One Big Thing for Nature: guest blog post from Chris Packham

Following the launch of the State of Nature report, I have been  keen to stimulate a debate about what else we need to do to live in harmony with nature. Over the past few weeks, people from differing perspectives have proposed their One Big Thing for Nature.  To close this series, I am delighted to welcome Chris Packham. 

State of Nature - state of crisis
The very sad thing about this report is that it contains little surprises. No new figures, no revelations, no skeletons freshly dragged from the closet. It is simply an amalgam of all the previously published data about the catastrophic declines befalling our wildlife. What is notable however, is that finally they have been collated, lumped together, to produce an instantaneous and easily available snap-shot of the state of all of that wildlife in 2013. And this is what makes the document so important, it’s a frank, precise and very accurate audit which allows for no ambiguity - things are going to hell in a handcart. Our so called countryside is in crisis and our conservation efforts have not been enough to stifle or stall the overwhelming majority of declines. Thus State of Nature is a line in the sand, it has invalidated any excuses, past, present and future, if we don’t act, then we are culpable of failing in our duties.

In turn that’s why all the agencies who contributed to this report should be commended . It’s a very brave step, its honesty is difficult to swallow, a bitter but necessary pill. But then for all its very obvious doom and gloom this is so clearly not a pessimistic report either for one very apparent reason...the causes of the vast majority of these declines are known. Alongside each of the accounts are brief notes which betray that the reasons for species or habitat losses have been measured and identified. So often this is the hardest part of any conservation concern and obviously once they are known we can act to rectify the problems.

So why haven’t we been doing that? Well, in some small ways we have, we have learned how to micro-manage individual species to greatly increase their numbers (Stone Curlew , Cirl Bunting), we have developed new technologies to re-build habitats from scratch (Lakenheath Fen), we have cleaned up parts of the environment  or reduced other pressures so well that species can recover 'naturally' (Otter, Peregrine). We have even perfected the art of re-introductions (White-Tailed Eagle, Red Kite). We can make the difference but just not on the necessary scale. And this is the crux of it. We neither have the space (enough reserves) , the money (we will never have enough) or sadly the influence over the bigger picture.

But you do, because you have a free vote and the choice about how you spend the pound in your pocket. We must learn to elect decision makers at all levels of governance who both understand and care about wildlife , it has to be a central part of their personal manifesto. We must recognise that our insatiable desire for cheap food does nothing to help our countryside and those custodians of it, our farmers. We must question far more rigorously the policies of nature conservation agencies and critically those who manage our countryside, from those farmers who flail their hedges into useless picket stumps, those councils who seek to build on every last scrap of our cities green spaces, those politicians who delay and deflect action to safeguard our environment, to ourselves who stand as those who now have no excuses not to act.

And if we fail, if our fields fall fallow and our springs fall silent, then at some stage in the future they will point to us and say 'they stood by whilst paradise shrivelled and died'. Doesn’t bear thinking about does it?

Do you agree with Chris? And what would be your One Big Thing for Nature?

It would be great to hear your views.