Episode 4 Rhys Jones's Wildlife Patrol

Welsh wildlife is under attack

and I am on the front line trying to protect it.

Our 5,000 native species of birds...

mammals...

and reptiles...

are threatened daily by illegal activity...

Black swan.

..mistreatment...

This is neglect on a level that I've never seen.

..and alien invaders.

That does not look like a happy spider.

I'm Dr Rhys Jones,

and from my laboratory at Cardiff University,

I work with the police...

Hello. Police!

-Bird in there!

-..international wildlife groups...

A little bit of a tank, isn't he?

..and concerned members of the public.

It's plastic, I promise you.

In the fight to save our animals from humans...

and humans from animals.

Everybody, stay still. Stay still!

'And tonight...'

-There it is!

-'I get a ring-side seat...'

There's a red squirrel!

'..as the reds strike back against the greys.

'I'm called in on an unfortunate animal autopsy...'

This animal really was starving.

'And things get pretty harsh for me up in the Italian Alps.'

This is brutal!

Humankind is driving wildlife to extinction -

we've heard it all before.

It's stark and it's gloomy, but it doesn't mean it's not true.

Even in Wales, we've already managed to kill off the wolf,

the lynx, and the beaver and we're currently doing a good

job of driving out the water vole, bats, and even the hedgehog.

And in this programme, I'm about to come face to face with

two of Wales's most endangered mammals, starting with

an unexpected discovery on the North Wales coast.

That body of water behind me is the Menai Straits

and the landmass beyond - that's the Isle of Anglesey.

It's home to the largest population of one of Wales's most

threatened species - the red squirrel.

Anglesey is one of only three places in the whole of Wales

where red squirrels still survive.

There are isolated pockets in Clocaenog Forest in North Wales,

and also in central mid-Wales, but by far the largest population -

of approximately 400 reds - is on the island.

And the reason they are surviving there is an active policy

to keep Anglesey free of the red squirrel's arch-nemesis - the greys.

Native to North America, the grey squirrel was introduced to the UK

in the late 19th century as an ornamental pet but has now

become a monumental pest - colonising the UK, out-competing

our native reds, and pushing them back into isolated areas

like Anglesey - where their survival remains constantly in the balance.

There's been a real battle going on to keep the greys

out of the island and stop them spreading squirrel pox, a disease

which has no affect on the greys

but is completely deadly to our native reds.

So deadly that up to 90% of the UK's red squirrel population

has already been wiped out by it,

whilst the immune grey population has now swelled to over 2.5 million.

The battle to stop the grey squirrel from establishing itself

on Anglesey has been incredibly successful

but there's a twist in the tail, for whilst the grey squirrel is

not over on the island, there are rumours that the red squirrel

has made it across the Menai Straits and is here on mainland Gwynedd.

These rumours that the reds were skipping across the Menai

bridges have been around for a couple of years now,

but I've yet to see any proof of this,

so when I had a call from my friend,

the wildlife photographer David Bailey,

asking if I could meet him at a secret location in North Wales

as he had something red and furry to show me, how could I refuse?

OK, Dave. I've heard lots of rumours of the red squirrels

making it to mainland Gwynedd.

I've never seen any evidence of that. Hopefully you're going

to tell me otherwise or show me otherwise.

Yeah, I've got photographic proof.

'Dave had taken these photos in woodland not far from Bangor -

'and they were proof positive that there are reds on mainland Gwynedd.

'But that wasn't all.

'Dave also had evidence that these reds were mixing with the greys.'

Two weeks ago, I had reds and greys together here on the same feeder.

OK, there are a lot of scientists that don't believe that the

greys and the reds interact at all. Are you going to tell me otherwise?

Yeah!

Goodness me! OK, right. That's a first for me.

Have you photographed this?

Yeah, I've got photographs of them both together.

From a scientific perspective,

Dave's incredible photographs are significant.

Since squirrel pox first appeared in the 1980s, experts have

disagreed about how this deadly virus is spread.

Most argue that it cannot be through direct contact between the

two species, as the reds and the greys don't mix.

But Dave's photos show otherwise

and they appear to strengthen the argument that the best way

to save the red squirrel is to cull the greys.

So Dave and I set off into the woods with two objectives.

One, to try and get the first video footage of a red

squirrel on mainland Gwynedd.

And two, to try and get video proof

that reds and greys do interact.

So we set up trail cameras...

Yeah, that looks OK.

..and stock up the feeding station where Dave took his photos.

Aw, who could resist that, Dave?

Then we hide, and we wait...

And we wait...

and we wait.

But six hours in, all we've got is four dead legs,

two bursting bladders, and a curious robin.

And then the greys arrive. And for the next half an hour,

they play feed-station tag.

They go nuts.

So do we, as there's not a hint of a red between them.

I'm beginning to suspect that Dave's either colour-blind,

or he's been playing with the Photoshop!

Disbeliever!

But then...

Red squirrel!

There's a red squirrel!

And there it was, darting through the trees at incredible speed.

9 o'clock, 9 o'clock in the trees. It's a red squirrel.

In the fluffy-tailed flesh on mainland Gwynedd.

And I was rather excited.

Good God! Feeding station now!

Well, it was my first Welsh red squirrel.

This is unbelievable. We have a red squirrel.

And not just one.

A second red squirrel soon appears, and they take it in turns to feed.

And then a grey arrives on the scene.

And for the next ten minutes,

they take it in turns to use the feeding station - red and grey.

And whilst we don't manage to get video of both a red

and a grey on the station at the same time,

we still have Dave's photographic evidence of physical contact.

And between us, we also have definitive photographic

and video proof that the reds are back living on mainland Gwynedd.

But given that the greys transmit deadly squirrel pox to the reds,

is there any chance for this small colony

to permanently re-establish itself here?

Dr Craig Shuttleworth of the charity the Red Squirrel Trust

has a grand - if somewhat controversial - plan.

Are there still the same issues with squirrel pox in the area?

Well, squirrel pox is a big worry on this side of the straits

and you've seen it - reds and greys together. There's a potential for disease.

However, if we get rid of the grey squirrels,

we don't have to worry about that.

Grey squirrels are bad news for reds anyway, not just for disease

but as you know, competition as well.

So it's something that we worry about

but if we get rid of the greys, it's not an issue any more.

So what's the future for the red squirrel in Wales?

-Well, we've a plan for that, certainly here in North Wales.

-OK.

We are going to clear from Bangor to Caernarfon

and then the Ogwen Valley in Llanberis. 90 square kilometres.

Get rid of all the greys and have red squirrels here just as

we have them on Anglesey and wouldn't it be nice to be able to go

into Bangor and there's red squirrels in the middle of the town and the city?

-That's fantastic.

-That has got to be the plan.

And whilst Craig's plan is undoubtedly controversial,

I personally agree with him that, sadly, culling the unfortunate

greys is the only way to save our native reds.

When not alerting me to squirrel stories,

David Bailey travels throughout the UK documenting the natural

world down the end of his lens.

But his home turf is the Brecon Beacons.

And it's on his local rivers

and streams that he photographs his favourite subject - the otter.

There was a time in the 1970s when the otter population

was so badly decimated by toxic pesticides in our rivers,

that they very nearly reached the point of extinction in Wales.

But with the banning of these pesticides

and the cleaning up of our waterways,

the otter has made a spectacular recovery and is now thriving.

So when David called me late last spring to say he'd found

the dead body of a young otter in an area of the Brecon Beacons a good

40m from the nearest waterway, I was as alarmed as I was saddened.

OK, here we are, just here.

I covered it over last night just to protect anything taking it away.

OK. I just want to have a quick look before we get the body

just to see... Have you been walking around this area quite a lot?

-Well, the farmer has been here and his dogs as well.

-Right, OK.

So we've probably lost any evidence that we would have got

as to how the otter got here,

so maybe it's just as well we have a look at the body then straightaway, I think.

-Yeah.

-Right. It really is a young one, isn't it?

Yeah, he is. He's fresh yesterday.

He's still flexible - rigor mortis hasn't set in.

Oh, dear. Let's have a look at that.

-That really is fresh, isn't it?

-Yeah.

There's no signs. I can't see anything at all.

There's no obvious signs as to why this animal has died other than

-it's extremely underweight.

-Yeah.

I can feel the ribs here, though. This really is a very thin animal.

-Yeah, yeah.

-It really is underweight.

It could well be that this animal was starving

and it's dragged itself out of the river.

That's quite a way if you're not well, but, er,

they can be thin like this as well

if they're carrying a lot of worms, a lot of parasites.

What might be interesting is to perform an autopsy,

bag this otter up now and get it back down to Cardiff University

and then to see if we're able to find out exactly

-why it ended up dead here.

-Yeah.

What a magnificent animal. How very, very sad.

'Given the lack of any obvious external injuries,

'my first guess would be that this otter has not been hit by a car,

'or attacked by a dog.'

But are there any other indications in the area as to why this

young otter has died?

Dave and I have a look around for possibilities.

Firstly, there may have been a pollutant or chemical

spill in the local river.

But we find no evidence of this - no other dead species in the area.

Secondly, this otter could have been deliberately

targeted by humans.

Recently, there have been a number

of incidents of otter deliberately shot or illegally snared, but

our dead male shows no obvious signs of a gunshot wound or snaring.

But my hunch at this point is that this young otter has died of starvation.

Over three-quarters of an otter's diet is made up of fish.

But recently there have been a number of unseasonable flash

floods in this area, and otters do not like hunting in swollen

rivers, or rivers that have burst their banks.

Instead, they look to streams and tributaries for other sources

of food. Particularly, at this time of year, frogs and crayfish.

But we've also had an unseasonable cold snap. Spring is late and there

are no signs of frog or crayfish

at a time when they should be in abundance.

There's just nothing for them to eat up here.

Could it be that the perfect storm of flash flooding

and a big freeze have left this poor otter with no food to forage?

I head back to Cardiff University to visit colleagues of mine

at the School of Bioscience's Otter Project.

For over 20 years now, the project has been carrying out

autopsies on otters found dead throughout the UK.

The first thing you need to do...

Rose Moorhouse-Gann of Team Otter and I are going to see

if we can work out exactly why this young male died.

But don't worry - I'm not going to get too graphic.

If we turn the animal over onto its back

and now you can check all of the limbs for breaks.

No breaks at all and all of the limbs are moving

as we would expect them to.

And the skull as well.

That's really intact.

With a road traffic collision,

-you can feel sometimes, they're all really crunched-up, aren't they, the skulls?

-Yeah.

-That's intact and the jaw is strong. The mandible as well...

-Yeah.

-..is really good.

I'm going to make the central incision.

-Goodness me, those ribs are prominent.

-Yeah, they are.

-Look at that.

-It's really skinny.

It's got through its fat reserves

and then it's started to digest its own muscle tissue as a reserve.

Now we can check the intestines for any remains.

Slightly full of dark liquid which is a sign that this otter has not eaten recently.

No solids at all.

'All of the evidence appears to support my original theory

'that this young male has died of starvation.

'But then we make a discovery that slightly clouds that conclusion.'

Yeah, there's some bruising there, isn't there?

-Yeah.

-Does that look like bruising to you, here?

-There's actually one broken rib.

On this side.

-Oh, yeah! No, you can clearly see...

-And it's split.

-..that there's a break and a split.

Yeah, which suggests that there was some sort of a light impact.

What's complicated now, of course, is, was that light impact

the cause of death or did it have an impact, did it damage its lungs

and as a consequence it starved to death?

Or was it already starving to death and took some more chances

in trying to feed and maybe had an impact with a car

or something like that?

It is actually impossible for us to say which way round these

things happened, but what we can say is that both of these things

actually contributed to the death of the animal.

How our otter received the bruising, we'll never be 100% sure.

Although otters do range over a vast area when hunting food -

up to 40km in an evening - and young males roam more than most

as they will avoid areas where other male otters reside.

So was our already half-starved otter on a ceaseless

forage for food when it was dealt a glancing blow by a passing car?

It's a highly probable "yes".

Ooh, a bit of sun!

But I didn't want to leave this case on such a sad note.

So Dave and I returned to the area a few weeks after

we took away the dead otter.

Stand there - that group of trees, that's where the otters' holts are underneath there.

Dave had discovered a holt - an otter's home -

in a tree by the river bank.

The question was, did it belong to our dead otter?

Or was it a sign that other otters in the area had survived the winter?

We set up trail cameras nearby, let nature take its course...

..and lo and behold, a mother and two kits.

At the Cardiff School of Biosciences where I work,

many of my colleagues are involved in far more exotic

projects than I am - travelling the globe working with

everything from turtles in the Caymans to parrots in the Amazon.

So when a colleague of mine asked me if I fancied a weekend

in the Italian Alps helping her collect wildlife data

for her latest research project, I naturally thought

mischievous marmots, magnificent mountain goats,

graceful golden eagles.

"No," she said, "I'm collecting scientific data on snow voles."

Snow voles? I've never heard of them.

But I quite fancied an Italian job, so I agreed to go.

Which is how I found myself in the foothills

of the Dolomite mountains, at the natural history museum in Trento.

But before I hit the Alps, I wanted to know what a snow vole

looks like and the only way to do that was by inspecting

the museum's collection of stuffed specimens from the late 1920s.

Wow!

Because intriguingly there are very few photos of this mysterious

mammal, there's no known video footage,

and scientifically, there have only ever been two studies here

of the Alpine snow vole -

the stuffed ones from 1929, and a study carried out 70 years later,

in 1999, by my friend and colleague Dr Sarah Perkins.

-Sarah!

-Hi, Rhys.

-Good to see you.

-Welcome to Italy. Welcome to Monte Bondone.

-How beautiful is this?!

-Isn't it fabulous?

-Absolutely amazing.

-Fabulous.

So I want to tell you a little bit about where we are.

So this is an Alpine meadow, OK?

In the 1920s - actually, in between the world wars -

-some people came here and they trapped snow vole.

-Right.

Now I came back here 15 years ago to look for the snow vole

and found absolutely nothing, so I went higher and found snow voles.

OK, makes sense to me. How much higher?

-If you can see...

-Up that little hill there?

-I'm afraid so!

-OK, right.

-Up that little hill there.

Thank you.

# Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's up the hill we go... #

Although, actually, there's something a bit more serious here than

just a romp up the Alps in search of some cute fluffy mammals.

As an environmental scientist, Sarah fears that her snow voles might

be victims of the controversial, much-debated phenomenon climate change.

The overwhelming majority of the scientific community believe

that climate change IS happening and there is DEFINITELY something

extraordinary going on in the Dolomite mountains.

That's a strange old thing to have in the middle of nowhere.

So this is one of 40 stations.

'Because in the last 100 years, weather stations here have

'recorded a 33% increase in carbon dioxide levels,

'and a 1.5 degree centigrade rise in average temperature.'

So this is how they know the temperature is rising here.

'That might not sound much, but if that were replicated

'in the Arctic Circle, Greenland would go into irreversible melt.

'And even today,

'we come across a freak climate condition that's definitely weird.'

I thought the snow would be a lot whiter than it was.

It's quite creamy, almost brown, isn't it?

-Yeah, yeah.

-What's that, then?

Well, it's actually covered with Saharan dust.

So the snow that we are stood on is white but those south-facing slopes,

a big storm came through and suddenly, in the early spring,

about two months ago, it covered these slopes with Saharan dust.

Is that common?

-I've never seen it before.

-Nor me.

Is that an aspect of...you know, sudden climatic change?

Yes. So we're starting to call it "global weirding", so it's not just

that the climate is getting warmer.

For some of us, it's getting weirder.

In Wales, we saw these really dramatic storms over the winter.

Really strong winds, and not just one - lots of them.

So that's WEIRD weather, right? And so this is weird weather here.

-And we are seeing it all over the world.

-Absolutely, global weirding.

Mamma mia! Saharan sand in the Italian mountains?

Global weirding, indeed!

Mind you, I don't know why I'm surprised. When I left Wales

yesterday, there was Saharan sand on our cars, too, and smog everywhere!

But will this global weirding have affected Sarah's snow voles?

Will they still be where she found them 15 years ago?

Or as a breed of cold tolerant specialists,

will the rising temperatures have pushed them

even further up the mountain and into an ever-diminishing niche?

Well, no, it wouldn't appear so.

As we reach 1,700 metres, just above the tree line,

we see our first conclusive signs of vole activity.

-That's got to be vole there, hasn't it?

-Absolutely, so this is a vole run.

-And that's 1,700 metres?

-1,700 metres.

That's the first sign of snow vole that we have seen.

First signs, but I think we're going to find more. I think we're going to find a better one.

'So we push on another 100m.'

Wow! Vole city!

-Wow, it's fantastic, all the burrows!

-Look at that!

-Yeah, amazing.

-A snow vole trap.

-Traps.

-Traps.

-Let's do it, Rhys!

-Let's do it.

'In environments as harsh as this, any food is at a premium.

'And used to a lean diet of lichens and moss, these apples

'and pears will hopefully prove irresistible to the snow voles.'

-I'm excited now.

-Me, too.

It's 15 years since I've seen these guys!

'So we leave out 30 non-lethal traps in front of the most

'active runs, nests, nooks and crannies.

'And feeling pretty confident of success,

'we even decide to head to the top of the next peak - the Cornetto.'

'Although at 2,000 metres, it wasn't doing much for my vertigo.'

Oh, this is brutal.

It's hard work.

So, Sarah, remind me again...

..why has nobody been up here to look for snow vole in 15 years?

Maybe I was fitter 15 years ago!

'Oh, well, all in the name of science...

'So we laid down even more traps at the peak.'

We're slightly above 2,000 metres. It's higher than the voles have been

seen before, so what we are going to do is go back down the mountain and

-at first light tomorrow, we're up here to check these traps, see what we've got.

-Fantastic.

Let's get back down before this snow comes in.

-There's some Alpine choughs.

-Oh, look. Alpine choughs.

-Look at that.

-Four Alpine choughs.

-Look at that!

Wow! That's a bit spectacular.

Alpine choughs as we head down the mountain.

Hey, it's a lucky omen.

'I was well-chuffed about these Alpine choughs and really

'looking forward to seeing my first snow vole in the morning.

'But the next day was a different story.'

-Trap number one.

-Looks like a no-no to me.

-You can normally see...

-Yeah.

..the hay - they make a bit of a nest.

-No.

-No.

'All 30 traps set at 1,800 metres were empty.'

It's a negative.

Nothing's moved.

'But how was this possible when there were clear signs of vole activity?

'And then the answer, quite literally, popped up.'

'A vole!

'Except it wasn't a snow vole - it was a field vole.

'Which was not a good sign

'but would explain why the traps were empty.

'Unlike the inquisitive snow vole,

'field vole are far more suspicious by nature, and tend to avoid

'any unknown objects suddenly appearing in their territory.

'But why are field vole here anyway?

'As the name indicates,

'field vole belong in fields, not on mountain tops, and I would

'have expected to see this fellow some 300m further down

'the slope in the flat meadows where Sarah and I first met yesterday.'

When we were trapping here 15 years ago,

we were trapping at lower altitude than we currently are

and we found snow vole, yet here we are higher up and it's field voles,

so the snow vole's potentially being pushed higher up the mountain.

And of course, with a field vole, it will outcompete a snow vole

-at the same habitat.

-Yeah, almost certainly.

This will be a field-vole-dominated altitude now.

-That's not looking good.

-I'm afraid it's not and I'm a bit gutted.

It means the snow vole is being pushed further up the mountain.

So the only place that the snow vole population can now possibly reside

is at the top of that mountain there.

So way up there where it was snowing on us. Yeah.

'As we trudge up to the 2,000 metre peak,

'I can sympathise with Sarah's genuine sadness. I guess,

'for me, it would be the equivalent of going to a forest famous for its

'red squirrel, only to find it's been completely taken over by the greys.

'We can only hope that we find a last refuge

'for the snow vole at the very summit.'

Check yours first, Rhys. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed.

OK, I've got it.

-Aw!

-How's it looking?

-Door's open.

-Bah!

-Absolutely nothing.

-No.

How gutting is that?

Here's another "no".

-Fingers crossed for me.

-You're our last hope. I have to say, at this altitude, I did wonder

if we'd get any voles at all.

Anything we get would be a snow vole at this altitude.

I mean, we're beyond the level of field vole.

-It would only be snow vole and we've caught nothing.

-Yeah.

'Holy moly.

'So does this mean that global weirding has driven Sarah's

'snow vole quite literarily over the edge?'

You know we've come all this way to see snow vole and we know

that in 1920, it was right down on the plateau.

We know that you were here 15 years ago

and you were sampling way lower than this.

This is really the absolute limit of where the snow vole can be.

-How are you feeling about all that?

-Well, it's not here. I'm pretty gutted about it, you know.

I was really excited to come here and see

if we could find a snow vole again.

And it seems to be an indicator, because of a change in the climate,

somehow, that it can no longer exist here.

Now that's... Yeah, that's pretty gutting.

There's just nowhere for them to go. If the snow vole are on the peak

of the mountain, it gets... The climate gets warmer.

They're just pushed, pushed further up the mountain,

out-competed by the field vole, until...

Right. Local extinction.

'So much for my Alpine jolly.

'Sarah is so upset, she just wants to get off the mountain.

'And I'm left wondering about what I've just seen - or not.'

When Sarah invited me out here to Italy, I was very excited

because there was an opportunity for me to see an animal

which I'd never seen before in the wild - the snow vole.

Now I suspected that it could be affected by climate change, the

population pushed higher up the mountainside, but I don't think

any of us expected to find what we did, or actually what we didn't.

And although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it's

highly likely that the snow vole is now extinct at this location.

This has been a very interesting series

but now that I'm back in Wales, what my trip to Italy has really

brought home to me is the real threat that climate change or

global weirding poses, not only to our native animal species

but to animal and human habitations across the globe.

To me, it's undeniable that just like the snow vole,

whole species of animals will

struggle to adapt to these rapid and unpredictable changes in climate.

And whilst I can't help wonder when I'll see the local

extinction of a native animal species here in Wales, the question

that really concerns me is just how much weird weather are

we prepared to put up with before we REALLY do something about it?