Interview Transcription

Now, talking of bleak, windswept landscapes filled with seabirds, Dungeness. It's an extraordinary place of many contradictions, squeezed in between an airport, a nuclear power station, an MOD live firing range, and it's home to the UK's only desert.

But it is also jam packed with biodiversity. It's a refuge for dozens of endangered plants and insects and perhaps most spectacularly, with birds. I met up with Craig Edwards, who's the RSPB warden at Dungeness, responsible for some thousand hectares, two and a half thousand acres of shingle marsh and wetland. Their big project at the moment involves the creation of a series of new islands in the lakes that were originally gravel pits dug out for aggregates in order to create more safe havens for endangered seabirds and migrating birds.

Craig Edwards: I think seabirds are kind of in a perilous state at the minute, not just kind of avian flu kind of really hitting these colonies hard, but this kind of infrastructure and human kind of impacts are hitting them as well. So for us, having a bigger colony or more room for them to nest is going to spread them out a little bit more to make them safer from impacts of things like the avian flu, but also opportunities for those colonies to expand.

Rob Smith: Okay, and so you're physically building islands, are you, in the lakes?

Craig Edwards: Yes, we've done some last year where we had kind of islands that were too low. Climate change is hitting us quite hard. Water levels are increasing each year or kind of being a lot more extreme. So we need to raise some of these islands up a little bit where they are underwater at the wrong time of year, in the breeding season. And the big project they're undertaking, there is nothing there at the minute, so we are looking to create islands from what we can find around.

Rob Smith: Okay, and what kind of species are you actually seeing down here? What should we be keeping an eye out for?

Craig Edwards: I think the island work will definitely benefit some of our gull species, so we're hoping; blackheaded gulls, herring gulls, lesser blackback, greater blackback gulls, common tern as well. That's kind of a real species that we want to see back here on the reserve again and as well as it's roosting habitat for some of the wildfowl that we get here in the winter. So you add tufted duck, teal, and wigeon as well. And then we have other species that will benefit from the work that we're doing, such as the medicinal leech and our marshmallow moth that we now have on the reserve.

Rob Smith: Sorry, the medicinal leech and marshmallow moth?

Craig Edwards: Yes. Some of our specialisms that we have, they're very, very kind of localised. We think we've got about 50% of the UK population for medicinal leech on the reserve and marshmallow moth has started to recolonize.

They're only found in kind of Kent and East Sussex and we think we've kind of got about 5% potentially of their population here.

Rob Smith: Okay. I've never seen a marshmallow moth. I've got probably completely the wrong mental image. What does a marshmallow moth look like?

Craig Edwards: To be honest, they aren't that amazing to look at. They are kind of a bit brown and fluffy. They don't look like a marshmallow or the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters at all.

Rob Smith: Right, okay.

Craig Edwards: They are unremarkable in how they look, but they feed on the marshmallow plant, which only grows in a few places.

Rob Smith: And that's one of the things that people don't necessarily twig is that Dungeness, you know, it's sort of flat and kind of a bit bleak and a bit windswept. It's actually one of the most biodiverse places in the whole of the UK.

Craig Edwards: Absolutely. Yeah. There are lots of little microhabitats around the reserve and actually because some of it's really undisturbed as well. Yeah, there's lots of different things that people can see and actually birds only make up 10% of the species that you'll find here and that's what most people come down to look for. But actually, we have a third of the UK's plants, we have over 2000 species of invertebrate. There's just so much here to look at that perhaps people might not even realise.

Rob Smith: So you create a space that's good for the birds, that accidentally creates spaces that's brilliant for everything else?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, definitely. I think where the land has been quarried. I think a lot of things have moved in in the past and it's now recovering. But we just need to kind of give it a little bit more of a boost just to kind of help it get through this kind of pressures that we've got with climate change at the minute.

Rob Smith: All right, well, let's go and have a look and see what we can find. So, Craig, we're looking out across a lake here. Are these some of your artificial islands that we can see in front of us here?

Craig Edwards: Yes. So these are four islands that were created last autumn in low water levels. We managed to get out here and create some new islands that are going to be really close to one of our new hide.

Rob Smith: And they're quite small. I mean, it's not a desert island that a human could live on, is it? They're quite little patches of land that are sticking out. That's enough, is it?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, I think a lot of these sea birds, they don't need huge amounts of room. I think sometimes having a variety of island sizes is really kind of key because sometimes you can get species like common tern are very colonial. You'll get a lot of them nesting in a very small space and other times you'll get things like herring gulls will be quite territorial, so you might get one per island. So having a variety of bigger islands and smaller islands is always quite kind of crucial, I think.

Rob Smith: Well, it looks like a swimming lane. You've got a rope going around the islands with lots of little floats on it. What's that there for?

Craig Edwards: That is our anti predator floating fence. So this design has come from Denmark that we have modified and it's been used on a couple of other RSPB reserves as well. So in essence, it's a floating line that sits in the water to deter mammalian kind of entry onto the island.

Rob Smith: Okay, what does mammalian entry mean? Who are you keeping off?

Craig Edwards: Foxes and badgers are the main-if they get onto islands, they can devastate colonies.

Rob Smith: Badgers, I mean, foxes I can get, but we know the fox gets into the hen house and it eats all the eggs just for fun, but badgers are an issue.

Craig Edwards: Yeah, badgers, they will go for a swim. There is evidence on RSPB reserves that they will swim through ditches and across water. We've had evidence on these islands before we raised them up that they were entering and kind of getting across onto their islands.

Rob Smith: And they eat the baby birds today. Is that what they're after?

Craig Edwards: They'll be after the nests. They love eggs, so they'll be after the nests and whatever they can get hold of, really.

Rob Smith: Okay, so this floating line, that's enough to keep them off, is it?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, the idea behind it is that there's not enough purchase for them to climb over it. And most of them at the time, they don't like putting their heads underwater. They have to be quite desperate. Unless they know there's food on the other side, which they won't do, there shouldn't be a need to get underneath.

Rob Smith: And they can't get tangled up in it?

Craig Edwards: No, that is a single line with floats on, so there's nothing to get tangled on.

Rob Smith: Right, okay. And just looking out across here, the lake itself is a beautiful scene. You are kind of dominated by a big nuclear power station in the background here down at Dungeness. Does that cause problems for you at all, with all the pylons and the cables and everything else that happens over on the EDF site?

Craig Edwards: We've not noticed anything or anything that we have picked up on surveys is that there's a lot of light at nighttime, so you can walk out there and you don't need a torch. There's a lot of artificial light which could deter some species that used to nest here from nesting here, like stone-curlew. The habitat out there is perfect for them, but it's so light, I don't think there's an opportunity for them as they're certainly too visible. So I think if that light wasn't there, there'd be opportunities for them to potentially but yeah, whilst it's so light, I think that they're too visible to predators.

Rob Smith: Okay, but other than that, it doesn't cause a problem?

Craig Edwards: No. To be honest, we work quite well with EDF in the past on some of our projects on things like our Sussex Emerald Moth project, which only found on Dungeness Peninsula. We worked well with them on those projects, trying to preserve them, so we got on well with them there. And actually the power station, there's a lot of seed defense work associated with that that's helping to protect this part of the reserve as well. The whole Dungeness Peninsula wants to move, and because we're kind of sat there between EDF and we have the MOD at Lydd. We're saying, no, we don't want to lose any land. Actually, it's helping to protect this kind of little haven for wildlife.

Rob Smith: Otherwise the sea would kind of wash it away, move it around the corner kind of thing?

Craig Edwards: Yeah. What we call the West Bay, the southern part of the peninsula is eroding away. We are seeing that and it is building to the east. So as a coastal feature, it naturally wants to move, and as humans, we are stopping that.

Rob Smith: Fascinating. Right, let's wander on. Craig, this is out the breeze.

Craig Edwards: Yes, it's very sheltered in here.

Rob Smith: We're in the Christmas Dell hide. Who's Christmas Dell?

Craig Edwards: I think it was named after a location that was here before they quarried these lakes in front of us.

Rob Smith: So this hide, I mean, this is pretty much brand new, isn't it?

Craig Edwards: No, actually, this is one of our oldest hides. It was built in 1990, but-

Rob Smith: Wow, it’s a really good nick.

Craig Edwards: Well, we've completely renovated it this summer, completely reclad it and redone all the windows and yeah, it's effectively a new hide, but in this old frame.

Rob Smith: Right, okay. It's like Triggers Broom?

Craig Edwards: Yeah.

Rob Smith: Okay. So as I look out the hide window here, I can see a lot of reed. I can see a power station in the background, but mainly what I can see is water and reeds going off into the distance. Give me a bit more of a kind of a naturalist sigh of what we're actually looking at here.

Craig Edwards: Well, from my perspective, this is a series of lakes, which is about 22 hectares, so it's not a small kind of series of lakes. And they have these narrow causeways across them. These causeways were once out of the water, but now they're kind of underwater for most of the time with just reed kind of popping out.

Rob Smith: And I can see I think it's a cormorant swimming around in the lake and diving?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, I think we've got cormorants out there. I think might be an egret or something out on that island as well. It's very quiet, which is why we want to do the project work over here.

Rob Smith: So what does the project work involve? What are you doing?

Craig Edwards: So we're looking at these causeways that are out here in front of us with the reed growing along them. What we'd like to do is to use that shallow kind of area where that is to create island work, so reduce the quantity of shallow water, but to create areas that are out of the water. We know that the surrounding water, where there is no reed, it drops between ten and 13 metres quite sharply, so it's very, very deep, very quickly.

Rob Smith: So this was all quarried, wasn't it? This has all been quarried out for aggregate. That's why there's standing water here at all?

Craig Edwards: That's right, yes, yes. So this is all quarried I think back in the 80s.

They had these causeways out here at the time, but they aren't because of climate change and kind of increased water levels and erosion that comes through these storm events, they are kind of underwater for most of the year, so they aren't really delivering anything. This area should be as busy as our other lakes. And in terms for wildfowl and wildlife, but it just isn't. So this project will create, on this lake in particular, about twelve islands that will hopefully be used by seabirds, such as herring gull, common tern, black headed gull.

Rob Smith: I can see a few birds in here at the moment. There's some moorhen. I think a grebe. Did I see a grebe?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, there’s-

Rob Smith: There we are.

Craig Edwards: Yeh there's great crested grebe and some coot out there. That habitat isn't going to change. There will still be the deep water that they will use, but we want to make more out of the shallow habitat. So yeah, it will improve things for the gulls and the terns, but it will also kind of create a kind of more shallow, shingle, kind of bare habitat with the warmer water would be better for some of the other wildlife as well.

Rob Smith: And the whole area, because it is such a huge space, mainly shingle, as you said, underfoot, what kind of other wildlife are you actually seeing about the place? If we just talk about the birds for a moment? Have you got raptors down here?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, to be honest, it's one of the best places to see raptors. We have marsh harriers that now breed annually on the reserve since 2009. We'll get daily buzzard sightings as they spread through. We have kestrels, sparrowhawks; we have barn owls that nest on site as well in the summer. We're quite good for hobbys. This time of year, we'll get kind of kind of passage ospreys, red kite, there's even a pallid harrier been seen in the last couple of days as well. And we'll get merlin. There's more kind of merlin in the autumn as well, so it's a fantastic place.

Rob Smith: Do you quite like your job?

Craig Edwards: I do, yeah.

Rob Smith: How did you get into this in the first place?

Craig Edwards: My background is my parents used to bring me down here when I was a child, so I've always loved Dungeness. And then as soon as I left kind of school, I started volunteering with a local conservation organisation that developed into a kind of a passion that then led to degrees and kind of college university before starting out on the Farne Islands in Northumberland. And then I kind of came back and landed here really.

Rob Smith: Okay, so this really is your manor?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, so I've known it for quite a long time, so it's nice to be able to keep improving things, really.

Rob Smith: And on that note, because obviously everybody's deeply concerned about the state of the environment, you're intimately working on the land down here all the time. How are you feeling about things in general terms? Are you optimistic for the future? Are we trying to push in the right directions?

Craig Edwards: I think as an organisation and as a reserve, we're definitely pushing in the right way. We are trying to do the right things. I think a more joined up approach is always going to be-we're going to need to do something different to change the tide that's kind of setting in with the state of nature.

Rob Smith: So, partly optimistic; partly optimistic. I can sense a sort of, like a degree of concern there.

Craig Edwards: There’s definitely, as you say, you've got to look at your nature. Having a one in six species is under threat of extinction. You can't sit here and be comfortable. With my power, I can do as much as we can to try and get this reserve back up and function as it can do.

You know, try and convert as much habitat as we can, so I can sit there and sleep easy, sitting there going, we've done as much as I possibly can; everything within my power.

Rob Smith: Well, Craig, that was great. We're sort of back around where we started, but we're actually by another one of the lakes. Which lake is this?

Craig Edwards: This one's Burrows Pit. This is our largest one.

Rob Smith: Now, looking out across the lake here, you've got an island that was created, what, in 2017, and it's absolutely heaving with gulls. Blackback gulls, are they out there?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, there's greater blackback gulls, herring gulls, and the one next door is full of lapwing.

Rob Smith: So that island, that little patch there is doing exactly what you want it to?

Craig Edwards: Yeah, exactly. It's thanks to the hard work of the volunteers that we have here, really, to help clear these islands each kind of early autumn, to kind of create that habitat that these birds can feel safe to roost on.

Rob Smith: So as we walk around, I mean, it's been quite easy for us to walk around. I know you've actually done quite a lot of work, haven't you, on making sure it's as accessible as possible. You want people to come and visit?

Craig Edwards: That's it, yeah. I mean, we've done a lot of work since COVID to try and make it more appealing for more people. Nature needs more people to kind of buy into it, and that's what we want to do with Dungeness, is just to have people to come here and go, wow, this is amazing, I really want to care about it. And so by having a range of viewing structures, not just hides, then there's something for everyone where you don't have to go in. And it's quite an intimidating place at times, especially if you've got kids and you want to explore.

So having a nice open kind of viewing platform where you can see across the lake and you can still kind of absorb the energy and the wildlife and it's just hopefully more appealing for more people to come and give it a go.

Rob Smith: And the fact that it's kind of squeezed in between an airport and a nuclear power station, that doesn't sound like it should be a great place for a wilderness, but it really is. It's just a lovely spot to come to.

Craig Edwards: It is. I say it's one of the most biodiverse places in the country. And there's something for everybody. If you're into your birds, if you're into your landscapes, if you're into just escaping from almost reality, or you say whatever kind of family group you're into in terms of insects or invertebrates, bumblebees, birds, dragonflies, there's something for everyone.

Rob Smith: That's a great spot. Craig, great to meet you. Thanks for your time.

Craig Edwards: Thank you very much.