One of the wonderful "perks" of being a RSPB volunteer is that you get invited to some pretty interesting events. I was invited to just such an event last Wednesday night in Cardiff Bay. I went along with my wife, Dawn, who is also a RSPB Cymru volunteer, to the Techniquest centre for the official launch of the State Of Nature report. In an unprecedented move twenty five of our conservation organisations got together and did a stock check of all the flora and fauna within the British Isles. Everything was covered, from lichen to Linnets, from butterflies to barnacles. The results were truly staggering. Just over sixty per cent of the wildlife in this country is in decline, and about thirty per cent of that in serious and critical decline. The amount of habitat loss the major factor in these declines, climate change and human activity believed to account for the rest. This report makes no bones about it; we are eroding the biodiversity in this country to the point where common bird, plants, animals and insects will become extinct. This is in effect a mass extinction event that is occurring. I don't know about you but I don't think the history books will judge us very well in a thousand years’ time. The keynote speaker for the evening was Iolo Williams. I am not sure what speech they expected Iolo to give, but I am fairly sure it was not the one he gave. It was deeply moving, emotional and in the end a very angry attack on why we have reached this point. Several times during his talk I could feel myself welling up as he described how his "local patch" had changed from his childhood. How ninety nine per cent of hay meadows in Wales have disappeared ... NINETY NINE PERCENT! That is a complete ecosystem removed overnight in ecological terms! But he saved his vitriol until the end. He said he didn't blame the farmers or the fishermen, who are just doing what they can under the rules they currently have. He said he blamed the fat, pencil pushing bureaucrats that sit behind a desk all day and never take any action. He said that their time will come, not by the hands of the public and not now, but in forty or so years’ time, when they are sitting reading their grandchildren a bed time story, and they may just describe a lush meadow full of Lapwings, Tortoiseshell Butterflies and screaming Swifts, and their grandchild will look at them and ask why they never see any of those things as they are now all gone what it was like to have so much wildlife in the countryside?
It really was powerful stuff! I swear to you if he would have called us to march on to the assembly building next door would have gone willingly It was one of the best and most heartfelt oratory I have heard in a very, very long time!
It was not lost on me that as Iolo was giving this address I was watching a pair of Starlings busily ferrying beaks full of food to an unseen nest outside in the apex of the Techniquest roof; Swifts and Swallows screamed silently in the evening sun, trying to catch flies, three species that are all in decline. Three reasons we were all there listening to Iolo talk.
Iolo left the stage to rapturous applause. I don’t think there was a person there that he didn’t reach with his message. The time to start up all our efforts has come, from volunteers like me, to the heads of the conservation groups who created the report, to the Assembly Members and other politicians that have the real power to make a change.
There were two more addresses to follow. I will tell you what they had to say in part two of this blog.
All Images © Anthony Walton
I meant righteous obviously, for some reason can't 'edit' the post!
As always Ant a very professional and yet personal account. Iolo's speech is the one that you wish politicians would make, something that is so compelling that it removes all doubt because you can feel that it comes from the heart. It's so refreshing to see genuine passion and rightious anger, rather than the ersatz anger and political posturing we often see in parliament. It does however raise some interesting questions that I would invite anybody to answer - why hasn't the clean air act and the millions spent on water treatment to clean up our rivers had a more positive effect on wildlife? I would have thought that our beaches and rivers are in a much better condition now than they were in the 70's. Iolo's describes the dramatic decline of water voles - is this down to agricultural mismanagement, effluent run-off for example or the miguided release of Mink by animal activists?