County's wildlife washed away

It is official, this summer has been the wettest since records began in 1914. But while we can put on our wellies and waterproofs or stay indoors and watch telly, our wildlife is not as lucky. The almost constant rain, cold weather and, of course, the flooding has all taken its toll on some of our favourite animals.

As floodwaters rose across our county last month you might have imagined that our birds would have been among the survivors. Ducks after all like water and the rest could just fly away.

However, some of our rarest and threatened birds, such as lapwing and curlew, nest on the ground on flood-plain meadows and it is probable that any young not yet able to fly may have drowned.

Kerry Lock, the manager of BBOWT's Chimney Meadows Nature Reserve, believes that at least one family of curlew chicks didn't make it to safety in time when the River Thames burst its banks.

Other birds, with unfledged young which nest low to the ground in scrub, such as chiffchaffs, willow warblers and reed buntings, will also have succumbed to the rising water.

Even animals adapted to live on the river bank will have suffered, so sudden and extreme were the floods. Water voles live in burrows along the edge of rivers, and while their homes are equipped with back-door escape routes to higher ground, the floods were so widespread it is likely that even these safe' areas will have been under water.

This is not good news for a species already suffering from a huge population decline. Results from a recent national survey indicate that water voles have disappeared from more than 89 per cent of the sites they once occupied 60 years ago.

Other voles and mice will also have become flood victims and many top predators, such as barn owls, which rely on these species for food, are likely to struggle in the coming weeks.

To most of us, a typical summer conjures up images of brightly coloured butterflies sunning themselves, the air heavy with the noise of bees collecting pollen and perhaps even the grasshoppers' rasping song coming from the grass.

All of our invertebrates need the sunshine. Unable to keep their own bodies warm, the sun's rays are essential to heat them up. It is only when they are warm enough that they are they able to go about their everyday lives of feeding and breeding.

The heavy rains and cold will have prevented much of this activity. Many invertebrates can survive by huddling down under vegetation and waiting for the sunshine, but if that life-giving warmth doesn't arrive for several days or even weeks, then the chances of making it through are greatly reduced. Smaller numbers of invertebrates also has a knock-on effect for all the many species that rely on them as food.

This is a problem or our resident bats. In July, mother bats are normally busy feeding on a host of insects in order to be able to produce enough milk for their one and only bat pup'. The pups' are the size of a 50p coin and at this stage are extremely vulnerable. The wet weather has reduced the number of invertebrates and prevented the bats from being able to hunt, forcing many mothers to abandon their babies or face starvation themselves.

Even plants that like it quite wet may well find all this extra water just too much to cope with. Oxfordshire's river meadows are famous for the glorious snake's-head fritillaries and spring time at BBOWT's Iffley Meadows nature reserve, in the heart of Oxford, normally heralds a stunning display of the purple-checked flowers. Next spring may, however, be different.

While the fritillaries like to live in wet meadows, they don't like to have their feet wet for prolonged periods, and certainly not during the summer when they should be busy using their leaves to send back energy to the bulb for next year. Not only can the leaves not do this while they are under water, there is also a possibility that the bulbs themselves might be rotting away.

The snake's-head fritillary population is carefully monitored by BBOWT every spring and this detailed information will help show what damage the flooding has done, and, of course, help to make sure that we do the best for the charismatic flowers in the future.

The winners? Well they are very few and far between. Although in the short term it would at least seem that carrion birds such as red kites are feasting on all the drowned animals. Frogs and newts may well have been swept along to new ponds, so increasing their distribution across our county.

So where does this leave us when protecting wildlife for the future? Well firstly, the poor weather and flooding may not have been good for our wildlife in the short term, but it certainly isn't the final nail in its coffin. Wildlife is ultimately very resilient and occasional catastrophic events can even be beneficial for habitats. What is important is that wildlife has safe havens from which it can spread out to recolonise the wider landscape. BBOWT manages a network of nature reserves across the three counties and these are exactly the safe haven that refugee and resident wildlife need.

In addition to these safe islands it is important to think beyond our nature reserves and about connecting our wild places across the wider landscape because that is the area that animals call home. To this end, BBOWT is undertaking ambitious landscape-scale' projects across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.

In future, to help prevent water from inundating our towns, we must allow our rivers to work naturally, and flood surrounding land so that it is slowly released as the water levels gently subside. BBOWT works strategically in many of our flood plains by both owning land and giving wildlife management advice to neighbours. By working with nature on this scale we are able to help protect both our homes and wildlife from the many extreme flood events that climate change may well hold for us.