Hello, Anthony Chadwick from the webinar bets, welcoming you to another of our podcasts. And we're very fortunate today to have John Chitti on the line. John is a good friend of mine, he has his faults, as we all do.
He's a Man United fan. But, he's, he's really somebody that I also really look up to, amazing exotic pets. He's been president of BSABA a few years ago.
And he does many webinars for us on exotic pets, on rabbits, guinea pigs and birds and the like. But I wanted to take him a little bit out of his, well, his, his veterinary comfort zone. I know there's some really interesting things that, John gets up to in his spare time as well.
And so I suppose, John, there's only two words I can say to you to really start the webinar, isn't there? I'm hoping, well I'm not. And, and, and I think that the, the phrase or the two words is great bustards.
Oh good, as long as those two words, that's fine. I'm never quite sure. No, it's fascinating.
John's been very involved in the reintroduction of great bustards into the UK as a veterinary advisor. John also works within several collections of, of birds and and other animals as well as a consultant to make sure that welfare is kept at the really. Highest level, but I, I think particularly with this being our sustainability regenerative podcast, and particularly talking in that whole area of rebiring and rewilding, just fascinating what you are doing.
So perhaps tell us the story of, you know, when did the great bustard actually become extinct in the UK and, A little bit of, of how that sort of return has gone and the reintroductions have gone. OK, I mean, basically summarise, probably nearly 20 years of work now, but, basically, but great Buster would, became essentially extinct in the UK in about 1830 something, been present for a very long time before that. If you look at anything around Wiltshire, it's the iconic bird there, it's on the flag.
It's, it's, it's on the coat of arms. It is definitely part of Wiltshire scenery. .
It suffers from being a magnificent large specimen with amazing feathers. The males have this great, display, lots of feathers, lots of crest, lots of inflating of, of air sacks and stuff. And as a result, they become very prized as trophies.
So essentially the males got shot out, around about 1830 odd, without the males, obviously breeding kind of declined a bit. So, at that stage, they disappeared. It's not due to habitat loss, this is not due to anything other than the fact that they just got killed.
So we then get left with Salisbury Plain, which was their natural habitat. They, they did live in other places in the UK, so Scottish borders to some extent, Cashire, I think they were. Somerset levels they had been reported occasionally.
But basically, Sater Plain was, was the home of the bustard. Now the great thing about Satter Plain is that it's hardly changed since 1830 something. Thanks to the Army MOD is that they do a training up there.
If you look at a map of the UK, the, the map of build of Saulsbury Plains got probably the fewest roads on it of any area that size in the whole, the whole of Great Britain. So it's really largely unspoiled. We did impact studies beforehand, which showed that really there was, you know, it was very similar to 1830, and that, you know, there's gonna be no negative impact from the birds being returned there.
So, you know, thankfully, this is one of the things where the habitat remains, thank, thanks to the army. It's really well managed, really tightly managed, and it was a perfect habitat to, to be there. Now if you look at great busters, they are found in various populations throughout Europe, .
So it was published in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Spain, Russia, . And they're in small pockets. So each population is quite threatened.
So setting up an alternative population on land that's absolutely ideal for them is a good way of, again, mitigating risk. So it's one more population that that can sustain, keep that gene pool alive. We went to Russia because, the genetic studies on the skins at, Trin showed that we were very similar genetically, to the old UK birds.
And Russia had the biggest, population. In Europe, also had a very closely monitored population. And that there's already a collecting project in place for captive breeding and stuff out there.
So we can actually, if you like, not set up a new collection, for eggs and stuff, but we can actually, hijack an existing one. This we duly did. And what we would do is go out there each year, we would collect eggs, in the field from disturbed nests.
These weren't, we weren't just driving birds off to get eggs. These were, were in the cook because the busters nest on agricultural land. So as the ploughs would go through, so they would see a female nesting, they divert around even island.
And what we found is that those islands, they stand like a sore thumb, little green patch in a big brown field. Foxes work out very quickly, but if that green patch means there's an egg in there, so they, they'll come and basically 100% of its nest with. To be predated if you left them alone.
So, basically, what we do, we got, we, we got the drivers to stop, pick up the eggs, female girl for nest again somewhere else, and that we would collect those in the field station. We'd incubate them, hatch them, and then, bring the chicks back to the UK some weeks later. And that's really what, what we, we started with.
That went on for 10 years in Russia. There's some interesting issues with, with what Russian birds did. They would do a few things bi weren't supposed to do, which is really, really cool.
And then of course, also the political situation between the UK and Russia somewhat deteriorated as well. So we actually moved our attentions to Spain, and we brought, we started bringing birds in from Spain using much the same sort of methods to, to collect the eggs. And that actually we, we, yeah, we did, we hatched them at, at Madrid so, so I'm trying to remember exactly what the change was with that.
And that was actually logistically much, much easier because, of course, within the EU we can move things around much easier with that. And they also had a great example of that the bird's behaviour in the wild is very different. The Russian birds migrate, Spanish birds don't, and that made a big difference to the success rate over here.
So that's that's it in a nutshell. So we basically bring eggs, brought eggs in the wild, hatch the chicks out, and then we, we kind of release them. The moment we got the sustaining population.
So actually what we do now is where we have birds with identifiable nests, we'll almost double clutch them. So if we can find this, we're actually Take an egg from a female, so she lays, so, she, will lay a second clutch and we rear about 12 youngsters a year and then we release them. And this way we can really plum pump up the numbers quite a lot.
This is in the UK, is it? This is in the UK, absolutely. So we bring them out out of the world and put them straight back in again.
Whereabouts in in Spain do we see the great bustard, John, are they spread around the country or specific areas? We're gonna catch out my geography that name and place. It's just, just north of Madrid, so up near Toledo and stuff.
Ah, OK, great. That's fantastic, and I think, you know, when we lose a species, and obviously it's 200 years ago since the great bustards left, you know, to bring them back is, is just an amazing achievement. How, how many do, do you think we've got in the country now, John, that there there there's country to be over 100, so we're actually at a level of sustaining population.
We can get a bit higher, it'd be great, but actually the levels now, they should sustain. So yeah, we, we, once we hit that 100 mark, we would say the moon about it. So you see a flock of 20 flying one goat, they're brilliant.
Fantastic. This was what Benedict McDonald spoke about in his book, you know, you, you need that sustaining population, particularly with, and I know these birds don't migrate, but migrating birds obviously are, are lost in migration, . And, and actually you need a space to put them in, so if the space is too small, you know, they don't exist.
He was talking about a, a wood where he used to watch Nightingales in Bristol area. And because of migration, because the area was very small and could only hold a certain number, if you had a really bad year that could be the end of Nightingales in that area, which is indeed what happened. So we do need big areas and Salisbury Plain.
You know, the Cairngorms up in Scotland, there's probably 2 or 3 areas that are really suitable and I know, I think it's in Somerset, huge numbers of cuckoos, because again, a big rural area that is, is well suited for, you know, for cuckoos to, to thrive in. Yeah, I mean, that, that's the other thing too. I mean, it, it's, it's also a movement of them.
So, you know, you allow the migration to happen, so they don't want those roots to be interrupted by, by whatever you choose to do. But also, you get, you don't want to avoid islands. So I don't know if you read, David Quayman's Song of a dodo about island theory, and that's when you do get these small populations split.
And so you, he, he is an example of having a tapestry. So all together in one big, it's very solid, it's very robust. But once you start cutting small squares, each of those squares unravels quite quickly.
And it's a really good way of looking at this. So if you get these small islands, it, it is quite tricky. So, yeah, it's great set up population.
The fact that birds can move and stuff is good. Now we've got a sustaining population, how they're going to interact, how much diversity we have in there is gonna probably be sending us to monitor and check on. It's really interesting that a number of the .
Wildlife charities, we, we spoke with . With Craig Bennett from the wildlife Trust, he's the CEO there. And very much talking about this whole concept of 30 by 30.
We, we actually live in a country which is quite nature denuded. Even our national parks are by and large, often, you know, green monocultures of grass, and so bringing that sort of higher level, higher standard of land, which you see on places like Salisbury Plain. Will, will hopefully allow breeds like a species like the great buster to, to flourish even more.
Well, is it interesting you say that because essentially, to a large extent, it sort of pain is genuinely, it is a monoculture grass. That's what it is. But, it's interesting again, within that, you always think about sort of being grass, grass, you think about these birds come from the steppe, you think about grass.
Actually there's other stuff there too, and actually busters are really well adapted to human agriculture. So for example, yeah, they, they nest in the grass if they're possible, and they, they sort of rear, sorry, they rear their chicks in the grass. They, they wander around there, but actually they're feeding a lot of the time as adults and their nesting is in the, agricultural fields.
So for example, they absolutely love oilseed rape, and they feed a lot on that. So they, they've really adapted to agriculture quite a lot, and that's been over centuries and centuries. Exactly, and I think this was another point in the Benedict McDonald book that actually, you know, the landscape in the 1400s was different from the 1600s, but actually birds will adapt and we see it, you know, my garden is, you know, a small green patch in an otherwise, you know, quite concreted area, and yet birds like.
You know, the blue tit, the, the robin, the magpie, the black birds will come into there and, and are probably becoming more garden birds now than necessarily what you would see in the country. Well, if you think about Antony, when we were kids, which is obviously a different millennium, is that when we were young, you know, house sparrows were like, oh, not a sparrow, you know, there's loads of them. And so a long tail tit, if you saw that in your garden, you'd get really, really excited about it.
Now, long tail tits are very common. House sparrows, they go in the nest box, you go, wow, sparrows. When I see a sparrow, when I see a house sparrow in the garden, I get excited.
Yeah, that's exactly it, because unless how these species can change and stuff, and the, the, there are various reasons for that, apart from just, just lack of diversity. That's what, that, the back garden is one of the most diverse, habitats you can have, depending on how you manage it. No, it's really interesting, and, and obviously, .
Rewilding, you, you've rewilded what is, as you say, quite a sedentary bird, although it's interesting that some of these are spreading to places like Cambridge and Somerset, which is a, as you say, a decent distance. The, the other one, perhaps a bit more controversial, I know you've been involved in bringing white-tailed eagles to the Isle of Wight. And that can obviously have a bit of a mixed feeling because obviously we struggle with raptors going across grouse moors, you know, marsh harriers, hen harriers being shot illegally.
What, what's your thoughts on the white-tailed eagle and tell us a little bit about maybe that reintroduction to the Isle of Wight. Yeah, that's a slightly different one to these birds from, Scotland, again, again and taken, and then the chicks are brought down, reared in captivity, and then isolation reared basically, and then then released, when they're at, sub-adult stage and . Magnificent birds, they really are.
It seems quite cool, but actually being involved with both the two largest, flying birds in the UK, it's really quite cool, actually. They are both huge, . The smaller numbers, .
Do a 6 to 8 a year. And are they all going on the Isle of Wight 6 a year going on the, I mean that basically Culver Cliff is which where they, they were last recorded breeding in England is on the Isle of Wight, and that's where where really fundamentally is. And so again, it's an area where there's no good fishing, where there, there, there's, it's white-tailed seagull habitat, of course they were shot out of existence again.
So the part of it is obviously educating people that these are not a great threat. I mean it was my first thought was, well, I wonder if there'll be any impact on pets. There hasn't been and and there's very unlikely to be because they're fairly lazy creatures.
They'll find dead things they can, but otherwise they do actually fish and there's some, we've got some great film work. What about sheep, John? I don't know how, how many sheep are on the Isle of Wight, but I know in Scotland that is a little bit of a worry, isn't it, that they do take out land .
Yeah. I think that that's one of the things is basically. What appears to happen with a lot of these birds is they're driven to areas which are more remote, which have less food for them.
And at that point, they have to start finding alternative food sources, and that's really where the sheep predation stuff comes from. If they've got plenty of food they're adapt to eat, they don't tend to touch them. So, to my knowledge, Had no reports on the Isle of Wight, of anything like that.
And it's felt that's very unlikely to happen because they've got quite a lot of food they get from other places. So not fish, enough, enough, not natural stuff. But it's very quite a theory that basically where they are in Scotland is not where they started off.
But there really isn't much else to eat, but sheep. And I suppose this is where actually having protected sea areas where people can't fish, very quickly they become nursery nurseries for the wider ocean, don't they? So we know that the oceans can replenish quite quickly, but we have to leave those sort of breeding areas where we don't go in with our, with our big trawlers and, and then therefore there will be fish around.
Yeah, for the, for the sea eagle. Absolutely, and and again it's that impact too, that basically if you . When you look at the species, you've got to look at well, what it's gonna eat, what it's gonna do, where it's gonna live, what its needs are.
And if it hasn't got those, it's gonna have to move on to something else there. So if we impact just by presence and move something on, it's gonna have to adapt or die out, and Chance are it's gonna try and adapt to it. And that's when they start really, really impinging on us.
So, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it, it, it's gonna be all looked at quite carefully. I suppose while we're on the topic of rewilding and reintroductions, what are your thoughts, you're you're a birds man, I know that, but what are your thoughts on maybe the lynx and the wolf? Again, I mean, it depends on what, what you've got there.
So you've got obviously the impact stages are really important about what are they gonna do when they get, what are they gonna eat? What's the, and in some ways, what's the easiest thing for them to eat as well, because, that, that, that's where the thing is, what's going to happen about that population grows, where they're gonna go, what's gonna be sustainable and where, what, you know, what the impact on people and other species of which we, you know, like sheep, like pets, whatever else there, when they do start spreading, out of those areas, if they have to. So essentially, I think like many of those populations, it's probably going to be some ongoing management.
If you, I think probably nearest model you can look at somewhere like South Africa, where a lot of the wildlife is very intensely managed, because it does grow and there's a lot of negative impact if a certain top of the pitch of a food pyramid, animal starts getting overpopulated or gets, gets too much of it. So, you, you can get negative environmental impacts. You can't just put something in there and say, just breed up and get going.
You've got to have, have, have, you know, have some management afterwards. John, that's really interesting, you know, I think rewilding is, is certainly an area that is also controversial, you know, because we're looking at. The rewilders sometimes versus the farmers and so on and how that happy medium happens and you know, what is land that is unproductive and that we should be using perhaps for nature, rather than trying to throw huge amounts of chemicals.
I know neither of us are, are farm vets, but do you, do you have a view on that as to how that kind of That that square or that circle can be squared. It's, it's gotta be by by discussion, it's got to be by agreement, it's gotta be by understanding. You know, if you don't do it with agreement, you look at some of the wolf projects in other countries where we haven't engaged with locals, they end in failure, because they're going to end in failure because they can't do anything but.
I think you also gonna have an understanding too, of rewilding of what the wild actually was and whether it can ever go back to that sort of plain's an easy one. It is exactly what it was and has been for several centuries. It wasn't always like that.
Once upon a time, it was tree filled. So, you know, it, it's not, you look at something and it's not what it was was there. I think it's a little bit like some of the, things about talking about sheep and stuff up in the, Lake District and things.
You know, you need that to maintain what people feel is what it looks like. But actually, you know, if you leave things big, so playing with scrub. I'm sure the lake district be scrub, and then it'll become treed over eventually from there.
So, it depends what you mean by, by wild. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it's a really interesting topic and I think it's one that we'll continue to, to work towards and and you know, try and find out more information because I think that's.
Can definitely be part of the solution, you know, the next decade is a crucial one as far as the climate crisis goes, you know, increasing biodiversity, reducing carbon, and so on, and, well, I'd love to think that vets would be part of the solution rather than, you know, part of the problem. Yeah, I think it's really where, where vet actually does play a part with that. I mean, certainly we're really interested with doing it's fundamentally we're trying to check that the birds we release are healthy.
So you're looking at two angles really, one is that these are healthy birds. So actually fit to survive. If you're really saying it's not fit to survive, it's not doing anybody favours.
And if you get a lot of birds who die immediately, they're released, then actually the publicity alone is probably enough to kill that project off. And the other thing too is also, especially when you're bringing from a different country, different populations, what infectious diseases might you be bringing over. So again, you've got to do that, if you like that impact study of, you know, we're screening this, we're screening that, and then you can change through the years of what you're actually screening, but making sure you're not bringing a novel pathogen over, and in that, and actually ending up killing everything around these birds, and they're fine living with it, but what they're living with can't cope with that pathogen.
And I think that's that's the other aspect where vets come into it. And also within that, too, if you want to look at biodiversity, you know, great, fine, we can get these birds in, we can treat them every, every parasite and everything like that. But actually, part of our diversity is the parasite.
So we've got again, make sure we're not actually going to just simply blanket, kill everything they've got on them, which might be actually beneficial to health in a weird way, but again, it's part of that bio biodiversity mix. So it's a really complex, situation that you're trying to work with. As you say, there's all sorts of symbiotic relationships going on there that sometimes we don't fully understand, but we're beginning to, to gain more understanding of, aren't we?
Well, there's some brilliant stuff I see on parasites and things that are sort of gene sharing almost, we're actually, injecting parasite genes into the host and stuff is actually part of the, can be part of the evolution drivers and things. So the parasites are immensely important, and, you know, they, they, they live together and many parasites again, as you say, to have symbiotic relationships and stuff. I think you as a dermatologist, that's one of the feelings about demodex, isn't it, you know, there's a niche for demodex to live happily in a dog, cat, human, you know, in our mind as we speak, yeah, as most of them do, and actually if you kill it out, something else is gonna move in there which may not be quite as nice as demodex, yeah.
Exactly, yeah, it, it's just cool. I'm glad, I'm glad we've finished the discussion on the most important topic, which is dermatology. Well, chosen a cow that one I see.
John, it's been absolutely splendid talking to you. I love the work that you're doing. I will be coming down that way, so we, we should go out for a, a great.
You're welcome anytime. And actually doing a bit of selfish, self selfish and publicity, is that, if you go on the Great Buster Group website, and the Great Buster Group is not part of a zoo organisation, it's actually a very, is a private small, concern. We have a, we have a website that we do organise visits and stuff.
If you want to see biodiversity in action, come out on a visit, because the birding around the great buster release site is amazing. Raptor spaces, small birds, everything, it's just beautiful. Stone curly plots nearby.
It really is a fantastic place to come and watch birds. And the bugs aren't bad either. So, you know, come on Great buster website, visits organised, come and see, come and see what we're doing.
I think we'd be very proud to show you, show you around. John, thanks so much for all the fabulous work that you do, you know, with your, with your veterinary hat on as an exotic ve, the fabulous webinars you've done for us in the past, and obviously it was a chance conversation that we, I began to realise you were, you were, Doctor busted as well, so it's fantastic to hear that side of the story that I didn't know previously. Being called much worse.
John, thank you so much, take care and looking forward to seeing some of you on or listening or having you on our, our podcast listening in. Let us know what you think, and if there's any topics you'd like us to cover. Take care, thanks again, bye.
