Until I got the British Trust for Ornithology newsletter today I hadn’t realised that last week was Non-native species week!
It’s reckoned that invasive species cost the economy £2bn per year.
There’s a poster at https://www.nonnativespecies.org/assets/Alert-poster-v1.pdf
which tells you some of the species that should be reported.
I’m interested that it includes Ruddy Duck. I rather liked them when they were more widespread! But it’s no several years since I last saw one.
The same BTO newsletter says that our populations of Yellow Wagtails and Yellowhammers have declined by about 20% in the last five years. Things are happening at an alarming speed.
[quote=“Ken_Noble, post:1, topic:2366”]
Yellow Wagtails
[/quote] Interesting that you mention that species as they are migratory? so are they native and if so to where, the earth?
I only mention this in relation to climate change, if UK is becoming unsuitable for some species and more suitable for others then defining nonnative becomes more tricky. It is OK for all those dragonflies and similar to turn up and become native so where the line is drawn is tricky.
What about the wall lizards that turned up outside my office at the OU many years ago, they had hitched a ride in the container that the builders were using and had come up from Spain if memory is correct, the colony died out. But there are wall lizards in sustaining colonies in other parts of UK.
I may have caused some confusion. The article about yellow wags and yellowhammers was in the same edition of BTO News as the one about non-native species. But they were separate.
Did you know that there is a self-sustaining colony of scorpions on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent?!
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