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Pool Frog programme coming up

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Richard2 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Richard2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Aug 2012 at 9:50pm
People here are being surprisingly negative about this reintroduction. From the programme, and from what I've read, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. We do basically welcome it, don't we?
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GemmaJF View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Aug 2012 at 10:12pm
Personally Richard I find it a little hard to get excited about it. 

I suppose it is good PR for EN and in fact I have nothing at all against the team of people who were involved in gathering the evidence, many whom I have met down the years which makes a fascinating detective story even if one is left feeling there might have been some areas overlooked. (such as a very large range of mountains which would have presumably been a little bit of an obstacle to the colonisation of the UK by the Northern Clade) 

I guess my negativity is that the reintroduced animals are not native and the whole area will be back under the sea in 20 years if some scientists have the calculations right. There are so many issues that remain unaddressed regarding the conservation of UK herpetofauna, I guess if they were not issues I could get more excited about Pool Frogs at a secret site in Norfolk.

Of course their relatives which are very common throughout areas of Kent are supposed to be exterminated during mitigation work because they can't be re-released. So many issues, so much else that could have been addressed.


Edited by GemmaJF - 07 Aug 2012 at 10:15pm
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Caleb View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Caleb Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug 2012 at 9:35am
Originally posted by GemmaJF GemmaJF wrote:

If the purpose of monitoring the grass snakes is also to prevent 'chucking in' animals in the future as Caleb suggests, it also raises the point that perhaps it should of occurred before the reintroduction rather than after it!


According to the report from Norfolk Biodiversity Partnership, grass snakes have been monitored both before and after the reintroduction (and have risen gradually at the same time as pool frog numbers increased).

Originally posted by GemmaJF GemmaJF wrote:

the whole area will be back under the sea in 20 years if some scientists have the calculations right.


Really? The area is about 40m above sea level, so the whole of central London would be underwater first.
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GemmaJF View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug 2012 at 12:00pm
Obviously I am referring to the height of the fens which if we are to believe the Pool Frog was once native would have been the natural range. The fens are anything but 40m above sea level, perhaps you are not familiar with the area. If the aim is to have a small population in a tiny area elsewhere it hardly meets the criteria of a real re-introduction. Which must surely relate to an effort to restore the natural range rather than having a single nurtured population at a nature reserve in Norfolk?

Below is a predictive map showing the effect of a 7m rise in sea level. The blue area above Cambridge is (was) the Fens.





Edited by GemmaJF - 08 Aug 2012 at 12:13pm
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Richard2 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Richard2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug 2012 at 12:11pm

True, global warming threatens to make a lot of our hopes and plans futile if nothing is done about it.

But that scale of events apart, what exactly is the problem with this reintroduction? To care about whether the reintroduced species should technically be called native seems pedantic to me. If we're enthusiasts for the presence of wild reptiles and amphibians in our countryside, we should welcome this project. It's an attempt to bring back an animal that was there before. Success at this one site is likely to inspire attempts in others. There doesn't seem to be any real problem of damaging impact on other species, even if a few Grass Snakes do get moved (and no one involved has actually proposed this yet). What's not to like?
 
The policy in Kent that you describe seems sinister and misconceived to me, but that's another argument.
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Richard2 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Richard2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug 2012 at 12:14pm
But I do take Gemma's point about the neglect of other conservation issues.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug 2012 at 12:23pm
It's not just a policy in Kent Richard, to make it clearer, it is an offence to release an alien under the WCA. So marsh frogs, alpine newts, midwife toads and more caught in the wild in the UK cannot be re-released. You might have seen the thread recently where Will removed alpine newts from a pond and then had to keep them at home.

But it is OK to put some Pool Frogs in a nature reserve in Norfolk from Europe.. I can't help seeing a little irony when locally we have a massive decline in common frogs and NE couldn't give a fig if local ponds are filled in.


Edited by GemmaJF - 08 Aug 2012 at 12:24pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug 2012 at 12:31pm
PS I've just realised on that predictive map that my house has gone too! (though we are actually 9m above sea level so I should still be on a tiny island) LOL
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Richard2 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug 2012 at 12:55pm
And my old university trembles on the edge.
 
But Marsh and Edible Frogs, as they used to be called, were introduced long ago and are in all the old wildlife books. Do you really think they should now be rounded-up and extirpated? I don't get this. I can understand wanting to remove introduced species if they really threaten native ones (grey squirrels because of the danger to reds, for example), but it isn't because of Marsh and Edibles that the Common Frogs are declining.
 
The basic idea here seems to be that we should try to freeze natural processes at a particular moment. It was OK, presumably, for prehistoric Pool Frogs to cross from the land that became Scandinavia, but movement of species is not OK now. That seems inconsistent to me. Shouldn't biodiversity rather than an arbitrary concept of nativeness be the fundamental principle?
 
I quite agree with you about the inconsistency between the reintroduction policy and the weakness over habitat-destruction, but the answer isn't to stop the reintroduction policy so as to achieve consistency with the weakness.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Caleb Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 Aug 2012 at 1:01pm
Originally posted by GemmaJF GemmaJF wrote:

Below is a predictive map showing the effect of a 7m rise in sea level. The blue area above Cambridge is (was) the Fens.


I am familiar with the Fens- I lived there for some time. There were fields below sea level within a couple of miles of our house.

No-one's seriously predicting a 7m sea level rise- most estimates seem to be more like 1m in the next century. How does the map look with a 1m rise?
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