How many different animals can you find in 3 days?

One of the joys of working in the forest, is that if you open your eyes, you will see a lot more biodiversity then people tell you is there.

We thought we would take it a step further by counting all the animal species we could find in 3 days in one productive spruce forest. One which is just starting to be re-structured. In April. Using just one technique.

We counted 359 species of animal.

This included otters, hares and pine marten. My personal favourite oddity was the venomous water shrew, which feeds on the plentiful fish and amphibians, tackling prey up to 60 times its own body weight.

The rarest was the critically endangered eel, which no-one knew was there. I am also a big fan of the enigmatic stone loach, which is an indicator of clean water.

The technique we used, environmental DNA sampling (e-DNA) provides an excellent measure of broad spectrum biodiversity. However, it doesn't record everything because the DNA needs to get into the water source you are sampling.

So; this total doesn't include the raptors, foxes, badgers and bats which we already know are present. And because it is a snap-shot in time, it doesn't record migratory birds, or dormant insects either.

We plan to integrate this technique with conventional survey approaches and cover all seasons to give a real base-line of broad spectrum biodiversity.

The full breakdown was;

Bony Fish 7; Amphibians 4

Birds 22: Mammals 16

In the lead by far were the invertebrates, at 310. Some of these species have not been detected in the UK before using this technique- so have an unrecognised DNA signature. It might even include new species.

Its amazing what you find if you look.

#forestry #ecology #naturalcapital