There are several lessons that we can learn from the species surveying in the Local Wildlife Site in Heene Cemetery’s one acre. The first is the remarkable variety of plants and creatures that can be found there (currently 711*). The second is the paradox that what we see there is but a tiny proportion of what we should be seeing.
Take hoverflies, for example. These sometimes colourful pollinators often resemble bees, wasps and bumblebees. They neither bite nor sting. Because the larvae of many will consume aphids in prodigious numbers we can think of them as friend to farmer and gardener. Visit the website of the Friends of Heene Cemetery to see these creatures in close-up. Look for the Marmalade Hoverfly or the Tiger Hoverfly (shown here). You’ll find 30 different species there. Yet in Britain there are perhaps 285 different species of hoverfly.
This disparity between what has been seen and what we know exists is replicated elsewhere. Adaptation means that each species favours a particular habitat; but also many are increasingly scarce. After all, scientists are repeatedly telling us that the past was richer than the present, and that man’s activity and the changing climate have caused immense harm to the natural world.
A third lesson is that hoverflies — as with the majority of insects — have different preferences for host plants. Although some are generalists, many are specialists, so the greater the variety of plant species there is in any one place, the wider the insect variety there should be. With over 200 different species of flowering plants, Heene Cemetery should be like this, yet on some days one sees no hoverflies at all. 2024 was especially bad. And just this month, with fires raging in Los Angeles, we’ve had confirmation that the heat of 2024 breached the 1.5C limit that was set in Paris in 2015.
As a species, we aren’t good at comparing details from one year to another. As the years roll by, our yardsticks shorten or lengthen, distorting the significance of what we see. Scientists call this shifting baseline syndrome. Less screaming swifts above the streets of Worthing one year encourages us — subconsciously — to expect less the following year. Little by little the larger changes that happen in the natural world don’t appear dramatic.
Insects on car windscreens or moths circling street lights were plentiful in the past. One Danish scientist even went as far as counting windscreen splats between 1997 and 2017, recording an 80% decline in insect abundance. Studies like this provide baselines.
Thirty-two familiar species that we do see in Heene Cemetery’s Local Wildlife Site are now classed as rare, threatened, endangered or vulnerable, two of them being hoverflies. None of them would have been classed like this fifty years ago. So when scientists measure the difference between nature’s past abundance and today’s impoverishment, we should all take note. These declines are facts, not impressions.
Nature is in retreat and needs everyone’s help, big or small. In Heene Cemetery, one of the foundational decisions taken by volunteers was never to use chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, insecticides). This is just one of countless initiatives being taken throughout the town and across the country.
Much of this is no longer the domain of cranks or visionaries, but is mainstream common sense — although apparently not for everyone. Several years ago Worthing Borough Council voted to phase out the use of harmful pesticides and weedkillers. It was a bold and welcome move. However, West Sussex County Council does not have a clear plan to cease spraying glyphosate on the town’s verges.
Glyphosate (aka ‘Roundup’ and some ‘Weedol’ products), we are told, is carcinogenic, capable of causing cancer. It’s demonstrably toxic to people and wildlife. This spraying happens near verges outside your home just as much as outside the gates of Heene Cemetery’s Local Wildlife Site. The chemical supposedly controls what the manufacturer calls ‘weeds’, although of the 25 that they list on their website (for the formulation that WSCC uses), all would be classed by botanists as flowering plants. 15 of them are found in the cemetery, being part of its fragile web of interdependence between plants and insects.
Sadly these chemicals, used to control ‘weeds’, inadvertently kill insects like hoverflies, together with invertebrates and even butterfly larvae. Their loss also impacts bird populations further up the food chain.
Leadership doesn’t need to be from the top, so why not make 2025 the year you plant more pollinator-friendly plants and stop using chemicals in your garden?
[This article first appear in the February edition of Inside West Worthing Magazine (page 27).]
[* The species count mentioned above has since risen to 734.]
Written by Rob Tomlinson