Burgundy to BBOWT - Arnaud's tale

By Arnaud Duranel
Wildlife Watcher

Arnaud's work involves restoring floodplain habitats and meadows

I spent my childhood in a small village near Cambrai in the North of France.

I was the oldest of four brothers, so you can imagine that the house was quite lively.

We lived on an old farm with a very large garden, so I had lots of opportunities for getting in touch with nature.

But I first developed an interest in wildlife through reading. One of the first books I read was about a young boy in the mountains of Eastern France.

He lived in a forest and his life was full of fantastic experiences with hazel grouses, wildcats and capercaillies. Compared to the flat plains of Northern France, this image of spruce and fir trees covered with snow fascinated me. I later visited the places described in the book as an adult and found that the description was not exaggerated at all, and it is still the place where I dream of living!

A very influential book for me was The Amateur Naturalist by Gerald Durrell, especially the last pages describing how to stuff dead animals and press plants. Quite a few times my mother, while looking for some food in the big freezer, would find a dead mole or weasel that I picked up by the road and was storing before I could stuff it or clean and assemble its skeleton!

When the time came for me to choose a career, it was obvious that I wanted to be an ecologist. I ended up studying for a post-graduate degree in Environmental Science & Countryside Management at the University of Burgundy. As part of this course I worked on a six month project in partnership with a local conservation non-governmental organisation belonging to the Conservatoires d'Espaces Naturels network.

These organisations are equivalent to the Wildlife Trusts here in the UK, acquiring and managing nature reserves and raising awareness of nature conservation issues. I got my first permanent job as a reserves ecologist in another of these organisations in Limousin, Central France. I worked there for nearly three years, surveying and managing diverse habitats such as mires, heathlands, woodlands and bat roosts.

BBOWT hope to buy Leaches Farm to preserve the rare species there

A few years ago I followed my partner to England and decided to study for an MSc in Conservation at University College London. My dissertation was in collaboration with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, on the hydrological aspects of floodplain meadow restoration.

This experience was quite appropriate to get the post of Upper Ray Project Officer for the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust, which involves restoring floodplain habitats, and floodplain meadows in particular.

At BBOWT I advise local landowners and farmers on how to restore wetland habitats on their land. I also manage the Upper Ray Meadows, a 275-acre nature reserve. We are delivering an ambitious programme of wetland restoration works, which has been running for two years now.

It includes the restoration of flower-rich floodplain hay meadows, a very threatened habitat at the European scale, the creation of a large number of new ponds, the creation of wet grasslands and shallow water features for wading birds and the restoration of a small river to make sure it has better ecological connectivity with its floodplain.

We are also improving visitor facilities with the construction of bird hides and permissive footpaths.

The River Ray floodplain is very important for species-rich hay meadows and wading birds such as curlew and lapwing. BBOWT and the RSPB are working together to develop a large project there, looking at restoring wildlife at the landscape-scale.

The Trust wishes to significantly increase the size of its reserve in the upper part of the floodplain near Bicester, to complete ambitious wetland restoration works. We are currently in the process of acquiring Leaches Farm, a 78-acre flower-rich hay meadow that will make a fantastic addition to our Upper Ray Meadows Nature Reserve.