(My) First Berus of the Season!

[Dominik Hauser]

Berislav: Your right, sadly it is not only a german problem. By now, it seems to be better in some southern european countrys, but for sure its already in a process of change, through the structural change of rural areas also there.
You will hardly find old wine branches beside fields, canals with vegetation inside,... in Germany if there is not a nature organisation which build up something.
Nowadays, in our local forest even the logging trails get cleaned so well after work, that the local Bombinas are near to extinct in this area. Since this year I´m digging ponds for them.
But you also have to say that some of the cultivation works building very good habitats here in my area. For example the cut of the waysides in the forests on about 1m. There are big populations of Zootoca, Anguis, and also some Sand Lizards and Natrix in this areas.

[Dominik Hauser]

Jürgen: Its of course not your fault, don´t understand me wrong! The problem is the lack of experience by the forester, or who ever is responsible. So its good B. variegata is the "Lurch des Jahres 2014" maybe this causes the people to look more after it.

And nice picture, I´ve never seen so much Bombinas on one branch

[Peter Oefinger]

Jürgen: It's a shame but in my expereince it even doesn't help if the area is declared as a protected area. People will do "Pflegemaßnahmen" - measures people think that are necessary to bring the area in a situation they think it should be. Often the result will be order...

[Lucas Schmeißing]

Habitat of Bombina variegata, Bufo bufo, Bufo calamita, Alytes obstetricans, Hyla arborea, Rana temporaria, Pelophylax sp., "our" 4 newt species, Zootoca vivipara, Lacerta agilis and Natrix n. natrix after the winter... It was a part of a protected area from a big gravel pit which they destroyed, unfortunately the only place there where B. variegata seems to breed.

Lucas

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Man, this is depressing... I can only repeat that it never hurts to get involved and talk to whoever (public or private) is in charge. I'm not familiar with German law, but there may be even ways to create new habitat. Bombina variegata is a Habitat Directive species, so that's at least a legal tool to exploit to the fullest, insisting on mitigation. The list Lucas gave even has 6 HD species in it. Bombina and cristatus are even on both annexes (II and IV).

[Jürgen Gebhart]

FUCK!!!

My problems are nothing against yours!

[Liam Russell]

Often it is the people who are supposed to protect these places are the worst vandals.

This thread on the UK forum is about an excellent berus site I know well which was destroyed by "conservation" organisations. Someone found several dead berus (protected under UK law) on the site and estimated that up to 50 could have been killed... I felt physically sick when I saw the photos.


http://www.herpetofauna.co.uk/forum/allerthorpe_topic4090.html

[Ilian Velikov]

I've always said that the more people try to control nature the worse it gets even if they have good intentions. The term "wildlife management" is a fallacy. How can something be "wild" and "managed" at the same time...I know that "wild" places in most Western countries are few and far between, so they need to be protected but the bitter truth is that the only thing nature needs protection from is us. Sadly management plans for wild places seldom consider taking people out of the picture as means for conservation. I've been frowned upon when saying that the best conservation is "doing nothing", but I stand by this statement because obviously nature is much better left to manage itself alone and until/if we learn to respect that there's always going to be problems like these and many more. Sorry for the depressing rant but seeing things like that makes me sad...

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

If you want to do nothing and achieve high biodiversity, good ecosystem functioning etc., you have to have an ecosystem that's able to "bounce back on its feet" upon being left alone. If not, you might end up with a hardly reversible wasteland, desert or monoculture. Some of the changes in N Europe (especially where I'm at...) have moved entire systems to alternate stable states which preclude the survival of a lot of species. Thus, it's either loose them or do some "gardening". Remember that a lot herps thrive thanks to our interference with the landscapes, creating more open areas allowing reptiles to thrive which otherwise would have a hard time in dense woods.
Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silva_Carbonaria (which was of course the fire salamander's walhalla, on the other hand)
If we really do nothing, a lot of pioneer species will have less habitat. In Belgium, for one, I would imagine we would loose a few species within the next couple of decades.

Having said that, the general idea of your post, I can subscribe to. More philosophically, us humans can only truly "do nothing" if we stop to exist - every interaction with our environment changes it.

[Ilian Velikov]

Of course, it is much more complicated than what I wrote. I respect the work of conservationists I just think we are still learning how to do conservation and that our approach to this needs to change and be less intrusive...and maybe it will as we learn more, like it did with so many other things that we thought we know everything about and thought we are doing right in the past. Don't tell me you approve the "gardening" they've done in the cases shown here?

When I talk about nature I don't only mean the flora and fauna of a particular place but also the whole geography, climate and other components that make a wild place what it is. So if a place is left alone and it turns to a desert or wasteland through natural processes, so be it...a desert is an ecosystem too, isn't it? Wild places should not be designed to suit our needs and want, like or dislike for a particular animal but rather be respected and enjoyed for what they are naturally. We have gardens and parks for that...and this is exactly what managed nature turns into - a park, a very spacious zoo inhabited by controlled species of animals and plants that we like and deprived of the ones we don't or find dangerous. I'm not saying these places should not exist I'm just saying they shouldn't be confused with natural wild places.

More philosophically, us humans can only truly "do nothing" if we stop to exist - every interaction with our environment changes it.

I didn't mean "nothing" in this sense. Of course, like any other living organism we have the right to use the resources of the environment, interact with it and change it to suite our needs like many other species such as beavers or termites for example. However, unlike them we should have the brain to realise that we are dependent on the environment and restrain ourselves from changing it to such a huge extend and in a way that destroys it. Before anyone says there's a controversy in what I'm saying I'd like to, again, clearly differentiate between 'wild places' and 'places managed to suite human needs'. Of course we need both of those to exist.