A WEALTH OF WILDLIFE

Our conservation effort on land and at sea depends on close co-operation between volunteers, staff and organisations addressing the many species, habitats and issues involved. Everything is underpinned by the Environmental Records Centre for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (ERCCIS), housed by the Trust, which holds and manages the information on which conservation depends. Here is just a sample of the specialist work being undertaken.

CORNWALL BIODIVERSITY INITIATIVE

The coastline of Cornwall is about 700 kilometres long and the diverse habitats found around it, from sheer cliffs and rocky reefs to sandy coves and seagrass beds, all help to provide a coastal zone which is rich in wildlife and natural beauty. The Cornwall Biodiversity Initiative recognises the importance of the marine environment and has written a number of action plans to try to conserve and enhance its biodiversity.

The Coastal Zone Action Plan covers many inshore and offshore marine habitats as well as 75 species ranging from rare star corals to humpback whales. There are also specific plans written for priority species such as basking sharks, grey seals, harbour porpoises and the pink sea fan.

A huge number of conflicting issues affect Cornwall's coastal zone, such as pressures from tourism, fishing and pollution, not to mention the effects of climate change. But the Biodiversity Initiative's action plans hope to get people working together to reduce these threats, maintain natural processes and promote the wealth of wildlife found in the marine environment. Action is happening throughout the county at all levels from site safeguard and management to research and raising awareness of the diversity of life to be found on and beneath the waves. Keep an eye out next time you're on the cliffs or the beach - you might be surprised by what you see!

Ruth Adams

SEAL GROUP The group is attracting a growing number of volunteers who are:

1. Counting seals at their main haul-out sites in Scilly, Cornwall, Devon and Lundy, to try to identify any seasonal migration trends.

2. Photographing and cataloguing seals, thereby

identifying them and matching them to records of time and place. This allows us to understand the life stories of individual seals and the tribes to which each may belong.

3. Quantifying disturbance of seals at haul-out sites by boats and clamberers. This will lead to the development of management plans to deal with any problems identified.

In addition, I am accompanying fishermen to sea to examine at first hand their problems with seals and the

seals' problems with nets. This extends work carried out this winter, the initial phase of which, Grey Seals and Fisheries Interactions in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Seas, was published in May 2000 and is available through the Trust.

We always need more help, so please contact me on (01736) 787207.

Stephen Westcott

RIGS Group

"I must go down to the seas again..." wrote John Masefield, a Poet Laureate, in the first half of the twentieth century. Today he would have to go down about ten centimetres less in Cornwall. A small rise in sea level, maybe, when the local tidal range is around seven metres, but not insignificant for coastal properties.

But what has all this to do with geology - and geological conservation in particular?

Our local sea level rise is due to rising global sea level (because of ice melting and sea water expanding as the planet warms) and local subsidence (as material beneath us creeps "home" to where it was squeezed out by the weight of the overlying ice - we were to the south of the ice sheets).

Ancient sea levels leave records in the landscape (as drowned valleys, raised beach platforms, bevelled cliffs and waterfalls) and records in the rocks ("fossil" beaches high above the sea, "submerged forests" and coastal peats). You may have seen, in the media, the peat rediscovered at Crooklets, Bude, by the company laying another fibre optic cable from the USA? Or remember the National Trust protecting the boulder beach at Port Nanven, St Just? The peat and log discovered during coast defence work at Praa? Or even seen for yourself the "submerged forest" at Portreath, Pendower or Penzance?

Wood and pollen from these sites help to build up a record of past climates, so the RIGS Group is recording, and sampling, as many as possible. Many of the better-exposed sites are already SSSIs (Sites of Special Scientific Interest) and are thus recorded in the Quaternary of South-West England (£130 - but the RIGS library copy at Allet was free from English Nature). An increasing number of others are RIGS.

Of immediate concern is what will happen to some of the mine waste in Cornish estuaries as sea level rises. Come to our AGM on Wednesday 8th November to hear Dr Duncan Pirrie (Director of Research at Camborne School of Mines) talk on the past, present and future of mine waste around the Cornish coastline, followed by an informal tour of CSM (electron microscopes etc). In the morning there's a field trip when we will cut a core at Hayle - so you can see mine waste in the estuary's sediment. All are welcome to either - or both.

John Macadam