Volunteer: Working for Nature
Mammal recording, Staffordshire
Derek Crawley dedicates his spare time to recording UK mammals
I want to pass on my own enjoyment of finding mammals to others.
All over the world, devoted individuals are doing their bit by volunteering to be involved with wildlife. Jo Price meets a man who has spent nearly two decades recording UK species for The Mammal Society.
Teaching people how to find a harvest mouse nest, and seeing their surprise and joy when they discover one, is a volunteering highlight for Derek Crawley. The quality assurer and training assessor for City and Guilds countryside and environment courses has devoted his spare time to British mammals for the past 18 years.
His volunteering journey started when he founded the Staffordshire Mammal Group in 2000. Twelve years later, he became coordinator for The Mammal Society’s National Mammal Atlas Project, collecting and verifying records from across the country. The atlas, which is due out in March 2019, will be the first publication of its kind in over two decades.
“We now have a greater understanding of changes over the past 20 years,” he says. “The data I have helped gather and review has also allowed a red list of threatened British mammals to be published.”
The task facing Derek and other volunteers – there are around 30 county verifiers and hundreds of recorders – is painstaking. Much of it is deskbound because it involves liaising with other recording organisations and logging records from the Mammal Tracker and Mammal Mapper smartphone apps, which are available to the public. Despite spending a lot of time in an office, Derek still manages to fit in fieldwork: “I take part in surveys and recording, and get local people involved with mammal identification.” The Mammal Society trustee also provides photographs for the charity to use in its publications. “This small organisation provides scientific advice to inform decisions all the way to government level,” he explains. “It strives to understand the distribution and population status of all species of UK mammals, including cetaceans, so they can be protected for future generations.”
As a knowledgeable amateur, Derek has been involved in opportunities that are not open to everyone, such as working on a pilot survey of hedgehogs using ‘footprint tunnels’, capturing and monitoring pine martens, and advising consultants on wildlife surveys. Being part of a scientific community is really important to him: “I want to support the experts I have learnt from by passing on my own enjoyment of finding mammals to others,” he says. “We all have a part to play in furthering our knowledge of British wildlife.”
FIND OUT MORE
For information on The Mammal Society’s work, visit its website: mammal.org.uk