I have been thinking about where the environmental leaders of tomorrow will come from.
I had a lovely morning on Saturday celebrating the role that one such leader - Adrian Darby - has played as Chairman and President of Plantlife over the last 18 years. He's made a huge contribution to nature conservation over the years (including time spent as Treasurer and Chair of the RSPB Council).
I'll always have a soft spot for Adrian - not just because he was on the interview panel when I landed my job as Conservation Director of Plantlife in 1999. He was a great mentor to me and others at Plantlife. He loves his plants (especially arable flowers) and always brings intelligence and humour to any debate.
But perhaps his greatest achievement has been highlighting the need to protect wildflower meadows.
Appropriately, therefore, we were at the Lugg Meadows in Herefordshire - where 18 hectares were dedicated to Adrian. These flood meadows are the largest known surviving example of Lammas Meadow – areas of common land that date back to medieval times.
Just 5% of the original meadows remain - a fact that is heart-breaking whle walking through the meadows in the summer, when they are at their best - oozing colour and full of life.
I was with the kids and I was reminded of something that Chris Rose had said the day before at a conference: we are losing contact with nature partly because of our lifestyle which shelters us from the wild. But this is compounded by a diminishing resource. There is simply less wildlife-rich habitat for you to bump into. Young people these days (did I really say that?) will have to be pretty smart to find their way to the patches of flower-rich grassland which remain. So, how can they grow to love it if they never have contact with it?
This is why I have always been keen on advocating the right for every child to have contact with the natural world as part of their formal education. Others, such as Tony Juniper, have advocated introducing natural history GSCE.
This is also why I am disappointed that successive governments, whilst agreeing with the principle, have not done enough to encourage out of classroom learning.
Unfortunately, the Natural Environment White Paper, while saying all the right words, fails to provide the guarantees that I think are necessary. This was a missed opportunity. The RSPB and others will continue to provide high quality field teaching opportunities, but many schools simply cannot afford taking kids on school trips. We had calculated that just £27m was needed to subsidise all children eligible for free-school meals to be given an annual opportunity to have contact with nature.
I know, there is no money, but surely it is worth looking again as this is such as tiny sum of money to invest in finding tomorrow's environmental leaders.
Thank you Martin I take all your points on board and it is really a massive problem(seems like one of many for you)and really raised it to see what problems you would see in it,seems several but we desperately need a compromise somehow as absolutely nothing has worked yet.I would normally be for sure one of the biggest backers of punishment normally but in this instance as I have said before it is virtually impossible to catch anyone treading on H H nest and they can always say it was a accident did not see it so in this instance I think we will only progress by dialogue and compromise.I think some people think that the trap in Peak District was after H H but feel sure the intended victims were Goshawks and that sort of thinking could cloud the issue.Think you may get results if you could get good relations with moor managers but that is one more big problem for you.My concern really is that the big stick approach has not worked for perhaps half a century and will never work so we are simply forced into a different approach.Feel sure you know they seem to prosper on Mull.