AFON
Power To The People – by Emily Robertson
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?
It’s after 2am, but I’m not the only one awake. Spring is at least four months away, but I welcome the respite from my insomnia-addled brain. Why isn’t the robin asleep? How is it managing to sing for so long? The sweet warbling continues from stupid o’clock in the morning, until it is eventually drowned out by delivery lorries, rubbish collectors, cars driving to school and the boiling of a kettle (ready to inject minds with their caffeine fix). While I feel privileged to have heard the robin’s song without background noise, I am also sad that it had been tricked into singing by artificial light. It is not uncommon for nature to be affected by human influence and we’ve even coined the term “anthropogenic impacts” to help us describe these phenomena. My vision for nature would be one where human’s excessive consumption is curbed and our negative impacts on wildlife mitigated to the very best of our ingenious ability.
It surprises me that prominent biologist Rachel Carson, who is over fifty years gone, spoke about children losing their connection to nature and even now people worry about this. Does this mean things haven’t progressed? Hardly. One of the most commonly-used insecticides in Carson’s lifetime was DDT is now banned in many countries. There has also been the ban of the poison strychnine, in the EU, due to causing “slow, agonising death” and potentially putting “other animals at risk”. A recent controversial study of wolf management in Canada showed the killing of 676 non-target animals, but did not address animals which may have been killed from strychnine. While we are taking some steps in the right direction, rewilding is a particularly exciting prospect to me as it may eventually result in humanity living within nature, rather than constantly fighting it. As Carson said, “Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
Citizen science is something you hear about often and I believe it is an invaluable way to engage with people who care, but are at loss of what to do. By tapping into the knowledge of locals we can share how exciting and cool nature can be, while filling in the blanks in records. From the fluffy to the flowery many naturalists are happy to teach others how to identify species; it’s just a matter of finding them. A search on Facebook comes up with groups such as “British Spider Identification” and “British Wild Flowers”, with amateurs and experts posting photographs to ID. Perhaps these groups should be advertised or a directory made of naturalists who want to share their experience with members of the public.
Now that it is finally a not-so-silent spring, for the first time in years, some birds are nesting in our bird box in the garden. It is heartening to see my parents getting as excited about it as I am (“Who needs telly when you have this?”). Every day I will be told a round-up of the comings and goings of animals in the garden: from the nesting coal tits, swaggering, silly wood pigeons and the twitching, nervous house mouse. Overall I would like to see more engagement from the government to encourage members of the public, young AND old(er), to take pride in the wildlife we have.
Recommended reading:
Traffic noise and its impact on birdsong
http://www.ecologyandsociety.
http://rspb.
History of Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson: A witness for nature by Linda Lear
http://www.prospectmagazine.
Pesticide use in general and its use for the Alberta wolf study
http://www.pan-uk.org/