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Conservation and Research

The Society undertakes active conservation in Gosforth Park Nature Reserve and is also represented on numerous committees concerned with the conservation and protection of the region’s wildlife. It is also involved in active research, particularly bird-ringing, and the publication of research findings in both its regular and special publications.

Society members play a key role as naturalists in the region recording fauna and flora and submitting their records which increases our knowledge of species distribution and provides valuable data for long term monitoring and conservation.

Bird Ringing

The Society has been involved in bird research for many years, particularly the use of ringing as a conservation and monitoring tool.

Ringing on the Farne Islands and Coquet Island during the last 50 years has had a major impact on discovering where breeding birds such as Sandwich terns go in winter and the mortality pressures that they face in parts of their African wintering range as a result of human activity.

These data have made a major contribution to some of the species accounts in the Migration Atlas published by the British Trust for Ornithology.

Bird ringing work on the Farnes and Coquet Island has expanded in recent years towards more-focussed studies in which ringing is used as a means of monitoring changes in the survival and growth of terns and other seabirds from year to year. It has become clear that we need to know a great deal more about the ecology of the marine environment in the North East, and studies have been extended with the formation of the Farne Islands Marine Research Group, a collaboration between ornithologists and scientists in the Society, the University of Newcastle and the National Trust.

In 2010 the Society Bird Ringing Group began a project to attach data loggers to Kittiwakes as part of their sea-bird monitoring work. This new area of research is providing fascinating and important data on seabird foraging which we hope will be used in the future conservation of the marine environment.

To find out more about our bird ringing group please click here.

Northeast England Beached Bird Surveys

A group of volunteers has performed monthly beach surveys in northeast England since December 2003 – mainly recording bird corpses, but additional creatures such as beached fish and mammals are also noted. This data complements similar long-term beach surveys in Orkney (which commenced in 1976) and Shetland (1979). This work is increasing our knowledge of our marine wildlife locally, nationally and internationally. 

The group is also involved in the ‘Save the North Sea’ (SNS) Fulmar project in which beached Fulmar corpses are collected as a tool to monitor changes in the marine litter situation in the North Sea. The SNS project commenced in 2002 and includes all countries bordering the North Sea.  Fulmars ingest floating plastic particles when feeding at sea and accumulate these in their stomach to a level that reflects the amount of litter at sea. Results are used by European governments to decide on policies reducing marine debris.

To find out more about the Northeast England Beached Bird Surveys and the SNS Fulmar project click here.

Nature Reserve Conservation & Research

For information about the Society’s conservation and research in Gosforth Park Nature Reserve click here.

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