Monitoring and Research

Why?

As wildlife conservation has developed, what started out as wildife recording, has developed into survey and monitoring. The two National Nature Reserves (NNRs), Woodwalton Fen and Holme Fen, have had their wildlife recorded since the 1800s, but it has been particularly important to extend the monitoring programme as the new parts of the Great Fen area come into restoration.

In order to ensure that the Great Fen is actually delivering these benefits for wildlife it is essential to maintain a full schedule of ecological monitoring and research, to:

1. Judge the progress and success of habitat restoration.
2. Inform habitat management decisions on new and existing land.

To determine "if we are winning", involves answering some of the following questions.

• What wildlife occurs and where?
• How do they move within and and in and out of the Great Fen?
• How are they affected by management?
• How can we manage to develop and maintain a healthy environment for wildlife and people?

What?

How far these questions can be answered varies in terms of the habitats we are investigating. Our projects include monitoring the land under restoration, and comparisons with our own and neighbouring farmland, and the NNRs.

A range of techniques and equipment needs to be used. For example, birds surveys involve walking across the project area in the early morning once a month and counting which birds are seen or heard.

Colonisation of new and recenlty managed ditches, ponds and meres, can be monitored by looking for amphibians in the evening, gathering data about aquatic plants, or pond-dipping for water beetles and other aquatic insects.

Existing habitats may be surveyed for water voles, which are rarely seen but common in the Fen and their presence can be inferred by looking for signs such as their droppings and burrows. Data on other mammals and their use of NNRs, such as bats and deer, are useful (see chinese water deer), for bats you need bat detectors, while some groups of species can only be identified using a microscope (see, for example, bryophytes).

Who?

Now, the monitoring that is carried out by contractors, partnership staff and volunteers, local natural history societies,  visiting naturalists and college and university students.

The Great Fen Monitors are a team of local volunteers, using useful natual history skills to help deliver the annual programme of survey and monitoring, coordinated by the Great Fen Monitoring and Research Officer. If you would like to find out more or become a monitoring volunteer, please contact Henry Stanier.