7, October 2024
Helping Habitats: an Interview with Dr Juliet Rose
It’s World Habitat Day – and protecting natural habitats has never been more important. We caught up with Dr Juliet Rose, Nature Guardian on our board and Head of Development at the Eden Project, to find out more about habitats and how we can help them.
Image above: chalk meadow, courtesy of Dr Juliet Rose
What is a habitat?
A habitat is the natural environment where plants, animals and other organisms live.
What makes a good habitat?
Diversity. Habitats are characterisations of a particular community of species that are suited to a particular environment – ideally that community should be as biodiverse as possible.
The Eden Project is home to the National Wildflower Centre (NWC), which aims to restore wildflower habitats across the UK. One example of a wildflower habitat is a meadow. This is characterised by having a particular number of indicator species (the species you’d expect to find there) – in this case, things like wild carrot and ladies bedstraw, hoverflies and bees. A healthy habitat contains a good number of indicator species. The more species and the more genetic material a habitat has, the more resilient it is to shocks and change. It’s important to remember that below-ground biodiversity is vital too and this supports above-ground biodiversity. In a habitat, different forms of vegetation support the layer of species that depend on them, such as pollinators and other insects. In turn, they support the layer above that, such as birds and mammals. The whole thing stacks up like a cake – in a habitat that’s not doing very well, there are fewer layers in the cake.
Why is it Important to Spread Awareness About Habitats?
We’re in the middle of a biodiversity crisis – and the UK is one of the most Nature-depleted countries in the world. The Natural History Museum’s amazing Nature Intactness Index measures how intact a habitat is, country-by-country. A healthy measurement is around 90% intact, and the global average is around 79%. In the UK, unfortunately, we’re only on about 59%, which puts us in the bottom 10 globally. We’ve obviously got work to do!
Habitats are fundamental to life. Without them we couldn’t eat, we couldn’t breathe, we couldn’t do anything, really. In the UK, we’ve lost 97% of our wildflower habitats since WWII. They provide lots of services; they sink carbon, they help with managing water, but they’re also really beautiful – they’re a big part of the tapestry of our landscape and they bring people a lot of joy. At NWC, our job is to try to bring those habitats back, in all their glory.
Why Should We Protect Our Local Habitat?
From a purely selfish perspective, habitats look after us. They manage carbon, release oxygen, help with water supply. But there’s an ethical reason, too – and it’s similar to the thinking behind Nature On the Board. As humans, we’re part of a bigger community of species. We’re the dominant species but with that comes great responsibility: being good custodians and looking after the living things we share this planet with.
What can we do to help protect habitats?
Start at home. If you have a garden, plant pollinator-friendly flowers or give a small patch over to wildlife. You can even create a mini meadow in a window box.
On a local level, you could support organisations working to restore habitats near you. There are lots of initiatives all over the UK – in both rural and urban areas. [The Conservation Volunteers, Groundwork and the Wildlife Trusts are good places to find volunteering opportunities].
At a global level, you could support organisations that are saving habitats worldwide. The Faith In Nature carbon-balancing partnership with World Land Trust (WLT) is a good example, because WLT protect the world’s most threatened and biologically significant habitats. Rainforests are the obvious ones, but there are also deserts – and grasslands, the unsung habitat heroes!
It’s important to educate yourself about the biodiversity of life, too. Go out and experience habitats in real life, head to your local Nature reserve, learn the names of things. Be an observer, as well as a learner and a doer.
What is the main factor for local habitats being endangered?
Taking the example of wildflower meadows again: after WWII, there was a big push towards making the UK more self-sufficient when it came to food. With the advent of artificial fertiliser, farmers could suddenly grow crops on the poor-quality soil of ‘marginal land’ where wildflowers had thrived, and a lot of habitats were destroyed. The arrival of agricultural machinery meant landscapes needed to be flattened; ditches, hedgerows and anything that caused a differentiation in the landscape (and therefore a differentiation in habitat), were lost.
Expansion and development have also obviously played a role in Nature depletion, but there are a lot of good things happening to incentivise Nature recovery. The new Green Infrastructure Framework for the UK will work alongside Local Nature Recovery Strategies and Biodiversity Net Gain to promote the greening of urban areas and networks of natural spaces, and give more land over to Nature.
It’s not just about creating new habitats but enhancing the ones we’ve already got. Sometimes simple changes in management can have a big impact, for example cutting grass less regularly and letting other things grow. More local authorities are taking a greener view; parks are being managed differently, wildflowers planted. In Liverpool and Manchester, where the NWC has a long history, there are big swathes of wildflower habitats in local parks. It’s vital that we bring habitat creation projects into cities, where most people now live. If people see, feel and have a chance to be in natural habitats, they’re more likely to value them.
How Could We Create a More Sustainable Future as a Whole?
That’s a huge question, but you can start small. Yes, we’re starting to see much-needed change to policy and legislation, but we need all of society on board to get us past this biodiversity crisis. This decade is critical, but I believe we can do it. Humans have an extraordinary capacity for positive change – but we do need to get going!
You can make a difference as an individual. We can all take action, whether that’s personally, in our communities, in our workplaces. Whether you want to make space for Nature in your garden or do some volunteering, it’s time to mobilise!
