BES Facebook pageBritish Ecological Society Press Release
29 April 2010
Ecologists pay homage to the 'most studied wood in Britain'
Leading ecologists will gather at Wytham Woods today to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its designation as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Wytham Woods near Oxford is probably the most studied wood in Britain, and the celebration includes the launch of a new book - Wytham Woods: Oxford's Ecological Laboratory - at a special meeting of the British Ecological Society's Forest Ecology Group on 29th April 2010.
Notified as an SSSI in 1950 - one of the first SSSIs in the country - Wytham Woods has been home to an extraordinary series of ecological studies by researchers from the University of Oxford, which was given the wood during the second world war.
The 350 ha wood - at this time of year carpeted in bluebells and ringing with the sound of spring birdsong - has played a pivotal role in training generations of British ecologists and the results of their long-term studies are helping address many of the most important questions facing wildlife conservation today.
According to Dr Keith Kirby, Natural England's forestry and woodland officer: "In parts of the wood every single tree has been measured; they have been studied literally from top to bottom with researchers using towers, walkways, ropes and cherry pickers to understand how the forest canopy grows and takes up carbon."
The site's other research gems include:
- The badgers of Wytham Woods form one of the most comprehensive long-term studies of medium-sized carnivores in the world, thanks to Hans Kruuk who began working on them in 1972 after his pioneering studies of hyaenas in the Serengeti.
- Wytham Woods was one of the eight founding sites in the Environmental Change Network (ECN). Established in 1993 by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology the ECN now comprises 12 terrestrial and 45 freshwater sites regularly monitored to detect the impact of environmental change.
- Studies showing how the structure and composition of the woods changed as rabbits declined in the 1950s (a thicket of ash sprang up), deer numbers increased in the 1980s (bramble clumps changed to grassy areas), and is changing again as the deer numbers have now been reduced.
- Blue Tits and Great Tits have been studied at Wytham Woods since 1947.
For most Great Tits at Wytham, each bird is individually known, including when and where it hatched and who its parents are. Thanks to long-term monitoring at Wytham, ecologists have uncovered the minutiae of Great Tits' lives, including the role of its song (described as sounding 'like a squeaky bicycle pump') in establishing territories.
The ecological value of Wytham Woods is enormous, says Dr Mike Morecroft of Natural England: "Most ecological processes are long-term, so long-term research and monitoring are essential. The breadth and depth of research at Wytham provides an invaluable insight into a whole host of contemporary environmental issues."
In the new book's preface Professor Lord Krebs, who began his research career in 1966 by studying Wytham's Great Tits, says: "If there were a Nobel Prize for Ecology, and if you could award it to a place rather than a person, Wytham Woods would surely be a prime candidate. It is almost certainly unmatched anywhere in the world as a place of sustained, intensive ecological research extending over nearly three-quarters of a century."
Like many other ecologists who have spent hours, weeks and years in Wytham, for Professor Krebs the woods are a place of great beauty, as well as a source of valuable ecological data. "For me, it is hard to match the sensation of inhaling the scent of a carpet of damp moss on a February morning and chewing 'bread and cheese' - the first, pale green, buds of hawthorn that foretell the arrival of spring," he adds.
Wytham Woods lie 5km outside Oxford, tucked into a a loop in the River Thames. The Wytham Estate comprises around 500 ha of farmland and 350 ha of woodland. The woods were given to the University of Oxford for conservation research by Raymond ffennell in 1942, and the Nature Conservancy (a forerunner of Natural England) in 1950 notified Wytham Woods as one of the first Sites of Special Scientific Interest. To date, 155 bird species have been recorded at Wytham, from breeding residents such as the Great Tit, to occasional visitors like Gannet, Razorbill and Marsh Harrier. Access to the woods is by permit only - email:
wytham.woods@admin.ox.ac.uk.
Wytham Woods: Oxford's Ecological Laboratory by Peter Savill, Christopher Perrins, Keith Kirby and Nigel Fisher (eds), ISBN 978-0-19-954320-5, is published by Oxford University Press on 15 April 2010.
