The biggest threat to our UK wildlife is mostly believed to be climate change, but of equal danger is a growing disconnect from nature.
The RSPB is aware of the issues and is fighting multiple battles. We're challenging bad development, trying to make coping with climate change easier, attempting to fill gaps in environmental delivery and protection where budgets have been cut and we're inspiring people to get outdoors, discover and embrace nature. After all, how will the next generation care for wildlife and our landscapes if they have no emotional connection, love for, nor understanding of, it?
Edwina Pitcher is a volunteer working with communities and schools at our Wild about Hampstead Heath project in London, helping them discover and enjoy the world on the City of London Corporation owned Heath. She's taking time out to walk some 600 kilometres from Lisbon in Portugal to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. It's one of the many pilgrim routes leading to the Galician Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here is her update:
"This is an ancient pilgrim route following Roman roads, farmers´tracks and some stretches of asphalt road, but occasionally the route changes course to follow older now dry ´ghost´ rivers. Crossing over the caminho are sheep-tracks, springs running down from the granite hills and ant paths beavering their toilsome way through the dust.
The caminho is not just made of footsteps (human or cloven) it is also formed by the wildlife which crosses the path. There is an oak tree with fruit peculiar to the Portuguese, I was told by a lady called Diana in a place called Machinata, that inside would be a small creature. Sure enough, inside the soft interior is a little egg with a white shell. She also told me that if you hold your breath, nettles don´t sting. Try it if you like, but keep some sting relief handy. We're not recommending it.
I have passed pine trees entwined like lovers and great eucalyptus trees, forest after forest of them, sometimes burnt; a testment to the fires and the continued threat of fires this summer.
On one of the summits along the route, you can stretch out and lie across the sun-warmed granite. I had never really appreciated views until now. You read the landscape differently after walking through it and experiencing the nature. Rather than being removed from it, as though dropped there from a great height, you realise your path in the landscape is involved with it and your place now dependant on it."
There will be more from Edwina and much more from the RSPB on this problem of people being afraid of the outdoors. Greater London is predicted to swell to 10 million people by 2020, so developers and planners are facing a tough challenge on how to ensure all those people have access to quality outdoor space and how to incorporate nature in urban settings. We have the expertise to do it. Their challenge is to include it in their visions for a better London.