Nature is Key to Our Physical and Mental Health - That's Why We Need to Fight to Protect Our Green Spaces.

 

Earlier this month, analysis carried out by the Met Office about the consequences global warming was reported by the BBC's Panorama programme. The way they explained this unsettling conclusion caught the national imagination.

If climate change continues at the current rate white Christmases will only be found on greeting cards. By the 2040's most of Southern England will no longer see the thermometer fall below zero in the Winter; by the 2060's snow will only be found on then most remote parts of Scotland.

Dr Lizzie Kendon, a senior scientist at the Met Office told the BBC 'We're saying by the end of the century much of the lying snow will have disappeared entirely except over the highest ground'.

The news coverage focussed on the idea of a Christmas without snowmen, sleigh rides or snowball fights, or as Dr Kendon warned striking a more serious note, a ' shift towards more extreme ' weather events.

The Met office based its unsettling predictions on the world warming up by just 4 degrees. This was only the latest warning about the poor health of the Natural world.

In 2018 the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England warned that the amount of green space lost to development has risen by 58%. That includes the paving over of farmland, forests, and other green spaces.

The Green Space Index produced by Fields in Trust in 2019, 2.5million Britons live more than ten minutes-walk away from a park or other green space.

The link between having access to green spaces and better mental and physical wellbeing is well known. Fields in Trust estimate this to be worth £3.2billion every year, as Alison McCann, policy and insight manager for the charity told the BBC people with access to green spaces nearby are 'reaping some huge rewards'.

The State of Nature report (2019) based on the details of scientific monitoring conducted from the seventies onwards shows a fall of 41% in the species studied. Worryingly 15% of wildlife species found in the UK are threatened with extinction.

There have been some hopeful signs in recent years including the reintroduction of red kites, bitterns, and other species however the losses outweigh the gains.

Leading figures in the conservation world expressed their concerns at the launch of the report to the Ecologist magazine.

Tony Juniper chair of Natural England said, 'more needs to be done to reverse nature's decline, so that our children can benefit from a richer natural environment '.

Rosie Halls of the National Trust said the report showed that the natural world was 'at a crossroads ' and that we all need to 'pull together with actions not words to stop the decline'.

Daniel Hayhow, the lead author of the report said that its findings should make people 'sit up and listen', he added that an urgent and determined response is needed if 'we are to put nature back where it belongs'.

 

 

The crisis affecting the future of the natural world can be seen in a hand sized version by anyone who visits Cannock Chase in Staffordshire where fears for the future of one of the county's iconic landscapes.

The Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) proposals to protect and enhance the area is a determined response to environmental crisis of the sort recommended by Daniel Hayhow and others. Sadly there has been a misinformation campaign all over social media designed to scare and worry people and create anger against the SAC proposals. 

The context of nature conveniently left out of the picture, by a campaign that has focused only on human interest, leaving our flailing natural world without a voice or concern. This misinformation campaign has led to some negative response from some members of the local community, who have been led to only think of the Chase as their adventure playground, or a place to spot Fallow deer now and then. There is so much more the Chase than just deer!

As Sophie Pavelle, a young conservationist who helped to launch the State of Nature report told The Ecologist, 'people protect what they love', sometimes that means doing what is right for the long term; not trying to please a few people right now.

Cannock Chase is a unique and valuable green space loved by the people of Staffordshire for centuries. As Ms Pavelle might have put it, now is the time for everyone who truly cares about its future to come together, work together; to 'dig deep and find real hope for a better and sustained future' for the natural world.