Despite being a nation of nature lovers, the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, with all its rivers polluted, poisoned soil, poor air quality and declining wildlife. Is that the price of prosperity?
I’m 51 now and I don’t think I can ever remember a time when the natural environment featured so heavily in news articles, reports and more recently on social media. The latest UK state of nature report 2023 (like all the other reports going back to 2013) says once again that we are losing wildlife species at an alarming rate.
Across the UK, species studied have declined on average by 19% since 1970. Nearly one in six species are threatened with extinction from Great Britain.151 of 10,008 species assessed have already become extinct since 1500. 12% In Northern Ireland, 12% of assessed species were at risk of extinction. The key take home here is that this hasn’t started happening in the last few decades and it’s continuing to get worse. What does this really mean though? Does it matter? How does this make you feel? I’m guessing that you care because you’re reading this article. I think of myself as a conservationist and when I read this, I feel terrible, but then I carry on with what I’m doing, cooking my dinner, watching my favourite tv show etc. It’s human nature and it feels like too difficult for one individual to make a difference.
You may have heard that phrase about the UK being one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. We all love a phrase that stirs a reaction, so I told my dentist about it, he looked at me with disbelief before injecting my mouth with anaesthetic. I can understand his reaction, after all, when we look at our glorious British countryside, the rolling fields, the woods, the hedgerows, it’s tempting to think nature is doing alright isn’t it? Here’s the snag.
We humans see things through a very narrow window of time. Most of our political thinking is short term and we rarely legislate for the long term. Most of us remember a grandparent who talked about the good old days when nature seemed more abundant. It probably was at that time but it’s all relative. What was it like 400 years before that? This is the limitation of the window through which we view the world. It’s a snapshot, with each generation accepting it as the default with each century that passes. This is why it’s hard to imagine the UK as a wilderness with its own ecosystem. Our wilderness slowly but steadily disappeared over the last few thousand years which is hardly any time at all in the scheme of things. Some fantastic beasts went with it (wiped out by us) - bear, moose, lynx, wolf and wild cattle and much more. Britain was slowly transformed into an agricultural landscape, and it has been like this for so long that no one alive can remember anything else. It’s ironic that we are now calling on farmers to make space for nature. Whatever your view, I want you to look again through the metaphorical window before you make up your mind. A chilling reality remains, despite being a nation of nature lovers (probably including my dentist) the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, with all its rivers polluted, poisoned soil, poor air quality and declining wildlife. Is that the price of prosperity?
Given the agricultural land use in the UK today, it’s kind of understandable we’ve ended up with an expectation that nature’s main purpose is to provide a service to us. It’s rarely promoted for its own sake, and you’ll often hear its presence being justified financially or for other human services. You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘ecosystem services’ which makes me think of something that was invented by a global corporation. The ‘service to us’ undercurrent is everywhere. Conservationists use phrases that justify the protection of a group of animals because they eat or control ‘pests’- bats eating mosquitos for example. We still seem to want to find a human service that legitimises the existence of a species.
The classic example is the common wasp, what use is it? That question means -what use is it to us? Nobody asks that question about honeybees do they? In fact, it’s honeybees that are promoted as the crop pollinating heroes, at risk of being poisoned by agrochemicals. The reality is that many species of wasps, bees, flies and bugs are all at risk from pesticides and they’re all just as important for pollination as bees are. Coupled with species providing a service, the land and habitats they occupy are at the whims of political infrastructure projects. I’ve seen the High Speed 2 rail link project and its massive machine of development lay waste to ancient woodlands in the Chilterns. Why do we not comprehend the cumulative impacts of these kind of projects? In isolation, they are still eye watering in their impact but all the rail infrastructure projects, all the road networks, all the airport expansions, all of the housing developments add up to unimaginable destruction and vast consumption of precious resources. How did we come to treat our environment like this?
Across the globe, whole ecosystems have disappeared because of us. Countless species have gone extinct, and this continues to happen every day. I’m not saying this stuff to make humans feel guilty, it’s a fact. In the unimaginable span of time that life has been evolving on Earth, this must be something that’s never happened before. One animal has become so successful, that it has very quickly changed the face of the planet. It’s staggering to think that 96% of all mammal biomass on earth is farm animals and humans and just 4% are wild mammals.
There’s a Darwinian thing at work here and I think it illustrates one of the greatest challenges we face as an intelligent species…we are in a unique place in nature, we have taken a step outside of it and we’re on an incredible journey of human advancement. However far we advance and depart from our natural environment, we are still bound by it along with all its complex processes. Earth is clearly a paradise within our galaxy, maybe even the universe so I think everything here is special, including us. If an intelligent alien race observed Earth from a distance, would they think that we are living in harmony with our precious planet?
We need to do so much to tackle the issues we’re facing but there are incredible success stories. In terms of an agricultural setting, the Knepp Estate work is truly inspirational. The owners transformed their poor performing and uneconomical farm in Southern England into a thriving wilderness. It’s especially successful because it still strikes a good balance between agriculture and conservation. Making change involves everyone and we can all make a difference to wildlife at a local level with simple everyday choices. I’ll be posting again soon about wildlife friendly gardening.