RSPB Old Moor by Paul Brookes
Some thoughts from the front
In the towns, there are people who care, who protest about the use of pesticides, have stopped eating animal products, using private cars. And there are people who don’t give a rat’s arse.
In the countryside there are people who care about their environment and limit the use of their car(s), change their eating habits and are kinder to their gardens. And there are people who don’t give a rat’s arse.
In the towns there is no wild habitat, and those who care are painfully aware of that, and try to keep their green spaces insect/bird/wildlife-friendly. The others are sitting outside KFC keeping their strength up for the next round of shopping.
In the countryside, the people who care deplore the use of pesticides in the fields, but most still have a fortress mentality. If you don’t keep your garden an oasis of order, trimmed neat and weedless, wildlife-less and controlled, nature will invade, swamp and take over. And, they say, there is plenty of habitat for the animals, and the roadsides must be kept clear for visibility, so that we can drive at the speed limit night and day, and the rabbits, hares, deer, foxes, badgers, hedgehogs, birds, that don’t get out of the way are simply stupid.
Most of us care in a general sort of way, like sorting our rubbish, not tossing empty soda cans out of the car window, putting food out for the ‘nice’ birds in the winter. We think children should be kind to animals, and we take them to children’s farms to pet the baby lambs, then treat them to a burger. We all agree that deer are beautiful, but we’re grateful to the hunters who ‘regulate’ their numbers because they nibble garden flowers and tree bark.
We are all prisoners of our culture, societal pressure, and we are weak. We, who live in the countryside don’t want to offend, be different, get a name for being an eco-warrior, an enemy of the farming ‘community’, a moralising nuisance.
I am beyond that. If I don’t give a rat’s arse it’s about what people think. The decades of regarding private property as somehow bubble-wrapped against environmental catastrophe are over. There is no justification for sprinkling toxic chemicals over our gardens like holy water. We know that it kills everything, bees included, ends up in the water, ends up in the oceans, ends up inexorably killing us and everything else. We know that garden insects, hedgehogs, badgers, deer, crows don’t attack us, spread disease or devastate our property. We just don’t want to share ‘our’ space. So perhaps the time has come to stop sniggering at the people tucking into whatever it is that KFC serves up, and accept that we all have to protect the wild, and what we have carved out of the wild, as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.
Jane Dougherty
The Wombwell Rainbow 