Need an audit?

John Macadam / Earthwords, geologist & writer

Need an audit?

01.08.07

Biodiversity Audits are well-known, as are BAPs, Biodiversity Action Plans, which result from the audits. But biodiversity is supported by geodiversity - plants' roots go into a material with a range of physical and chemical properties. These properties are the result of many factors, chief of which is the nature of the original material - the rock - and the geomorphological processes which have acted upon it. Increasingly, geological information is being included in BAPs.

I was commissioned to write the geodiversity audit to complement the biodiversity audit undertaken by the National Trust for their properties in Cornwall (the NT owns around 42% of the Cornish coastline). This geodiversity audit was a first for the National Trust.

One result of this audit was the realisation that management for wildlife could often be integrated with management for the Earth heritage features and result in less overall work for the Trust. For example, the pattern of selective clearing of scrub, to increase biodiversity, could be designed to aid geological conservation, often by clearing around key exposures. Equally, very sensitive sites could be allowed to become inaccessible, until such time as research was to be undertaken.

In early 2005 we - Earthwords - carried out a geodiversity audit for South Penquite Farm on Bodmin Moor, in Cornwall. The work was largely funded by English Nature's Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund. The team of 3 geologists was Paul Wheeler (who wrote the Geodiversity Action Plan - GAP - for Cornwall), Simon Camm, and myself. GAPs - and LGAPs (Local Geodiversity Action Plans) are being formulated all over the UK.

One advantage of having me, rather than any geologist, undertake the audit is that while I am not an ecologist I have an above average awareness of the living world. I am involved in recording for the Cornish Bird Atlas, and in December 2001 - January 2002 I surveyed the garden of my home to see if yellow-necked mice, Apodemus flavicollis, were still present. One was trapped here in the mid-80s but there are no Cornwall records on the database of ERCCIS (Environmental Record Centre of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly). Sadly none were found. As for birds, the tetrad (2km square SX06S) in which I live, in 10 km square SX06, had one of the highest species counts in the wintering survey 2000/1 for Cornwall: I recorded 55 species. In addition I have sent in records for this location for lesser horseshoe and whiskered bats, and other species (including the third Cornish record for a particular beetle, and the fifth for another - Sinodendron cylindricum), as well as records (e.g. for dormouse, siskins, cetaceans) for other locations in Cornwall. In total I have contributed a few hundred records. Currently the ERCCIS website has a downloadable report with maps of the mammals recorded in Cornwall up to the end of 2006.

The 'cutting' below should be evidence of my commitment to preserving the environment, where possible, and to local distinctiveness.

The Cornish Guardian Thursday November 21, 2002

written by Ben Glass

LONE MISSION TO SAVE TREE

09:30 - 21 November 2002

Geologist and freelance writer John Macadam held a one-man protest in a small Cornish hamlet last week over the felling of a 60-year-old tree.

For an hour-and-a-half on Friday morning Mr Macadam refused to allow Cormac workers to chop down an ash in the middle of Little Kirkland, near Bodmin.

Standing vigil over the tree, Mr Macadam said he would not budge until he knew why the tree, which was growing near the side of a small bridge, was being removed.

He said it was an attractive part of the hamlet and feared its removal was unnecessary.

At about midday Ian Bounsal, senior engineer for Cormac, arrived on the scene. He told Mr Macadam that the tree had to be removed because the its roots were damaging the small granite bridge. He said he had even had reports of the bridge, which runs over a small stream, swaying when the tree moved in the wind.

Mr Macadam, who has lived in the hamlet for 21 years, said once he knew there was a legitimate reason for removing the tree, there was no point in trying to protect the tree. He said that although unfortunate he understood it had to go.

But he added: "If they had told us what was going on it would have saved a lot of time and effort on both sides."

As a footnote:

The Cornwall County Council tree-felling crew told me the bridge had to be strengthened (as so many have been in the UK) to take forty tonne trucks. Ludicrous on this lane! But equally ludicrous strengthening schemes have already been carried out locally (e.g. at Resprynn near the National Trust's Lanhydrock House). Hence my protest. We hope to get the tree replaced by a new tree - probably a rowan, which is native but does not grow so large as an ash - nearby. And by the way, it's Kirland, not Kirkland. Kirland comes from the Cornish/Kernewek for enclosure ('lann' though whether the first bit, 'kir', refers to sheep - as some say, or is a person's name, no-one can agree). More place names in Cornish.

The mason who repaired the bridge made a superb job, and left us our quirky iron safety rail set into (Luxulyan) granite - a true piece of local distinctiveness! Luxulyan quarries are far nearer than the Bodmin Moor granite quarries.

The engineer's name is Ian Bounsall.

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