WHERE ARE ALL THE CUSTOMERS’ BEES?

Please keep in mind while reading that I have worked in conservation, in wildlife consultancy, in designing and implementing species record keeping systems in the early part of this century, wildlife species databases and specialist geographical information systems, (GIS), which were supposed to help protect wildlife.

I also run a successful wildlife consultancy on a day-to-day basis and so I have front line first hand experience of what I now refer to privately as The Circus.

Like every successful circus, the environmental NGO sector has an elephant or two in the ring.

Fact #1: Despite billions of pounds spent, much of it public on a variety of cash consuming NGOs, it seems that there have been no significant advances in biodiversity improvements or the collation of species records in 20 years or more.

The elephant in this virtual room is that we are in such a desperate state that we no longer have enough bees to pollinate our crops or wild flowers.

By any measure or metric you care to take, The Circus has failed.

Sure, there have been pilot projects, isolated areas of success, but no large-scale reinstatement of habitat, no changes to the planning laws, little change effected.

In fact, with the National Planning Policy Framework, there is even less protection than ever. And now our government want to allow building on greenbelt…and the NGOs have done what exactly?

Just like a circus, lots of noise, lots of flag waving, fake fighting, some tigers paraded about for photo opportunities and media clowns, but eventually it leaves town and all there is to show for the event is dead grass in a muddy field.

So how long before we do something else? Or do we wait for “something” to happen?

Species data is still gathered by a fantastically dedicated group of under appreciated volunteers…which brings me to…

Fact #2: Despite the millions of pounds that Biological Records Centres take UK wide from selling these people’s data to consultancies, which is used to carry out desk studies informing clients of the possible presence of protected species, only a tiny amount of that money, if any in most cases, goes back to the recorders who provide the data.

Fact #3. This shocking situation is not made any better by the fact that consultants are not even allowed, having purchased the data, to publish it as part of their reports.

This means that there is no actual proof that any proper desk study has been carried out. If anyone wants to they can produce a report without any species data, there are no legal standards that dictate that any desk study needs to be done at all to check for protected species records.

Fact #4: It is possible that reports can be produced that only consist of a site survey, which is impossible to conduct properly without some idea of the surrounding habitats and presence of protected species, such as bats, barn owls, dormice, plants, invertebrates. How is this going to even conserve what we have left, let alone improve biodiversity?

Fact #5. Many developments may well be doing untold damage to populations of rare and protected species, but as long as the cash keeps on rolling into The Circus, then it appears that nobody cares.

Fact #6: If we do not do something now, and by now I mean Monday, not some hypothetical now at some more convenient point in the future that we all like to think won’t come to anything concrete (like the invitation to dinner at that couple from Staines you met on holiday) then we are going to reach a tipping point very soon when biodiversity finally reaches an unsustainable state and results in a mass extinction event that will take modern civilisation down with it.

At that point even that dinner invitation with the swinger from Staines may seem quite inviting.

No, what we need is not more circus rings. No more clowns. We require concrete action, a real world solution which does not rely on unsustainable funding streams, NGO cash, charity donations or celebrity hand wringing and which provides quantitative data, updated regularly and preferably globally.

There has to be a better way to inform us of the state of biodiversity. Some way of providing a global species data set.

I have come up with one possible solution within The Magnificent Science Company that may well do just that. A commercial solution that solves the data issues which, in my professional opinion, underpins the biodiversity crisis.

A plan so cunning in fact that you could pin a tail on it and call it Mr. Fox.

And we are starting on Monday. Hope you can join us ∞