AFON
A focus on gardens – by Ryan Clark
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?
Introduction
We adapt our environment to meet the needs of just one species, our own, and as such our environments are very similar throughout the world. These needs include somewhere to live, space to grow food and space for recreation. As the human population grows, urban areas need to grow in order to house the increased population, often decimating the wildlife rich habitats around is. By 2050 the number of people in urban areas is expected to reach 6 billion, this is the same as the global population was in 2002. Although ideally my vision for nature would be to stop a population expansion and the building of houses, in my opinion, this is unachievable. Therefore I think we need to work with what we have. One key factor in this is appreciating and utilising gardens as habitats for wildlife. In Britain 87% of households in urban areas having access to a garden of some description. At the same time, we are now more disconnected with nature than we have never been. Children are especially becoming disconnected with the natural world which I find especially worrying. Many studies have shown that the natural world that we experience as children, forms a baseline for the environmental degradation around them. I am just about old enough to remember having to clean squished insects off the licence plate of our car, now there are hardly any.
My vision for nature is that gardens will be appreciated more for their value to people and wildlife, and designed better to facilitate both.
Value to Wildlife
The conservation value of gardens is not often the top priority for householders, but gardens are already a important conservation resource. It is predicted that residential gardens in England and Wales alone could cover 500,000 ha, covering more area than nature reserves in these countries occupy – imagine the potential here if just some people made their gardens better for wildlife. Gardens also have real potential to connect up out landscape, for the ‘more, bigger, better, joined up’ approach to conservation that is needed if we want to save species in the future. Some species now thrive in urban areas, sometimes this is because we have already destroyed their natural habitats, but not always. By no means am I saying that urbanisation is good for wildlife, but as a lot of Britain is already urbanised so we may as well do what we can to improve urban areas for wildlife and realise their potential in some cases and make sure that species can move between urban areas by using the network of gardens that are already present. We also need a push to study the wildlife in urban areas more. In my own specialism, that of pollinating insects, it has been thought that the more urban an area is, the less species are found. Yet a paper released just last month has shown that in Northampton, urban areas have more solitary bee species than the surrounding nature reserves! More focus needs to be put onto studying urban wildlife in gardens and seeing what we can do to help it.
Value to People
If people cannot connect and empathise with the diversity of native wildlife around them in the surrounding area then they are less likely to want to protect it. Not everyone is lucky enough to live within easy access to the countryside so experiencing urban wildlife is becoming increasingly important. I live near to the beautiful Chiltern Hills but have lived on an urban housing estate since I was 11 years old, my experience of nature developed here through my small garden. I discovered that nature really was on my doorstep, if you stop to look. I have recorded 620 species in my garden in the last three years and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of these species are conspicuous and easily identified, some of which have even been the first for the county, you just have to look! My garden has also been important to me on an emotional level. It is my retreat from the world around me. I can focus on the tiny struggles of a bee trying to get enough nectar to survive, and forget about the motorbikes zooming down the road and more importantly forget about my troubles. I can get out of bed and excitedly run outside in the summer to check and see what the moth trap has attracted overnight, that is priceless. Connection with the natural world has also been shown to have the potential to save the NHS millions of pounds per year through improved recovery times, imagine if some of those millions were invested into conservation! Gardens can play their part in this and I know from personal experience how they can affect my health. Some of my friends are not as lucky as me and their health means that even getting outside to their garden is a struggle. So their view over the garden is really important to them, and time spent in the garden is more valuable to them than can be put into words.
The Future
Urban gardens are under threat from ‘tidiness’ and paving over gardens, thus reducing their value to people and wildlife. Houses are also being squished in with smaller and smaller or nonexistent gardens, with the value of gardens being overlooked. We also need this value to be appreciated more by everyone and research to look into conserving wildlife in urban areas, not just priority habitats. Therefore we need to know what lives in urban areas, it is here that I must shamelessly plug a project that I help run, the Garden Bioblitz. The Garden Bioblitz is a two day event ran by myself and 4 other keen naturalists in which people go out all across the country and record the wildlife that they find in their gardens in a 24 hour period. The 5 of us set up and volunteer give time to this project because we love our gardens and local green spaces and want others to do the same. This project has generated thousands of records in the last three years, including some new species to science, which is important in itself. But more importantly in my opinion, it has got people involved with wildlife in their gardens and I am very proud to be involved. I am especially pleased when I see that families have got involved together, got muddy and discovered wonderful wildlife in their gardens – far more valuable than any species records generated.
Ryan Clark is a ecologist, conservationist and wildlife photographer. He works in local authority ecology, spending the rest of his time outside exploring the world around him. He is an avid pan species lister and tries to find and record every species he can but especially loves solitary bees. He loves engaging people with the wildlife around them, especially in gardens through his blog at ryanclarkecology.wordpress.com/blog/, and tweets at @RyanClarkNature