Why is monitoring important when doing habitat creation and restoration?

Good news stories in nature recovery and conservation, such as the return of iconic and charismatic species to newly restored habitats, are the lifeblood of ecological restoration. They bring us hope and inspire local communities and people to do their bit for nature. When we are considering improving any piece of land for nature, whether it’s a whole landscape, a farm, one field or even a garden, the first thing we should be looking to understand is: What is here already, and what do we need to do to attract species that aren’t already here? This is the underlying principle of ecological surveying and monitoring – if you don’t know what you have, how do you know what is missing?

Hollie Fisher (Nature Recovery Advice Manager) on a breeding bird survey

Understanding the current nature value of land is a therefore a crucial first step in understanding what we need to do to restore nature. This is known as your baseline: the starting point against which you’ll be able to compare after you to make changes. Once you have got this, regular monitoring of the site will help you to understand how the habitats are changing and what new wildlife is being attracted to the area. It will also allow you to notice where further changes might be needed. This is particularly important information if a site is looking to go down a Natural Capital route (receiving payments in return for enhancing ecosystems, as a robust baseline is usually the minimum that any payment schemes will need.

At Wild Solutions, we are experts in surveys and monitoring and can help you to decide what kinds of surveys are best suited to the your type of nature recovery project. As well as being important from a scientific, evidence-based perspective, being able to see and understand positive change will help inspire and motivate people to see that nature recovery is possible when the right conditions are there. Below is a quick summary of the types of surveys and why they are important:

Bluebells in

ancient woodland

(C) Luke Massey2020VISION

Plants

Plants are the bedrock of most ecosystems on earth and provide the fundamental building blocks of most habitats. They are important because they help us to understand what types of habitats we have, and many high-quality habitats are often rich in plant diversity, such as species-rich grasslands and ancient woodlands. This botanical richness has a positive knock-on effect on the whole ecosystem, resulting in increases in invertebrates and subsequently species that eat invertebrates such as birds and bats.

Speckled Wood
Butterfly

(C) Vaughn Matthews

Pollinators & Other Invertebrates

Pollinating insects are critical components of a healthy ecosystem – and often when undertaking rewilding or nature restoration projects these are some of the first species to respond. This is because insects have short life-cycles and can have multiple generations in a single year, meaning that when conditions improve you can have an influx of bees, butterflies, hoverflies and moths. As well as pollinating insects, other invertebrates are similarly quick to respond to positive changes in habitat availability, and as these form the basis for many food chains, an abundance of invertebrate life is an excellent sign that nature is beginning to recover in an area.

Buzzard

(C) Jon Hawkins – Surrey Hills Photography

Birds

Birds are often the most noticeable wildlife in the UK due to the fact that they are active during the daytime and often beautiful both to look at and to listen to. An increase in birds on a site is therefore a very visible sign of positive change for nature. As well as bringing joy to people, they also play a crucial role in ecosystems, helping to control pests and disperse seeds. Tracking increases (or decreases) in abundance and diversity of bird life is therefore an excellent way to both monitor the effectiveness of restoration efforts, and because of their visibility is a superb way to engage people in nature restoration.

Common pipistrelle

(C) Tom Marshall

Bats

Bats are good indicators of ecosystem health for a number of reasons. All of our bat species in the UK are insectivorous, which means that the more insect life, the more bat activity. They forage in a range of habitats from woodland, to edge habitats like hedgerows and rivers, to open parkland and wood pasture, so the greater the diversity of bat species present on a site the more likely it is to be providing a good range of habitats. And finally, most of our native species will avoid bright artificial lighting, so a healthy level of bat activity can correlate with higher naturalness of a site.

Earthworm

(C) Alan Price

Soils

Soils are an important habitat in their own right, with up to 1.5kg of organisms living in one square metre of soil – many of them microorganisms but also invertebrates such as earthworms, mites, springtails and insect larvae. As well as being an important habitat, healthy soils are an excellent indicator of ecosystem health, and biodiverse soils underpin essential ecosystem functions like nutrient cycling, water filtration and carbon storage. Due to changes in land use, industrial and agriculture practices over the centuries, many of our soils have become degraded. By monitoring soil biodiversity and other factors like carbon content, structure, water content and nutrient levels, we gain an important insight into overall ecosystem health.

In addition to those listed above, there are many other kinds of monitoring focusing on other species and species groups including reptiles, amphibians and mammals. Wild Solutions are experts in surveys and monitoring and we can help you identify what kind of monitoring best suits your site and/or project.

Grass Snake

(C) Margaret Holland

Nature recovery is about long-term processes, not a quick fix – and the success and longevity of our actions is dependent on our understanding of nature. We are fundamentally a part of nature, not aside from it and it is for this reason that we all want to see humans and nature thriving together. Monitoring is our window into the natural world and gives us greater insight into what is working, what isn’t working and perhaps most importantly, it gives us a deeper understanding of, and increases our connection to, the nature that we are looking to restore to our land.

If you’d like our experts to survey your land contact us today