Fens are rare wildlife 'hotspot'

 
Ouse Washes is a Special Area of Conservation
 

The Fens are home to 25% of Britain's rarest wildlife and 13 globally rare species, according to a new report.

Researchers from the University of East Anglia studied over one million

records collected by scientists and amateur enthusiasts that date back to 1670.

The Fens Biodiversity Audit details evidence of 13,474 species of plants,

insects, birds, fish and mammals.

The area covered 3,800 km sq, spanning the Fenlands of Norfolk, Suffolk,

Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire.

Christopher Panter, an ecologist from the school of Environmental Sciences at

the University of East Anglia and one of the authors of the audit, commented:

"One of the most surprising things was that, despite it being a very large area,

most of the area was previously unrecorded."

Fantastic fens

Predatory Great Raft Spider - East Anglica.

Data was collected from well-known fen sites such as

Chippenham, Woodwalton and Wicken Fens, as well as less-known sites such as

Marine Protected Areas increase 10-fold in a decade

 

 
The reserve around the Chagos islands is the world's largest, protecting a notoriously rich ecosystem.

A 10-fold rise in Marine Protected Areas has been recorded over a decade.

A report to a in Hyderabad reports that more than 8.3 million sq km - 2.3% of the global ocean area - is now protected.

The percentage is small but the rapid growth in recent times leads to hope

that the world will hit its target of 10% protected by 2020.

This would have looked most unlikely prospect just a few years ago.

The aspiration was agreed by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2004

with a target date of 2012. Progress was so slow at first that the target was

slipped to 2020 - with some researchers forecasting it would not be reached

until mid-century.

But recently there have been huge additions - like Marine Protected Areas

(MPAs) in the UK-controlled Chagos archipelago and US-controlled uninhabited

territories in the mid-Pacific.

The Cook Islands recently announced a 1.1 million sq km MPA - that is four

times the area of the UK land mass. New Caledonia's is even bigger - 1.4 million

sq km.

Australia has added a further 2.7 million sq km to its listing of the Great