It’s a stunning region famed for Jane Austen’s countryside and Britain’s first ecologist Gilbert White.
Now a groundbreaking study has shone a light on the biodiversity of this quintessential English countryside – and shown wildlife around Selborne is not doing so badly after all.
The survey is the most comprehensive since Gilbert White’s own studies almost 250 years ago that culminated in The Natural History of Selborne, which was first published in 1789 and has since run to nearly 300 editions worldwide. White was a pioneering naturalist who transformed the way we look at the natural world, his writings influencing the likes of Charles Darwin and David Attenborough.
The study, published this week after five years of painstaking data collection by a team of dedicated volunteers, collates around 10,000 species records across the animal kingdom in the Selborne Landscape Partnership (SLP) area (5,600 hectares), much of which falls within the South Downs National Park.
The five-year study has already found 114 different bird species – just short of the 120 or so recorded by White, which he collected over several decades and across a much wider area in the 1700s. Eighty-eight of these bird species (more than three quarters), such as the swift, swallow, barn owl, linnet and grey partridge, are the same as those recorded almost 250 years ago and, while there have been some losses, there have been gains too.
The report has been produced by the Selborne Landscape Partnership (SLP), which has existed for almost 10 years and comprises around 30 dedicated farmers and land managers working together to create a joined-up network of wildlife habitat and promote nature-friendly food production.
Debbie Miller, lead author of Farming in Partnership with Nature – A New Natural History of Selborne, said: “We hear a lot of negativity about the state of Britain’s biodiversity, so it’s nice to share some really positive news that wildlife is flourishing on farms here in the Selborne Landscape Partnership”
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Posted On: 20/03/2023