Beetles and Burial Grounds

Silent Speaker at AGM

After the usual speedy AGM meeting this year (there is still just about a committee and Brian Sylvester is still Chairman) we were expecting a talk from Meg Cathcart-James, a researcher from Reading University. The only problem was she had lost her voice!

By using her presentation we were entertained to some fascinating new facts about Newtown Road Cemetery. Here is a resumé.

Beetles and Burial Grounds

Meg and her team are finding out how cemeteries and graveyards provide space for wildlife in urban areas. She has chosen flying beetles as her focus. This has never been done before. She selected urban cemeteries over four counties: from us in the west over to Slough in the east, High Wycombe in the north to Godalming in the south. In each site she has taken four samples, each one over a two hour period. Each sample was taken on a white sheet hung on poles. The beetles were then sucked off with a pooter (a tube with a mesh at the mouth end!) and identified. The only species I recognized was ladybirds. Variables noted at the time of collection included temperature, time of day, wind speed and cloud cover.

Of particular interest to us was a comparison between Shaw Cemetery and our cemetery. She has found eleven families of beetles in Newtown Road Cemetery, only five at Shaw; 107 individuals compared to 88. So now she has to look at the differences between the two sites. The obvious ones are surrounding land use and density of graves. In both these cases you might predict that Shaw would be more welcoming for flying beetles – more space to fly, fewer buildings surrounding but that is not the case. Another difference is that NRC is managed for wildlife and Shaw is not. Our cutting and mowing schedule allows for wild meadow areas over the common grave areas and different levels of grass throughout the year. Meg commented that she will now have to find out who owns farmland next to Shaw and what sprays are used on it.

Meg’s purpose in doing all this is that she discovered that National Planning Policy Framework guidance for decision making (2012) no longer protects graveyards and she suspects it should. At the moment 50 years after the last burial, graveyards can be used for development. Local policies can provide that protection, does West Berkshire’s?

Meg’s research will carry on for another three years and she will keep us posted.