Ingham’s W RLD
ALL too often saving the planet seems to involve wearing a hair shirt or taking an oath of abstinence amid a frenzy of finger-wagging. Don’t drive that car, don’t eat that meat, don’t go on holiday there… the list is endless. Well, at last I have good news for anyone who wants to help our wildlife. Drink more wine.
But before you grab a bottle, there condition: it has to have a cork stopper.
The reason can be seen today if you venture to the cork forests of southern Europe.
They are, and have been for centuries, essential refuelling stops for our summer visitors, tiny birds such as flycatchers and warblers, nightingales and redstarts.
All of them are on the move now, most of them feeding up on insects before they brave the toughest ordeal of their migration – crossing the Sahara. Others, like sunseeking robins and woodpigeons, will stay all winter to be rejoined in the spring by the long haul migrants who will once again guzzle on the insects, caterpillars and spiders that thrive on these wonderful cork oaks.
In Spain and Portugal these forests are also home to endangered species such as the Iberian lynx, the world’s rarest big cat, now reduced to about 150 adults. They are also home to the Spanish Imperial Eagle which numbers fewer than 1,000 birds.
However, the corks are under threat because of the growing prevalence of alternative stoppers for wine, among them screw tops and plastic bungs.
As demand falls, cork forests become less valuable. They are being replaced by watermelon or avocado farms which offer little to passing wildlife.
Of course, there is a catch. Depending on who you believe, one to five per cent of bottles with corks can be spoilt or “corked”.
However, the Drinks Business magazine said natural cork is the greenest stopper. It came top in nearly every category, including for the energy needed to produce it and the greenhouse gas emissions.
The world’s cork oak forests also absorb up to 14 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be heating up the plant. They act as a barrier to desertification.
So it is time that wines came with a new label, one specifying which stopper they use so boozy eco-warriors can make their choice. Paul Stancliffe of the British Trust for Ornithology said: “Buying wine in bottles with cork stoppers will help ensure the survival of cork oaks in southern Europe which are an important source of invertebrate food for summer migrants.”
It’s advice I’m more than happy to follow. Cheers. is one SHOREBIRDS have suffered a “substantial decline” due to climate change, say Bath University experts.
In the last 70 years nest predation has trebled in the Arctic and doubled further south while adults are surviving in smaller numbers, reports Science.
Warmer temperatures are changing vegetation, exposing their nests, while predators must find new food following lemming shortages. THE threatened shorebirds include spoon-billed sandpipers which are being helped by a captive breeding programme involving the RSPB and Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.
Some were released in the Russian Far East this summer. Four weeks later one was spotted, with its leg ring, on migration 3,000 miles away in China. There is hope. GREEN TIP: Put autumn leaves in a chicken wire enclosure to rot down into humus for your flowerbeds. WHAT was your worst ever job? Well beat this. On a visit to Windsor Castle a guide told us that Charles I, who is buried there, was reunited with his head after it was chopped off in 1649. Someone had to sew it back on his body. Imagine the Queen asking the person responsible: “And what do you do?” BIRDS of a feather really do flock together. Vultures “eavesdrop” on each other to find the best thermals which let them glide effortlessly on rising columns of warm air, says a Royal Society journal. Hannah Williams of Swansea University monitored French vultures and found they made a beeline for others already riding the airwaves.