16th September 2024
What if everyone lived within walking distance of a community-run orchard?
Surely that would improve biodiversity, improve people’s connection with the natural world and encourage people to expect and enjoy eating locally grown/ produced food?
Certainly that dream is the ambition of The Orchard Project. (1) Since 2009 they have created or restored 500 plus community orchards across the country – Orchard Map
10th September 2024
Every year trees such as the oak, the horse chestnut and the beech, produce vast numbers of seeds from which hardly even one will make it to become itself a mature tree. Rather their seeds will be eaten by squirrels, birds, deer and – if they are there – pigs or wild boar. There is a balance between the food supplied and the number of creatures fed. But then once every few years, the trees produce an excessive number of seeds – a mast year. For this year only the supply of food exceeds consumers and from this crop, the next generation of trees may sprout. This fascinating understanding of supply and demand comes from Tristan Gooley’s book, How to Read a Tree, which I thoroughly recommend.
9th September 2024
A rich biodiverse habitat is a habitat that is regulated by both competition and opportunism. The balance is not always even in the short term but longer term imbalances level out.
This year’s wet weather has seen an explosion of slugs that has not been fully balanced by an increase in beings that prey on slugs. Although conversely the wet weather may have produced excess amounts of plant growth on which the slugs have been feeding!
It is not just gardeners but farmers too who find their hard work devastated by hungry slugs – but research is in hand to find ways of creating a better balance between slugs and plant growers – for more information or to help – https://bofin.org.uk/2024/08/29/slimy-invaders/
6th September 2024
Biodiversity is also an important component of our relationship with God. The following comes from the Centre for Action and Contemplation, and invites us to look again at nature.
“It might’ve been being at the beach and seeing a flock of seagulls in flight that suddenly made you aware of beauty in a way you’d never felt it before, or it may have been the first dog that you really knew, loved, and connected with. It helped you think of intelligence that was different than your own, and beautiful in its own unique way. It might’ve been some other scene where you felt sacredness, and holiness, and depth in the natural world. It’s easy for us … to forget that childlike wonder at this beautiful world. We don’t need to put God and nature in competition. Nature is God’s original self-expression”.
4th September 2024
A biodiverse rich ecosystem is a more stable ecosystem, and that stability benefits all the component parts. A biodiverse rich environment will thus support a better life for humans as well as other creatures, plants and life forms. Such an environment will be healthier for humans – including cleaner air and water – and will ensure a richer, more reliable food supply.
3rd September 2024
The State of Nature report 2023 states: “The UK, like most other countries worldwide, has seen significant loss of its plants, animals and fungi. The data from State of Nature cover, at most, 50 years but this follows on from centuries of habitat loss, development and persecution. As a result, the UK is now one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth.”(1) This includes a 54% loss in the distribution of flowering plants, meaning more than half of the land is less rich in biodiversity.
Yet a rich biodiverse environment is better able to cope with and tackle the causes of climate change. (2)
(2) https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/biodiversity
2nd September 2024
There are 50 days remaining until this year’s biodiversity COP. Biodiversity COP16 will take place between 21st October and 1st November in Cali, Colombia
Biodiversity is a measure of the number of different varieties of life forms found in earth. Some ecosystems are richer in biodiversity than others. The richer an ecosystem is in biodiversity, the more stable is that ecosystem. Globally biodiversity has been shrinking at an alarming rate. The Biodiversity COPs are tasked with finding ways of reducing and turning about this loss of diversity.
23rd August 2024
Ecosystem engineers have an ability to modify resources they have to hand to alter their environment. This alteration maybe to change or to destroy or to maintain (ie prevent change) a habitat. Coral species that form coral reefs, and trees that form forests, both have the impact of radically changing the environment into which they move. Beavers are well known for creating new habitats by felling trees and damming water ways. Prairie dogs by tunnelling and turning over the soil, provide accessible habitats for other burrowing mammals, birds, snakes and toads. They also keep the grass nibbled short, providing a favoured habitat for various birds, as well as enabling the prairie dogs to spot would-be predators – and their whistled alarm alerts other creatures in the vicinity too.
Many living beings, on land and in water, are important because they can engineer environments that support a greater diversity of life forms than might otherwise be the case. Humans fall into this category of ecosystem engineers but the outcome is not always one that promotes greater biodiversity.
16th August 2024
There is a movement called ‘We are Nature’ (1) which aims to redefine the word ‘nature’. Dictionary definitions of nature define nature as being other than what is human. This setting apart appears assumes that that which is human is superior,more important, than nature, and thus to undervalue nature. The definition this group is looking to introduce would be along the lines of “The living world comprised as the total set of organisms and relationships between them. These organisms include bacteria, fungi, plants and animals (including humans). Some definitions may also include non-living entities as part of nature – such as mountains, waterfalls and cloud formations – in recognition of their important role underpinning the web of life.” This one comes from The Conversation – https://theconversation.com/a-new-campaign-wants-to-redefine-the-word-nature-to-include-humans-heres-why-this-linguistic-argument-matters-229338
If we see humans as being integral to, and not separate from, nature then how will that affect our understanding of what is a natural environment? For surely by this new definition a natural,
environment is not necessarily an environment free from a human presence or influence? Might a natural environment be better defined then as an environment in which there is a harmonious – long lived? – numerically rich biodiversity?
12th August 2024
The so called ‘Glorious Twelfth’ marks the start of the shooting season for grouse. Over the next few months some 700,000 red grouse will be shot on moors across the UK. These birds, whilst they remain wild, are husbanded by the owners of the grouse moors using methods that involve burning heather and shooting predators and competitors such as foxes, crows and magpies, and birds of prey. The burning of the moorland heather is intended to maximise the new shoots which the grouse feed on, but at the same time it damages the underlying peat and reduces biodiversity, killing insects and small mammals, and by inhibiting the growth of a wider range of native plants.
Grouse-moors are an artificial construct and do not equate with maintaining a ‘natural’ environment.
“Grouse are charming, sensitive birds who can survive as far north as the Arctic circle and are devoted parents to their chicks. They deserve better than being killed in cold blood for someone’s twisted idea of entertainment.” https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/grouse-shooting/
The Green Tau 