158 BR. J. ENT. NAT. HIST., 6: 1993 



BOOK REVIEW 



Woodland rides and glades: their management for wildlife by M. S. Warren 

 and R. J. Fuller and Coppiced woodlands: their management for wildlife by 



R. J. Fuller and M. S. Warren, Peterborough, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, 

 1993, 2nd edns, 32 pages and 34 pages respectively, paperback, £3.50 each. — These 

 two booklets, aim to provide a prescriptive guide to habitat management for 

 wildlife in a readily accessible form to the site manager or reserve warden. For 

 some unknown reason, researchers into wildlife management, including myself in 

 the past, have the habit of publishing in relatively obscure journals or conference 

 proceedings; these authors have thankfully collated the information into a digestible 

 form. 



Both booklets contain historical backgrounds on their subjects. The origins of 

 coppicing go back several thousand years, the cyclical cutting producing wood products 

 for building and burning, as well as 'cottage' industries such as basket or hurdle making. 

 Open grassland areas have existed in woodlands since the retreat of the last ice flows, 

 formed naturally at first, but increasingly created by mankind for grazing stock or hay. 



Management history has an important influence on wildlife interest, as the booklets 

 describe. Coppicing creates open, hot woodland, allowing for example, particular 

 butterflies to thrive whilst preventing the establishment of a substantial dead wood 

 fauna. Woodland rides, even within an ecologically dull conifer plantation, may be 

 valuable as linear unimproved hay meadowland, containing flora once common before 

 widespread agricultural intensification. 



The value to wildlife of coppicing and ride management is well covered and there 

 are good colour photographs to illustrate techniques and beneficiaries. The con- 

 sequences of cessation of management could not be better described than through 

 relating the decline of the heath fritillary, Mellicta athalia (Rott.) to the abandonment 

 of coppicing in southern England. Dozens of sites in the early part of this century have 

 been reduced to a handful today. However, I appreciate the authors' caution in placing 

 reintroduction of coppicing into a wider woodland management perspective, rather than 

 acting on impulse to a rare butterfly crisis. Clear management objectives are required 

 to look after woodland wildlife, since different species can have conflicting needs. In 

 addition, simply because coppicing has ceased, it does not mean that the wildlife interest 

 has died as well. Derelict coppice usually has a considerable standing dead wood 

 component, a fine habitat for rare and beautiful microlepidoptera such as Oecophora 

 bractella (F.), as I found recently in an abandoned oak coppice in Hampshire. 



The booklets have plenty of facts and figures on management prescriptions. Whilst 

 I did find them somewhat scattered throughout the explanatory text, there are some 

 useful line drawings and illustrations which summarize current thinking on good 

 management practice. 



These two booklets are aimed at site managers. However, they are valuable to the 

 amateur wishing to contribute to knowledge of wildlife management. They are highly 

 readable and I would hope they could spur recorders into focusing their minds on 

 how ride management and coppicing affects their pet interests, be they Coleoptera 

 or Collembola. 



If I have one criticism of the booklets, it is that there are no county-based lists 

 of where good management systems are in operation to direct visits by interested 

 recorders and managers. Otherwise, at £3.50 each, these two booklets are excellent 

 value and useful texts. 



P. H. Sterling 



