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If we ignore the decline of wildlife, we will lose it
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From Mike Stentiford.
WITH scores of personal anxieties each of us needs to confront on an almost daily basis, it probably isn’t too surprising to find that the current shockwaves relating to a dire decline in much of Britain’s wildlife has passed over our heads with nary a shrug of our combined shoulders.
After all, what difference can it possibly make to our daily lives if Britain has lost 44 million breeding birds since the 1960s, or that a decline in butterflies has now reached an astonishing 70 per cent?
These days we see our lives as far too industrious to give even the most dismissive wave of a hand to creatures such as the innocent hedgehog that, in the 1950s, found solace in the British countryside to the tune of thirty-six million individuals. Today their numbers have been reduced to just one million.
‘It’s just wildlife and of no concern of ours’ might be the naturally expected response from Mr and Mrs family average as they attempt to grapple with the challenges each single day now seems to present.
Although it’s very easy to understand such lack of interest, it seems a sad indictment of our 21st-century society that with much of nature in serious trouble, even here in Jersey, such alarming changes and critical losses appear to be regarded by so many – including much of the media – as of little or no consequence.
When we see how nature inspires us today and how the classic poets, artists and composers of the past gained even grander inspiration from its undeniable diversity, we quickly realise the massive contribution towards our quality of life the natural world has somehow managed to deliver and maintain.
Furthermore, I honestly believe that should we ever experience a silent countryside devoid of birdsong, the company of butterflies or the heady drone of honeybees, we would immediately find something undeniably missing from our daily lives.
While we might feel confused and confounded as to what we, as individuals, can do to help – should we feel inclined to help, that is – perhaps we might take the initial step of showing that, as a society, we are at least aware of and seriously concerned with this incredibly sad situation.
If we accept this, we can then begin to make modest amends by offering support and encouragement to all those local environmental organisations that continue to work extremely hard to give struggling wildlife a far more hospitable Island home.
Make no mistake: The odds are already seriously stacking up against much of our wildlife. Life is not necessarily all about social networking, extreme activities and a general refusal to accept silence in its most inspirational form.
Nature, in all its many guises, is about knowing that the world is still turning and that, hopefully, there might still be much out there for us all to discover and enjoy.
Lose it, and I honestly believe that we lose a crucially important part of our inner selves. Who knows, it might be a part of us that we didn’t even know existed.
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