Latest news with #ecologists
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Guineafowl can outsmart extreme temperatures: we spent a year finding out how
Have you ever wondered how wild birds cope with baking hot afternoons and freezing cold mornings? Our new study has taken a close look at one of Africa's most familiar birds – the helmeted guineafowl – and uncovered surprising answers about how they deal with extreme temperatures. The helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris) is a common sight across sub-Saharan Africa's savannas and semi-arid regions. They are instantly recognisable with their spotted plumage, bony helmet, bare blue head, and loud cackling calls. These birds are famously social, often seen roaming in noisy flocks. Helmeted guineafowl can endure air temperatures from -4°C up to 40°C in South Africa. The idea that animals huddle to stay warm – known as social thermoregulation – is well documented in mammals and birds like penguins. This theory proposes that animals huddle together to conserve heat in cold conditions, but is this what guineafowl are doing? Together with colleagues in Spain, we set out to find the answer because understanding whether birds group to keep warm or for other reasons helps ecologists uncover the true drivers of social behaviour. This can also inform how species will respond to changing climates and help guide conservation strategies. We studied a wild population of guineafowl in South Africa's Madikwe Game Reserve, a protected area near the Botswana border. It's known for its sharp daily temperature fluctuations during winter, with cold, frosty mornings dropping to 0°C and sweltering afternoons reaching up to 40°C. To spy on the birds without disturbing them, we set up a live-streaming webcam at a busy waterhole, recording their behaviour over an entire year. We watched how group size, body posture and daily routines shifted with the seasons and weather. What we found was striking. Our study challenges some common assumptions about how animals survive in extreme climates. Guineafowl don't rely on cuddling for warmth like some penguins and some species of monkeys. Rather, they use behaviour – adjusting posture, timing their activity and changing group sizes according to food and safety needs – to navigate life's temperature extremes. This strategy may help them cope with the growing unpredictability of climate. When they get together, it's to exploit a food patch and nurture their offspring within close-knit social groups while foraging, or to fend off predators during coordinated mobbing behaviour. The evidence we gathered shows that the guineafowl did not form bigger groups when temperatures dropped. There was no evidence they huddled together to stay warm. Even at night, when they roosted in trees, they perched in small family units – just two or three birds per branch. Our findings suggest that the reason guineafowl form groups has more to do with food and safety. During the dry winter months, when seeds and vegetation are scarce, the birds form large foraging flocks to help find food and stay safe from predators. More eyes mean better chances of spotting danger. This supports the widely recognised 'many eyes' hypothesis, which shows that individuals in larger groups benefit from improved predator detection. But once the rains return and food becomes more plentiful and spread out, the guineafowl split into pairs or small groups to focus on breeding. While group size wasn't tied to temperature, the birds used clever body postures to handle both heat and cold. On chilly mornings below 17°C, they puffed out their collar feathers and tucked their bare necks deep into their bodies, creating a rounded, fluffy ball that trapped heat. On warmer days, they stood tall with their necks fully extended, legs exposed, and feathers sleek to release excess heat. When temperatures soared above 30°C, they opened their beaks to pant, spread their wings slightly away from their bodies, and exposed bare skin to cool off, much as a dog pants on a hot day. One of the most delightful behaviours observed was 'sunning'. On frosty winter mornings, guineafowl would fly down from their roosts and stand facing the rising sun, fluffing their feathers and soaking up warmth before starting their day. It's a simple, effective way to heat up after a cold night. Another surprise was how rarely the birds drank water. Despite living in a dry environment, only about 2% of observed guineafowl visits were to the waterhole. In wet seasons, they likely get most of their moisture from eating green plants and insects. In the cold, dry season, when food is drier, drinking increased slightly, but still far less than expected. They drank even less when it was both hot and windy, possibly because the noise of the wind makes it harder to detect predators when standing out in the open. Avoiding water during hot periods is usual among helmeted guineafowl, which typically avoid exposing themselves during peak heat due to increased predation risk and the physiological stress of extreme temperatures. Most galliforms (gamebirds) and terrestrial species favour early morning or late afternoon activity patterns, limiting mid-day exposure. Every evening, the flock gathered at the same familiar 'launching pad' near the waterhole and flew into nearby trees to roost. But once again, warmth wasn't the reason for this behaviour. They roosted to avoid ground predators, not to share body heat. I have seen them for many years going into trees when predators or dogs chase them, unlike spurfowl and francolin just flying further on. This research carries important lessons for understanding animal adaptation. Rather than relying on group warmth, guineafowl show how behavioural flexibility, adjusting posture, timing and habitat use, can buffer them against harsh conditions. It highlights how survival depends not just on temperature or water availability, but on having access to diverse habitat types: open grasslands for foraging and trees or dense bush for roosting and safety. As climates shift and ecosystems change, understanding how animals like guineafowl cope with extremes will be crucial for conservation planning. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Johann van Niekerk, University of South Africa Read more: Africa's freshwater ecosystems depend on little creatures like insects and snails: study maps overlooked species Berg winds in South Africa: the winter weather pattern that increases wildfire risks Africa's plants: a database project has recorded 65,000 species – and is still growing Johann van Niekerk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
South China Morning Post
11-07-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
China blows up 300 dams, shuts hydropower stations to save Yangtze River habitat
China has demolished 300 dams and shut down most of the small hydropower stations on a major tributary of the upper Yangtze River to safeguard fish populations as part of an effort to restore the ecology of Asia's longest waterway. Advertisement According to a report by the state news agency Xinhua on Monday, 300 of the 357 dams on Chishui He – also known as the Red River – had been dismantled by the end of December 2024. In addition, 342 out of 373 small hydropower stations have been decommissioned, enabling many rare fish species to resume their natural reproductive cycles, the Xinhua report said. The Red River flows for more than 400km (249 miles) through the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. It is regarded by ecologists as the last refuge for rare and endemic fish species in the Yangtze's upper reaches. Over the decades, water flows have been increasingly blocked by the dense network of hydropower stations and dams, restricting water volumes downstream and occasionally even causing some sections to dry up entirely. Advertisement This has drastically reduced the amount of suitable habitat and spawning grounds. The stations also blocked the routes of migratory fish species between breeding grounds and non-breeding areas.
WIRED
05-07-2025
- General
- WIRED
Is It Time to Stop Protecting the Grizzly Bear?
Jul 5, 2025 7:00 AM The Endangered Species Act has a major problem. An unlikely move could help save it. Photograph:This story originally appeared on Vox and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the early 1900s, long before smartphones and selfie sticks, tourists flocked to Yellowstone National Park—not for the geysers or scenery, but for a grotesque show: a nightly spectacle of grizzly bears raiding cafeteria scraps from open-pit landfills like desperate, starving pirates. The bears were in dangerous proximity to humans: Hungry bears tore at open car windows. Tourists posed a little too close with their film cameras. Yellowstone park rangers logged dozens of injuries each year—nearly 50 on average. Eventually, the Park Service ended the nightly landfill shows: Feeding wild animals human food wasn't just dangerous, it was unnatural. Bears, ecologists argued, should eat berries, nuts, elk—not leftover Twinkies. In 1970, the park finally shut down the landfills for good. By then, though, grizzlies were in deep trouble. As few as 700 remained in the lower 48 states, down from the estimated 50,000 that once roamed the 18 western states. Decades of trapping, shooting, and poisoning had brought them to the brink. The ones that clung to survival in Yellowstone National Park learned to take what scraps they could get and when they were forced to forage elsewhere, it didn't go so well. More bears died. Their already fragile population in the Yellowstone region dipped to fewer than 250, though one publication says the number could have been as low as 136, according to Frank van Manen, who spent 14 years leading the US Geological Survey's grizzly bear study team and now serves as an emeritus ecologist. The Yellowstone bears had been trained to rely on us. And when we cut them off, their population tanked. And so in 1975, the US Fish and Wildlife Service placed grizzly bears on the endangered species list, the country's most powerful legal mechanism to stave off extinction. The grizzly's place on the list afforded them some important protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Hunting was off-limits, as was trapping or poisoning, and the listing included rigorous habitat protections. Grizzlies slowly came back. In 1957, Yellowstone tourists often got a little too close for comfort—like this driver, who leans out the window to snap a photo of a mother bear and her cubs. Today, this kind of wildlife encounter would be a big no-no for safety reasons. Photograph: Historical/Getty Images Today, more than 1,000 grizzly bears live in and around Yellowstone alone, and tourists who visit the park by the millions every year can observe the bears—no longer desperately feeding on trash but lumbering in and out of meadows with their trailing cubs, or sitting on their haunches feasting on elk carcasses. The recovery effort was a major success, but it's brought a whole new slate of issues. In recent years, grizzlies have spilled out of their stronghold in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—a broad swath of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming—and into human territory, where coexistence gets messy. In 2024 alone, more than 60 grizzlies were killed in Wyoming, most of them lethally removed by wildlife officials after killing cattle, breaking into cabins and trash cans, or lingering in residential neighborhoods. It's the classic species recovery paradox: The more bears succeed and their populations expand, the more trouble they get into with humans. And now, a controversial debate rages over whether or not to delist the grizzly bear. No species is meant to be a permanent resident on the endangered species list. The whole point of the ESA is to help species recover to the point where they're no longer endangered. A delisting would underscore that the grizzlies didn't just scrape by in the Yellowstone area—they exceeded every population requirement in becoming a thriving, self-sustaining population of at least 500 bears. But to remove federal protection would mean grizzly bears would face increasing threats to their survival at a time when some biologists argue the species' recovery is shaky at best. The stakes here are bigger than just the grizzly bear alone—what happens next is about proving that the ESA works, and that sustained recovery is possible, and that ESA protection leads to progress. Because if a species like the grizzly, which has met every biological benchmark, still can't graduate from the list, then what is the list for? 'The [ESA] is literally one of the strictest wildlife protection laws in the world…but in order for people to buy into it, they have to have respect for it,' says Kelly Heber Dunning, a University of Wyoming professor who studies wildlife conflict. 'If it starts to be seen as…part of the culture war, that buy-in will go away.' What's the Endangered Species Act for Anyway? Since President Donald Trump has taken office, the Republican Party's assault on the Endangered Species Act hasn't been subtle. The Fix Our Forests Act—which sounds like it attempts a wildfire and forest health solution—actually fast-tracks large-scale logging at the expense of fragile ecosystems and imperiled species. Trump allies in Congress, like Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert with the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, flagrantly prioritize political agendas over science, according to the nonprofit National Resources Defense Council. The House Natural Resources Committee has also suggested weakening the Marine Mammal Protection Act with an apparent intent to unravel protections for species like the North Atlantic right whale and the Gulf of Mexico Rice's whale. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has called to remove 'burdensome regulations' standing in the way of Trump's desire to unleash America's energy potential. Project 2025, the conservative playbook, even explicitly calls to delist the grizzly bear. But ironically, to prevent a full unraveling of one of the world's most powerful protections for wildlife and wild places, conservationists need to grapple with the mission creep of the ESA. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, left, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright deliver remarks outside the White House on March 19, 2025, in Washington, DC. Photograph:When Republican President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the country's wildlife had been in a century-long nosedive. After decades of habitat destruction, unregulated hunting and industrial expansion, federal officials had already flagged more than 70 species at risk of extinction—with many more lining up behind them. In the decades that followed, the ESA proved to be one of the most powerful conservation tools in the world. More than 50 species, including the Canada goose and bald eagle, thrived with their newfound federal protections and were later delisted; another 56 species were downgraded from endangered to threatened. But others, like the black-footed ferret, Houston toad and the red wolf, for example, remain endangered—even after almost 60 years of federal attention. Today the act protects more than 2,300 plant and animal species in the US and abroad. And still more wait in line, as overworked federal biologists triage petitions amid dwindling resources, aggressive layoffs and budget cuts. But when it comes to the grizzly bear, the debate has become bigger than just biology—it's become a referendum on what the Endangered Species Act is for, says David Willms, a National Wildlife Federation associate vice president and adjunct faculty at the University of Wyoming. 'The ESA is a science-based act,' he says. 'You have a species that is struggling, and you need to recover it and make it not struggle anymore. And based on the best available science at the end of the day, you're supposed to delist a species if it met those objectives.' The trouble begins when species linger on the list indefinitely, not because they haven't recovered but because of what might happen next, out of fears of possible future threats. But the ESA was only meant to safeguard against 'reasonably foreseeable future threats,' Willms argues. Congress has the ability to protect species indefinitely—like it did for wild horses under the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act or for numerous species of birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But those were specific, deliberate laws. 'If there are other reasons why somebody or groups of people think grizzly bears should be protected forever, then that is a different conversation than the Endangered Species Act,' he says. But this power works in the opposite direction, too. If grizzly bears stay on the list for too long, Congress may well decide to delist the species, as lawmakers did in 2011 when they removed gray wolves from the endangered species list in Montana and Idaho. Those kinds of decisions happen when people living alongside recovered species, especially the toothy, livestock-loving kind, spend enough time lobbying their state's lawmakers, says Dunning, the wildlife conflict researcher. When Congress steps in, science tends to step out. A political delisting doesn't just sideline biologists, it sets a precedent, one that opens the potential for lawmakers to start cherry-picking species they see as obstacles to grazing, logging, drilling, or building. The flamboyant lesser prairie chicken has already made the list of legislative targets. 'Right now, the idea of scientific research has lost its magic quality,' she says. 'We get there by excluding people and not listening to their voices and them feeling like they're not part of the process.' And when people feel excluded for too long, she says, the danger isn't just that support for grizzly bears will erode. It's that the public will to protect any endangered species might start to collapse. The Case for Delisting the Grizzly For Dan Thompson, Wyoming's large carnivore supervisor, the question of delisting grizzlies is pretty simple: 'Is the population recovered with all the regulatory mechanisms in place and data to support that it will remain recovered?' he says. 'If the answer is yes, then the answer to delisting is yes.' That's why Thompson believes it's time to delist the grizzly. And he's not alone. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem population is 'doing very well,' says van Manen. In fact, grizzlies met their recovery goals about 20 years ago. Getting there wasn't easy. After the landfills closed and the bear population plummeted, it took a massive, decades-long effort from states, tribes, federal biologists, and nonprofits to bring the grizzlies back. The various entities funded bear-proof trash systems for people living in towns near the national parks and strung electric fences around tempting fruit orchards. They developed safety workshops for people living in or visiting bear country, and tracked down poachers. And little by little, it worked. Bear numbers swelled, and by the mid-2000s, more than 600 bears roamed the Yellowstone area. Given this success, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed delisting the grizzlies for the first time in late 2005. Environmental groups sued, arguing bears needed continued federal protection as whitebark pine, an important food source, diminished. Bears could starve, groups maintained, and their populations could plummet again. But a subsequent federal study of what, exactly, grizzly bears eat, found that while grizzlies do munch whitebark pine seeds during bumper years, they don't depend on the trees to survive. In fact, grizzlies consume no fewer than 266 species of everything from bison and mice to fungi and even one type of soil. 'Grizzly bears are incredibly opportunistic and use their omnivorous traits to shift to other food sources, ' says van Manen. So losing one food—even a high-calorie one—did little to change the population. The move to delist them paused as the federal government addressed the federal court's concerns, including researching the grizzly bear's diet. And bear numbers kept climbing. In 2016, the Fish and Wildlife Service—under President Barack Obama—updated delisting requirements including more expansive habitat protections, stricter conflict prevention, and enhanced monitoring. The agency then proposed a delisting. The following year—under Trump—it delisted the grizzly bear. This time the Crow Indian Tribe sued and—determining in part that delisting grizzlies in the Yellowstone region threatened the recovery of other populations of grizzlies—a federal judge overturned the government's decision to delist the bears and placed them back on the list. In 2022, Wyoming petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to delist bears in the Yellowstone region. The service took a few years to analyze the issue, and then this January, days before the Biden administration ended, it issued a response to that petition: Grizzly bears would stay on the endangered species list. All of these years of back and forth reflected the change in how the federal government viewed the grizzly population, largely a result of the bear's own success. The Yellowstone region's bears, they argued, are no longer distinct from bear populations in northern Montana, Idaho, and Washington. And because northern populations haven't met the recovery benchmarks yet (with the exception of a population in and around Glacier National Park), the species as a whole is not yet recovered. But the goalposts for delisting grizzlies keep moving, Thompson told Vox. Grizzly bears would still be managed even after a delisting. States would be responsible for them, and—miracle of miracles—state and federal agencies actually agreed on how to manage grizzlies after ESA protections end. Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana are committed to maintaining between 800 and 950 grizzly bears if the creature ever leaves the endangered species list. And states like Wyoming know how to manage grizzly bears because for years, under the supervision of the feds, they've been doing the gritty, ground-level work. Wyoming's wildlife agency, for example, traps and relocates conflict bears (or kills problem bears if allowed by the Fish and Wildlife Service), knocks on doors to calm nervous landowners, hands out bear spray, and reminds campers not to cook chili in their tents. Despite all that, 'nobody trusts us,' said Thompson, with Wyoming's state wildlife agency. 'There's always going to be a way to find a reason for [grizzlies] not to be delisted.' Delisting Now Might Be the Right Decision. It Would Still Be a Gamble Even though grizzly bears may be thriving in numbers, they're not ready to go it alone, says Matt Cuzzocreo, interim wildlife program manager for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition has spent millions of dollars over the past few decades helping bears and humans more successfully coexist. But whatever comes next needs to build on the past 50 years of working with locals. As bears expand into new territory, they're crossing into areas where residents aren't used to securing garbage and wouldn't know how to respond to 600-pound predators ambling down back roads or into neighborhoods. Simply removing bears from the list and handing management to the states, which is the default after a species delisting, isn't enough, says Chris Servheen—not when so much is still in flux. Servheen, who led the Fish and Wildlife Service's recovery program for 35 years, helped write the previous two recovery plans. He says a delisting could leave them dangerously exposed. 'Politicians are making decisions on the fate of animals like grizzly bears and taking decisions out of the hands of biologists,' Servheen says. Montana and Idaho, Servheen points out, already allow neck-snaring and wolf trapping just outside Yellowstone's borders—traps that also pose a lethal threat to grizzlies. And now, the Trump administration has slashed funding for the very biologists and forest managers tasked with protecting wildlife. A grizzly bear cub forages for food on a hillside near the Lake Butte overlook in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Photograph:Once states take over, many are expected to push for grizzly hunting seasons, and some, like Wyoming, have already set grizzly bear hunting regulations for when the creatures are no longer protected. Layer that on top of existing threats—roadkill, livestock conflicts, illegal kills—and it's easy to imagine a swift population slide. 'It's a perfect storm for grizzlies,' Servheen says. 'We're seeing attacks on public land agencies, the sidelining of science, predator-hostile politicians muscling into wildlife decisions, and relentless pressure from private land development. Walking away from the grizzly now—after all we've invested—just feels like the worst possible timing.'
Irish Times
14-06-2025
- Irish Times
Ireland's threatened corncrakes desperately need open, diverse and life-filled fields
One summer's day a few years ago, I boarded a boat on Magheraroarty pier, on the northwest coast of Donegal, and took off for Tory Island. But the vessel wasn't full of day trippers wanting to visit Ireland's most remote inhabited island; instead, my fellow passengers were of the shaggy, four-legged kind – a small herd of young, female black Galloway cattle, a hardy breed from Scotland accustomed to wind and salt-laden rain. It had been 25 years since cattle had set foot on Tory, and their return to the island came with one clear purpose: to graze through the thick layers of scutch grass that had taken over the fields. The beneficiary was the corncrake, a bird whose continued existence in Ireland is conservation-dependent and critically reliant on active intervention and management by ecologists, farmers and landowners. On Tory Island – often called Ireland's 'corncrake capital' – the return of this bird each spring is like the arrival of a headline act with a non-negotiable tour rider. In order for it to successfully breed on the ground, the corncrake's needs are precise: vegetation must reach at least 20 centimetres in height by mid-May, ideally of nettles, meadowsweet, or cow parsley; no mowing or machinery can disturb the field until August; the ground should be moist – but not flooded – and teem with insects; the area must be spacious enough to roam freely, but with a constant opportunity to hide from predators; and no fertiliser or reseeding during the summer is possible. When we arrived at the pier on Tory, a small group of islanders gathered while the local priest blessed the new bovine residents, before they were led to a nearby field to begin their work in the tangled scutch. These tough, impenetrable fields offer adult corncrakes no room to weave through and few insects on which to feed. For chicks, it's like being trapped in a room crammed wall-to-wall with old furniture – impossible to navigate. Cattle clear out the junk by grazing on the sweet, young shoots, gradually weakening the underground stems, and in doing so, they helps to create an open, diverse and life-filled field that corncrakes so desperately need. READ MORE That day on the island, I heard a corncrake's call. It's a bird of multiple talents: adept at soaring through the air for thousands of kilometres from central and southern Africa to reach here, the corncrake is also good at disappearing into the landscape. But after a bit of time, with almost comic effect, it popped its head above the grass, offering a quick but intense glimpse before vanishing into the ground once more. In Ralph Sheppard's thoroughly researched and illuminating new book, The Birds of County Donegal: Residents, Regulars and Rarities, he shares a memory from the 1960s when, from his home in east Donegal, he heard the sound of 10 corncrakes in a single night. 'The continuous rasping call of the corncrake may have prevented sleep, but it is sadly missed as an evocative sound of summer,' he writes. Like the nightjar, grey partridge and corn bunting before it, the corncrake would too have disappeared from Donegal were it not for the national conservation efforts to save it, he notes. Extinction is the certain fate of the ring ouzel, or 'mountain blackbird', which is now down to a single bird in the southern uplands of Donegal, and one breeding pair in the North, in what Sheppard says is the 'last gasp in Ireland of this once-familiar songbird'. It's not all about decline. Visitors such as reed warblers, garganey, little ringed plover and cattle egrets may soon become regular summer breeders in the county. Sheppard speculates that the vagrant ring-necked duck might become the first known colonisation by an American species, having first been spotted in Donegal back in 1984 on Dunfanaghy's New Lake. This lake is a relatively recent addition to Donegal's landscape, having formed just over a century ago. During the first World War, the demand for bedding and feed for horses led to harvesting marram grass from the sand dunes around Sheep Haven Bay and Dunfanaghy. This disturbed the dunes, causing sand to settle and eventually block off the sea, trapping water behind it and creating the lake. Since 1984, 97 sightings of this North American duck species have been recorded in Donegal, including at Lough Fern, Inch and Durnesh Lough and Tory Island. To stop the decline of vulnerable species and to 'lay out a welcome mat' for new arrivals, Sheppard advocates for changes in how land is managed. On the uplands, replace sheep with grazing cattle, ideally lightweight breeds such as Dexter, Kerry or Galloway. Native grasslands, such as lime-rich coastal machair, should be grazed in winter and managed using low-intensity farming methods. Native woodlands need to be restored; pollution of wetlands need to stop; and nature corridors should form a continuous network to allow species to thrive without becoming isolated. Sheppard emphasises the need to 'let nature decide how to proceed'. We're very far from yielding to ecological limits and allowing natural processes to shape how we manage land. As a result, the efforts to keep species such as the corncrake from extinction are resource-intensive in the face of pressures. Since 1993, millions of euro of public money has gone into corncrake conservation. On Tory Island, actions such as the grazing Galloways have helped lift numbers from nine calling males in 2020 to 21 last year. The species continues to cling on, just about. 'We just have to learn to recognise and reward benefits that are not yet part of the economy,' Sheppard writes. 'Re-thinking what we mean by 'the economy' will be to the benefit of birds and other wildlife, and also to ourselves. Preserving and encouraging biodiversity in our own small corner is an obligation that we share with every other small corner – if abundant life, human and other, is to remain sustainable'.
The Guardian
12-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Sheep farming is integral to the Lake District's heritage
Your piece (Conservationists call for Lake District to lose Unesco world heritage status, 7 June) quotes campaigners who criticise sheep farming in this most revered area of Britain. The Lake District is a national park, with protected and designated sites of special scientific interest. The fact that sheep farming and hefted livestock grazing has been core to its management for over 3,000 years suggests it has created something of value. How ironic that rather than celebrate (and further fine tune) its farmers and graziers, and the surrounding rural infrastructure that depends on this primary activity, ecologists want to see sheep farming's demise. Given the right policy framework and the public being prepared to support local food producers, the Lake District's farmers will be able to continue to adapt and deliver what it wants – the enhancement of natural resources, a nature-rich countryside, and a vibrant society with cultural heritage and a contribution to food security. That surely is what conservation should be about – a recognition of the whole, and not just singular outcomes. Finally, while sheep farming enterprises in these harsh regions may be financially marginal, if they are considered within an economy where money is recirculated locally, creating jobs and enterprise and supporting a rural community, then they're not such poor performers. Public support helps farmers to do more for nature and protect water and other resources. Farmers want to continue looking after the land they have farmed for centuries, ensuring public access, balancing farming with nature, and managing the landscape in a viable way for future StockerChief executive, National Sheep Association Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
