2018: in search of a new normal

Above the fireplace in the main meeting room at the RSPB's Headquarters hangs a portrait of one of our founders, William Henry Hudson.  I knew little about his backstory until my colleague, Conor Jameson, explained how Hudson grew up in Argentina and fell in love with the wildlife of Patagonia before moving to England in his 30s.  Here, he continued his passion for natural history but also for writing novels (for which he remains famous in Argentina).  Conor, who as well as being a writer himself is also a Senior Legacy Advisor for the RSPB, has a particular interest in Hudson, in part, because on his death in 1922, the RSPB was named as the main beneficiary in his will.  

To illustrate Hudson's passion and campaigning spirit, Conor showed me a letter that was published in the Saturday Review in 1900.  In this letter (pictured and typed in full at the bottom of this blog), Hudson expresses his distaste for the way that albatrosses were being hunted for sport.  He writes,

"The mere sight of this noblest pelagic fowl, the great Wandering Albatross, is a moving event in the life of any person, even as is that of the soaring condor among native mountains; and, in a less degree, that of the golden eagle, the one great bird which happily still survives in the northernmost parts of our country.  That any man, I do not say who has any poetry in him, any reverence for life, any sense of mystery and glory of this visible world; but I will say, any man who has an instinct of humanity, or of truth, who is not a ruffian at heart as well as a Philistine, can find pleasure in torturing and killing such birds, is a thing to wonder at." 

I first read the letter in the week that the final episode of Blue Planet 2 was broadcast, which revealed how a parent wandering albatross regurgitated plastic to its hungry chick. It served as a sobering reminder of how human impact on wildlife has changed.  While humans no longer deliberately torture albatrosses for sport, seabirds still face many challenges due to the reckless actions of humans.  Thanks to the Albatross Task Force which is jointly run by the RSPB and BirdLife International, we are successfully reducing the number of albatrosses being killed as bycatch from fishing and we are also doing what we can to remove non-native invasive predators from seabird islands.  Plastic pollution is another environmental challenge facing these majestic creatures and other marine life.

Many modern day environmental challenges appear to be the result of unintentional consequences of 'legitimate' human activity: fishing, transport, housing or farming.   Some will say that harm is inevitable as we seek to secure higher standards of living for our growing population.  Yet, we have known about the environmental consequences of our own activity arguably since Alexander von Humboldt*, inspired by his five year expedition to South America at the turn of the nineteenth century, first wrote about humankind's long term impact on nature (through deforestation, irrigation and industrialisation).  While ecological problems such as climate change and habitat loss are the incidental results of otherwise lawful activity, the destruction caused is reckless when the environmental impacts are known.

In the same way that it is now (thankfully) socially unacceptable (and illegal) to deliberately cause harm to seabirds, it should be socially unacceptable to damage the natural world through reckless acts (ie when the negatives consequences of the action are well known).  And that is what could be a good test of the much anticipated 25 year environment plan, promised by the UK Government.  Will the plan set the right vision, ambition and actions to build on existing environmental protection and help us live in harmony with nature? In short, will it help create new norms?

We have made huge progress on social issues to outlaw reckless activity and we have introduced such concepts into domestic wildlife law (such as reckless destruction of a Site of Special Scientific Interest or recklesss disturbance of wild birds).  Yet, we are in the business of changing societal norms and in our use of fossil fuels, plastics and management of the land, we still have a long way to go before it is deemed socially unacceptable to cause environmental harm.  We need governments to be active, to intervene (through laws, incentives or taxes) to make it easier for people to do the right thing and harder for people to cause harm.  No environmental challenge (from plastic pollution to greenhouse gas emissions) has or will ever be solved through voluntary measures alone.

Just look to the way that our uplands are treated.  These are some of the wildest places we have in the UK, yet they are degraded through inappropriate grazing, commercial forestry and burning for intensive grouse shooting.  The impacts on water quality, flood protection, greenhouse gas emissions and wildlife are well known, yet parts of society appear to accept the consequences of these legal activities.   Following the UK vote to leave the EU, we have opportunities to reform agriculture and land use policy to provide a better deal for our uplands and hill farmers while the case for raising the environmental standards of driven grouse shooting continue to grow.

For the past four years, we have argued that a system of licensing of driven grouse shooting is essential to help protect our amazing upland wildlife, restore our internationally important peatlands, and protect birds of prey.  There is the promise of progress in Scotland as licensing grouse shooting is now official party policy of the Scottish National Party and has been the subject of a parliamentary inquiry.  There are also calls for other parties to follow suit across the UK.  In England, Ed Hutchings has set up an e-petition calling for licensing of driven grouse shooting. We agree with the objectives of this e-petition and I would encourage you to sign it.  In 2017, the British Association of Shooting and Conservation made a welcome call to its members to stamp out the illegal killing of birds of prey.  Yet, I still believe that regulation is the only way to create new norms within the shooting industry - norms that help protect and restore the uplands. 

Ever since the establishment of the RSPB in 1889, our charity has campaigned for a change in the way that human society relates to nature.  From the use of wild bird feathers in the hat trade to the use of DDT in farming and the work of the Albatross Task Force today, we have always sought to eliminate harmful human activities.  While environmental challenges increase in both scale and complexity as a result of our growing population consuming more, so must our response.  Through practical conservation, aligning with others to influence change and involving more people in our work, we want to change social norms, so that it is no longer acceptable to cause environmental harm (whether intentional or reckless).   

That was the mission of our founding members like Emily Williamson and WH Hudson and that remains our mission today. Thankfully, this mission is shared by many other organisations around the world including BirdLife International's 120 partners.

I remain optimistic that we can improve the natural environment.  Our ultimate goal is to create new social norms, norms which decouples environmental harm from growing prosperity, norms which provide everyone with a right of access to areas rich in wildlife.  I look forward to making the case for action and, thanks to our supporters and work with partners, reporting real progress throughout 2018.  

Oak woodland at Haweswater (Andy Hay, rspb-images.com)

*In her brilliant biography, The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf makes the case for Alexander von Humboldt as the founder of the environment movement. She goes further and concludes that much of what we are experiencing during the Anthropocene makes "Humboldt's views alarmingly prophetic... now is the moment for the environmental movement to reclaim Alexander von Humboldt as our hero".

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DESTRUCTION OF THE ALBATROSS

To the Editor of the Saturday Review, November 1900

Sir. – I hope you will allow me to call the attention of your readers to a correspondence on the “Tenacity of Life of the Albatross” which appeared in the columns of “Nature” on 25 October.  It will serve to remind us that the senseless destruction of this noble bird is still being carried on for the amusement of the officers and passengers on our ocean-going steamers.  As long ago as 1893 I made my little protest against this modern sport, in a book entitled “Birds in a Village;” and from what was there said I quote the following paragraph : - “A few months ago one of our leading illustrated weeklies contained a large picture and a column of so of letterpress, showing and explaining how English gentlemen amused themselves when voyaging in large steamships in the Pacific Ocean by taking the albatross with hook and line.  The floating bait swallowed and the hook stuck fast in the gullet or stomach, the bird is forced to fly after the ship, and is finally drawn down on to the deck.  A large number of albatrosses can be thus captured in the course of a day. And for what purpose?  To chop off their heads with a hatchet or a butcher’s knife; the head, ‘with Roman beak sublime,’ to be kept as a momento of the voyage, or given to a friend at home; the long slender bones of the pinions to be taken out and cleaned for pipe stems; the mutilated carcass to be cast back into the sea.  For the sea does not grieve for her lost children; and the albatross has no soul to haunt its murderer.  That is an old vanished superstition.”

Since this was written much has been done for the birds; laws for their better protection have been passed in England, the Colonies, India and America; an immense amount of literature on the subject has been distributed, and a strong favourable public opinion created.  But this all avails nothing on those lonely distant seas, where there are few to witness, few to protest against the outrage, when the sportsman gets out his hook and line to take not fish but that bird which Herman Melville bowed himself “as Abraham before the angels.”

The mere sight of this noblest pelagic fowl, the great Wandering Albatross , is a moving event in the life of any person, even as is that of the soaring condor among native mountains; and, in a less degree, that of the golden eagle, the one great bird which happily still survives in the northernmost parts of our country.  That any man, I do not say who has any poetry in him, any reverence for life, any sense of mystery and glory of this visible world; but I will say, any man who has an instinct of humanity, or of truth, who is not a ruffian at heart as well as a Philistine, can find pleasure in torturing and killing such birds, is a thing to wonder at.

In the letters printed in “Nature,” we are told that some albatrosses were caught by the officers of the s.s. “Star of New Zealand,” and after being choked by means of strings tied tightly round their necks were placed in the ice-box, and that after several days two of the birds were discovered to be alive.  One after ten days in the ice-box, with the lower half of its body frozen hard, emitted groaning sounds; and on being taken out it raised its head and gaped, and stared about it with wide-open living eyes; and that it continued in this state for a space of two hours, after which it was strangled a second time, and put back in the ice-room.  The captain of the ship, in conclusion, announces his intention of experimenting with the birds he may capture on his return voyage, to find out how long they will keep alive in these low temperatures; and the owner of the ship, Sir William Corry, Bart,. M.P., displays a lively interest in these investigations.

It is a horrible story, and I will try to believe that few will read it without a feeling of unutterable detestation for those who can do such things and who approve of them.

Apart from the question of torture, it is to be feared that if this form of sport continues unchecked, the albatross will shortly become a rare bird indeed; for he has the fatal habit of following ships for the sake of the food cast on the water, and it is easy to take him with a baited hook.  He may be very tenacious of life and so long lived as to be, so to speak, one of the few immortals among the higher vertebrates; but he is a slow breeder, and the ships that traverse the seas are legion and their number is ever increasing.

This is doubtless a matter for the Society for the Protection of Birds to consider; but it is one, too, which concerns every ornithologist, every naturalist, in the country.  The Society I have named can but place the facts and a protest before the shipowners and directors of the steamship companies, and hope against hope that these important busy gentlemen will pay some attention to the matter.  It is clear that such a protest would gain immensely in value, and would not be refused a hearing, if the names of leading naturalists’ societies and unions could be associated in it with that of the Birds Protection Society.

I am, yours faithfully,

W. H. HUDSON