Almanac

Nature Notes

Most of the birds have now migrated and the landscape is silent, moody and preparing for winter. If you’re craving noise and life, head to the Severn Estuary or the North Suffolk coast, where you can behold wild geese flying in to our gentler climes from Scandinavia. Wild geese flying overhead can be a life-changing experience – it certainly was for Mary Oliver, whose poem “Wild Geese” is one of the most widely read texts in the world today and a nature poem I heartily recommend, since it perfectly sums up the month of November. But if wild geese don’t make you poetically inclined, a solitary elegant swan feeding in the misty saltmarshes might bring inspiration. Meantime, in the woodlands, the beech trees are at their most golden and the oaks still have their green leaves, holding winter at bay for just a while longer. In the garden (if the ground isn’t frozen) this is the perfect time to plant bare-rooted hedges, trees, shrubs and roses. Best of all, make a wildlife habitat: take your sticks, leaves and logs and pile them up to the back of the garden, this feature will soon transform into a sanctuary and natural food source for overwintering birds such as blackbirds, wrens and robins.

Positive Ecological Restoration

Australia’s zero-extinction goal
A proactive ten-year plan to prevent extinctions is being formed by the federal government in Australia, an effort that has already led to using an additional 50 million hectares of land and sea for restoring ecosystems. The government is aiming to turn around the wildlife crisis that was laid bare in Australia’s 2021 State of the Environment Report. Rachel Lowry, the chief conservation officer at WWF-Australia said: “It’s wonderful to see Australia join other developed countries, including New Zealand and members of the EU, in setting a target of zero new extinctions. Halting
extinctions is achievable, particularly for a wealthy nation with science-based solutions.”

UK beavers are now protected
Shot to extinction 400 years ago in England, beavers are now classified as a native species with full protection, so it is illegal to trap, maim or kill them. “During droughts, the wet landscapes they create stand out as green oases because their woody dams hold back water – and in times of high rainfall, they slow down flood waters and improve water quality,” explains Elliot McCandless from the Beaver Trust. As we move into a new era where we are being made more vulnerable to drought and floods, beavers’ work helps us with real and practical climate change mitigation. It’s a new-found protection we should celebrate, after many decades of work from activists.

Lagoon gains personhood status
The Spanish government has granted “personhood” status to Mar Menor (pictured below), Europe’s largest salt-water lagoon, after an extraordinary citizen-led push to protect it led to a vote by the Senate in Madrid. The lagoon has been struggling from vast die-offs of marine life due to development and local farming, but now will be granted full protection for a total of 1,600 sq/km. “So that the episodes of mortality of fauna of the Mar Menor don’t return, let’s give this ecosystem its own rights,” Senator María Moreno said before the vote. The law now states that the lagoon has the right “to exist as an ecosystem and to evolve naturally.” A similar event happened in 2017 when New Zealand passed a groundbreaking law granting personhood status to the Whanganui River.

Bears, wolves and bison are back
Nearly one in five mammals are at risk of extinction across the European continent, but according to the European Wildlife Comeback Report there are signs of optimism, since wolf, bison and brown bear populations have been increasing since the 1970s. Most of these recoveries are thanks to newly-formed habitat restoration programmes and hunting ban introductions. The keynote species are known to improve the health of entire ecosystem – often in complex ways. “Our hope is that this report will reinforce the message that whilst it can be complex, wildlife recovery and coexistence is not only possible but essential for the health of our planet,” says Sophie Ledger, lead author of the report

Sky Events

The Taurids Meteor Shower arrives on 4 and 5 November, producing up to five and ten meteors per hour, mainly radiating from the constellation of Taurus. On 8 November there is a total lunar eclipse, but it’s only visible from eastern Russia, Japan, Australia, the Pacific Ocean, and western and central North America. On 17 and 18 November the Leonids Meteor Shower will produce an average of up to fifteen meteors per hour – radiating from the constellation Leo. For sky-gazing, 23 November brings the new Moon, the best time of the month to observe faint objects such as galaxies and star clusters, since there is no light interference.

Tides

Spring: 9-11 and 24-26 November
Neap: 2-3 and 17-18 November

Andreas Kornevall is a Swedish storyteller, writer and ecologist. He is the Director of Operations for the Earth Restoration Service Charity based in the UK