In honour of the Olympics, I have invited our London team to provide an insight into the wildlife and our work in our capital city. So, if you need a break from watching handball, hockey or the hundred metres, here's a glimpse of what will still be there long after the Games moves on to Rio...
8.2 million People can’t be wrong. London is a great place to live. Metre for metre it has more green space than most other Capital cities. In its open spaces and rivers, you’ll find porpoises, red deer, kingfishers, eels, peregrine falcons, scary-looking stag beetles and bats.
London’s wildlife dwarfs its human population, yet few tourists come to see the wildlife. Indeed, few Londoners would add ‘nature’ to a list of London’s top ten attractions. Enjoying nature is one of the few universally free activities; accessible by all, regardless of mobility, knowledge, language or age. We should all relish the chance to relax in its parks and open spaces.
The need for housing, additional transport links and the waste, water and power infrastructures required to support the burgeoning population of London is kettling nature; wild spaces are being fragmented and condensed.
As a classicist and scholar of ancient civilisations, London Mayor Boris Johnson is better placed than many to understand the lessons of history. Every continent has seen empires collapse when their needs outgrew their resources.
Earlier this year, changing weather patterns left the Capital with an early hose-pipe ban while, simultaneously, the drains overflowed; with heavy downpours sending raw sewage in to the Thames, de-oxygenating the water and killing plants and fish.
Mayor Boris rightfully cheerleads for London’s green credentials. Its low carbon and environmental goods and services sector is forecast to be over £27 billion by the end of this financial year, an 18 per cent increase on 2009/10 levels. The RSPB welcomes that, but we’d also welcome a more concrete show of support for London’s natural assets and the contribution they make to its economy, public health and future.
London’s nature needs Boris’s rumbustious verbosity and dynamic buttressing as much as London needs its break-out spaces, pollution-filtering green canopies and flying-pest eaters. What London doesn’t need is Boris Island. Apart from the danger to planes from the thousands of estuary birds and ignoring the destruction of globally important habitats, increased aviation scuppers the UK Government’s chances of meeting its 2050 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.
Improving London’s connectivity to the world is not about physically moving people around the globe faster, it’s about communication and quality of life. Together we can make London step-up, head and shoulders, above its global competitors to become the capital to copy for modern living and economic growth.
Follow our blog this week to find out more.
Pictured: house sparrow wildflower plot at Peckham
Mayor Boris, may emphasise London's green credentials, however having met and spoken to him on the need to conserve our rapidly declining wildlife, I do not believe he is in the least interested in this area of "greenery", especially when he is advocating a big new airport for London in the Thames Estuary. I hope I am wrong in my assessment but I don't think so. I trust the Government will see sense and "ditch" his idea for very many reasons, but I think it would be wise to now put in place some plans for a campaign against Mr Boris's island should such a campaign be needed.
(I notice more wartime ordanace was accidently draged up off Sherness last weekend necesitating the temporary evacuation of some people in Sherness).