A Focus On Nature, A Vision For Nature

7th May 2015

AFON

Do one thing today: stand up for wildlife. By Lucy McRobert.

Welcome to our series of blog posts in the run up to the general election (7th May 2015). Over this month AFON members will share their own Visions for Nature: what they want the natural world to look like by 2050 and how they want to get there. We have created a hashtag on Twitter so why not join the conversation? What’s your#VisionforNature?

If you haven’t voted yet, do.

I don’t care who for – just make your voice heard. It’s your right to do so, and your responsibility if you want to see nature on the political agenda in the future. Martin Harper’s handy blog can help you if you’re struggling to decide who for. 

I remember the first time I went ‘birding’. It was a rainy May day, quite cold, a bit windy. We went to WWT Welney and RSPB Ouse Washes, enjoying a top-notch bacon sandwich in the WWT café (they do restaurants very well) followed by my first walk out on to the reserve. It was the first time I had actively identified birds and wildlife, and included my first conscious acknowledgement of an avocet, a kingfisher, a cuckoo. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could tell the difference between the darting shapes all around. Four years later (this happened when I was twenty years old) I have seen all but one species of British breeding bird.

That first trip out into the Fens struck a chord with me, largely due to a childhood obsession with Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights. Pullman describes a wet and wild landscape, flat, untamed, untouched and unentered by all but his fictitious Gyptian peoples, who live on canal boats and dine on eels. I was eager to see how much my vivid imagination lived up to reality.

The Fens were every bit as wide, wonderful and waterlogged as I had hoped, but they certainly weren’t wild, untamed or untouched by human hand. Towering wind turbines stretched high into the sky, their rhythmic turning hypnotic and meditative; trains zigzagged across the landscape, and uniform, flat towns broke the horizontal skyline. Huge fields spread like a patchwork quilt as far as the eye could see, with piles of turnips lying by the roadside. This was one of the most manufactured landscapes I had ever seen.

And yet parts of it teamed with life. This was a landscape reclaimed (in part), where society, and it’s wants and needs (food, carbon storage, energy) went hand-in-hand with nature: it seemed as though one could not exist without the other: that wildlife, wild places and communities existed as they should. Without boundaries or definitions or distinctions.

This one place inspired my career, and taught me, in a few short hours, more about wildlife, human history and myself than the previous twenty years combined. At the time, I was at university studying for a degree in History – Environmental History from then on. Here was a landscape shaped by its past, still bearing the scars and successes of use and delight, people and nature, exploitation and conservation.

I also recall my horror at the expectation that I wear a pair of binoculars: what if someone saw me?! Here was an accessory so at odds with my usual apparel, one that would have had me bullied senseless at school, yet on the reserves it was the norm. It took a further three months before I got my first pair – Opticron Discovery’s – at Birdfair. Now, I try not to leave home without them.

For me, that day and that landscape showed me a vision for myself, and for nature. A Focus on Nature was founded a few months later, a joint venture between Pete Gamby of Opticron and Dr Rob Lambert of the University of Nottingham, who were keen to assist young people with provision of equipment and expert mentoring: the scheme quickly morphed into a much wider network, a hub of youth conservation. This network has the power to realise its vision for nature.

Today, I had to vote for a party that I don’t fully agree with: the party most in line with my values didn’t put a candidate forward for my constituency, so the next best thing had to do. I could have abstained from voting, but what would that achieve? If this General Election saw a turnout like that of the Scottish Referendum, maybe we would have a government that actually represented the wants and needs of society.

But this predicament did get me thinking: what policies would I like to vote for? I narrowed it down to my top five:

• Make nature and the environment a compulsory part of primary education across the UK, incorporated into every curriculum topic (not just the sciences). Outdoor learning, regular outdoor field trips (subsidised by government) and wild play to be integral to education, and the inclusion of a nature table in every classroom, and a green space in every school ground. This would improve learning, self-esteem, help combat childhood obesity and improve concentration, as well as teach children about responsibility, respect and taking risks. It would make binoculars cool, too.

• All future housing and business developments to be ecologically friendly. Incorporate green roofs, access to green space, proper planning (not building on flood plains…), and homes for wildlife into all developments. If we are to meet demand during a ‘housing crisis’, bums on seats cannot be the only consideration: short-term gain would be a long-term disaster for both people and wildlife. Additional costs now would be an investment, as access to diverse green spaces increases house prices in the long run.

• Make it illegal for non-environmental companies and corporates, especially those whose aims are detrimental to the environment, to use wildlife and nature in their marketing strategies, logos and names. This would include street names for new housing developments (a local example to me would be “Pipistrelle Drive”, a new housing estate which displaced a colony of Common Pipistrelle bats) or the use of natural landscapes, creatures and sounds to sell products. Too often, this branding serves as a memorial to something that once was, as opposed to celebrating what is.

• Investment only in renewable energy. No fracking. Simple.

• Governments to adopt a responsible attitude towards policy-making, based on peer-reviewed science, supported by public opinion. For example, culling native wildlife should not be seen as a simple matter of trial and error – trade-offs between people and wildlife are rarely, if ever, needed, if planning and research is carried out thoroughly and rigorously. This does not happen at present.

Lives would be wilder, better, happier, healthier. Extinction would matter more than the X Factor.

I envisage a time where nature, biodiversity and the environment are not diminished to seven seconds in an election Leader’s Debate. In a discussion amongst those who wield the most power in influencing the state of nature, there would be no eye-rolling. Instead, there would be an acknowledgement that nearly every subject spouted by our politicians has its roots, and solutions, in the environment: education, health, society, wealth. Our politicians would demonstrate a genuine and vested interest in long-term solutions to societal problems, with the environment at the heart of each department – not lumped with ‘food & rural affairs’. There would be a commitment to wise investment in the environment, again cross-department that would not only save taxpayer’s money, but potentially make more. All of this would be underpinned by an acknowledgement of the intrinsic and inspirational values that wildlife brings to our lives, and its worth for its own sake.

 

Much of these thoughts are encapsulated in the Nature and Wellbeing Act, a proposed piece of legislation put forward by The Wildlife Trusts and RSPB. I place a great value on legislation and politics, but I equally worry that this won’t be enough. Therefore our wildlife champions and NGOs must learn to speak the language of the 21^st century, if their (our) message is to be heard, comprehended and acted upon.

After all, my vision for nature is actually paradoxical: where we no longer need a nature conservation movement at all.