Issue 8

The lore of plants: the greater celandine

The greater celandine, the medicine for almost all ills! TWM ELIAS describes how this plant has been used medicinally over the centuries and notes that today it is a subject for pharmacological research.

This article is written in Welsh. A translation is available on request.

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An artist's view of Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island)

PHILIP BRENNAN combines his love of nature with his skill as an artist. In 2001 he ventured from his native Ireland and took part in the Artist-in-Residence scheme on Ynys Enlli/Bardsey. Here he recalls some of the pleasures and problems of capturing the ever-changing natural world with a pencil and brush.

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Roads and wildlife: a perspective

Most environmentalists think that roads and wildlife go together about as well as oil and water. The mixture is not always a lethal one, as LEN WYATT point out, and offers opportunities for improvement.

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Mary Edith Morris' diary

For twenty-five years Mary Edith Morris kept a diary in which she recorded the birdlife she had encountered at her Carmarthenshire home. These entries provide a fascinating glimpse of the changing fortunes of birds like the corncrake. They also paint a picture of a more rural, more stratified yet more intimate society, perhaps with fewer material blessings but more immaterial ones than we have today. JAMES ROBERTSON delves into a countrywoman's diary.

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Avocets 'on the level'

The Gwent Levels Wetland Reserve arose as compensation for the destruction of part of the Taff Ely SSSI during the development of Cardiff Bay. The clock is being turned back on over 400 hectares of improved farmland on the Welsh side of the Severn Estuary to re-establish the abundant birdlife that would have been found on such land in the early part of the 20th Century. This year the clock turned back a bit more than expected and a species nested which possibly hasn’t bred on 'the levels' since Roman times. In fact, as TONY PICKUP reports, it is the first time that avocets have nested in Wales within recorded history!

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Mapping seabed habitats around Wales

Seabed habitats are inaccessible places and, if we think about them at all, we probably limit our thoughts to spectacular corals reefs in remote places. Yet life on the seabed is rich, exciting and important foe the health of whole marine ecosystems. We need to know what's there and where the most important places are around the Welsh coast. Thanks to new collaborative research, seabed life is giving up its secrets, as ANDY MACKIE reports.

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Welsh islands round-up

Edited by GEOFF GIBBS from text supplied by RICHARD FARMER (Grassholm) and by STEVE SUTCLIFFE (Caldey).

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The coastal bee

As the favourite habitat of a little creature is the soft coast that’s likely to fall into the sea, then what chance has it got of survival? In this article ELINOR GWYNN discusses the trials and tribulations of a small burrowing bee which is literally nearly falling over the edge.

This article is written in Welsh. A translation is available on request.

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Farming for biodiversity and rural communities

Once nature was seen as the enemy of the farmer. But it is only in particular places that wildlife habitats are constantly battling to re-assert themselves. If those areas are targeted for special management, they could bring major biodiversity gains; but they could also be restored to nature at no cost, and often at a benefit to farmers and rural communities, as SARAH HETHERINGTON explains.

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A fluctuating pied flycatcher population

For twenty years TONY JENKINS has been recording the breeding success of pied flycatchers at a Carmarthenshire county park. The population has fluctuated but the underlying trend is not as easy to discern, as he reports.

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At home on the reserve

"About 1,500 words, managing a reserve from the farmers viewpoint." "But we don’t manage the reserve." "Well helping manage a reserve then." "But we're not proper farmers." "The reserve doesn't know that." "I think the older cattle have their suspicions." Eventually DAVID and LIZ WOOLLEY ran out of excuses.

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