UK wildlife ‘devastated by a series of weather swings’ in 2022 | Climate crisis

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A leading conservation charity said extreme weather this year – including severe storms, scorching heat and deep cold – has destroyed some of the UK’s most precious flora and fauna.

The harsh conditions have made survival very difficult for animals from frogs and bats to birds and butterflies, and from large trees to meadow flowers.

The National Trust, which produces an annual Christmas audit of how the year’s weather affects nature, said the climate emergency means what felt in 2002 as extremes will become the new norm, creating major challenges for many species.

The charity’s Climate Crisis Adviser, Keith Jones, said: “The weather this year has been a challenge for nature. Droughts, high temperatures, successive storms, unseasonal heat, cold snaps and floods mean that nature, like us, must deal with a new series of weather events.

Dry pitches at London’s Hackney Marshes in August. Photo: Carlos Jasso/AFP/Getty Images

It’s a stark illustration of the kind of hardship many of our species will face if we don’t do more to mitigate rising temperatures and help nature survive.

Weather experts predict that the future will witness more heavy rains, along with very dry and hot summers. We will see more floods, droughts, heatwaves, severe storms, and wildfires—and they will go from bad to worse, breaking records with alarming frequency if we don’t reduce our carbon emissions. “

One of the most visible results of the hot summer has been the bushfires that ravaged areas of desert land in Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, destroying habitats for species such as the silver-studded blue butterfly, rare sand lizards and smooth snakes.

Mating pair of blue butterflies studded with silver. Photo: Kerstin Joensson/AP

The heat had other unexpected consequences. At the height of summer, keepers in Wallington, Northumberland, found young bats suffering from dehydration and disorientation. They rehydrate the bats with small pipettes before placing them in a cool, dark place where they can rest, recuperate, and fly off to join their colony at dusk.

The drought has been terrible news for naterjack frogs, which need groups of ponds to travel across the dunes. The ponds at Formby on Merseyside have dried up and the little braids have not been spotted.

The shorter flowering season caused by drought also affected pollinators. Many butterfly species have suffered a poor year as a result of depleting food sources during the peak summer period.

Black dragonflies, the UK’s smallest resident dragonfly, have been in decline for half a century, but experts are shocked that none have been spotted in one of its strongholds, Black Down in the South Downs National Park, this year. The fear is that the summer was too dry for the delicate black caterpillars to survive.

Swifts returned to the east coast of England later than usual and in smaller numbers, and those who did return had low breeding success, likely due to the dearth of flying insects, especially aphids, whose numbers had been reduced by the heat.

June has been harrowing for colonies of terns on Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland when their nests are swept away by south-eastern gales, rushing tides and periods of heavy rain.

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A bad year has also suffered the Blakeney terns in North Norfolk. Only one pair nested, compared to more than 3,000 in 2021, possibly because mild winters boosted rat numbers.

There have been some winners. The lack of a late frost in spring resulted in a good harvest of apples, and it was a “mast year”—an excellent year—for some nuts and berries, but even this is thought to be caused in part by stress on the trees due to drought conditions.

It was also a good year for the chough, a symbol of Cornwall, as the number of birds swelled to around 200.

Chagos. Photo: Andy Hay/RSPB/PA

Ben McCarthy, head of nature conservation at the National Trust, said an alarm had been sounded: “Habitats such as wetlands and grasslands have completely dried up in some areas, affecting all those species that make them home.

“Many species suffered, with a marked decline in the number of flying insects such as butterflies and bumblebees as flowering plants withered and died.”

He said some species are better adapted than others. “Wildlife that use a wide range of habitats, called generics, such as robins, wood pigeons or the common blue butterflies we might see in our gardens, are better able to respond to the stresses of severe weather because there is more space to support them.

“However, those species that have more demanding requirements are particularly at risk because they are usually constrained by specific needs. For example buntings cirl, which is an agricultural ground bird, requires seeds in winter and invertebrates in summer, or marshmallow butterflies, which require Wet grasslands with good collections of plants such as satanic scabies on which the caterpillars feed.

These are the species currently facing the greatest challenges and need our help to rejoin habitats and make landscapes more resilient to change.”

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