Great Expectations, Banks Mining open cast and "all the infections that the sun sucks up"

When the escaped convict Magwitch ambushes the boy Pip at the start of Dicken’s Great Expectations he does not just appear on some anonymous street corner or leap out from behind a tree. Instead he looms out of the miasma fog of a Thames estuary salt marsh, more resembling an ancient bog creature than a man, coated in mud, dripping slime to menace the boy who would become his great friend (that's them from David Leary's superb 1946 film). Dicken’s choice of a marsh is no co-incidence. Certain habitats have always had particular associations. Think of a hay meadow for the joys of early summer (Cider with Rosie) or a windswept moor for doomed, gothic romance (Wuthering Heights). Wetlands ooze a particular menace; unruly, unkempt, their inner workings barely visible. They can swallow up a man or women and leave not a trace. Dancing lights lure the unwary to their doom. Diseases rise from their foetid waters. In the Tempest Shakespeare has Caliban curse his vanquisher, Prospero,

“All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease.”

Then again Shakespeare would know all about the foul airs of bogs and fens since his famous globe theatre was then in unlovely Southwark, a mixture of very dodgy taverns, stinking fish ponds and even stinkier clientele.

One problem with wetlands is that they can be a hard sell, not just existing wetlands but also the possibility of creating new ones, for example managed retreat of the coastline or inland sites designed to hold flood waters. Wetlands provide a wealth of benefits: flood control, food, building materials, mopping up pollution, wildlife and recreation but these may not be obvious, except to specialist visitors such as bird watchers or flood control engineers.  New sites might even risk creating worries by visibly flooding.

The Banks Mining Open Caste proposal includes a wealth of environmental data and an emphasis on restoration, much of it focused on wetlands. Not a hint of Magwitch.

Low Newton and the new and old first years

Two days of autumn murk, the rain barely able to decide if it should be fog or cloud. Then two days of brilliant low sun, searing across the landscape, picking out every curve and trench, hollow and bump. Three weeks into their new course and we took the Environmental Science first years for a walk over the southern Cheviot foothills, then, the next day, along the coast to Low Newton. The sea was perfect pale blue with huge rafts of gulls, made white specks by the sun, bobbing off shore. This little dune slack pool is tucked behind the high dunes at Low Newton, a deep, warm hollow protected by the steep dune seaward and a cosy mess of wet woodland north and south. Red Admirals showed off with glide fly-bys around us

The pond was dug out some fifteen years ago by the National Trust who own the site. They could have dug out the whole area of the slack but, instead, put in six separate pools of varying sizes. Each one is now rather different. Clusters of smaller pools usually have more species of plants and animals than one large pond because each pool goes its own way. The pools at Low Newton are now chocked with bur reed and bulrush, over a vivid carpet of moss. Ideal pools to bury carbon, the moss layer keeping the sediment wet and anoxic even if the site dries out.

Post grad Scott came along on the walk, outlining his work to the students. That's Scott on the left. Two days of hard working, (and one night in Wooler of hard pool and pints), and they were still keen to note down the first hand account of research, a revealing mix of physical struggle in the mud and delicate geochemistry in the lab. Six years ago Scott himself was stood there, a first year himself.  An inspiration to our newer recruits. They probably learnt more in 10 minutes talking with Scott then in a two hour lecture. The one thing they can all do, whatever their future holds, is dig a pond.

Pretending it is summer with Druridge Bay's late butterflies

Autumn is not my favourite time of year. Where some people see a mellow, fruitful, contemplative landscape I just see it getting darker in the morning. Ruthless midwinter is just fine, the completed dark a stage set for lights and sparkle, but autumn is just grey and damp.

September however has been dramatically warm and sunny, the low rays casting each day into a silver and gold wonder. This speckled wood butterfly for instance, still out in good numbers and fresh specimens too, newly hatched and perky, flying up in battling pairs. Before 2008 speckled wood were a remarkable novelty in the north east but are now well established along the coast. They are one of the most reliable sights throughout the summer and multiple broods keep hatching so long as the warmth lasts. It is the expansion of butterfly and dragonfly ranges north into Northumberland that has me convinced that the climate is warming. These are sun loving species, not especially fussy about habitat: it is not some change to the landscape that had lured them from the warmer south Speckled wood, for example, are perfectly at home in gardens and parks. Along the Bay they do well at sites such as Hauxley with a mix of dappled hedge shade and open grass. Their caterpillars feed on common grasses, whilst the adults hold territories along the edges of paths and rises. This one is using the sun fuzzed seed pods of a willowherb as a launch pad to see off rivals

I do my best not to take them for granted. In 2008 I was startled to find on in Newcastle. In 2010 I broke my mobile phone, sitting on it in my haste to photograph one at Hauxley. Now speckled woods are a familiar, everyday companion. On the other hand I’ve not seen a wall brown for a couple of years and these more orangey cousins of the speckled wood look to be in trouble.

The butterflies briefly help pretend it is still June and July but the evening chill is creeping up on them. I know that the Bay is often at its best for bird watchers in Autumn but the colour is leaching away and the last flowers look scraggy and folorn.

The Druridge Bay open cast proposal and exactly who owns the elephants

In the United Kingdom we are fond of elephants. They are the staple stars of natural history TV, their close knit family lives, endearing babies and charming eye lashes creating a ready empathy as we watch their triumphs and challenges. Their struggles in the face of drought and lions, or, worse, our industrial poaching for ivory only endear them further. Elephants seem to have a sense of their own mortality and existence, which are very rare properties in the animal world. It comes as a surprise to many people in the UK that elephant big game hunting is nonetheless legal in much of southern Africa, and that some conservationists positively support this sport. The logic is grimly simple. If hunters pay a lot of money to shoot an elephant and then a substantial chunk of that cash goes to the local people on whose land the pachyderm was shot then the local people will put up with living next to these large, fast, greedy, clever leviathans. We are fond of elephants in the UK.... but we don’t have them in our back yard.

The problem is with approach to conservation is exactly whose land an elephant is on (or, technically, was) when it was shot. Trophy hunts linked to conservation have often run into problems once people realise the potential pay out. The idea works best where it is wholly clear whose land it is and who counts as local. Which is also part of the dramatic tension at Druridge Bay as Banks are about to submit their planning application. Who is a supporter and who against, and how local do you have to be to count?

Or, as Ronald and Douglas Smith put it when describing objectors to the mine proposal in an interview for Look North:

 

“It’s the people as moved up from Newcastle”,

“Haven’t got a clue what they’re on about”

These are good points, familiar to many a conservation debate. Town vs countryside, locals vs outsiders, bunny huggers vs despoilers of the countryside.

The Smith brothers’ opinions matter a great deal. South east Northumberland is an area rather cut off and left behind by economic powerhouses further south. Jobs are needed, there is a proud mining heritage, the economy needs a boost. So will the objectors be immediately check mated? No. The trouble with the outsiders/local argument is it all depends where you draw those lines. Which is exactly where the problems start with who owns a valuable elephant.

Funny how the challenges of wildlife in Drurdige Bay or southern Africa can be so similar.

Druridge Bay, Banks Mining and the open cast die is cast

Druridge Bay is about to become an amphitheatre for a classic battle of ideas and ideologies that that fought over a countryside for hundreds of years. The battle will not in some exquisite Coliseum but down and dirty in an open cast mine, more the scenery for 1970s Dr Who than Gladiator. Banks Mining are about to lodge their planning application for a new open cast between Cresswell and Druridge villages. Look North did a fine job of tracing out the battle lines: jobs, tourism, landscape, wildlife, energy, community, money. Their storyline captured the contested views of what might or might not happen very neatly, a microcosm of environmental debates from around the world.  There were firmly held views, with anti-mine protestors dismissed as know-nothing outsiders whilst equally local opponents of the mine worried that alternative businesses would be snuffed out.

For conservationists the open cast proposal represents a complex and unnerving dilemma. The best wildlife sites along the Bay are restored open cast mines, from Hauxley at the north through East Chevington and Druridge Pools. The potential of a new site, restored as a fine reserve once mined out is obvious. On the other hand that might not be the outcome. Hauxley, East Chevington and Druridge Pools were all handed over to the care of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust or National Trust. Trouble is that Banks do not own the proposed new site and cannot offer this prospect as a definite prize to aim for  beyond the short term horizon of mining. I suspect conservationists will be caught in the cross fire, at least in the short term. Fail to oppose the mine and we will be challenged by protestors who can draw on the deep roots of anti-nuclear power and sand extraction campaigns on the Bay. Fail to support the mine and we will be portrayed as anti-jobs, lacking the vision to see the future benefits.

I suspect this very blog will haver between these two poles, not least because of both the brilliant potential for a new wildlife site but the deadly uncertainty that it can be delivered.

Meantime the light has changed to autumns spun gold, warm in the day but the edge of cold in the air giving the lie to pretending it is still summer.

The whole wheat diet is not doing these ponds any good

Here is one of the Ellington Farm arable field subsidence ponds in September 2013 (left) and this July (right). In 2013 the wide, shallow pool had stayed wet most of the summer, the open water ideal for gulls, and waders to loaf about leaving the water’s edge with a scum line of preened feathers and down.  It was ploughed through in the autumn but then left unplanted and soon reverted to its less domesticated state. In 2015 the pond was waterlogged over winter but only as a small central pool and the winter wheat has been drilled, germinated and is fast approaching harvesting. I doubt that any teal or avocets hung around this year. Since 2010 we’ve kept track of when these ponds dry and fill, and their changing areas. The arable field ponds are particularly sensitive to the rainfall of the preceding month, the ponds in amongst wetland mosaics and dune slacks less so, perhaps buffered by a more waterlogged surround. 

If the pond stays like this the whole lot can be ploughed and planted this autumn, which may be enough to knock it out of the wider pond-scape and banish the wildlife that likes these disturbed, open flashes. The wall of wheat looks likely to advance, unless the weather turns fearsomely wet.

Drought and the plough: the subsidence ponds' tough summer

July has been an unlovely mix of cloudy, clammy days. Nonetheless we have had little sustained rain and the effects are obvious as the Bay’s smaller wetlands dry out.  Not a problem in itself, especially with the mosaic of pond types scattered across the landscape.  Perhaps a greater threat is the interplay between the weather and other forces, in particular land management. For example this subsidence pond at the south of the Bay at Ellington Farm. These fields are dotted with seasonal ponds, shallow bowls that fill every year, roundels in winter then choked with the ephemeral mayweeds and oraches of disturbed ground in summer. You can see the white splodges of scentless mayweed in bloom. This pond has been the summer hangout of avocets and gulls in recent summers but not this year. The dry weather has allowed the wheat to grow thick and strong a long way into what is normally the pond’s core. It is now a small remnant, forlorn in amongst the crop. The dry ground also means that tractors can plough through, rather than round.

It could be worse, for example this pond.

 

It’s not there. You can make out the faint curve where it has been but this summer a solid mass of wheat.  There are none of the characteristic plants in amongst the phalanx of stalks, only a huddle of pineapple mayweed along the distant hedge line edge.

Pond and their wildlife can cope with drying out, so long as there are refuges to retreat to then re-advance from. However the dry weather has tilted the balance in favour of the intensive cropping.  The land use looks to be the greater threat to the pondscape’s survival rather than the dry summer itself.  It is a classic threat, a double whammy of drying out and land use intensification. Wildlife can ride out the occasional mishap. But multiple stresses take a toll.  The subsidence ponds are having a tough year.