The people problem

Imagine you have a huge house, which you feel safe and comfortable in and it has everything you need - a warm,comfortable bed, cupboards full of food, space for you to raise your family and in which to see them grow up to be strong and healthy.  Then gradually this space is taken over by people. People who don't care that it's your home, don't seem to see you, disrupt your life, your feeding habits and whose dogs scare your children.
This is a problem that the RSPB wrestle with all the time. While we want to bring people closer to nature, share our passion for the wonderful wildlife spectacle in our countryside and encourage people to enjoy the great outdoors with us we also have a duty to care for and protect those unable to protect themselves and who were in those spaces long before we found them. Added to that many of those species, be it animal,insect or flower, are rare and endangered.
RSPB scientists have done quite a bit of survey work on exactly this sort of problem - and I was fortunate enough to be at a presentation about  this subject earler this week. The audience learnt how a nightjar population suffered from predation of nests by crows - but only where dogs scared the mother bird off the nests along a track frequented by dog owners. Another island habitat for Chough was visited in huge numbers by holidaymakers during August. It was found that the fledglings and their parents moved to another area, not as plentiful in food during this invasion and as a consequence failed to thrive and became malnourished and unlikely to survive the winter. In another area several metres either side of a public footpath through scrub showed much less dense a population of wildlfe, which given the length of this track added up to a considerable area
This is a sobering thought to those of us who like our walks in the countryside and own a dog who walks at least 4 times the distance when off the lead!  I guess the answer is to attempt to explain to our visitors that the shiny new sign with an image of a dog on a lead is not just there for 'other dog owners' or ornament. Between the months of March and September the nature we all love to see is busy in a fight for survival. Adders are coming out of hibernation and warming up on the seawall banks, many birds are building nests on the ground ( not all in trees!!) and wild flowers are attracting insects and eventually turning to seeds both of which are food for many things.
Loving Nature means taking care of it too - so that your kids and mine will be able to show the same things to their kids as we do to them. So sorry Fido, you're on the lead from now on!