasons that they died out but actually looking to where we are recovering nature where we have restored habitats
And where some of the species will just make their way back naturally birds are very good at this sometimes rep are not soer but those um things that need don’t need our help will make their way back those things which do need our help because it’s really too far they do fly
A very long way the large Marsh grasshopper but um it really is too far from The New Forest to come back to Cambridge and this is it’s not quite the rarest the heath and grasshopper is rarer but it is one of the rarest it is
The largest and I think it is the most magnificent and beautiful grasshopper and here we can see that it’s kind of surviving but declining um it it it in the somerset levels um there’s a query as to whether that was kind of CT reintroduction or whether it was just
Never really found um it’s also uh found in the New Forest in Dorset and as you can see um was extinct sort of um north of this line but very excitingly is now back and I was just going to tell you a little bit about the the project that
Has brought that back very very um quickly because I think it will be coming to pay tempature um next year and I also just wanted to say that this is uh this is a species that that has appeared in um the 2023 state of nature report as one of the success stories of
A um species that is um declining in its range but over its former range as a result of this is now um increasing and um has um appropriate habitat it’s a project that started uh way back in sort of 2016 with a a a youth group doing surveys
Also um we uh had Stuart Nome from the British H for orthology where our other um speaker today is coming looking at Acoustic monitoring and um surveying to because before you reintroduce you really need to know that the species populations aren’t sort of flinging on and have just never been found um it’s
Been a fascinating project we’ve been down to the New Forest to with all of the proper permissions from Natural England and the forestry commission um to collect grasshoppers to uh breed them uh we’ve been in the sunshine we’ve been in the we’ve been in the rain um and we
Have an expert Stuart green who has um done his PhD on this subject and has developed a way of um breeding these grossers breed when we bring them back from The New Forest he stores the um egg pods in uh Petri dishes in in the fridge and then we recruit um citizen Keepers
Who we train and we give them a little egg pob we give them a page and they grow from it being this kind of terribly Barren thing and they pick grass every day uh and then you get hundreds of grasshoppers we keep them together in a little Facebook group we then release
Them often marking them um on into these um sites where they’ve been reintroduced um last year we we reintroduced um over the total time with are it came to 5,498 individual grass large Marsh grasshoppers that we had introduced into Northfolk very annoyingly not 5,500 but
There we go we have to be accurate about these things and we have done a a population assessment by um sort of Mark and recapture that we now uh on one particular site um we have reintroduced 2,000 to that site over the last four years and we now have a population of a
Estimate of 414 um so it’s a real um success story we have all generations involved in our citizen Keepers uh the chair of Natural England came out with us on a release and said that it was one of the best days in nature he had um last year we
Keep very accurate records and very excited to see you know that in 2019 from a small translocation amount we had our first Native born male and then in in in uh in 2020 our first captive re um from reintroduced the year before in 2019 our first sort of breeding population
Um which is our um female on on the right it’s been very widely um talked about um because I think people get very excited about this and that’s even my last slide and I am always quite tricky when you’re chairing at the same time as I’m doing but I think I’ve had my
Allocated amount of time um and I will stop now and ask if anyone has any uh questions or any interactions that they would like to have about I see we do have some things in the chat um and so there we go uh so do the very small
Wings on the meadow help it to fly or does it just hop so I am more of a person that knows quite a lot about large Marsh grasshoppers which fly a tremendous way less about the meadow grasshopper but my um my thinking is that yes that is to to
And if anyone is a better naturalist than me which is probably I would say probably at least 2third of the population which is attending today uh you are very welcome to come on in there um they said to us when we started the large Marsh gooper project that um oh
They don’t fly very far and then we went on a very hot day and they fly a tremendous distance uh I have some fascinating videos of us chasing them across the B and it’s always quite hazardous chasing them across the bog because you have this thing called hover
Whereby you think you’re on Solid Ground and in fact one full step and uh you could be two meters under um so it’s it’s um we put a stick down to to two met in those spaces um so we are very careful when we are chasing them across
The bog I I think they do just hop but I’m very happy to be corrected by anyone who is more of a grasshopper expert than me Roger please come in on Meadow grasshoppers I’ve looked it up and they spring they’re hot they don’t fly so you’re right
Excellent oh and then from Laura where should we send uh citizen Keepers if they would like more info um so we do have uh a citizen Zoo have a website um where we have information about it also you could um you could get in contact UM
With me or with Helen and and sorry Helen we could we could pass it on to the relevant organization as well we would love to see more we actually do our training in uh cambour at the wildlife trust um headquarters when we bring our c and keep us together um
Quinton you’ve got your hand up yeah I can’t find the raised hand button on my zoom at the moment um so to do oldfashioned way just C some last year I remember going to a meeting with uh UN about one one University projects and they were talking there
They’ve been doing surveys of ground nesting Birds on solar farm size on the grounds that solar farm on Grassland are providing a potential habitat and the results were quite startling actually in terms of some species bearing in mind I’m not I’m not um this isn’t my are of X at all but
Some some species so showed huge increases because that managed habitat suited the particularly ground converts others showed a decline because um panels basically G the way and I’m just wondering is it is that the kind of do those sites provide the um suitable habitats potentially for
Grasshoppers in the same way they do for ground nesting birds and is that something worth surveying in the same way University survey Birds I think I think that’s a really good idea and I think you know the kind of large scale habitat Mosaic as well as the small scale you know heterogenity
Within a habitat I mean I can just look out site and know where the large Marsh grasshoppers are going to be from having got my eye in for those particular things and I suspect there there are naturalists who could look at those those kind of different sites and
Actually sort of predict where they are as well as um as well as think about how you manage those for the different types of grasshoppers some really really like you know the ones that like the short grassland often it’s not necessarily the talk it’s it’s the really shortness of
It um rather than um you know uh yeah the underlying or it could be could be the species but um yeah anyone else want to come in on anything further on that I think that’s a really good idea whether we get permission to go on those S Farms
To do that but I think you know I think we should be investigating Roger you’re coming to my rescue as the the captive naturalist thank you I can’t I can’t quote work on that I know I know there’s been quite a lot of work being done on
This and also interestingly I think it’s not in this country elsewhere they’ve now F found that uh vertical solar panels although they’re compromise in getting electricity are better for for wildlife and indeed they’re using them on with agriculture now so I think there’s a lot of work to be to be done
On this to see what the best the optimal conditions are for you know how you how you plal solar panels and what you get but I know there’s a lot of work going on on This brilliant thank you and Rob um you’d like to come in yeah I just
Going to say there are two very good solar farms in South cams out to the many that popped up there’s the born solar farm which was certainly very well Wild Flower seeded was a wash with butterflies one summer when I was there and then’s the one in the Nature Reserve
At shingi K Wendi which is a very large one and pleased to say that the fence was lifted at the bottom of that to allow Brown hairs and badges to get in which might affect the uh the ground nesting Birds but certainly some of the solar Farms did follow what they set out
To do and have got extensive wild flowers beneath them that could be worth a look brilliant thank you yes my my Badger is eating all my Ivy bees um so um yes it’s a kind of mixed blessing sometimes isn’t it letting all the wildlife in um um excellent right I
Think um if there’s no further questions and just to reiterate um Peter’s um request in the uh chat that we would love to um have more suggestions for talks particularly as well if if kind of you know somebody who could give that talk that would be particularly good uh
So our next speaker is um Chris Houston from uh the BTO um so Chris is a senior research ecologist um in the framing Futures team um and and his mission which I’m sure he will tell you more about is to increase the knowledge of migr migratory Ecology of um of bird
Species um and he’s been tracking cuckoo and looking at patterns of Swifts Nightingales wobblers um and uh I won’t steal any more of his Thunder and we’ll um hand over to Chris thank you can you hear me okay yeah brilliant I’ll just try and share my screen if I can uh okay
Uh can you see that okay brilliant okay so the title of my talk as you can see is tracking our Su migrant Birds to understand population declines and I’ll start by giving you some background as to why we’re doing this work um in the first place and you
Can see that we’ve got a graph here which shows the population changes of birds according to the breeding bird survey and we’ve got bars going off to the right showing population increases and bars going off to the left showing population declines and the first thing to notice is that we’ve got a large
Number of bars here showing substantial declines in recent Decades of some of our most iconic and popular summer visiting birds so that includes the CUO the iconic harbinger of spring uh and that has declined oh I don’t know whether you can see that but um it’s off
Top of my screen for me unfortunately um declined by over 70% in England over the last 53 years um there’s been a smaller but still substantial decline in the last quarter of a century across the UK but that masks a substantial Regional variation so there’s been a huge 71%
Decline in the last quarter of the century in England but in the last 10 or 11 years there’s been a bit of a Resurgence going on in Scotland which has balanced that out a little bit we also have the Swift The Fantastic aerial species it might be flying
Constantly for 9 or 10 months of the year before returning to breed in the rooms of our houses and that has undergone a really big decline of 60% in the last quarter of a century and that’s exactly the same whether you look at the UK or just in
England we have the Nightingale famed for the quality of its song in poetry and literature um which has declined by 91% in 53 years so we’ve lost in the time I’ve been alive more than nine out of 10 of the nighting girls which existed and I know that um that’s been
Particularly the case where I am here in South Cambridge here and over the last quarter of a century substantial 48% decline so there’s still a big decline going on with Nightingales and then finally spotted fly catchers um perhaps less well known to the general public than um some of those other species but
Nonetheless popular on C of on account of its um Fly catching beh Behavior which catches the eyes in our Gardens um and the fact that they come to breed on our houses and sheds in our Gardens makes them more conspicuous than many birds and we’ve lost 92% of those are
Very similar to Nightingales over the last 53 years and a huge 63% decline further uh in the last quarter of a century so if we go back to this graph when we color in the bars according to where species spend the winter you can see that the colors aren’t evenly
Distributed across the graph and that’s because we’ve got relationships between the recent population changes of these migratory species and where they spend the winter so if we group all of these bars together according to uh where they spend the winter into their respective groups and plot trend lines we come up
With a graph that looks something like this so we’ve got a red line showing the recent constant populations of Resident species so those which spend the winter here where they breed we’ve got a purple line showing the recent population increases of Northern species so those which went to north of the Sahara and
Southern Europe black caps and Chi chaps two of the most conspicuous of those this Orange Line shows the recent population fluctuations of Ariz Zone species so those are the words which winter in the Sahel just south of the Sahara and then we’ve got a blue line showing the slow but constant population
Decline of Southern species those which winter in southern Africa and finally a severe decline which is ongoing in humid Zone species so those which winter in the humid Tropics of West and central Africa close to the equator now each one of those groups um is a summary group but it hides
Diversity and complexity of potential migration strategies for sorry for all these different species and it’s against this background that we started our first um project tracking project using geolocators which is the smallest track smallest um tracking devices um and you can see this nighting girl on the left
Here wearing a geator provided by the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge um with a light sensor here on the end of the light St to keep it away from shading by the feathers um geolocators are basically archival light level recorders they take record readings every two minutes against a very
Accurate clock um and calendar and that allows us to collect data like this um you can see three daily Cycles here um with increasing light levels in the morning variable shading due to vegetation and the behavior of the bird Etc during the day and then decreasing light levels in the
Evening this line here is a threshold that we use to define our Twilight event sets to a low light level um one of the drawbacks of geolocators is that the accuracy is dependent on um calibration for latitude um and by that what I mean is I’ll show you I’ll show you here um
With green line here where we’ve defined our Dawn event by a threshold a red line where we’ve defined our dusk event and the time between the two is what we Define as day length but for that to be useful for us to locate our bird on the
Earth it needs to be calibrated in other words we need to relate um the passing of these thresholds to an astronomical event in other words how far far above or below the Horizon is the sun when this event um occurs and that’s what we call mean by calibration in contrast solar midday is
Simply the midpoint between our two twilight events that we’ve defined and this allows us to get longitude so we’ve got 360 degrees of rotation around the Earth 24 hours in the day so for every 1 hour that solar midday is shifted Birds move 15° around the um Earth
Surface so the result of all this is that longitude and the timing of movements are easier to determine than than latitude latitude of course you’ve also got no latitudinal variation in day length round close to the equinoxes so we can’t do that at all but perhaps the biggest drawback of
These tiny devices is that they have to be retrieved for the data to be downloaded so so only got information from returning Birds which means that we don’t find out about that portion of the birds which I hope to show you later on is is most important for understanding
Population decline sometimes and those are birds which don’t make it back now this map shows the migration of one of the NY gos that we taged at graph and water you see it Southward migration in yellow line here showing it left the UK to a stop over in probably Southern
Portugal in early September before migrating rapidly over the Sahara and to a first stopover loc location in winter in Sagal or Gambia and then in the middle of February it moved to a second wintering location in Sierra Leon before returning back via stopovers probably in southern Spain and then in northern
France arriving back to graffin water on the 19th of April now this map shows the um wind midwinter locations of all of the nting gals tagged in um first couple of years of the study and you can see they’re extremely tightly clustered so certainly by geolocator results standards uh in
Sagal um Gambia and guine M um and this is actually the tightest clustering that’s so far being recorded of any migratory bird any population of any migratory bird anywhere in the world um and because they’re in such a small area they’re obviously vulnerable small amount of habitat loss could be quite um
Dramatically impactful on this population we know that this area particularly the coastal strip in Sagal and Gambia has undergone extensive transformation for um agriculture um tourism and other human developments there’s often a very narrow strip of high quality scrub in these areas um so this is something that we’re currently
Looking at in more detail now to find out whether as we suspect this is contributing to the decline of the UK population of Nightingales now I mentioned that geolocators are our smallest devices but they’re getting smaller all the time um the smallest one currently available is
This one which weighs a third of a gram including this harness made from beading elastic you can see the light sensor here has got a light stalk um and the battery here it’s really a very tiny device indeed and this is enabling us to track some of our smallest migratory
Birds um and that includes the spotted fly catcher uh we tracked them from Cambridge here um on the you can see one of these devices on a spoted fly catcher here it weighs less than 3% of the body weight of the bird which um means that we’re confident that the birds will not
Be severely impacted by this device um and I think the result also suggest that’s the case um and I’ll show you now the migration of a typical spotted fly catcher summary they all did more or less the same thing or variations on the theme anyway um but it’s before I show
You that I want you to remind you that this is actually a bird which weighs about the same as a one pound coin so it really is a very tiny bird indeed but anyway we see that the birds leave the UK to a stopover probably in um Portugal
Or Morocco where they spend one to three weeks in September before crossing the Sahara they then have a similar stop over on the southern side of the Far Western part of the Sahara for two or three weeks in late September to Mid October before moving steadily quite slowly
Across the uh longitudes of West Africa and then in sometime between October and December they have a short stop over can be longer um before they fly southwards over the Congo Basin um to Angola where they resident from December onwards um with our G locators we don’t
Pick up the beginning of the spring migration because they’re moving northwards close to the Equinox but during April first half of April we see them moving westwards through the longitudes of West Africa um and then they make another stop over of two to three weeks between mid April and
Early May in a similar location to where they stop off in um Autumn before heading north was over the Sahara to complete a 22,000 kilometer um round trip journey and we know that the spotted fly capture there appears to be a problem with recruitment of first year survival rather than necessarily
Breeding success itself um so this is really a God sent in terms of the information to enable us to uh make an initial assessment of the threats that this population is undergoing as well as to look at the migration strategies which we’re doing the way they move U
Which helps us to prescribe U what sort of conservation action would be required to make sure that habitat is available through them through the annual cycle for these Birds now this shows um mat we did it for a bit of fun really it’s it’s the bir from Cambridge here plotted on a map
Of Angola to show the best estimates of where the locations are um the you can’t really do this as accurately as we showed here it was more for the householders who let us kindly tag Birds mostly in their Gardens that we did it but you can see that one bird from
Hatley St George had the shortest displacement of 6,800 kilm from the tagging site whereas the bird that we tagged at Halton not so far from where I’m sitting now um actually was displaced by 7,700 km from the tagging site to the midwinter um later analyses suggest that actually uh with more
Sophisticated technique suggest that actually many of these should actually probably be a bit further south so actually these distances are a minimum and some of these birds may actually be wintering uh in Northern Namibia rather than in Angola as shown here but nonetheless the general pattern of migration is as I’ve shown
You so moving from the smallest um taging uh tags that we have geolocators to the largest which is satellite track tracking um and the commu is an excellent model species for uh this work partly because as I’ve already explained it has a declining population in Britain um it’s also the largest small nocturnal
Migrant so that class of birds it’s the first one that we’ve been able to um tag and track using satellite tracking technology which has a number of advantages over other tracking techniques as I will show you um and then thirdly it’s migration that’s very poorly known um we knew from ringing
Recoveries or we thought we did that the birds left the UK and through Europe in the southeast Direction but beyond that in Africa we knew virtually nothing um the only piece of information we had was this ringing recovery of a juvenile ring did a p wagtail’s nest in June 1928
Which was recovered in January 1930 um having been taken by man for the pots in in Cameroon but it’s been the Advent of this new technology a five gram satellite tack from microwave Telemetry which has enabled us to basically revolutionize our understanding of um cuckoo migration so the tags are solar powered
Um you can see they’ve got a rechargeable battery the solar cells on the back of the tag here um and they transmit signals for 10 hours a very high quality constant radio signal and the way that that changes as it’s picked up by satellites passing over over overhead um allows the satellite system
To use the dopper effect to work out whereabouts on the on the ground um the tag must be and therefore where the bird is and the tags then switch off for 48 hours to allow the solar cells to recharge the battery um the result of this is that we
Get unbiased information there’s no need for recapture so we get to find out all the information we need from every single bird that gets a tag on its back um so we not only get to find out where they go but also where they die which
Has been really important as I’ll go on to show you um in beginning to understand the causes of the population decline of the cuckoo in England in particular and the result of all this is that we get close to realtime tracking across the entire annual cycle which has
Been a real Boon for the BTO in terms of um public engagement because the public have been able to follow the um the migrations of these birds and the progress of This research in virtually real time on our website so this this map shows the population changes of CUO according to
Breeding bird survey in blue we’ve got population declines which you can see in the north and west Uplands of Highlands and Scotland in particular whereas in the south and east we’ve got red colors showing population declines and it’s against this background that we in 2011 I think it
Was we’ve tagged our first five birds in East Anglia partly because it’s close to our um bto’s H BTO HQ in thatford but also because it’s right in the heart of the declining Zone and then over the next few years of the project we tag birded a number of
Locations across the UK stratified by population Trends as well as by latitude and the major habitat types that the Upland versus lowland in particular this map here shows the Southwood migrations of cooko across the first few years of this of the project and you can see that as expected we had
Some birds shown in red here which migrated Southeast to stop overs mostly in Northern Italy before moving southwards into subsaharan Africa and finally to wintering zones in the western part of the Congo Basin of central Africa but in yellow unexpectedly we had a number of birds which migrated Southwest via Spain um
Some entered the the um African continent at its Far Western part before turning East and then converging on the roots of the other birds and ending up in exactly the same Western congolian uh wintering grounds so we had in the first few years 23 Journeys by 20 Birds
Migrating Southwest and 33 by 22 Birds migrating Southeast and we found that there was a significant difference in survival so these are modeled estimates rather than simply The observed outcomes um just over half of the birds on Aver surviving to complete the Sahara Crossing that migrated via Spain whereas
Nearly all of the birds which migrate via um Italy in these first few years sample um successfully reached tropical Africa now not only did the birds survived differently but they’re also distributed differently across the UK you can see from these pie graphs that in red here in the Uplands of Scotland
And Wales all of the birds migrated via the more successful route um via it whereas across England we had a variable mixture of birds taking the two Roots except for in Sherwood Forest where in the initial sample of birds all of the birds migrated by this more dangerous
Rout via Spain and the background to this map shows the population changes of CUO between the last two breeding atlases and um we found there’s a very strong correlation between the U degree of local population change and the proportion of birds which take this more dangerous less successful route via
Spain and this hold across the whole data set and also interestingly both within lowland and Upland birds so this gave us quite strong evidence together with the um differen in survival that this was that the use of this route was um contributing at least um over over
And above conditions in the UK to the population decline that we’ve been observing and this shows the um mortality locations of bir taking that Southwestern route and you can see that a number of them died in Spain um before uh initiating the Sahara Crossing um and in years where the what droughts and
Wildfires that occur in Spain in some years U well there’s always a dry period but where the droughts were particularly severe there extensive welfares none of the birds which migrated via um Spain survived um to to reach tropical Africa at all and sample size is small so we
We’re continuing with this work um to work out exactly what’s going on but that is the general picture um and I think that’s me pretty much done but I would like to say thanks as well as the thanks to you all for listening thank you to all these people from the BTO and
Beyond um who have been pretty much instrumental in allowing this project to um well all these projects to go on because they’re big team efforts requiring input from lots of people so thanks very much brilliant thank you Chris it was so fascinating to hear the background you
Know I’ve seen on on the BTO website that the uh the cuckoo tracking um and that was a fantastic run through of some of the detail which I’m sure you know many people found really fascinating um and and I just wanted to say that there’s an opportunity for questions now
And it and no question is too Dar so um if you if you have any question that you’d like to ask Chris and I will not be passing judgment on that was a Dar question um but really we you know this is we had a bit of you know n naturalist
Nerdy talk at the beginning but but you know the purpose of this forum is that we’re all sharing and we’re all learning so I just wanted if anyone had any questions for Chris I haven’t seen any in the chat do you want to stop the screen sharing oh
Matthew yeah I I’ve struck about what you said about Swifts and swallows observation personally just looks as though swallows are di diminishing and so are Swifts are swallows actually doing okay they are actually yeah um they’re not they’re they’re not um red listed or Amber listed even they Haven g undergone
A big population decline in fact I don’t think they they’ve been declining at all in recent decades um this yeah the reasons for that are uh unclear I would say um the that I mean some of their Foods so insect declines is an obvious possibility as to why bir like swallows
And Swifts would be impacted but we know that in a recent study that um some of the food stuffs um which which swallows um take a lot of like aphids actually are doing fairly well in a lot of regions um so so yeah so swallows are
Are doing are doing a lot better than Swift the causes of decline of Swift aren’t clear either um obviously that a bit a big um contributor is thought to be um Nest lack of Nest sites so people modernizing roofs Etc um but that’s probably only part of the story so
Insect declines are very much likely to be impacting Swifts um not necessarily just in the UK but also um in the stopovers that they they make on routs here on the way back from Africa as well so yeah so we’ve got some lovely questions in the chat um Lara asked are
The migration Maps available online um and the residents of Huntington sh will be very interesting I’m sure the residents of K and Peter were very interesting yes well the cookies the cookies are online so they’re updated twice a day I think certainly once a day um that’s wwwb
To.org cooko I’ll put that in the chat afterwards um some of the other yeah around that area of the website I can’t exactly give you the address there are other some of the other maps are there for some species um and we’re also um well we’re about to submit a paper on
Nighting Gale U migration um and then that’ll become available on our website once that’s once that’s yeah been published but certainly the C the main one that you can follow because of the size of the cookies and and the ability to track them with um satellite tags is
The cooko which you can follow live on the BTO website brilliant and then uh I think a final question on this I don’t see any further hands but I see in the chat Anna mcmah has asked what can we best do as local citizens to support endangered birds what could oh
Gosh as local well carrying out um joining with BTO surveys is a very good way to start to help because it provides us the information that we need to understand um what’s going on with population decline so BBS um and even people who aren’t particularly proficient BTO provides training courses
These days which enables people to get up to speed so it’s always um worth you know looking to see what you can do garden bird watch as well there are more practical things as well um so although we don’t know that it’s necessarily the main cause of the decline putting up
Things like Swift boxes um and then playing attraction calls to get them established on your house is not only a fun thing to do but actually certainly not going to do the population any harm and it’s very likely to be um helping the population um but yeah yeah all
Those normal all I say normal all those all those things but Gardens as well I mean there’s things we could do in our Gardens Etc and just supporting conservation as as as general I suppose the obvious ones and I I misled you that that was the final question because
We’ve just also got one from Martin Dole our um chair which says do we have any idea at all why birds CUO um take a Southwest as opposed to Southeast route so so do we have any idea why the cucko go one way or the other way um
When you showed that migration map with the red and the yellow going s of those two two routs exist so we know that um it looks like based on um The Limited information we have from other populations in Europe um and also from uh the initial results of genetic
Studies that we basically got a hybrid Zone um so birds in um southern France uh Western France probably taking mostly the Western route um and we know that in northern Europe say from um England eastwards most of all the birds in fact are taking the Southeastern route so it
Looks like we’ve had a we probably had cucko um from northern Europe invading originally and so all of our CUO migrated Southeast via Italy um and then subsequently cookus from um sort of Western France maybe the low countries even have invaded and that’s given us a
Mixture of the two so it’s like it’s it’s genetically controlled is I suppose the short answer to that as far as as far as far as we can tell although as yet um our colleagues in Munich who are doing their genetics haven’t been able to identify the precise genetic
Element thank you and I also see a a final hand final final hand doing really well here um from Roger Mitchell did you have a question as well yes thanks Pamela Chris um I was in uh Malta a week ago and I was pleased to hear from
Senior people that uh the shooting and trapping of birds is declining well we know it’s been a big problem around the Mediterranean what do your records show you know that the how the how the migrants are being affected is is this actually helping now with the you know
ECA regulations cutting in and declining shooting can you detect this not not yet as far as I’m aware um so it’s been of a debate as to how much um shooting is responsible for the recent population declines we’ve seen in various species um as far as I’m aware that that was
Unlike my my thoughts were it’s unlikely to be the case because shooting hadn’t increased in the timing where the population Trend had gone from relatively positive to more negative um but but a decline in shooting I would as you’re asking I don’t know of it but I
Would expect that to have a beneficial effect so it can only be good news to particularly spring migration shooting um yeah hopefully hopefully we will see an impact on that but I’m not aware of that as yet thanks Chris brilliant um thank you very much Chris that was a fascinating
Action-packed uh um Talk um that I’m sure we’ve all enjoyed so thank you very much um and I’d now like to move on to our next speaker uh which is Rob Rob moven uh from the wild trout plus even actually voted a wild trout um hero um I
Read on your website um uh and Rob is a conservation officer for the east of England with the wild PR Trust a passionate River man a campaigner for uh River conservation and trout and a trout Fisher um and has worked as an ecologist for South kire um District Council um
Before then uh and Rob is going to talk to us about a perspective on Chalk streams which is a a very Hot Topic at the moment so um we’re very welcome and then um hopefully we’ll have um some uh time for not just questions but but perhaps an interactive um debate about
This afterwards so handing over to you okay good morning everybody are you hearing me loud and clear and first of all are you seeing the value of talk streams presentation great so then as I’ve been introduced yes I’ve got a bit of background in this uh County in this
Area and now I’m lucky enough to work for one of the Charities that take care of my favorite fish the wild brown trout so first of all the little view you’re looking at there that’s one of the chalk streams that’s most precious to me it’s the river Shep running through my
Village of Shep it’s my home patch I’m very fortunate to have taken care of that River for just about 25 years now um and I’ve learned a huge amount from being a Hands-On naturalist and observing things which is what many people don’t get to see it’s
The same places time and time again it can also bring some sad thoughts as well having seen these habitats 30 years ago and seeing how they are now there’s definitely been a downward decline so my organization the wild trout trust we use the wild brown trout as a flagship species to inspire
Everyone to get involved in their conservation if it’s good enough for the brown trout that means you’ve got good water quality you probably got good water flow and you’ve got habitat diversity the bottom picture there shows a community planting event after we undertook some habitat restoration work
On the lower River Shep down near barington and really getting the community out to plant to get involved hands on can be a great way to bring habitat Improvement projects to conclusion so at the wild track trust we share information on the latest science affecting trout we get involved in
Partnership projects one which I’m going to talk on today we’ll catch the eye of uh ear of two people here from bab research campus to listen out Chris and Matt I’ve seen you in the audience and um we basically try and make sure that people know why it’s important to
Conserve the wild genetics of the diverse population of brown trout that we have in the UK we do not need to stock fish if if we create the right habitats work from the bottom up these Rivers will take care of them and the Fantastic thing about Chalk streams is
That you can see everything that’s going on in them that bottom picture there shows the basically the color variation of our wild brown trout at F Nature Preserve again in the river Shep they’re all different we do not need to put in domesticated stocked reared fish so then let’s look at a beautiful
Chalk stream this is the born rivulet attribut of the river test um what I didn’t ask is how I get the pointer up red pen and laser point pen yes there we go you see one trout there that’s because this is a wild fishery it’s not stocked it’s not overp populated with
Trout you got one big dominant trout there we’ve also got filt in a chalk stream unusual we’ve got trees coming right down to the edges this is more of a wild more of a Shaggy chalk stream but in common with all chalk streams it’s that crystal clear water that allows the
Sunlight through the water column to drive the plant production it’s also really important that our chalk streams have stable flow so they don’t tend to be prone to large destructive flood events they have pretty much the same bank levels throughout the year they don’t have a large fluctuation in the water height or
The volume of flow but then it’s also that mineral content the dissolved Minal minerals that allow different organisms whether they be plants or animals find the minerals that their structures need their growth so talk streams really are a stable environment something that we can see what’s going on which makes us
Become attracted to them but what many people don’t realize is that nearly all of our chalk streams are man-made and by man-made I mean they might have been realigned in the river valley to follow a contour level to take the energy to a water mill they might have been channeled to drain
An old era Fen to increase land producct productivity they’ve all been manipulated in some way by man which also makes quite a challenging question when we bring forward the idea of habitat restoration which period in their time are we restoring them to do we want this Crystal Clear quality
Modern chalk stream environments or do we want them to be something like a wet Fen oozing across the river valley so where are our cish chalk streams this extract is taken from 2019 when it showed the river Shep the Hofer Brook and the wendon ambo stream as the
Threee in my part of the catchment that still had good ecological status sadly they’re now all failing because there are other criteria brought in it’s these forever chemicals and uh some of the compounds associated with fire runoff that are basically affecting nearly all of our water courses but the point is we
Can bring about habitat restoration we can improve the ecological stat of water courses and I’ll get on to that later there’s a bit of a sad sad account of how our rivers are at the moment but the potential for their restoration is there so what have the chalk streams
Given to us here in Cambridge well we know Hobson’s conduit that enabled people to live healthily with clean quanti Cen clean water in good quantities they channeled that water that people didn’t suffer from chora we provided drinking pumps to our parishes some of those pumps you literally had to
Pump them others simply tapped into that Artesian pressure and the water bubbles up as this one still flows in the village of Wen but at the same time we know that not everything is good Tony even made his fantastic film and brought the issue really quite forward into the Cambridge
Area that we know that we are taking too much water from the environment to supply our daily needs Supply our industry to supply agriculture but the question is what is what are we going to leave for the environment should we allow our rivers to be sucked dry most
Years um how are we really going to address that issue the supply and demand is increasing rather the demand is increasing but then we need to remember that the rivers enabled man to achieve the population density we at now water Mills were a source of energy they
Enabled us to grind and Crush our food sources so they’re more palatable for us top picture here bubeck Mill in barington on the river re the river re was once a beautiful chalk stream it’s rather suffering now but it had very stable flow this Mill here was the last operating
Water mill in the cam Valley that’s hawkon Mill rather sorry state of what it had once was now in this fantastic book produced in the early 1970s by the barington Historical Society they documented well over 10 ms in the river ree Valley you contrast that to the clay river excuse me
Contrast that to the clay river of the Bourn Brook where the flows would be flashy and unreliable I can only think of one mill on that river system that was at Toof so the chalk streams provided us with an easy to manipulate and use source of water that provided
Lots of energies lots of energy for Milling purposes which enabled us to support higher population density there were also water Meadows people often think of the classic floated water Meadows that you see in Hampshire and Wiltshire and don’t think we had them here in Cambridge here
That’s not quite the the way the water Meadows are really a complex agricultural system for improving productivity getting that ground warm in the spring meant that the grass grew earlier that gave it that early bite you could get your sheep fatter you could send them up to London quicker you can
Get more money for them ahead of everybody else but also the sheep and corn system that’s where the Sheep were brought onto the water Meadows to eat the Lush grass and then the Sheep were taken back up onto the higher ground or the less productive ground where they defecated
Urinated and naturally fertilized some of those Upland reaches so you got this kind of uh natural fertilization system so people in 17th century realized that water Meadows Rivers could be part of increasing their AG agricultural productivity and this is kind of what they look like from above who’s seen
That in the cambri landscape well with drones now you can get out and see it I haven’t got a drone picture yet but this is a floated water Meadow in the Valley of the river this network of drainage channels here this is the Rivery here this is the
A10 Haron Mill is just here the Hofer Brook here you have drainage channels going underneath the Hofer Brook which would have supplied this water Meadow system to enable the grass to there to be irrigated it then drained underneath the river and around Haren Mill quite a complex system so people
Thought it was worth establishing water Meadows in cacher and there’s also some in the Valley of the river granta too of course Rivers particularly chalk streams where people can see what’s in them would have provided our ancestors with food these kind of structures I’m
Not going to say what it is yet it’s not Mill it has a series of traps inside it those traps and grills caught eels we all know that eely was famous for his eels but I can say that there were people in Foxton who were also catching
Eels um there is a man who proudly had an eel Trident in his front garden in Foxton where I grew up and he found it in the Foxton Brook also Roland Parker a famous Foxton historian also wrote a section in that book that I referenced the camel re
Where after the river re had been edged he found a number of implements sharpened ax headlike implements that he think were there for cutting fishing nets free and also with clunch sinking weights so people were taking food and resources from our chalk stream valleys they were supplying us with energy and
Food and water but they can also bring us wealth we all know that there’s famous fishing down in the Hampshire valleys on the river’s test and itching that’s a picture of the itching maybe not so much for fishing at sheeter Mill and Trout Farm they tried but it was a
Water decline it’s that lack of steady flow that also put their business but imagine if people want to come and fish in high class rivers and pay a lot of money that has the KN on effect with supporting Hospitality River Keeper jobs fishing guide jobs and also keeps your local economy and shops
Buoyant and then our chalk streams have just given us Beauty to put it quite simply if you’ve seen the chalk stream River in the back end of May early June a wash with water coword flowers it’s a sight to behold it’s just one of those things you go yeah that’s that’s a
Moment in time it’s something of you know typical English Countryside Beauty but in our Rivers I chalk streams you might also see these bright green cushion-like plants or to starart that are harboring large brown trout hiding behind them and that plant diversity supports one of our declining mammals
The water bows stable environment Lush growth of plants ideal habitat for the water vow but you might find things much more interesting like the dendritic form of freshwater sponge that used to grow in the river Shep on the railway Culver I’ve also seen it on the bridge footings
At Hawks and Mill many years ago though I don’t think it’s there in recent times so there are still strange things to be found and then people also say go sit by a river it’s good for your soul it will inspire you well Byron Lord Byron got
INSP spired from swimming in the River cam at Byron’s pool I think that sight’s rather let down now sadly um good for the soul place to relax this little image there is the Hofer Brook um it’s a place I’ve known all my life but to be quite honest it makes me slightly sad
Now because I know that change may be coming to that spot that may be affected by the East West rail they may have to widen the uh rail Corridor at that point what will be left of that small little stream so there’s lot of pressures lots of problems coming upon our water
Courses we know that we’ve got abstraction problems F nature reserves to the left of that image the Springs are completely dry and you can see the water augmentation being pumped in thank goodness the environment agency able to support artificially our Rivers but that isn’t sustainable we know and don’t tell us that we’re
Getting less rful it’s been incredibly wet this year but um let’s see how water resources are come September of this year we know that we’ve got water quality problems on some of our streams this is the river grter right almost completely supported by treated effluence in the
Summers of 2019 and 2020 we know that we’re going to have more discharges into our water courses as we have more urban developments going on we know that we’ve got excessive shade where people have said don’t cut those trees back well if you don’t get light to our chalk streams you have
Nothing to dry the photosynthesis in the plant communities that are so important and if we don’t have those Rivers being flushed out by good flows they silt up siltation is a real significant problem on Chalk Rivers those gaps between the gravel particles which is where many of our invertebrates live it’s those gaps
Between the gravel particles that hold the eggs of brown Trout’s fire we know we’ve got invasive species coming along himay and balsom getting bigger and bigger possibly enriched by phosphate uh effluence in our water courses we know we’ve got signal crayfish marching up our streams there are people who
Still use herbicide on our Rivers kill off the natural beauty in um and we know that in these hotter Summers we’re getting algal blooms in our water courses not good so what’s most threatened it’s the things that don’t fly it’s the things that don’t have the ability to jump or
To swim up hard raging flood waters to get over structures to come to so we have Brook clamp praise Stone Loach spined Loach Bullhead and the native crayfish it may still be in our CER Rivers this one was found in the River cam at ichon in 2014 when some old uh
Willow tree roots removed from the river there may still be Relic populations those things don’t jump then this one this is the konoba Alpina that made nine worlds Nature Reserve famous until the drought of 197 76 caused that species to disappear and nine Wells lost its trii
Status so that species would have been there since the last ice age that species would have been there in those Springs stable waterlow stable temperature everything was just right for it until we suck too much water out and diminished its habitat to the point it could never
Return I’ve touched on more barriers or barriers being a problem people think fish jump no they don’t they swim this is the river ree at the barington Foxton road bridge that is an impoundment barrier stopping the migration of minnows chub Dace probably even brown trout they could try and jump but
There’s no pool there there’s no way they can get momentum to to basically to shoot themselves up that though less water means more barriers and ironically the environment agency have to measure the flow in our water courses and some of their structures their gauging stations become barriers um Pamela I was
Told I could speak for longer so I’ve gone slower I’m keeping my eye on it um if I try and wrap up for about 20 minutes or so start waving at me if you need me to so part of the work that wild trout truff does is we can walk award the
Course we can write reports for people and we can point out the good and the bad that’s our advisory visit service we can then take that advisory visit service we can walk the water course and come up with a project plan I’ve done that for the bab and research campus
They now employ me to get out there and take their staff members and to get them involved in their conservation of their river granta through their site and I’ve also undertaken a more significant habitat Improvement project with them which we delivered in April 2021 and most importantly we got some flood plane
Reconnection back and I’ll show you some examples of that we can make space for water this is just a nettle bed it can be graded out you can make shallow bays at the sides of rivers so you’ve got more online water storage when that River comes up in flood we can slow the
Flow by placing trees across the water trees naturally fall into rivers they’re an important components slow that flow hold back that flood water allow that water to flood out onto its flood plane flows go down the water moves on we can regrade the river bed we can
Bring up gravels to make that bed undulate to go up and down as well as side to side we can reshape the river so the public can be connected to it once again this has now been Wild Flower seeded and is an attractive walk through their
Sight we can put gravel bars back in to create these spawning areas for fish for brown trout for minnows da and chub we can find the river again keep your eye on these three trees at the back there completely hidden by that stand of rambles but there’s actually
Quite a nice little part of the river Grant about hidden underneath there flood plane reconnect ction my wife is kindly standing where I created an engineered lowered dip when the river floods the river able to connect back to this low risk area an area of wet Woodland why wouldn’t somebody allow
That area to flood it’s not causing anybody any problems but most importantly some of that flood water gets onto the land where it’s able to infiltrate and help to AC for recharge that’s something that we think is missing is urgently needed in parts of the the grind of
Catchment we can also make the river better for people foot Bridges will always attract people and dogs people and dogs wear out the banks you get lots of slopes high input of silt that’s filt and and clog the river gravels and degrade the habitat we can regrade those
Banks back we can make Beach light features so people have got somewhere clean and attractive if people are not connected to their Rivers why should they care I think it’s really important for people to understand and learn to love their Rivers really and so some of my final images is
The Holy Trinity is what Charles rangley called this what supports a CH a healthy talk stream you’ve got to have natural flow you’ve got to have clean water and natural habitats the stronger or bigger those three components are the healthier and more resilient your talk stream will be take away natural flow
And you haven’t even got a river take away good water quality and you might have a river but it’s probably not healthy you could have the best water quality you could have a lot of it but if it’s flowed in a concrete Channel it wouldn’t really be a chalk stream so all
Of those three factors have to come together to make you a healthy talk stream my final slide Pamela what will the future bring are we to expect more of this as our summers maybe get hotter but we use more and more water this is the river Grant at Stapleford in 2019 the
Bottom of the river was dry the top end was wet fortunate for the water being pumped in are we to see our tourists punting on an effluent River I don’t think they knew really what they were punting on take away the good water quality take away the good water quantity and we
Don’t really have a River cam anymore we’ve exposed travels but we can work together I’ve said many of these species will respond positively to Habitat restoration and this is why I’m showing Cambridge water company’s logo and the wildlife trust I’ve worked with them to place gravel in the river
Mel this is the river Mel near the back of mriu church good connectivity the Rivery put the gravel in and really a month later very good wild Brown drought about 45 cm long or spawning on that habitat make it connect it and they will probably come so we can have a very
Positive outcome for certain species but without the good water quality quantity and habitat some of these species won’t be as abundant as we would expect them to be thank you very much thank you Ro that was um amazing and uh inspirational and and I I live in
Stapleford so um I I’m very familiar with that and I was actually out with the grant an East Cambridge um Farm cluster uh last week looking at some of these interventions on the granter and having conversations with with the wildlife trust too and and all of the
About 15 farmers who were present about what they could all do collectively and how they can’t do things individually because if you do something at some point then you’ll actually be holding back too much water from the villages above um but if everyone just lets it
Flow out then um then you know that that that means that you’ve got the flooding Downstream and you don’t have enough of that water quantity and quality that’s it and do you remember the times when the little Rose Pub in stap food would get flooded definitely it was actually a
Couple of weeks ago and yeah and the whole the foot path the foot path to the school as well to saon was was flooded as well and and that bit that you created I’ve fallen over there thank you very much um for that lovely bit of um
Outfall of this the stream definitely a Well’s territory so um yeah brilliant brilliant and we now have an opportunity um for a conversation actually that that follows on from this and I I know I’m really interested to hear um uh you know thoughts I just we’ve got one question
In in the chat from from ruper P gold which is uh which we could start off with and then maybe have an open discussion I’m really interested in your views about this whether you know you’re a a talk streams expert you know whether you’re a journalist whether you’re a
Member of the public who’s rocked up for these um um you know hear this amazing talk from from Rob and from Chris um so all viewers are very welcome in here and do use the participant button to kind of raise your hand if you want to talk or
The chat so the question in the chat is what percentage of treated water can our chalk streams take before the brown trout and biodiversity move away yeah I don’t know Rupert I saw that question coming up I I think the issue really is water temperature um and oxygen concentration
So the river granted I showed there that’s the um wild trout fishery at hildersham um we thought they were going to lose trout in that summer but they didn’t lose a single one so somehow those trout managed to hunker down I’m hoping they probably just stayed at the bottom of
The pool where the water temperature is cooler they probably stopped feeding maybe there some of their biological processes is slowed down and they just endured it um I simply couldn’t say but it will come down to concentration of oxygen which will be one of the limiting limiting factors and
Temperature um but it’s rather sad thought that some of our fish are swimming in treated sewage eant but thank goodness it is treated um and we’re not getting the high amounts of sewage dumping in our water courses that other parts of the country are suffering definitely and we’ve got um from a sort
Of a question in in from Elizabeth in the chat can’t we work harder to get people to stop using so much water we can to answer that isn’t it really it comes down to people caring and if people don’t care they’ve got to be priced out and somebody did say that
Maybe there should be a two tariff sort of payment system on water so that people are allowed to use say up to 80 lers at a lower cost for their essential needs but if you want to start using higher volumes of water and you should
Start to pay a premium price for that I know the ofwat are very concerned that people of lower incomes aren’t pressured aren’t finding water at a high cost but certainly those people who are watering their lawns in the height of Summer washing their cars jet washing their driveways could probably afford to pay
For that extra water use and they probably wouldn’t give give a damn anyway so um we’ve got to find ways to positively encourage people to reduce water and effectively financially control I think because that’s money talk but um we’ve got to use less water because there going to be more people around
Here and I noed well I’ve noticed um we’ve got three questions I noticed also we’ve got um Charlotte along from uh the um elen news catchment so um very welcome to join so I’ll do it in hand order Roger you put your hand up first thanks Rob I I I really enjoyed your
Talk um uh you showed us one slide where I think it was natural recharge of the aquaa by you know um some exavation at the side of the river um I I presume there’s a a lot more potential in this I know there’s one landowner who said that
Uh he thought this should be something that the farmer should be encouraged to do and probably get you know government government subsides what what are your thoughts on both natural and artificial recharge of the chalk aquer to get these partly to get these streams going again I think it should be natural I’m
Actually quite concerned about artificial my understanding artificial recharge is basically pumping some water down into there and you don’t really know what you’re pumping down I think we need to rely more on the river’s natural processes the biological control of certain compounds for getting them to adere to Clay particles for biological
Control and diminish but if we just think we can pump stuff into the ground I I I think we’re on to dangerous territory we run the risk of potentially damaging or polluting our acas and once it’s down there who knows what that could result in so I I think we’ve got
The landscape it’s worked for Millennia why don’t we just use that process you know the bacteria there the fungi there the soils are there I I think we’ve got to be careful about how much we feel we can always find an engineered solution and I know that in the cambrid area When
The Water Crisis being talked of people say how can we design ourselves out of this it might Simply Be we’ve got to make space we’ve got to let the nature natural processes run it’s work for Millennia and it could continue to work for Millennia if we allow the space and
Time and I think I think certainly that the grant of farmers are looking at that kind of flood Meadow expansion and and what they can do and I certainly think that the new Farm incentive payments that have kind of changed and really increased around the you know the flood
Meadow could make a difference it could make because whatever is done has to fit with a farm productivity and profitability and so if this can be one of the services that a farm is delivering alongside you know delivering um food um then you know delivering water feels like a really important
Thing yeah Pamela the um there’s just been announced I think the farming sensitive payments for £1,200 per hectare for flood plane inhabitat and River reconnection so that seems to me is quite a large payment especially if that was wet ground that wasn’t very easy to farm in most years
So the farmers may start to be rewarded for encouraging flood reconnection I mean I I was with the yeah the grter oo Farmers as well looking at that and saying well this build floods you know three years out of five and before they’ve tried to make it productive
Because it hasn’t worked with the incentives but actually with the incentives now that that makes that a viable deliverable and certainly the the fowers along the oo Valley appreciating that’s not a chalk screen but you know rivers are important um but also along the grter and the cam very very aware of
That um right I’m just going to go to our next question we’ve also got um uh yep lovely um Peter we in natural cambrid have been having very meetings with de R the water companies environment agency and others to try to improve the water situation one chilling
Piece of information we got at one of those meetings is that 10% of toilets leak and not just a little bit two to 400 lers a day so if everybody can do something about their toilet it would help a lot excellent that’s that’s one of those what comp people do fantastic uh right
Uh next is um Stephen cam Valley Forum thank you um I just wanted to make one or two observations C Valley Forum has been pushing water saving methods and we’ve got things on our website which you can look at and learn from um I really wanted to ask Rob a question
Um I think one of the things I feel Cambridge Shire and Cambridge people need is a absolutely perfect chalk stream to look at to take the children to I think there is an opportunity of doing that on the granter and what I would like natural Cambridge to do is to
Persuade the Cambridge water company to use their abstraction reduction credits to save one River first at a time it could be done possibly on the grter best first and then I think we would be gaining hugely from it you cannot expect the granter to be a decent chalk stream if you’re
Taking 10 megaliters per day from that chalk 10 megaliters is for Olympic swimming pools per day from that tiny little stream it’s just not right and it’s not fair we’ve got to do something about it I agree stepen we’ve spoken about this quite a bit in the past and the
Granter is one of the only chalk streams that hasn’t been radically changed acong along its whole length the Shep is unnatural many parts of the Mel are unnatural the Hofer Brook is partly unnatural the ree Valley has been moved the plast to the grter we’ve still got a
Wide hard beded gravel um chalk stream with’ gently shaving banks in places and we know that the cambage water abstraction is directly affecting it and we know or we believe that they could ease back on some of those pumps and it’d be a fascinating exercise to see
How it could recover and remember the slide that I showed showing the river Granda dry at the bottom that’s completely back to front the chalk Valley should be at its wetest at its bottom end that’s where the downhill accumulation of all of that water should be building up but we’d suck the river
Granda Valley so dry it was not even holding water at the bottom that’s the the sad desperate state that River Grand has got itself into but if you look at it today it’s chugging through nicely the granta is it’s got gradient which means it’s got stream power it’s got the
Potential to drive natural processes to start its own restoration if we just give it back its water flow it could respond amazingly brilliant brilliant thank you and certainly you know natural cish but but also we have the local nature recovery strategy which we’re going to hear about from Gabriella as as our our
Final talk but that’s a real opportunity to to prioritize um both habitats such as chalk streams and actions or measures to to what we can do to um conserve and recover nature in them so is a real kind of strategic opportunity that the public consult that the sorry not consultation
Public engagement at the moment is is ongoing tour um I’d like to come toell uh next malcol hello thank you very much for an excellent presentation Rob that was really fascinating it was just a little bit uh more of a response to the question about how we can improve water
Efficiency and reduce water usage in uh demestic settings um the environment AG been doing quite a lot of work with the water company and the local planning authorities in Cambridge here um and also with the apologies there’s somebody doing building work upstairs if you just bear with me I’ll ask if he can
Just excellent the water conservation issues it’s something we have to just keep repeating because in the middle of this wetest winter who will really be thinking about water conservation who be thinking about turning the Taps off when they’re brushing their teeth it’s it’s a message it has to just put out a
Difficult message to get across Rob you’re quite right and uh Peter made an excellent point as well about leaky lose uh so there’s a lot of public information um and communication that needs to happen to get people to prioritize and understand water but uh the piece of work that we’ve been doing
With the water companies is pulling together data and evidence for the local planning authorities to use in their work with developers to encourage more um water efficient dwellings so that reducing the per capita uh daily consumption of water for something like 135 liters per person per day I think it
Is but trying to aim to get that down to something more like 85 uh you need to have um you know particular local evidence for that to happen for that to become a requirement but we’re working hard with them and with Def and deu at the moment to try
And ensure that th those water efficient dwellings are being are being um constructed brilliant thank you very much and I’d like to bring in uh Tim Brit Meer one of the natural chemers trustees but also the lead land owner for the uh um grter FM cluster thank you Pamela I’d just like
To um highlight this business of water recharge and what we are looking to do here um we haven’t I would would say made total progress yet but I think it’s on the way um we’ve looked at two type we’ve looked at two different forms of modeling now one which shows that we’ve
Got some uh here at Bartow we’ve got some quite weak chalk strata along the river valley floor and that is certainly one area which we’re looking at to see whether recharge might be possible there by effectively just digging a hole which has a chalk bottom you capture the water
Probably this season we would have captured water 10 times at least um and then it drains through the bottom of the chalk hopefully over a period of time and then you refill it again interestingly there is another set of modeling which shows that possibly the better place to do this is actually on
The shoulders of the valley where the chalk is closer to the surface and um funny enough my dog walks around the farm I know almost to a to within about 20 yards on each ditch that flows off The High Ground where the water suddenly disappears out of the ditch into the chalk
Aquifer 20 yards up um up the ditch it’s still flowing in water 20 yards down it’s dry as a bone so we’re looking at where the best model is to do that and and certainly hope to try and see whether we can get at least a trial in place by uh next
Winter but the other thing which um concerns me significantly is the whole business of um the water quality particularly when it comes to sewage works I have three sewage Works which discharged onto my farm from Villages and that’s the only source of water coming down the gred during the
Summer and by the time it gets halfway across my farm that water has disappeared and it’s only gone one place it’s gone into the aquifer and we know from testing that cam valy have done that the phosphate levels are very high and therefore we would really really like the environment agency and uh
Anglian water to look at the idea of at least once again triling settlement pits and and read beds and then my final point which actually really concerns me is the business of environmental support 20% of the water that’s used taken out of the grter um aquifer apparently is for
Environmental support and this is code for what I think was called the elu transfer system whereby they pump um the aquafer high up in the catchment take it on a pipe across my farm and put it back in the river again and uh I know for a
Fact that over the last 40 years that has drained the aquifer significantly more and if we’re going to make the grant for a showcase example I wonder whether we should think about stopping that transfer system I don’t know whether the the environment agency would like to come back to me
About that but it’s just a thought well that’s a quick rundown I I’ll speak up because I’ve said in public forums if it wasn’t for this water support network we wouldn’t even be talking about talk streams in camb here today if they hadn’t had those support networks in
Place from the early 90s when we started to get the drri Summers we’d have lost our talk streams 30 years ago it’s unsustainable but we got ourselves into this sticky and dangerous or perilous situation and yes it is something like 20% of the water abstracted in the Cambridge catchment by Cambridge water
Companies then used to support to mitigate the impacts of abstraction so it’s um a bit of a strange situation okay well that’s helpful um the answer is we just need to try and capture more and put it back into the aquer that’s great thanks excellent thank you um and sue
Wells um obviously got wcpa CPA Marine but I think you’re also with the friends of cherry hon Brook more locally so sue you come in sorry um I don’t know if you see me sorry I hadn’t realized what I was labeled with and I’m supposed to like
You um P I think we’re supposed to be on another call at the moment um but um just to say I just yeah I’m I’m representing FRS of Terry Hinton Brook here and I thought it a great talk by Rob I just wanted to emphasize step’s
Point uh I’m not we won’t have time to explore that more the idea of making the granter uh you know a proper chalk stream and and sort of investing resources there has been around for a long time and everybody seems to be in favor of it I can’t really understand
Why we’re not doing why we’re not pushing ahead to do that I have great hopes of the nature recovery thing but I mean we seem to be have been spending all our time doing strategies and project proposals rather than actually doing the stuff and having been involved in chalk streams
Now in Cambridge for well over 10 years I’m getting a little bit frustrated and I do think if we can push the granter idea if we everybody seem think that’s a really good place to start can we not get going with it I feel like to uh you
Know put some coins in a hat towards it because it doesn’t seem to me that we’re really making progress yeah I mean rob you can come back certainly I I felt a real kind of um urgency and a sort of collective will to to do something amongst the granta
Farmers when I was out which I’m sure Tim can can tested by too but yeah and the funding seems to be better now and in place from both the water companies and from defra but but yeah Rob do you have a perspective on that I don’t have anything much more
To say other than trying not to really speak for the water company I think they’re probably knowing that they’ve got to find out of amount of water are being very cautious over their resource if they agree to um cut a pump and we have a dry summer where public
Consumption and demand goes right up they might need to call on all of their resour es and it gets them into very awkward situation I’m not really justifying it for them but um they’ve got a business and they’ve got an obligation to supply all of us as
Customers so it has to be customer demand that has to go down but how on Earth is that going to happen when we’re going to have so many more people in this area that is the problem we can all use less but we know that demand is
Going to go up as we have hundreds of thousands more people around here so um Cambridge water company probably wondering where they’re going to end up until the reservoir is built yeah excellent thank you and um I’m gonna go to Charlotte stennard next um and Charlotte has also put a link in
The chat about a river dust online conference on 16th of April on uh buff zones uh and I’m sure um Peter will be willing to share that when he shares around the recording as well so thank you Charlotte and do come in do join our join the debate H thank you sorry my
Name is Charlotte stanard and I I’m the project officer for the cuse cat partnership the aim of which is to encourage everybody to collaborate around uh water environment Improvement great presentation Rob very inspiring I thought that was wonderful um and I wanted to say I mean there’s so much
That we could say but I think the the sort of one of the toughest things is getting the message out to people about using less water because we are one of the highest per per and a usage in Europe um and I think uh the message coming from the water companies gets
Lost because they’re the wrong people to to spread that message so Rob Mar had a very good idea that we should all get together all of our comms teams and we had an initial Mees uh meeting with um a few organizations and their comm’s teams and everyone was really behind it and if
We could get a piece of money a bit of funding to try and drive a project around some messaging that you know everybody needs a water bot you know and everyone needs to be doing x y and Zed and as I said you know we all need to
Come together to get that message out um and just to say that uh uh Cameo is uh at the starting point of developing a uh subcatchment plan for the cam so uh if anybody has any data that they can send any statistics or information please
Send it across to me and if you want to get involved in a sort of core Planning Group please get in touch thank you thank you Charlotte um anything you want to come back to then Rob I I’d like to point people out there’s some very
Good uh debates going along in the chat if um always tricky to see these things if you’re joining on a mobile um but uh some very good conversations about how we might do this certainly when I lived in broadland in Norfolk which was very near and lots of chalk streams they
Prioritize the the free giving of um water um water buts to those who in the catchments of the chalk streams you know went and the TD and and those um which was an interesting Council initiative you know they they really wanted to sort of Target um reduction by taking action
And and uh Quinton has put in some some things in in the chat uh I might bring you in in a bit Quinton as well if if you would like um and uh Matthew we’ll just go to you now as you put your hand
Up yes I just want to pick up the point that Rob was saying you know there’s there’s so many people here therefore we won’t have enough water for the for population I may be wrong on this but if I take the water flow in a year across
The whole Eastern Area um ENC catchment there is enough water coming through that area during the year for us to provide enough water for the whole population the problem we have is first of all we obviously have from the aquifers we have a quite limited amount
Of water that we can take from that and that’s got to be sort of managed much better but there’s enough water through the ooze and the N uh and actually had thought through the cam uh if it is held and then managed in the whole year it’s not as though we’re talking what
They have in China which is where the the rivers actually have run dry during the whole year so the question is how do we get the res reservoirs not I mean yes we have to we have to make sure we manage it better but we must deal with
The question of reservoirs and and I’m working on this with with Peter and a number of other Farmers that if in fact we can create more water held in the land there’s enough water okay and let’s think about that uh obviously we got to make sure we got to
Deal manage the aquafers much better than we have been but it is question of storage and and and how do we do that and at the moment we have everything based upon fantastically high level cost massive kind of produ objects which will all run run long too too late so
Work I’m looking at at the moment is really working with the farmers to build up reservoirs in their land because Farmers typically can build a Reservoir in about sort of three years rather than the 15 to 20 years that we’re talking about in terms of chatteris and that is
A basis if I look at what happens in Australia that actually is how the water Market Works in Australia much more dry much drier population area than we are uh and they basically have a market and they buy and sell water and water is held in the land and sold and I think
The point that you’ve made about getting the right pricing is very very correct I think it’s a very good idea of having so 80 limit and then over that you’ve then got to pay a higher price we have to get to realize that water is a natural
Resource and it is limited and they have to manage it better but it is possible for us to do this don’t get into a death spiral about thinking we can’t have enough population here there’s enough water to make everybody happy provided we just manage it in a more sensible
Way I’m going to give Rob the the final comeback on that um uh very interesting I would argue with Matthew there we look at the farming Community they roll up their sleeves they get on with it it’s their motivation look at Russell Smith farms around here the farm networks of
Irrigation they’ put in place because they’ve seen the value of their crops and they know got to hold the water um but Matthew’s right these big public projects just take decades to come on board um I do know a farmer who said he wanted to retain some more water on some
Land in South k maer um we haven’t got much many Hills but there there still reservoirs being built in the flat landscape you could there’s one near Milton isn’t there where the maze maze is a great big Reservoir it might not look nice but it’s solving a problem so
You know we can achieve it um I don’t know how it’ be tied into the public water supply but no it can be done you you I can’t deny that Matthew oh and I just noticed that Roger put up his hand again uh Roger did you
Want to to come in for a final and and different comment there or was that a legacy hand you’re on mute and I can’t see your picture no I’m sorry okay right here I am yes it’s about holding water back um if you have Downstream effects and you
Have restaurant effects if you if you cold water back during the winter the high flows it affects flows to estras the I won’t say a lot about this I did my PhD on this but um the Norwegians hold back about 50% of their snow melt for hydroelectric and it’s it’s it’s
Dramatically affected the uh inore ecology and Fisheries in some places so we have to remember whatever when however we manipulate the environment there’s something going to happen somewhere so it’s obviously we have to balance all these things up it might suit it might suit these chalk streams
But maybe it’s not Su suiting the wash so we we need to look in the round at these things um an excellent point to end on and thank you rob for your presentation and stimulating uh so much um discussion here I think you know water and chalk
Scams is is a very pop topic and certainly something that we will be looking at in relation to um the local nature recovery strategy um which is how I’m going to bring in Gabriel Yan’s uh who tells me she has also um she used to work in the flood risk uh assistant
Assistant team role has been been out with Rob on on some of these talk streams um is now the local nature recovery strategy officer uh keeping us all in order as we move forward with the development of the local nature recovery strategy and gabella has a a presentation and also has um some
Opportunities for final questions as we finish so gabella over to you if you want to share your screen thank you Pamela um can I just check you can hear me we can wonderful I’m just showing my screen right now now bear with me there you go can you see my screen
Yeah wonderful um good morning all and thank you for that lovely introduction Pamela and yes I did used to uh work in the flood risk and bity team assistant rout at the County Council and had an opportunity to go out and do some nfm on
One of the rivers in cire with Rob many many years ago but it was such a good experience and I really much enjoyed it so it was great to hear Rob’s presentation just now and all the great work that you’re doing um so today I’m
Going to be giving you a ever so quick update and progress on how we’re getting on for our local nature recovery strategy in cire and Peter uh I appreciate that there may be some people on this call today that actually don’t know what a local nature recovery
Strategy is so before I do that um I just wanted to give an update on what is an lrs um so local nature recovery strategies are system of spatial strategies for nature and environmental improvements and they are required by law under the environment Act of 2021 the purpose of these strategies are to
Identify locations to incate or improve habitats that are most likely to provide a good or great benefit for nature as well as wider environmental benefits uh we are required under the environment act to that each LNS must must contain uh two components the first one being a local habitat map which identifies
National conservation areas local nature reserves as well as other areas that we’ve identified and are particularly important for B diversity the second component is a statement of biodiversity priorities which Pamela previously just mentioned that we will be identifying these priority areas and the potential measures to go alongside them um and the
The the quick conversation that just happened after Rob’s um presentation I’ve been busy jotting down all of the great ideas and it’s really en eastic to hear what’s going on and you will have an opportunity at the end of this presentation to provide us with some further ideas um which will hopefully be
Fed into this statement of biodiversity priorities uh ever so quickly local nature recovery strategies are part of a wider nature recovery Network um each region in England have been a assigned as a responsible Authority so for K and Peterboro that is the combined Authority but they have contracted this
Responsibility to the kire County Council so uh who then have recruited me and we are working very closely with Pamela and colleagues on developing this strategy for kire and petur um ever so quickly on what we are trying to achieve in Kar and Peter um the focus areas that we would like the
Ellen r s to focus on so I’ll just quickly uh do a Whistle Stop tour of these as you may have already seen this slide in uh previous presentations that I’ve done um we want it to be a cross-county collaboration uh building on existing assets and expertise uh we
Want the stakeholder engagement to be well resourced and Well Done uh we want a document that everyone can get behind but is also building upon existing great work such as the Cambridge nature Network as well I don’t think we can see your slides moving or I can’t I don’t
Know if anyone else can I’m so sorry um which slide can you see I can see your base screen with Cambridge here and Peterburg local nature recovery strategy Beau butterfly is anyone elseu I just I just messaged you I think you need to to put it on presenter mode and then move
Through it we’re on the we’re on the preview where we can see all of them I just messaged you because I didn’t want to interrupt your flow but abely thank you for um I’m so sorry let me just don’t want to miss all the good stuff absolutely thank you for letting
Me know can you see this now yeah okay I’m so sorry about that um let me just I’ll go back to my previous slide so you can oh no now I’m going forward there you go uh so that was the previous slide that I was just talking about um
The local habitat map and the statement of biodiversity priorities um we these slides will be sent round afterwards so I won’t hang back too much um and then this was the slide that I was just presenting on so these were the areas that we hoping to focus us on developing
For the C and Pacha local nature recovery strategy um and where was I um we want a document that everyone can get behind and building upon existing great work in the area such as the Cambridge nature network uh We’ve developed a governance framework and we’re you know utilizing existing groups
And Partnerships and forums uh we also want to link into other environmental incentives such as biodiversity Net game Elms Etc uh as well as Community engagement it’s really important that we’re engaging with our local communities and that it’s locally LED nature recovery uh we’re going to be expanding upon natur Capital
Opportunities uh and lastly just linking into those wider environmental benefits such as health and well-being flood risk climate change Etc um so progress so far I came to this group back in December and I um basically gave you an update saying that we had commenced our stakeholder engagement work our data and evidence
Work stream um and I procured the relevant Consultants to support us as we we started our journey um since well that started in October but since October and December when I presented uh We’ve we’ve really hit the ground running and have started um doing a lot
Of great work uh so the first one the stakeholder engagement and communication workstream I cannot take any credit for this this has been Sol natural cers specifically Pamela that has been wonderful and pulled together expert workshops we’ve got our development group meetings that are happening as well as going to some Community
Engagement events we went to the Eco um El’s ecoair at elely library in early February where we engaged with local community members um to gather their Insight on what they want to see in their local nature recovery strategy Pamela’s also been doing some great work with farmers and land owners going to
The different cluster groups across the cire uh We’ve started member engagement um as well as you know interest group engagement and we have launched some surveys which I will come to ever so shortly uh the data and evidence Works stream we’ve completed our data request which was going out to
Partners uh and key stakeholders asking them for their habitat data uh this was used to update our Baseline habitat mapping um which has been completed Now by our Consultants natur Capital solution um we’ve also been working really closely with CK the K and Peter environmental record Center uh as well
As County Recorders on species recovery and that workst stream is well underway um as well as um commencing the opportunity mapping and the connectivity modeling that is to happen all of this data and all of this information will be used to create the local habitat map and the opportunity
Maps for the bi statement of biodiversity priorities that I mentioned on my previous slide uh as well as Gathering all of our outputs to start creating our priority long list which is what Pamela mentioned previously uh of our priorities in cambri and pach for nature recovery and the potential measures that go alongside
Them lastly our um Consultants L Consulting who are taking on our author editor role have done have completed some death based research on understanding existing land use strategies and policies and also that wider environmental benefit aspect that we need to now all incorporate into the first draft of the
Elen uh so as Pamela mentioned and as I just previously mentioned we’ve got two surveys out at the moment uh the first one is very much uh for individuals uh members of the public who would like to tell us you know what they want to see in their nature recovery but also what
Species and what habitats are important to them and why uh and we also have a second survey uh for for local groups and organizations um and this is very much for these local groups and organizations to tell us what are their top priorities and why um the slides
Will again be circulated at the end of um this meeting so if you want to quickly capture these QR codes now please do but you will get these these links um at the end of the meeting if you have any further questions you know please do feel free to contact me at the
Local nature recovery strategy inbox um and then lastly I I wanted to hand back to the group we’ve you know we’ve heard a lot of great conversation today following on from Rob’s um presentation but also I’m so sorry man dropped out of my head um on migrant birds and there’s been some really
Interesting you know discussions and I’m personally really inspired to what’s been talked about today but I I want to hand it back over to you the audience today um and to ask you you know tell tell us what what do you care about nature and why do you love it please do
Share us your ideas and how you know these ideas and projects may help shape nature recovery in the county so I’m gonna hand back to Pamela uh who’s hopefully going to in the last 10 minutes uh moderate this conversation and then I will be busy scribbling away
With all of your ideas but if you don’t have a chance to speak again please send them across to me or partake in our surveys um because all of this information all of this data would be be fed into the final draft of the alen RS
Um that’s that thank you so much it was a quick Whistle Stop tour yeah and we we’re just sort of finalizing our um our final sort of Engagement uh stakeholder meetings with three uh landowner meetings spread throughout the um country no not the country the county um and uh and also
Going along Helen was in chapis library um last week and I’m going along to Linton Library this afternoon and then I’m going to be meeting with peterb um city council members uh this evening to talk about Len RS um because ultimately the approval moves through the combined Authority which have been
Allocated but also its constituent parts of all of the district and City councils and unitary uh need to um approve this as it goes through its Journey so um opening the floor really if you haven’t spoken before it would be lovely to hear from you you’ve got a particular species
That you kind of think I I just really would love to see it I haven’t seen it I’d like to see more of it you know because as we know the PO components abundance and um um presence are are very important too so so tell us you can
Put it in the chat uh you can put your hand up you can leave me to flounder in silence um all of those things are are equally possible okay we’re going we’re going we’re going for silence um that’s that’s completely fine um Helen yeah just to Pam you mentioned
I was at chatus library uh last Friday and it was great to be there a small group that’s convened by the library I think this is their first sort of forum meeting lots of great Community groups doing some really great things particularly around tackling loneliness um the the reservoir the chatus
Reservoir was was measured was mentioned and somebody said oh but remember we’ll be getting a reservoir the general and there were about 20 people in that room quite a lot of people didn’t know about the reservoir they’ received a letter and read something in the newspaper so
Which just struck me how yes within groups like this we’re very aware of some of the big um infrastructure projects and the the the the challenges we’re facing but even at a very local level where people have these massive potential projects on their doorstep there’s very very little low awareness
About why they’re happening and uh any detail so I’m I guess it’s just a um a call to uh everybody here to uh yes to respond to Gabriella’s qu uh question about tell us what we can do here through the forums that we have through
The forums that you can do to help to raise that awareness piece and I’m really encouraged by Charlotte’s um mention of a group that’s looking to get together or has got together to to to do this is that the way forward is it about Collective campaigning um you know I
Don’t know so just a observation and a comment and a call to action about what can we all do more of to really do that connection piece um as as as Rob really said really well is s of people don’t connect with something they if people are not connected with their Rivers why
Should they care but I think replace rivers with nature with Woodlands with species they won’t care how can we all do that better very very well said and and can we all be nature evangelists and nature um ambassadors and I noticed Leslie you’ve got your um hand up do you want
To come in and there’s some there’s some great contributions in the chat as well about the greater chalk stream project and that libraries that are great plac places and you know keeping green spaces um and also from Helen about the oo Valley and washes um Leslie you got to come
In yeah hi P thank you can you hear me you okay yes I can’t put my um camera on sadly but um yeah thank you so much great talks um to say that first I’m just going to jump off of um what the previous speaker says which was uh said
Which was really great which is um about engagement and campaigning which is that I find in our local community there’s no lack of amazing amazing ideas of you know making a free water butt campaigns putting up Swift boxes making Swift streets there um lots of Amazing Ideas
From the Community but I find that the biggest difficulty is not sort of getting good ideas from the already engaged it is it is convincing the people who are not already aware if it isn’t about the big projects that are happening or um which is the much bigger
Problem I think of the climate crisis at all and there and the pressures that we face and the urgency and so I was just wondering if they’re like I wanted to say self-help groups because of the frustration but um but a peer group or advisory groups about how to do
Campaigning in a positive respectful manner that will engage those climate skeptical people and communities who are currently either in denial or just not aware or Not educated or Not in Love Enough like Rob said with the local nature that is disappearing so rapidly so I would just love any kind of advice
Of engaging those who are skeptical or opposed um to those great ideas in the community that’s that’s a really good point and a really good um really good challenge and actually I wonder if I might move along to sue because Sue it’s got a hand up but has also been um I
Know from our days back in Natural England years ago has been sort of very much part of the Cherry Hinton Brook Community you know um spreading that uh you know that message that engagement that that love um presumably in a community that has a mixture of people
From the very engaged to the the completely unaware or even antagonistic you probably wanted to put your hand up to say something else I’m sorry Sue well related um but thank you um yeah I was listening to Les Leslie there and thinking I agree totally with her but actually I don’t think we’ve
Done I mean we have tried in FRS of cherry Hinton Brook but one of the problems we find is um huge dependence on volunteers for doing a lot of the work and it’s just really really difficult I I don’t know if there’s a difference between the villages I I tend
To think having myself lived in villages and towns Villages I think it tends to be easier to uh not easy but you can get people together because you have a sort of community feel there but in the city with cherry Hinton Brook we’ve uh despite having Constitution that says we
Have to change offices on our committee every three years we have had exactly the same committee members for oh since we were set up since we set ourselves up in 2009 we found it impossible really with a few exceptions obviously there are some great people but it’s so difficult and there is a
Dependent I feel a lot of the agencies uh have these expectations of all these volunteers uh to do a lot of the work and and it it’s really difficult um and kind of linked to that I suddenly realized Rob hadn’t mentioned this greater Cambridge um chalk chalk stream plan that grew out of
That great I mean it’s come out of that great report that the wildlife trust and Rob and the city council did on all the Cambridge I mean it is Cambridge well greater Cambridge say is Cambridge Shire um of all the chalk streams and the actions immediate actions that needed
Going and suddenly this report has kind of appeared but this again with sort of remarkably little consultation there there’s going to be consultation now with on all the proposals but it’s taken again it goes back to my earlier comment about all these strategies it’s Tak an incredibly long time for the report to
Appear the strategy to be done and I just feel we do so much talking we listen to so many webinars um no criticism this one because I think it’s very useful it’s got a lot of uh effective people on it but we do I I think it might be a
Cambridge thing because a lot of us have got University backgrounds we like to talk and strategize and how can we get things moving a bit a little bit and I just wanted to flag up that fact that that project it’s in still a plan I don’t really know when the actions are
Going to start but Rob I don’t know Rob if you can mention that apologies um yeah Rob if if you want to come in we’ve got about we’ve got a couple of uh minutes um so Rob do you want to certainly so I’ve been involved with friends of river Shep for
Many years and yes it’s the same people get involved in the same Community issues and it’s trying to find new blood and it’s very very hard because often the doers are involved in so many things all the time by definition they are the doers and other people sit back and
Occasionally join but if it’s something you like keep doing it um Rob Mar’s latest cage talk stream plan I haven’t even seen it yet I know it’s out there I just haven’t got into it yet um it’s important to have big plans because big plans can unlock big money but at the
Same time Ruth hawksley and I we kind of quietly try and just get one thing done a year I don’t know how we manage to get things done but we do and it’s important because we need to have things happening otherwise the public and other people
Who need to be inspired will say well what have you done and if we can’t ever Point anything but point at any positive change then people would leave us but I love showing pictures of positive change that’s why I’m try and make my talk so
Visual but I also make sure that I try and just quietly get stuff done I’ve got a project in my home Village here in sheet of this summer With Friends of rivership and we’re looking to engage more people we’ll be connecting with the can Valley form so we we get a wider
Audience and get people trained up so there’s there’s things that are bubbling away there um it’s just pushing that is a perfect ending note really I mean I think the hashtag conservation optimism because so many people get to turned off when we just say you know all all the despair so
It was just wonderful and I think that they do one thing it’s certainly it’s the question that you know Helen’s created a kind of survey when we go around and ask people it’s the kind of you know what is that one thing then maybe we could all go away and do at
Least one thing and encourage all of our um friends and family and connections and villages to to do one thing uh and then we could all you know collectively make a difference for nature I’m going to finish there because we are at 12:00 I’d like to thank all of our um fabulous
Speakers thank all of you for joining in the debate and and all of the excellent um suggestions that have gone in the CH in the chat um thank you all very much and uh hopefully see you at the next one here to more nature everywhere and more nature recovery thank you thank
You we stop recording as well Helen that’s okay