Here are a few New Year resolutions for you to consider. You can pick and choose or ignore them altogether!
- Be proud of the fact that you love wildlife – it’s everyone else who is odd – and talk to people on buses, in queues, in the pub etc about wildlife. You can be a recruiter of more wildlife enthusiasts.
- Get informed about the issues about which you care – pick one or two to start with – and make up your own mind about things. Nature conservation isn’t straightforward and your approach to it depends on your core values.
- Speak out, use social media, go on a march or demonstration – become an agent for change.
- Review the wildlife NGOs that you support – and dump the ones that are just a habit (and spend the money saved on the others).
- Have a meat-free day a week – it’s ridiculously easy (I have 4+ but I enjoyed yesterday’s steak all the more for it being a ‘treat’).
- Reduce your carbon footprint
- Write to your MP once a month to keep her/him on their toes – I will, and I’ll post my letters here towards the end of each month (so you might just copy and paste them)
- Contact the wildlife NGOs you support and tell them what you’d like them to do with your money
- Get out and enjoy wildlife
- Sign this e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting.
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I love all these suggestions, and feel very virtuous that I’m doing at least some of them already… but number 7 is a good reminder for me – I’m not a party political animal, and still not convinced how much use it is to write to one’s MP, but as I hate the ‘what use is that’ response to my own suggestions, I could at least try out the once-monthly-ish letter for 2016 and see what happens… So, I’m going to, and Mark, it will help if you do post your letters – it will remind me, and I can make adjustments if necessary.
And my addition to the list (could be whilst you are doing 9) would be this: take five minutes ‘meditation’ time to focus on a particular species or habitat area you would like to protect… and just let the waves of positivity flow out there. And no, I’m not on the New Year tipple too early.
I regularly write to my MP who is a Conservative. She doesn’t really reply on her own behalf, just replies with the party line. However, even if my letters don’t change her mind, if I and other like-minded people didn’t/don’t ever write to her about wildlife issues then she would be able to claim that her constituents are not interested in those issues and therefore maybe she could justify either ignoring anything to do with nature conservation, or not considering her constituents point of view on that subject. So I carry on writing.
Here’s the sort of big thinking Britain needs for the new year. A 900 mile nature reserve! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Green_Belt
Put your savings in an ethical building society e.g. http://www.ecology.co.uk/eco-difference/beliefs/. Not bad interest rates at present in relative terms. HQ building has a green roof and the only electric charge point in the area ( and is in the grim North!). Not that I am entirely convinced electric cars are the answer.
Writing to my MP is pretty disheartening – he definitely considers me a “Green Blob” and trots out the usual unthinking Tory propaganda. I am trying to convince my friend that the moles in her garden are on balance a good thing. She doesn’t believe me, I’m afraid. I have succeeded in convincing my partner to mow the lawn less often and leave patches where wildflowers have self-seeded. I promise to cut down on my meat consumption this year. I will attend Hen Harrier Day again.
I would add “Do some practical conservation work” to the list. In my view, people spend too much time bemoaning what’s wrong and spending fruitless time and energy on desk-based chit-chat. Go and help with some pied fly boxes, sow some heather seed, help build a pond, plant some trees, help create a meadow. I say this as a researcher.