Does Counting Count?

Thousands of volunteers take part in wildlife recording schemes. Do their efforts make a difference – or are they wasting their time?

- Kate Risely

If you’ve ever diligently scrutinised your feeders for the RSPB or strained your ears listening for tawny owls for the BTO, you’re part of a long tradition of citizen scientists who have been watching, counting, monitoring and recording Britain’s fauna and flora for generations.

But, when sending back your completed survey forms, you may wonder where on earth your records – that glimpse of a tree sparrow, that hedgehog trundling across your patio – end up. Will they make a difference to the wildlife you love, or are we all just documenting what we are losing? What, really, is the point?

Counting wildlife was once the realm of amateur enthusiasts, but today data gathered by the wider public can have enormous value, landing on the desks of professional scientists from the Government and national organisations.

Collectively, our records can be used to push through high-level decisions that can have lasting effects on our wild neighbours. We don’t have to look far to find a high profile example of how monitoring efforts are helping to save a threatened species. For several years the RSPB has spearheaded a campaign to rescue Lodge Hill, a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Kent, from extensive housing development.

Pivotal to the campaign is Lodge Hill’s status as the country’s top spot for breeding nightingales, a species whose population has crashed by 90 per cent in the past 50 years. Currently keeping the diggers at bay are three vital pieces of information, all of which have emerged from counts compiled by volunteer birdwatchers: the number of breeding nightingales at Lodge Hill; the total number of nightingales in the country (so we know the proportion at Lodge Hill); and the fact that nightingales are already declining and that their breeding sites are therefore in desperate need of protection.