Ben lives in Somerset and was Features Editor of BBC Wildlife magazine from 2008 to 2018. Now he is a freelance wildlife journalist, editor and children’s author, but his daughters just call him the word policeman. He is the only Guardian reader in the village. Twitter: @benhoarewild
With Super Saturday looming, pubs are on many people’s minds. Not mine – I am shielding and in no hurry to get a pint at the Rising Sun. But I miss the chat.
The Tuesday pub group I usually meet up with includes a couple of farmers, some smallholders, a large-animal vet (the hyphen is important), someone who sells agricultural seed, another guy who works in farming machinery.
Why might this be interesting to readers of this blog? Well, my friends mostly support the badger cull, control predators, trap magpies, shoot pheasants, stalk deer… and quite a few voted for Brexit. In short, we don’t agree on everything.
Meanwhile among my other friends, among my contacts as a wildlife journalist and author, and in my social media feed, it’s a different story. A totally different world, it often seems. Again, though, why is this remotely relevant?
For a while now, I have asked myself how many conservationists, naturalists and nature nerds – people in the ‘green bubble’ on social media – spend leisure time hanging out with those who have opposing views on things they hold dear. Things like the badger cull, lamping foxes, rewilding.
During lockdown I have had even more time to ponder this. And I realised that, while I am still hanging out with the same people on social media, who share the same views, I am much less in touch with the guys down the pub. I miss those conversations. (Some of them, anyway.)
Online, in our green echo-chamber, nature lovers like me and probably you have felt the pandemic reinforce our love of and absolute need for the natural world. But when people say the lockdown has made society as a whole appreciate nature in a different way? Increasingly, I suspect that’s bullshit.
Most nature writers are, like me, influenced by heavily curated, nature-rich social media feeds. They, like me, have been quick to assume that just because their phones are fuller than ever of people sharing recordings of birdsong and wildflowers, society as a whole seems to be engaging with the more-than-human world differently to before. Really?
The reimagined Springwatch 2020 was superb and may well have enjoyed great audience figures. But so has all lockdown TV, especially the news. People in lockdown are spending much more time in their gardens, if they have them. But does this mean they’re buying any less peat, fake grass, decking or nectar-less bedding plants? The BTO Garden BirdWatch survey has signed up record numbers of new participants. But that may just be because people already in tune with the BTO – a brilliant organisation punching well above its weight – suddenly have the time to get involved.
Maybe it comes down to what you mean by being in nature and how you choose to enjoy it.
I was one of those who retweeted pictures of rubbish-strewn Bournemouth beach. Not so much in anger, but more out of disappointment that folk were carrying on as before. It was pointed out me that the beachgoers arguably were enjoying the natural world.
All those people on Dorset beaches this month, everyone who took disposable BBQs to woods, hills and heaths, everyone who went wild camping and made a mess, were having fun in nature in their own way. Just not the way that you or I might prefer. Were any of them more aware of the birds or flowers they may have seen, as a result of the lockdown experience? I don’t know. But they certainly were desperate to get outside and enjoy being outdoors.
Back in the green bubble, much of the disgust shared online is frustration that the world hasn’t changed as much as we thought. An awful lot of people are still disconnected from the rest of nature, still living throwaway lifestyles, still want to fly on summer holiday. The contrast between an exceptionally beautiful spring and the utter awfulness of coronavirus and our government has been too much to bear.
Tweeting the anger won’t change anything. Education, a better curriculum, better national parks, might. It’s one reason I write children’s books. And, perhaps, go to the pub.
Will we ever become a more biophilic society? I am no expert, and not a scientist either, but really hope so. I am just wary of being seduced by what’s on my phone.
[registration_form]
This is a really important point and one that can’t be emphasized enough. It reminds me of the number of times before the last election I’d see comments online to the effect of ‘I think Labour are bound to win – everybody I’ve spoken to is voting for them!’ One minor quibble though: please don’t tar all wild campers with the same brush. In fact, the kind of camping usually referred to as ‘wild’ camping in the media isn’t really wild camping at all; it’s just roadside camping. For a fuller discussion, see this post by Chris Townsend: http://www.christownsendoutdoors.com/2020/06/thoughts-on-wild-camping.html.
Well-timed perspective – thanks for this.
Sadly Ben, I think you are spot on. People who truly love nature don’t drop litter, and I’m picking up just as much now as in the past.
Yes people may be more eager to get outside after lockdown, but they are still the same people. Education will take a lot more than three months. The worlds governments who put money above people will be pleased to note this!
Paul – thank you for your 500th comment here.
A very good blog and again a timely reminder that often we exist in a bubble of people with the same views and thoughts convinced we are right!
For many people nature is just a peripheral issue in their lives, they have other priorities and of course a different perspective. Yet these are the people who need to be convinced if we are going to make significant progress.
I am all to aware of the deep divide between those who work and live in rural areas, whether they be farmers, farm workers (an endangered species), gamekeepers, hobby shooters, anglers etc. and the bulk of the conservation lobby.
Like Ben I’ve had many an argument about the merits of Fox Hunting and the like and one of the issues is that deep rooted sense of “tradition” thats ingrained in many “native” country dwellers, who are suspicious of change in any event and aren’t amenable to “outsiders” telling them that the activities they and their forebears have historically undertaken are either cruel or unsustainable.
I find that informed, reasonable discussion does get a different message across, but that an approach to conservation which seeks to impose a completely different set of rules and values is not surprisingly counter productive.
There is a great deal of work required both in education (especially of the younger generation), but also in a considered approach which has an element of acceptable compromise. I’m not suggesting that any compromise should involve accepting criminal acts such as the shooting of birds of prey, after all people have had 50 years or so to get used to that legislation.
But a thoughtful, well reasoned approach, which takes account of their perspective and respects their position rather than ramming vegetarianism, veganism and a “thou shall not kill anything” down these people throats.
Matthew – Spot on. Well said.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Rather than worrying about how connected other people are to nature, I think we should be worrying about how unconnected we are to other people. If we hide in the green bubble, we’re preaching to the converted. When I talk with my colleagues we’re all on the same page about nature, but I step into my circle of military friends and the words Greta and Environment basically get used as swear words. They can regard me as a lefty nutter if they like… I think it’s better than stepping back and leaving them to a life without any wildlife conversation!
Rachel, I think that’s right. I’ve learned to bite my lip. Arguing isn’t my forte anyway. But you can still show people things.
One farmer, a near-neighbour actually… I showed him some of my otter trailcam footage captured on his land. He thought it was cool. Another near-neighbour landowner, I’m going to give him a copy of Isabella Tree’s book.
You are spot on. I live in a rural area because I love nature, but most of my neighbours have a very different viewpoint. I don’t really bother to argue; just retreat to my Twitter bubble, pick up litter where I can and sign all those petitions. And of course use my vote.
Interesting perspective, Mark. This paradox is something I’d say many of us encounter. I find the “down the pub” conversations harder…
“I suspect that’s bullshit”
Bullshit – aka Framing.
Every phone-pic of a non-human organism becomes A Sign – like Brian’s Sandal. The notion that nature has quickly “returned” in the absence of humans – see: Llandudno the Goats’ town – is bigged-up as proof we must rush to these now enriched places to gawp at it and drive it back into hiding again. This is not only bizarre but just values nature as a pay-per-view commodity rather than something to respect for its intrinsic value. Meanwhile Joe Public rushed to the beaches and parks to show how much they are valued as rubbish tips.
Since March there has been a constant dribble of unsupported assertions that everyone has turned to nature to find “Solace” and no analogy has been left unturned between Covid and any other crisis of choice with the coda that just because there is a real crisis we can’t forget about the ones predicted by models. Just to remind us to Give Money – but with stark omission of the parallels between the Covid recession and what life will be like under Net Zero. The Covid lockdown brought about large emissions reduction almost instantaneously but Net Zero fans need the them to be repeated year on year forever to achieve their goal. Will we like that?
For most people the poverty inflicted by the pandemic has up to now been mitigated by government measures but when they are withdrawn the stuff will hit the fans. I fear we have enjoyed a false sense of security and this will evaporate now insolvencies and redundancies are gathering momentum. Nobody asked for this – apart for some zealots – and it’s not what people want but what has been imposed on them. We don’t volunteer to be poorer and there is a great need for a return to work. In the diminished economy there may be a shortfall in discretionary incomes and the very organisations wanting our surplus dosh may indeed remain wanting. Will they like that?
My father and I live in separate echo chambers. He is a lifelong shooter and angler and accepts The Shooting, and Angling, Times as completely trustworthy. I only started questioning my own acceptance of his views as I ventured into social media when my children were teenagers (it seemed like a kinder place then). I learnt a great deal from the naturalists I met through Facebook and Twitter, but it was my father who gave me my love of the natural world. If it wasn’t for him I would never have experienced the Essex marshes at dawn or learnt to sit quietly and just watch and listen. Had his background and upbringing have been different, he might have been a field naturalist. As my perspective has changed we have had some intense discussions but we have never fallen out. He feels the decline in the natural world as keenly as I do, but his belief in the necessity of predator control is deeply ingrained and fed by the publications mentioned above. If I only paid attention to my social media feed it would be easy to believe that all shooters were monsters who had no moral compass and only paid lip service to caring about the environment. I know from experience that this isn’t true, and often find myself in the middle ground, which isn’t a comfortable place to be. I normally keep quiet and wish the atmosphere wasn’t quite so adversarial, but Ben’s blog has prompted me to put my head above the parapet. I think what I am trying to say that not all shooters are the same, and neither are all conservationists. The two can have much in common, and sometimes (but not always) an effort to understand the opposing point of view can lead to a constructive dialogue.
Good response Gill, there has to be a middle ground through which there can be constructive dialogue and action. After all the great Sir peter Scott was a wild fowler!
We are never going to make sufficient progress if conservationists don’t recognise that the way forward is an acceptable compromise, with country “traditionalists” but also with the wider general public who will not accept the wider implications of climate change and the natural world until its too late, if we don’t find that middle ground.
Gill, that’s a very sweet and thoughtful reply, thank you.
What I could have added but didn’t was that several of the farmers and keen predator controllers I know happen to own SSSI land with species such as marsh tits, dormice, waxcaps, glowworms, marsh fritillaries…
I wish they’d put the flail away and leave foxes, badgers and magpies alone, but maybe you can’t have everything.