Page 62 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #10

NEWS FEATURE
60
US wildfires were recorded
in early July, burning
504,000 acres of land –
up by about 25 per cent
from a year ago.
33ºC
was the top temperature in
Finland, so even the
Arctic Circle felt
the heatwave.
Right: the 2018 many freshwater
wildfires, such as habitats could
in Lancashire, may cope; the heat
cause permanent benefitted some
peatland damage. of our native
Far right, from the butterflies,
top: watercourses including the
dried out, but purple emperor.
wood and ringlet suffered large declines
in 1996 after the very dry summer in
1995. But warm weather may speed the
northward spread of butterflies such
as holly blue – assuming they aren’t
hindered by drought impacts.”
Odd year for plants
Trevor Dines of Plantlife paints a grim
picture of the UK’s flora. “Grassland
that was full of wildflowers this May
and June was brown, parched and
desiccated by July,” he says. However,
it’s impossible to get a meaningful idea
of the current condition of our plant life
without considering the longer-term
context. As we sweltered, it was easy to
forget that this year’s blistering summer
followed a long and severe winter.
“It’s turning out to be an extreme –
and odd – year for plants,” Trevor says.
“The long, hard winter was great as it
helped a process called ‘vernalisation’,
which stimulates the production of
flowers. Though spring was long and
cold, many plants flowered like mad
through March, April and May. Even
up until mid-June, meadows and
grasslands were looking fantastic.”
62 BBC Wildlife
But with little significant rain between
May and mid-August, many plants were
forced to adopt drastic survival tactics.
They jettisoned flowers, leaves and even
above-ground shoots in order to withdraw
resources into the roots.
In some ways there’s nothing surprising
about a heatwave. It’s summer – isn’t it
supposed to be hot? “I tend to think this
year has been a rare return to what was
once normal,” says Jon Dunn, a specialist
in orchids. “That’s probably been good for
orchids – and indeed other wildlife.” But
as the drought dragged on, he adds, later-
flowering orchid species found life hard,
wilting or even failing to flower.
The immediate impacts of drought can be
dramatic, but what’s often more important
“ Species of bird that feed on
aerial insects had a bumper
breeding season, but species
that depend on soil
invertebrates sufered.”
Paul Stanclife, BTO
is resilience – the capacity of a species or
ecosystem to return to good health once
normal service has been restored.
Jeremy Biggs of the Freshwater Habitats
Trust is keen to stress the natural variability
of water levels in ponds, lakes and rivers.
“Droughts are normal in fresh water,” he
says. “About half of everything that lives in
water is fine with drought. There’s a range
of aquatic plants that are happy with, or even
need, periods of drought. The plant starfruit,
for example, is fine in temporary ponds.”
Froglife patron Jules Howard is similarly
upbeat about the potential of freshwater
habitats to handle the heat. “I’m not too
concerned,” he says. “It has been a splendid
year for pond-watching, because so many
animals are drawn towards them for Firefighters: Lindsey Parnaby/Getty; watercourse: James Osmond/Alamy; purple emperor: Derek Middleton/FLPA
water. Ponds have
incredible value
in years like this.”
Jules goes into
detail on life in the
‘drawdown zone’ –
the area exposed as
a pond’s water level
is lowered in the
summer.
“One of the myths
October 2018