Climate change, mass extinction, seabird breeding failure: crucial research topics at three widely respected centres, all of which will be shut down to save just £1m a year. The closure of Monk's Wood in Cambridgeshire, Winfrith in Dorset and Banchory in Northeast Scotland, in a reorganisation of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, will cost no less than £45m! And with that loss of world-renowned research centres will go one third of CEH staff (200 jobs) as the Government's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) moves away from wildlife research. NERC, whose responsibilities range from geology and oceanography to the Antarctic, has decided to spend less of its money on ecology. Wildlife specialists are poorly represented on NERC's 18-strong governing council; the chief executive, Professor Alan Thorpe, is an atmospheric physicist. The council has now concluded that wildlife science has been getting too big a slice of the cake. `This is an absolute disaster for British wildlife,' said Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation. `At the very time when such research is increasingly important, they are savagely cutting back on it. It beggars belief.' RSPB director of conservation, Mark Avery, said: `The proposed cuts will deal a body blow to the UK's reputation for wildlife science.' Britain's best-known naturalist, Sir David Attenborough, who has featured research at Monk's Wood and its sister stations in his latest BBC TV series, Life in the Undergrowth, told The Independent that the closure plans were `very disturbing indeed'. Reducing fundamental science on costcutting grounds