JERSEY’S wildlife is under serious threat from a rapidly changing climate which has seen the Island record one of its hottest ever starts to summer, experts have warned.
Last month was officially the warmest June since the famously hot summer of 1976 and the driest for nearly a decade, according to data released by Jersey Met.
The prolonged period of warm and dry weather comes less than a year after Jersey recorded its hottest summer and its hottest-ever day (37.9°C on 18 July), which environmentalists believe had a devastating impact on wildlife, particularly insects.
Nationally, the UK’s Wildlife Trusts yesterday warned that a succession of heatwaves and droughts over recent years had left nature ‘pounded by extreme weather without a chance to recover’.
The hot and dry conditions have caused streams to run dry and many flowering plants to wilt, leaving insects that feed on nectar and pollen to run out of food.
Commenting on an apparent significant decrease in the number of insects in Jersey, environmentalist Mike Stentiford said: ‘Nature can adapt to changes, but the problem is that the climate is changing so rapidly it isn’t being give time to adapt.
‘The most startling thing at the moment is the complete lack of insects. A few years ago I wouldn’t have dreamt of leaving my window open at night with the light on, as you would end up with all sorts inside the house.
‘Now you don’t really see anything. It’s the strangest time I have known. It’s very odd.’
The average temperature last month was 18.3°C – 2°C above the monthly average. And just 19.4mm of rain was recorded, with almost all of it falling on two days. The average for the month is 50.7mm.
Sea temperatures were also just under 1°C above average. However, Jersey’s waters have so far avoided the extreme warming caused by a so-called marine heatwave which has pushed up the sea temperature off the east and north-west coasts of the UK by as much as 4°C.
JEP Nature correspondent Bob Tompkins said that the hot and dry conditions – coming so soon after last summer’s record-breaking weather – had contributed towards a significant decline in insects, which was possibly having a knock-on effect on other wildlife.
‘We are seeing a very, very serious decline in our insect population. For example there are nowhere near as many bees, such as mining bees and bumblebees,’ he said.
‘All this is likely to be a knock-on effect of the drought last year when many of the insects would be breeding and laying eggs.
‘We are also starting to experience a rise in mortality among barn owls which are yet to fledge.
‘We are not sure of the reason, but it could be because their prey species are suffering too. When it gets hot and dry invertebrates will go deep underground to find moisture, so rodents will struggle to eat, and so there has possibly been a drop-off in the number of rodents and this will of course have an effect on the barn owls.’
Mr Tompkins echoed the message that nature was simply not having time to recover after spells of hot and dry weather.
‘It is a year-on-year problem. You have a drought one year and you notice a small decline in numbers and then you have another drought the following year and you notice a bigger decline. This is the third year now where we have had a drought and it hits wildlife hard.’
Meanwhile, Dru Burdon, from the Jersey Hedgehog Preservation Group, said June had been ‘horrendous’.
‘We have been getting so many dehydrated hedgehogs brought to us. It was so dry, and because it was dry there were no worms, and so the hogs were so dehydrated and emaciated.
‘It has rained a bit recently, which has helped, but we just don’t know what is going to happen over the next couple of months. I would really encourage people to leave food and water out in their gardens.’
In a press statement yesterday, the UK Met Office said the hot June had a ‘fingerprint of climate change’.
It said that following a study it had concluded that the chance of ‘a June beating the previous joint 1940/1976 record [average temperature in the UK] of 14.9°C has at least doubled since the 1940s’.
Paul Davies, UK Met Office climate extremes principal fellow and chief meteorologist, said: ‘Alongside natural variability, the background warming of the Earth’s atmosphere due to human-induced climate change has driven up the possibility of reaching record high temperatures.’
Commenting on the Island’s hot June, Matt Winter, duty forecaster at Jersey Met, said: ‘You really can’t attribute one weather event or one month of weather to climate change. However, a scenario where you have higher than average temperatures over a prolonged period of time is something you would expect to see more of as a result of climate change.
‘You would also expect to see more intense rainfall over shorter periods, and this is what we saw last month, when almost all of June’s rain fell over two days.’
THE RECORD-BREAKING YEAR OF 2022
* Last summer was the warmest on record
The Island also had its hottest ever day (37.9°C on 18 July), its hottest June day (33.2°C on 17 June) and a new night-time record of 25.5°C on 19 July
*Last summer also had eight days reaching at least 30°C – more than any other year since records began
*Every month last year, except for December, was warmer than average, resulting in the warmest year on record
