20111116_R4

Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme

URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9640000/9640820.stm

Date: 16/11/2011

Event: British seasons face a "climate change lottery"

Attribution: BBC Radio 4

People:

Stephen Moss: Naturalist, writer and broadcaster, based at the BBC Natural History Unit
Tim Sparks: Professor and nature advisor to the Woodland Trust

Justin Webb: Presenter, BBC Radio 4: Today Programme

Justin Webb: It's pretty chilly in London this morning, or at least it was, very early, but of course it hasn't been, recently. We're told November's going to be the warmest for centuries. There are wasps still buzzing about, poppies flowering, it's all a bit unsettling. Stephen Moss is author of Wild Hares and Humming Birds: The Natural History of an English Village. He is on the line, as is Professor Tim Sparks, who is nature advisor to the Woodland Trust. Good morning to both of you.

Stephen Moss: Morning.

Tim Sparks: Morning.

Justin Webb: Stephen Moss, you did your research, didn't you, for your village study last year, so you had proper seasons.

Stephen Moss: I did, I had a proper year. It was a bit like the years I grew up with, in the '60s and '70s, where we had proper seasons. We had a nice cold winter, a fairly normal spring, summer, you know, the typical two fine days and a thunderstorm. And the wildlife responded to this. Wildlife likes normality. It struggles when we get problems. And the classic example, of course, is the humming bird of the book's title - it's not a humming bird, it's the humming bird hawk moth. And this is one of the winners of this climate change lottery, which is turning up in Britain, now, far more than it used to. It's good news for that little insect, very bad news for all sorts of other wildlife.

Justin Webb: How worried are you, Professor Sparks?

Tim Sparks: Well, it's quite astonishing how different the seasons have been in 2011, compared to 2010. I'm still astonished by how much there is in the way of colour in leaves on trees, and it looks like it could be probably one of the latest years we've ever known.

Justin Webb: Yes, you've been taking photographs, haven't you, of Remembrance Sundays, for quite a few years running.

Tim Sparks: Well, I've been - I've been looking at photographs of Remembrance Sunday for a very long time, and we've got photographs, obviously, going back to 1919, for that. And in the early years, in the 1920s and '30s, there were Queen Mary and others huddled under fur coats in completely - in the situation where the trees were completely bare behind them. And now, as you saw last Sunday, those London plane trees are still very green.

Justin Webb: And what that means, Stephen Moss, for the wildlife that you're worried about, is that it will have to adapt, and, over time, it's quite good at adapting, isn't it? I mean, that's what we animals all do.

Stephen Moss: Yeah, wildlife's always been good at adapting to gradual change. But the problem, at the moment, is, as Tim said, the changes are absolutely bizarre. We have one of the coldest winters of the century, two winters ago, and then we had the earliest spring ever, this year. And now we're having, as you said earlier, one of the warmest Novembers in recorded history. And the problem with that is that it's all very well for some creatures, but things like blackbirds and song thrushes are starting to breed. They're going to start nesting, because they think it's spring, and if we're not careful, we're going to have to re-name Autumnwatch "Springwatch". Of course, the serious side of this is that those birds perhaps lay eggs, have chicks, and then there's a cold spell in December, January, and of course those chicks die. And birds and insects and mammals can adapt, but they can't adapt to the sort of rapidity of change that we're seeing.

Justin Webb: There's also a sort of psychological side to it, for us, isn't there, Professor Sparks, that we - seasons are important.

Tim Sparks: We - yes, I mean we're delighted to see the return of spring. We don't like to see winter returning. It's almost like oncoming death. Um, so we're delighted that we've got - um -

Justin Webb: We like to have a little autumn, don't we, between our summers and our winters, as well.

Tim Sparks: We do. I mean, we like to kick around in leaves. We like to go out into woods and enjoy ourselves, and we like to pick fruits and berries, um, but we don't like to see the return of winter.

Justin Webb: Because it is one of the features, isn't it - I used to live in Washington, in America, where you really have about - I don't know, a few days between extreme heat and extreme cold. And one of the great glories of Britain is that we do have our springs and our autumns, Stephen Moss, and we would miss them, and not just miss them from the point of view of wildlife - which of course is important - but miss them from the point of view of us as human beings, and the way we live here.

Stephen Moss: Absolutely. I mean, the more that I grow older, the more I think about wildlife and the seasons in this way, its importance to us, and Wild Hares and Humming Birds really is an elegy, I feel, to those lost seasons, this lost pattern that - Tim says we don't like winter, but actually we do quite like winter, we do quite like the fact that we can play - build snowmans [sic] and play snowball fights, and that sort of thing. And that, we had last year - that happened, and then it's been taken away from us. And I worry that we will never get that again. I worry that we will have these bizarre seasons for ever more, and we won't have the pattern that we, as the British, have really evolved to love and cherish.

Justin Webb: Stephen Moss, Professor Tim Sparks, thank you both very much.