A reflection on the state of nature in the South West of England and ideas for the future: guest blog by Mark Robins

This week, my colleague, Mark Robins, leaves the RSPB after more than a quarter of a century.  Mark has been a fantastic colleague and an inspiration to many.  As he leaves us, he leaves South West England too. Here he shares his thoughts on a region rich in potential for much more nature.

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After 30 years working for nature and mostly for the RSPB and almost all in South West England, what do I know, what do I feel, and where can I find optimism for a better future for our natural systems?

Nature and the South West are in my soul – spend some time here and who could avoid being seduced by Dartmoor, Exmoor, the South West coast in its many splendours, West Penwith - Cornwall, one and all!, Salisbury Plain – Europe’s biggest chunk of chalk grassland, the famous wetlands of the Somerset Levels, the Forest of Dean – the wooded land of rebels, and then the awe inspiring mother-of-all UK’s estuaries – the Severn? Soul food indeed. But so tragic too – despite successes, nature’s loss and decline in these of all places hurts me. The places are still there, and still inspire, but the actuality for nature has too often been grim.

Dartmoor. one of the South West’s famous upland landscapes - a huge area farmed semi-natural habitats’. Photo: Mark Robins

Down west, we have the places then. And so many people, including the visitors from up country with their consumer power, who care about nature, but together, so far, we just haven’t done enough. We haven’t made it easy to do the right thing for nature.

Thankfully exceptional people have broken through and done fabulous things but it’s not enough. Let’s call them the ‘outlaws’ (escaping the laws that lead to failure). And gladly I can think of a few down West!

So far, thirty years on then, using my sou’wester test of the state of nature in our most special places, I conclude: governments and the way our bureaucracies work, so far at least, just don’t fit with the kind of nature-restoring development that would honour generations to come. So, I hope these frameworks will change. And then away from a focus on central governments, while we mustn’t let the state escape its key roles (national leadership, coordination or facilitation), the question for us is whether we can imagine an approach that much better re-couples people and nature.

We’ve got more thinking to do about everyday life in our places and how this might change to offer more hope for nature. In the places where we live and love, we need to shift away from viewing ‘ecological’ and ‘social’ systems as distinct and separate things. Discovering a much more comfortable marriage between people, their places and the ecosystems that these are set in.

Somerset Levels. The UK’s largest floodplain wetland – where ‘safe’ water is the key to nature, farming and community resilience’.  Photo: Mark Robins

Mine is a proposal for something much more lively and at a scale where most of the action to restore nature must happen. A ‘pro-nature’ localism that is people-centred, action- orientated, imaginative, innovating, learning, boundary pushing, and deeply-rewarding. At this local level, success is tangible and tactile – it can be tasted, touched, and felt. In just one example, imagine the South West coast, where the enjoyment of the so-many becomes a new form of shared leadership for nature. A leadership that offers and blends many kinds of investment: private, public, corporate and that of the so-many citizens and creates a zone of passion, care, sensitive demand and rich resources for something much better for nature.

People and place - the most beautiful thing! Surely the South West is as good as it gets on this.  Rich in new nature-restoring opportunities cast around community, place and identity. And increasingly I hope, full of those outlaws escaping rules that fail nature.