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One approach for measuring the potential biodiversity in new urban construction projects is through ecological models that predict how wildlife will respond. For the United Kingdom, such models have only been developed for birds, but to maximise the extent to which models represent overall biodiversity, species from different indicator groups must be considered.Here, we assess this possibility for butterflies by combining citizen science survey data with high‐resolution digital maps. We derive detailed characteristics of urban landscapes around survey sites using previously established methods and quantify their relationship to counts of adults of 18 butterfly species in urban and peri‐urban settings.Higher butterfly counts were found when traversing urban sites with larger areas of semi‐natural grassland, other managed greenspaces and adjacent arable land. Most of the butterfly community were found to have negative relationships with highly built‐up or fragmented landscapes.We found high species‐specificity for different details of urban form, particularly in habitat elements such as gardens, vegetation around railways and grass verges.Policy implications. Improving biodiversity is now part of legislation governing new construction projects from England and Wales. However, predicting quantitative changes from hypothetical land‐use modifications remains challenging. Our models provide the foundation through which butterfly abundance could be integrated into an urban biodiversity assessment tool, providing species‐ and community‐level statistics to non‐specialists from the urban planning and design sector. This would allow them to hone configurations for built surfaces, private gardens, greenspaces and wildlife areas and assess their capacity to provide residents with the intended access to nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Hotspots of human activity are focal points for ecosystem disturbance and non‐native introduction, from which invading populations disperse and spread. As such, connectivity to locations used by humans may influence the likelihood of invasion. Moreover, connectivity in freshwater ecosystems may follow the hydrological network. Here we tested whether multiple forms of connectivity to human recreational activities promotes biological invasion of freshwater ecosystems. Location: England, UK. Time period: 1990–2018. Major taxa studied: One hundred and twenty‐six non‐native freshwater birds, crustaceans, fish, molluscs and plants. Methods: Machine learning was used to predict spatial gradients in human recreation and two high risk activities for invasion (fishing and water sports). Connectivity indices were developed for each activity, in which human influence decayed from activity hotspots according to Euclidean distance (spatial connectivity) or hydrological network distance (downstream, upstream and along‐channel connectivity). Generalized linear mixed models identified the connectivity type most associated to invasive species richness of each group, while controlling for other anthropogenic and environmental drivers. Results: Connectivity to humans generally had stronger positive effects on invasion than all other drivers except recording effort. Recreation had stronger influence than urban land cover, and for most groups high risk activities had stronger effects than general recreation. Downstream human connectivity was most important for invasion by most of the groups, potentially reflecting predominantly hydrological dispersal. An exception was birds, for which spatial connectivity was most important, possibly because of overland dispersal capacity. Main conclusions: These findings support the hypothesis that freshwater invasion is partly determined by an interaction between human activity and species dispersal in the hydrological network. By comparing alternative connectivity types for different human activities, our approach could enable robust inference of specific pathways and spread mechanisms associated with particular taxa. This would provide evidence to support better prioritization of surveillance and management for invasive non‐native species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Bird count predictions are derived from real-world urban development plans. • Methods are readily applicable to examine how tweaks to the development plan affect predictions. • Individual species, or species groups can be assessed for the predicted impact of different land-use patterns. • No scenario provided consistent changes in bird diversity across all sites, highlighting the need for site-by-site approaches to biodiversity net-gain. If urban environments are designed from the outset to be biodiversity-friendly, they can support resilient wildlife communities, improve the wellbeing of inhabitants, and reduce overall costs due to a reduced need for buying compensatory land. Urban planners might best design productive green infrastructure through predictive tools that output rapid, quantitative, and reliable wildlife statistics from digitized plans. Here, we demonstrate how species-habitat models could provide the foundation for such a tool. We took plans for nine housing developments across England and Wales and integrated them with high-resolution digital maps to derive the urban landscape measures used to parameterise previously developed species-habitat models. We produced predictions of abundance for 55 common bird species per development, which we summarised into bird trait groups and overall diversity. We compared predictions between planned developments and designs with alterations to greenspace, woodland, and housing configuration in five scenarios. We found that biodiversity predictions for actual plans were lower than at least one scenario per development, but that the scenario that achieved the highest species diversity varied between sites. This indicates that optimal solutions for bird diversity depend upon the biophysical context of each planned development. We believe that this framework could provide a cost-effective and data-driven approach to support green infrastructure and be of particular importance for urban planners in jurisdictions where such considerations are mandatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is currently little evidence that wider countryside agri-environment scheme (AES) management has led to population-level benefits for farmland birds and it is timely to consider why this might be the case, so that AES options can be improved if necessary. Two reasons why particular options might not deliver landscape-scale population benefits are that they do not take account of the full temporal scale of a resource gap for birds and that they do not provide resources at an appropriate spatial scale for the target population. This paper reviews the published evidence on both issues, focusing on the results of landscape-scale field experiments that used winter seed provision as a model AES option. There is strong evidence that most existing measures that aim to provide overwinter food resources for granivorous birds fail to do so during the late winter period, when the need for the resource is likely to be greatest. Consideration of within-season changes, such as vegetation growth and management of vegetation height, could also increase the value of options such as field margins for birds. Published research and new data together suggest that a separation of c. 1 km between winter food patches would provide all individuals in local Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs and Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella populations with access to the resource. This separation tallies well with the recommendation in Environmental Stewardship in England that seed crop patches should be sown in patches no larger than 2 ha, with no more than 3 ha/km2. Spatial scale issues could also be critical for AES success in terms of the degree to which complementary resources, within or between seasons, are sufficiently close to one another for the same birds to access the resources that they need. Although they are based on sound evidence, modern AESs might still be improved by revision of their organization or management prescriptions. Revisions that take both the temporal and the spatial scale of resource provision into account will be necessary if farmland bird population recovery goals are to be met. Such revisions could include seed crops or mixes managed specifically to provide food in late winter and the coordination of AES agreements between neighbouring farms to ensure that sufficient resources are provided at the appropriate spatial scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor overwinter survival caused by low food availability represents the most likely mechanism behind the decline, and failure to recover, of many farmland passerine populations. Management to enhance food resources is now in place via agri-environment schemes (AESs) such as Environmental Stewardship in England, but the measures concerned probably fail to provide a significant seed resource in late winter. Landscape-scale experimental feeding over six winters was used to investigate the variation in demand for supplementary food from farmland birds between November and March. Quadratic modelling of the temporal variation in (semi-)weekly bird-use data from experimental feeding stations showed some evidence of curvilinear changes through the winter for all of the 11 granivorous or omnivorous species considered. For generalists and human-associated granivores, peak use of supplementary food was found in January or earlier, suggesting that harsh weather is the principal influence. However, peaks occurred in February or later for Yellowhammer, Reed Bunting, Chaffinch and Dunnock, suggesting an effect of ambient food availability. These species depend on seed in farmland in winter and three of them have declined, probably because of reduced survival (rather than poor breeding success). It is likely that current farming practices, including existing agri-environment prescriptions, do not provide enough food in late winter for such species and that the loss of set-aside will exacerbate this problem. Revisions of management guidelines and crop content for AES stubble and sacrificial crop prescriptions are needed to ensure late winter seed availability for farmland birds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Agri-environment measures providing winter seed are central to current management activities aiming to reverse granivorous farmland bird declines. Previous research has considered the effectiveness of particular agri-environment options, but the influence of their distribution in the landscape, an important factor in determining cost-effectiveness, has received less attention. We used a large-scale field experiment in eastern England, featuring 10 replicates of a spatial arrangement of seven artificial feeding stations separated by different distances, to investigate bird movements between discrete winter food resources. 2. Feeding sites were established and bird use monitored at least weekly over two winters (November–March). Habitat type in the areas surrounding the feeding sites was also recorded. Two measures of feeding site use were analysed as functions of the distance from the nearest alternative feeding site, controlling for ambient resource availability, for 11 passerines (including chaffinch Fringilla coelebs, reed bunting Emberiza schoeniclus and yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella and non-granivores such as blue tit Parus caeruleus). 3. Feeding site use varied significantly with separation distance for nine species. For most, both maximum counts and bird minutes were higher at more isolated sites, but the opposite was true for yellowhammer and reed bunting. Most relationships incorporated significant thresholds at separations of around 500 m, with low site use below the threshold and high above it (or vice versa). 4. The results suggested that species such as chaffinch and blue tit made disproportionately more use of food at isolated sites than at clumped ones, but that reed buntings and yellowhammers used food in proportion to its availability, moving freely between more clumped patches. In both cases, birds tended to share resources separated by 500 m or less. At greater separations, resources tended to be used by discrete groups of birds. Radio-tracking and colour-ringing work produced corroborative evidence. 5. Synthesis and applications. The response of birds to the experimental food resource distribution implies that creating resource patches more than 1 km apart should be most cost-effective, a recommendation that can inform agri-environment scheme planning directly. This distance may represent a minimum, however, because birds might locate standing crops more readily than inconspicuous artificial food patches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on topics related to selective prohibition. According to the author, selective prohibition is ethically and scientifically sound, economically attractive, and technically demanding. He added that the public opinion with its diverse sources might have ambivalent feelings towards selective prohibition.

The frequency of visits to Emergency Departments (ED) varies greatly between populations. This may reflect variation in patient behaviour, need, accessibility, and service configuration as well as the complex interactions between these factors. This study investigates the relationship between distance, socio-economic deprivation, and proximity to an alternative care setting (a Minor Injuries Unit (MIU)), with particular attention to the interaction between distance and deprivation. It is set in a population of approximately 5.4 million living in central England, which is highly heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity, socio-economics, and distance to hospital. The study data set captured 1,413,363 ED visits made by residents of the region to National Health Service (NHS) hospitals during the financial year 2007/8. Our units of analysis were small units of census geography having an average population of 1,545. Separate regression models were made for children and adults. For each additional kilometre of distance from a hospital, predicted child attendances fell by 2.2% (1.7%-2.6% p<0.001) and predicted adult attendances fell by 1.5% (1.2% -1.8%, p<0.001). Compared to the least deprived quintile, attendances in the most deprived quintile more than doubled for children (incident rate ratio (IRR) = 2.19, (1.90-2.54, p<0.001)) and adults (IRR 2.26, (2.01-2.55, p<0.001)). Proximity of an MIU was significant and both adult and child attendances were greater in populations who lived further away from them, suggesting that MIUs may reduce ED demand. The interaction between distance and deprivation was significant. Attendance in deprived neighbourhoods reduces with distance to a greater degree than in less deprived ones for both adults and children. In conclusion, ED use is related to both deprivation and distance, but the effect of distance is modified by deprivation.

This paper describes socio-demographic, alcohol-related, legal, medical, behavioural and treatment characteristics of 407 patients with problems of alcoholism/drug abuse assessed over a period of three years in a community oriented assessment and treatment program. The results show that patients entering this program represent a cross section of alcoholics in the area. These patients are similar to those entering traditional outpatient and residential facilities on most demographic variables; severity of alcoholism, length of history, and previous treatment experience. However, they are slightly younger and differ significantly from the others on their sources of referral. Over the three year period a significant change has occurred in the relationship between the program and the sources of referral. The implications of these findings for planning comprehensive treatment services for alcoholism are discussed.