Starling Parade - It's a jungle out there
ENGLISH Nature wants to help wildlife survive by bringing some of the wild back into urban lives. CHRIS BAKER talks to the man in charge of reminding us of the variety of wildlife on our doorstep.
THE tens of thousands of starlings that cartwheel above Brighton's crumbling West Pier in the evenings has become one of the most stunning wildlife spectacles in the south of England.
Fifty thousand of the now threatened birds often gather for their sunset dance when the roost is at its biggest, on cold mid-winter nights.
English Nature believes the roost is so important it wants plans to redevelop the derelict Victorian pier made more starling friendly.
Steve Berry, from the watchdog's Sussex office, said: "It is a fantastic sight and I think people do enjoy watching it.
"You could not really have them in a more ideal spot. It is a great spectacle to have 50,000 birds in a big town wheeling about."
The starlings did not move to the pier until the trees they had been roosting in were blown down during the Great Storm of 1987.
Fifteen years later, they have turned one of the most remarkable pieces of seaside architecture in England into a wildlife site in its own right.
Not only is the decaying structure a perfect night-time home for starlings - think of the droppings on city streets if the birds roosted elsewhere - but they also attract peregrines and sparrow hawks, who view the West Pier as a larder.
Mr Berry said: "I think it is a classic example of where you get an urban spectacle and you have got an example of people enjoying connecting with wildlife first hand.
"Whether it is masses of starlings on a pier, looking at a bluebell wood or spectacular orchids on the roadside, all these things have a value."
Watching the nightly display by the West Pier starlings fits very well into Mr Berry's job, heading a new English Nature initiative to bring people closer to wildlife, especially the 90 per cent of us who live in towns and cities.
The newly launched People and Wildlife project hopes to break the divorce from the natural world that has left children growing up unable to recognise once familiar plants such as a dock leaf or a poppy.
Mr Berry remembers a visit to an urban local nature reserve where some asked, in all seriousness, whether there were monkeys in the trees.
The watchdog wants everybody to be able to have quick and easy contact with wildlife to try to end our dumbed-down relationship with the natural world.
Its long-term objective is to have a natural green space within 300m from every home and one hectare of local nature reserve per thousand people.
There should be a 20 hectare wildlife site within 2km of every home, and larger sites within easy travelling distance.
East and West Sussex, with 38 local nature reserves, is better provided than most places. About a third of them are in urban areas; places such as Whitehawk Hill, Wild Park and Benfield Hill, all in Brighton and Hove.
These urban sites are important to Mr Berry, both as a way of reconnecting people with wildlife, and a place where plants and animals can survive.
He said: "They have two sorts of importance, for me anyway. One is they are a reservoir of wildlife because the countryside, to some extent, has become hostile.
"And I think the other important thing is they are one of the few places where people can have day to day contact with wildlife which they cannot otherwise get."
Contact with wildlife can rapidly help reduce stress levels. Even a short stop at an urban wildlife site after trying to negotiate city traffic can have a soothing effect, researchers have found.
For many plants and animals the these urban sites are essential to their survival.
Water voles, which struggle in the wild where they have to compete with mink, often do much better in urban areas.
Many birds have suffered dramatic declines and have turned to urban areas to escape a countryside sterilised by intensive agriculture.
Starlings too, despite seeming to fill the sky above Brighton and Hove, are struggling. All the more reason, Mr Berry said, to stop thinking of the West Pier as a piece of Victorian ironmongery but as a haven for wildlife.
The above text is reproduced from The Argus of October 31, 2002.