TRAGEDY ON THE COMMON
Animal welfare is a contentious issue and most of us rightly strive to make sure that animals under our control are treated well. We can do rather less about the welfare of wild animals, yet there is no avoiding the fact that wildlife faces a constant battle to survive.
Disease, starvation, injuries and death are routine, everyday occurrences in the countryside around us. They are integral to the way that natural systems work.Modern humans (and our companion animals) alone are shielded from the hardships that underpin natural selection - the daily battle for survival that has influenced our species’ evolution for all but a tiny fraction of its history. Most of us, in developed nations at least, no longer struggle to find food or shelter, and we don’t need to worry about keeping warm or dodging predators. This is in stark contrast to the way things once were and the way they still are for the wildlife that lives around us.
Luckily for the more sensitive of human observers, much of the quest for survival happens away from our prying eyes. Animals that are cold, or hungry, or sick, or injured know to keep out of sight as best they can. They don’t want to make it any easier for a predator to track them down when they are at their most vulnerable. But there is one animal in this area for which the battle for life is all too obvious.
The first sign of what’s to come is the appearance of mysterious blobs of greyish-white jelly, scattered about on our local common in the middle of winter. This substance has perplexed people for generations. It’s sometimes known as ‘star jelly’ or, less salubriously, ‘star snot’. Its sudden appearance out in the open fields and on the moors, with no clues as to its origin, led people to think it must have fallen from the heavens. Where else could it have come from?
Wait a few weeks and the answer becomes obvious.
From as early as the first week in January, clumps of this odd jelly start to appear in shallow water on the common and in the surrounding fields, this time in more familiar form, dotted with dozens of tiny black eggs. Star jelly is simply the remains of predated female Common Frogs that emerge from hibernation early. Individuals unlucky enough to be found out in the open, by a corvid or Heron perhaps, disappear into the food chain, leaving only the indigestible gelatinous masses that would have protected and nourished the eggs.Once the breeding season is underway, clumps of spawn can turn up almost anywhere with water a few inches deep. There are a few small, rain-fed ponds locally but most of the spawn is deposited in diminutive, short-lived pools. In pasture fields, gateways are a favoured site, where poaching by cattle and farm machinery has created shallow depressions that fill with water. Out on the common, rain-filled wheel-ruts are used, left by the commoners when they have driven across to check on their cattle. Strangely, the Frogs themselves are rarely in evidence, especially away from the permanent ponds. Presumably all the action happens under cover of darkness, when there are fewer predators to disrupt proceedings.
By March, clumps of jelly have been replaced by living streams of tiny, black tadpoles. This is when the real trouble starts. Over the next few months, there is tadpole Armageddon. The losses are immense. As farming activities increase in the early spring, the same vehicles that helped create water-filled ruts return to exact a terrible reckoning. They follow their old tracks across the common and churn tadpoles into the mud. For any survivors, the main enemy in the coming weeks is warm, dry weather. If there is no rain for a while then the pools begin to dry out, a little more each day, and the tadpoles become restricted to ever smaller puddles. I’ve seen remnant pools that are essentially more tadpole than water, full of writhing animals that were once able to swim around in a far bigger area.
Rain can still save them at this stage, but if it fails for a few more days, they are doomed: a lost generation reduced to a thin, rubbery film on the surface of the mud.This, I suspect, is the reason that some Frogs risk everything by emerging from hibernation as early as possible. The cold conditions are far from ideal, and they stand out as an attractive target for predators at a time when other prey is scarce. But the earlier the eggs are produced, the better the chance that tadpoles will become froglets, able to leave the water before the early summer sun burns it all away.
The adult Frogs are caught between two options that appear equally unappealing: risk your life by emerging early to give your kids a better chance; or play a longer game, minimise the chance of predation, and hope that spawn laid later in the season occupies water that endures the sun, if not this year, then perhaps the next, or the one after that. It’s worth remembering that each mated female has (on average) only to produce two eggs that manage to survive into adulthood for the population to be maintained. Given that Frogs lay so many eggs, a certain amount of carnage is inevitable. It is nothing much to worry about - unless of course you are a Frog.
If you are unmoved by the plight of amphibians - and not everyone is a fan - then perhaps birds will elicit more sympathy. In the breeding season, those of us who put up nest boxes around the garden can get a rare insight into the struggle for life. A female Blue Tit breeding in a nest box might lay ten or more eggs, but the pair will rarely manage to rear that many young. The weaker chicks do their utmost to fight for a share of the food, but it’s a hopeless battle. At the end of the season when we come to clean out the boxes, shrivelled husks at the bottom of the nest are all that remain of these ill-fated individuals.
In winter (when most Frogs are tucked away in hibernation) birds face a constant fight against starvation and spells of freezing weather.
On the coldest nights, those that have struggled to find sufficient food during the previous day will have no stores of fat to burn in order to maintain their body temperature. Many will succumb to the cold, dropping from their perches in the dead of night, a brief disturbance of the leaf-litter below marking their exit. They go unnoticed by humans, though not by the scavengers of the forest floor. Their death will at least help to feed other animals. And that’s the thing about natural systems; a constant stream of losers is required in order to keep the winners alive.Another rare insight into the perils of life for wild birds comes when we witness predation. All but a tiny fraction goes unseen, deep inside the woods, hidden among hedgerow foliage or within the long grass of a meadow. The Sparrowhawk is the bird predator most likely to offer us an occasional glimpse of reality by hunting in the open close to our homes. Female Sparrowhawks can take prey up to the size of a Woodpigeon, though the squeeze of talons and sharp claws that quickly kill smaller birds are not always enough to finish off a pigeon. I’ve watched from the house as a Woodpigeon has gradually weakened and given up the ghost, having been pinned to the ground for several minutes, its feathers torn away from it one beak-full at a time. And I’ve wondered about whether it would be right to intervene. Save the pigeon from a prolonged, unpleasant death? Or allow the raptor to continue to enjoy its hard-won meal?
Most birdwatchers, I think, would hold back from interfering. By and large, we accept that suffering and premature death are integral parts of life in the wild; intervention is usually impractical in any case. We (most of us anyway) take responsibility for the welfare of domestic animals while accepting that wild creatures must fend for themselves. We help where we can in our gardens by providing food and nest boxes. Yet, for the most part, the battles for survival are left to play out, brutal though they may be.
There is, however, a rapidly developing area of conservation that is causing us to think carefully about where the limits of our responsibilities lie.Rewilding is a controversial and ill-defined concept. Broadly though, it applies to conservation projects where natural processes are given more of a free rein. Rather than managing a habitat to achieve a particular outcome, such as maintaining heathland by clearing scrub, the approach is more flexible. The end result is determined by letting nature take its course and waiting to see what happens, more than by our own preconceived ideas. A well-known, much publicised, example from the Netherlands has highlighted one challenging issue that straddles the boundary between non-intervention and animal welfare.
The Oostvaardersplassen is an area of fifty-six square kilometres of coastal wetland set aside specifically for wildlife since the 1970s, with minimal human intervention. Early in the project, grazing animals were reintroduced to increase the chances that a variety of habitats would develop and be maintained naturally, rather than the whole site becoming dominated by uniform, unchecked scrub and trees. These included wild species such as Red Deer as well as old breeds of cattle and ponies as surrogates for the native wild horses and cattle that have long been extinct.
This project has been a huge success in terms of the wildlife that now thrives there within a diverse and dynamic range of wetland habitats that are changing all the time. Thousands of waders, ducks and geese are present in winter and there is a wide variety of breeding birds. Bearded Tits and Marsh Harriers have moved into the reedbeds, and in areas where bushes provide cover, Penduline Tits and Bluethroats can be found. Where more
mature trees have grown up there are Goshawks, Willow Tits, Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers and Hawfinches.
White-tailed Eagles and Ravens also breed, taking advantage of the wide open spaces and an abundance of animal carrion.
And therein lies the problem. Left unmanaged and with no natural predators, the deer, horses and cattle increased when conditions were good but starved to death in large numbers during prolonged hard winters - delighting the eagles and corvids but not the human visitors. Those running the project were reluctant to intervene because the whole idea was to let natural processes unfold. Others were not convinced, believing that the welfare of the animals should come first. In some ways, this is a larger-scale version ofthe Sparrowhawk-Woodpigeon conundrum that we all face occasionally. Leave things to nature or intervene on welfare grounds?Ultimately, a compromise was reached at Oostvaardersplassen and there is now a cap on the herbivore populations with humane culling if numbers build up too much. It has been accepted that because the animals are fenced in (though the area available to them is a large one) and have no natural predators, humans retain some responsibility for their welfare. In effect, the argument hinges on the way we define ‘wildlife’ and ‘natural’ processes. Those involved hope to move further towards a fully natural situation in future at Oostvaardersplassen. Some of the fences may come down in order to reconnect the area to the rest of the landscape, including other wild areas. It is also possible that top predators such as Wolves and Lynx might recolonise (or be reintroduced) and help to naturally constrain the herbivore populations.
The aspiration remains for Oostvaardersplassen to be a place where nature dances to its own tune, as much as possible, rather than being driven by the ideas and ethical concerns of humans. Hopefully we will start to see more of this type of project in Britain in the coming years, both in the wilder and less heavily populated uplands, as well as in the lowlands. One thing is certain: the heated debates about the precise meaning of ‘rewilding’ and the balancing of natural processes with concerns about animal welfare and the need for interventions are sure to continue.