Author: Melissa

‘Yay! We can finally meet in groups outdoors!’ cry the people of England, as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions are lifted. But does that mean we should be heading en masse to beauty spots? Should you be shoving your kids, Great Auntie Betty and the new lockdown puppy into your four-by-four and setting off for the New Forest, the Yorkshire Dales or Dartmoor? It seems the guardians of our most beloved outdoor spaces don’t think so.

National Parks Fortnight

In April, the UK’s National Parks normally runs a big marketing push, called the National Parks Fortnight, whereby it tries to persuade the people of Britain to detach their bahookies from their sofas and visit the countryside. This year, the whole campaign has been quietly shelved.

Could this be linked to what happened last summer, when our National Parks saw the biggest increase in visitor numbers in their history? With foreign travel off-limits and a population stir crazy after months cooped up at home for the first lockdown, horrible scenes unfolded in some of the UK’s most precious landscapes.

A Tsunami of Poo

Places like the Lake and Peak Districts were overrun with people, their litter and a veritable tsunami of poo. ‘Fly camping’ – people buying cheap tents and then leaving them behind – became a thing in supposedly protected habitats. Visitors caused fires by lighting barbecues on tinder-dry moorlands. They even cut down trees and damaged dry stone walls. The last thing our National Parks need is another onslaught of all that.

Indeed, last year, visitor numbers soared so high on the day the first lockdown ended that some National Park authorities ended up pleading with people to go home. Never mind cancelling their annual marketing campaign, it’s a wonder they haven’t launched a proactive national campaign for the 2021 season telling the great British public to stay away.

More Nature

Of course, the answer isn’t that people experience even less nature. The truth is that we all need much, much more of it. In the age of the linked climate and ecological crises, the last thing we want is for people to become further detached from the awe-inspiring ecosystems on which we all depend. We are a part of the natural world. We can’t survive without healthy soils, abundant seas and hordes of pollinating insects – as well as rich varieties of fungi, plant life, trees and wildlife. At the moment, too many people have lost touch with that fact. And that’s dangerous. We all need to reconnect with nature, so we can band together – and save it.

Nature in Trouble

The horrifying reality is that nature is in deep trouble. In the UK, more than half our wildlife species are in decline and 15% are threatened with extinction. Hedgehogs, turtle doves, puffins, dolphins, bees, moths, butterflies, newts, and bats are all in danger. Forests cover a meagre 2.5% of the land. Only a third of our fish stocks aren’t overfished. As we have tamed our land, we’ve also stripped the life from it. Our soils are being rendered infertile. Experts warn that we only have about 30 or 40 harvests left, if we carry on polluting soils with artificial chemicals and fertilisers. At the same time, so many humans have lost touch with the wonders of the natural world. British children suffer from ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’, which is damaging to both their wellbeing and their academic achievement. We have quite simply forgotten that we are nature and when we mistreat it, we mistreat ourselves.

Expansion of Wild Places

The problem is that there aren’t enough wild places. Our fifteen National Parks don’t have enough acres – and, even so, many experts deem them not wild enough. They’ve been degraded and overmanaged. What we quite clearly need is an increase in real wildernesses – more spaces for flora and fauna to recover and for humans to reconnect with their natural selves.

This is why conservation and wildlife organisations have a campaign to restores 30% of the UK’s land and sea to nature by 2030. This doesn’t just mean expanding our existing National Parks, but creating a series of interconnected rich habitats, thriving with life. It involves reinstating missing species and reinvigorating defunct forests, heaths, peatlands, wetlands, peat bogs, saltmarshes, kelp beds and reefs.

Of course, this needs to go hand-in-hand with more nature education. If people aren’t taught about the consequences of not shutting gates, collecting rubbish or guarding against fires, then they’re not going to do any of it.

Behaviour Guide

The immediate solution for those wondering if they should head to a National Park this Easter weekend is to do so following the authorities short guide on how to behave on their land during COVID-19 restrictions. It basically boils down to this:

1.  Don’t trash the place or the staff.
2. If there’s a crowd bigger than the one at the Cheltenham Festival, get out of there.
3. For god’s sake, use a toilet.

The threat of climate change is overwhelming. The problem’s so huge most people don’t feel they’ve the power to do anything about it.

‘What can I do? I’m just one itty bitty person, I can’t do anything about the global corporations responsible for most emissions,’ they say. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights, they freeze at the enormity of what’s heading their way – and do nothing. Unfortunately, this lack of action can only have one outcome.

Billions of squished bunnies.*

No matter how insignificant each of us feels, we can help drive the necessary cultural shift to a more sustainable way of living. History shows us that big change usually comes from the bottom up (see Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, 1517;  the mob storming the Bastille in Paris, 14th July, 1789; and Rosa Parks refusing to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white man on 1st December 1955). As Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’ (Or as Barry Manilow once sang, ‘You can create your own reality /And make your dreams come true/ It’s really up to you.’)

There are loads of easy, everyday things we can all do that, when applied en masse, will have a significant impact. This post is the first in a series outlining simple things you can easily change at home. Here are the first three:

1. Change to a green energy provider – This is where you do have the power to take direct action against the fossil fuel giants. Green energy used to be something you paid a premium for. But not any more. In the last few years it’s dropped significantly in price. New eco-friendly energy providers abound. If you don’t know which supplier to go for, start by reading what the consumer champions at Which? have to say on the subject.
2. Stop being a soap dodger – When did soap become liquid? When did we stop buying bars and start buying plastic bottles of it instead? And who decided you could only wash in the shower with gel from a plastic bottle? As David Attenborough made quite clear in his beautiful Blue Planet series, the natural world is drowning under a tsunami of plastic. It’s time to avoid single-use plastics – and the soap in your bathroom is as good a place as any to start. But please make sure to buy eco-friendly soap, such as the ones from Faith in Nature or Friendly Soap. There’s not much point trying to cut down on plastic, yet still polluting the water system.
3. Use a bamboo toothbrush –  See point two about plastic not being fantastic. On Planet Earth we are heading towards a global population of eight billion, which is an awful lot of teeth and an awful lot of toothbrushes. So why do most of us still use a plastic toothbrush? Bamboo toothbrushes are biodegradable and sustainable. You won’t notice the difference  and you can get one here, here or here.

*Shorthand for human extinction via environmental Armageddon (I mean, you got that, right?)

 

The contents of your make-up bag and bathroom cabinet are not always good for you or the planet. Slow Beauty is a new movement that celebrates a more natural, environmentally-friendly kind of beauty. It offers a positive and inspiring alternative to the airbrushed, socially-constructed images of supposed feminine perfection that dominate our culture. Find out more about it in this blog post I wrote for the rather fantastic Glow Organic.