There have been many comments via blogs and via those peripheral voices of the countryside that the British public are apathetic towards the threats to the UK countryside, its flora and fauna and further the biodiversity of the world. Are they? I don’t believe they are and the monumental flow of money equivalent to a small countries’ GDP into conservation NGOs suggest otherwise. The huge public surge of anger towards the ‘Forest Sell Off’, was quickly manipulated by some NGOs, who ended up getting the praise for the turn around by the media because their PR departments are rich and were made richer by this manipulation.
There is no public apathy - but there is a huge disconnection. The increasingly fluffy image of the countryside portrayed by TV is clearly very popular and whilst there can be no criticism levied towards such exposure, in real terms it isn’t working. The hard issues we have to face with regards the countryside, the urban environment, our landscapes remain hidden or do they?
Watching rant after rant at the current government one starts to become distracted. Politicians do not and can not understand the plethora of issues with regards land management, they rely upon advice. That advice can be misconstrued, possibly deliberately by way of lobbyists, as seen with ‘sustainable development’ in the draft NPPF. And as governments change regularly in the UK each with a new agenda advice is sought in an increasingly large spectrum of ‘stakeholders’ and debate invariably ensues amongst those stakeholders, thus delaying any possible progression.
The NGOs can no longer pretend that they are not involved in providing that advice.
‘On the ground’ things are very different and blaming the government all the time is a risk. As funding and a financial future is less and less certain for everybody, people naturally start to ask more questions about where their money is being spent, either by way of their taxes or their continued donations to charity. It is surely no surprise that after being told ‘the need for their money has never been so important’, they wonder why having persistently invested more and more into protecting flora and fauna in the UK. What has it achieved? The hedgehog is close to extinction and our windscreens are now void of bug copses after the longest of journeys. We have Ospreys and many other previously rare species on the increase but the common everyday animals we are used to seeing in our gardens and parks are fast disappearing, those that live amongst the majority of the human population but which do not benefit from being so.
I visited a Garden Centre with a Spanish work experience student working for us in the South West of England a couple of years ago. He was utterly shocked by a display and it took me a while to understand why – the huge range of ‘RSPB’ branded bird feeders and similar products were next to a mountain of ‘slug pellets’. The paradox was at first lost on me as it was / is with most of the public.
Gardeners and landscapers are readily blamed for the disappearance of wildlife in the garden landscape and as seen on the LJN and elsewhere there is an acceptance that practice has to change. But the garden landscape and it's biodiversity is fed from the wider landscape. Why should we as practitioners accept the blame when clearly there are larger fundamental problems.
As we witness a continued decline of species and the felling of huge tracts of trees, (although they may only be Larch it is a falsehood to continue to believe as many ‘experts’ do that the UK populations image of forest is mainly ancient semi-natural woodland - it is usually commercial plantations!), who is going to be blamed? Those on whose watch it occurred, which is not the government itself because the problems transcend the periods of government. It is time the NGOs and Quangos join the rest of us, the industry itself and the public, in realising that their actions were and are as much a part of the problem as they are a part of a solution. In my head ‘Expert Led’ is the same as saying ‘The people are stupid’ which they aren’t. And blaming the practitioners whose joint wealth is nowhere near that of the NGOs combined, is nothing more than slanderous.
Comments
interesting blog Pip. You cover much wider issues, but I just wanted to comment on the specific issue of hedgehog disappearance - there's a suggestion that a big part of the problem is gardens being so well fenced that they can't get in and their habitat gets increasingly restricted. If every fencing contractor on this network undertook to persuade their clients to let them put in hedgehog gaps, it could make a real difference! Here's one that's been made in an oak panel fence -
Thanks for sharing the photo a perfect example of one of the hundreds of little tricks landscapers and gardeners use daily to ensure that biodiversity within the garden landscape is preserved and they do so without any recognition.
With the hedgehog issue scientific evidence is somewhat lacking, (I am real geek when it comes reading research papers) and the complex issues surrounding Hedgehog decline are assumed to be a blend of issues; hedgerow removal, badger population increase and loss of other habitats. A refuge in urban suburban gardens was found and exploited by Hedgehogs. An angle by NGOs has been to concentrate on educating people to provide for their Hedgehogs - so far so good.
But statements then go on to suggest that the urban garden is becoming increasingly sterile, (nonsense, in fact there is research to suggest the opposite), increasingly paved over, (again nonsense, landscapers in particular embrace by necessity SUDS regulations, probably more so than the councils who should be regulating it), and artificial barriers preventing their migration. This last point could well be true - but I have an enclosed garden as well as a healthy migration of hedgehogs, I have no intention of tagging them and finding out their movements but despite a lack of real scientific evidence the NGOs feel completely at ease in basically blaming the practitioners’ techniques.
This is just one of many examples of soundbites from NGOs suggesting with immunity that practitioner actions are to blame. Yet they are as culpable as the rest of us. And as you stated it is the role of the practitioner to interact with the client to ensure good practice – thus should it not be accepted that the practitioner is the most important link in this ‘education’. And lets be honest I would bet that well over 90% of those on the LJN work in this manner, how many on here will actually deliberately halt wild animal movement or destroy biodiversity in anyway, even if requested by a client.
Biodiversity continues to decline, but not in the garden landscape, and it is time the NGOs who have been driving around the countryside in their corporate logo 4X4’s stopped choosing an easy option to blame but actually took stock of the fact that they are failing miserably in what they have charged, (using donated money from the public) themselves to do.
Rant over, many apologies.