From Patients to Pollinators: How Davies Veterinary Specialists is Championing Wildlife
Davies Veterinary Specialists is one of the largest and most diverse small animal hospitals in Europe, providing outstanding care for over 20 years. It is part of veterinary group Linnaeus.
Established in 1998, Davies was the UK’s first specialist referral centre outside of the traditional, university-based system. Today, it employs more than 100 specialist veterinary clinicians, registered veterinary nurses and veterinary professionals and cares for more than 9,000 patients every year.
Its team is extremely proud that Davies was the first veterinary practice to achieve iiE accreditation. The hospital earned iiE’s top-level Green accreditation in 2019, and has been reaccredited with top-level Green in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024.
Situation and Challenge: Enhancing Wildlife Habitats
Davies’s Green Group noticed that they could implement actions to enhance the natural environment and engage their staff. There is increasing need for businesses to play their part in protecting the planet and Davies has responded to this.
What Has Been Done to Improve Wildlife Support?
Since the inception of the Green Group at Davies in 2017, several features to benefit local wildlife have been installed on site. There is a dedicated wildlife area with fallen leaves, stacked logs that are left undisturbed, and naturalised grass areas within a dog walking area where the grass is left longer for insects and small mammals. This area is also popular with vulnerable solitary wasps and bees.
An area next to the carpark has been tilled and seeded with a wildflower seed mix creating a haven for pollinators with ox-eye daisies, poppies, amaranth, borage and hollyhocks. Plants grown by team members were added to further enrich the availability for pollinators.
To increase the areas of the hospital with pollinator-friendly plants, a planter created onsite from pallet offcuts has been filled with herbs that encourage bees and beneficial insects. This also deters mosquitos and wasps from outdoor staff seating areas in a natural way.
To document the positive changes these areas for wildlife can make, Davies’s Green Group used iNaturalist to start a project to record the flora and fauna found on site. Davies is contributing vital data about population trends, density, timings and spread of species as the global climate changes.
This project has been opened to all practices within Linnaeus’s sustainability network, while still being managed by the Davies sustainability lead. To date, 16 practices have requested to join, from Edinburgh to Brighton, with eight practices already recording flora and fauna seen on site. Using the iNaturalist app not only records the species Davies team members are working alongside; studies have shown that spending time connecting with, and learning about, nature can improve mental wellbeing.
What Were the Results of Wildlife Monitoring?
Within the original Davies project, this app-based recording system has been adopted by several staff members since its inception in June 2023. In just one year, over 170 species have been recorded.
Staff members have observed a number of exciting species:
– Wasp spiders, which have been recorded on iNaturalist in the UK less than 1,500 times (at time of case study) as they spread from the continent
– Red kites that are thriving and expanding their range after generations of persecution
– Badgers, which are protected by UK law
– Yellow wagtails, which are on the UK conservation red list
– Common Lizards that, despite being the UK’s most numerous lizard, are hard to spot and declining in numbers
– Northern Lapwings, which are classed as vulnerable within Europe, with declining population numbers
Recording this information on iNaturalist is contributing data to a global social network of scientists that are interested in recording and educating about biodiversity, as well as a large community of the public that are learning about the world around them.
The overall count across all Linnaeus projects is over 1,000 including 389 different species. Practices across the UK have joined from Penrith, Scotland to Brighton! Connecting as a group has also supported the wellbeing of these teams by developing these relationships and common interests across Linnaeus. More than 35 people across Linnaeus practices have helped create this valuable dataset of species seen, and 341 people from the wider iNaturalist community have helped identify them, and seen the results that Linnaeus has gained from the efforts.