Dave Clark is an ornithologist with an MSc in Ornithology from the University of Birmingham and environmental campaigner with a particular interest in the interactions between birds and humans.
Dave is keen to spread the word about the importance of urban areas for wildlife and improving our engagement with nature. Dave’s previous two guest blogs here were: Why do we feed wild birds?, 17 April 2019; Phylloscopus collybita 7 April 2020. He can be reached at [email protected].
FIGHTING FOR THE SOUL OF SWANSCOMBE
Grand and hard-hitting. That’s what I said to myself, an opportunity to talk about a special place, Swanscombe Marshes… Start off grand and hard-hitting. A green statement, that’s what you need, along the lines of ‘Nature is the air we breathe, the water we drink, so stop trashing it’ or some such snappy mantra. It was here I mentally put the brakes on. Hold on, slow down Mr. Billy big green wellies, let’s get a reality check here Mr. Pomposity. That’s all very true but look at yourself first, you’re nothing more than a green voyeur.
I’ll explain. I’m a birder. I like watching birds. Wherever they are, I’m rarely without my `’bins’, a birder’s vernacular for binoculars. I also like to think that I have green credentials, an environmentalist in tune with nature, particularly birds, and I do believe that nature is all pervasive and persuasive. Yet really, most of the time, I`m distanced from nature, an outsider, looking at my environment remotely from the safety of a set of lenses, fragmented and refracted from the reality, all enjoyment without the involvement. Like I said, a green voyeur. Yet I do have my moments, every now and then there are moments, moments that stay in the memory, moments that make me believe in spirituality and that I may indeed have a soul, that I am involved with something greater, something that happens that transcends the five senses. Swanscombe Marshes provided me with one such memory where I truly can say I felt that I was on the inside, truly part of nature.
I was enjoying a day `’birding’ at Swanscombe with good friend and fellow birder Darryl Jones. Lunch beckoned, we found a suitable grassy bank, undid the tinfoil, chomped and nattered away. A Raven appeared, a bird of majestic proportions and unmistakable voice, a bird that through the centuries has inspired artists, poets, writers and indeed whole nations, a bird that is surrounded by myth and superstition, evoking both joy and fear, written deeply into worldwide cultures. More prosaically, through centuries of persecution, it’s a bird that is still rarely seen in Eastern England. Out came the little black book to satisfy the anally retentive part of my character, and another species duly chalked up on the day’s list. We both watched as the Raven performed an almost perfect circular route from its pylon perch, a circle not more than 50 feet above our heads stretching for what seemed a mile each way. Mesmerised by its magnificence we watched it land and Darryl turned to me and said “Hold on, it will do it again”. And lo and behold it did. Darryl is also a professor, a behavioural ecologist, interested in how humans and animals interact with each other and is something of a corvidmeister, a crow expert. And then he said ominously …….”it’s checking us out!”.
We walked away and observed the Raven flying to where we had been sitting. This bird, was not doing something as base as eating our throwaways (there weren’t any) or indeed anything utilitarian …..it was clearly sussing us out. This is a bird with serious mental capacity, a bird that watches, assesses and learns, an avian supercomputer with the cognitive ability on a par with the higher primates. We had been visitors to its world, a realm that Jakob von Uexkull (1864-1944), a German biologist described as umwelt and importantly philosophised as something unique to each living species. Umwelt literally translates as ‘surrounding world’. Uexkull understood that all life has its own specific sensory universe, and we had been in the Raven’s. I have to say grown man and tears comes to mind; this was no voyeurism, this was a true love in.
There’s a pragmatic reason why Ravens can be seen at Swanscombe. Ravens like a view from heights and this post-industrial brownfield site has plenty of them. It also likes space, prefers not to be disturbed, well not too much, just one of the features that Swanscombe as a natural resource provides us all with at the moment. There are a host of other rare bird, insect and plant species on site all of which have umwelt and the ability to enthral and touch our souls. Marsh Harriers, Skylarks, Bearded Tits, Jumping Spiders, Marsh Frogs……….. Oh and by the way, there is no charge, all of this potential enchantment is free. However, as we know there has been talk of the marshes being developed and, for the sake of partiality, let’s hazard a guess at what the future could have in store.
As with most new non-residential developments the sweeteners fall into two categories, employment and mitigation. There will be promises of loads and loads of jobs. Unfortunately the numbers will be grossly inflated by including construction workers’ jobs, rather than sticking to the amount of sustainable jobs. Then there will be all those fantastic site jobs, those part-time, zero-hour contract, temporary, seasonal, minimum-wage type jobs, no-hope type jobs. The crafty-fags-at-the-fire-exit type jobs, vaping-our-lives-away type jobs, The twenty-minute-induction type jobs all formica tables and polystyrene cups, all nobo boards and mission statements, key performance indicators and management information systems type jobs all acronyms and spreadsheets. Conceived to compartmentalize, systemize and dehumanize, clamp down on initiative and enthralment. Here, empty your soul into this lip service tick box.
Wow I’ve gone all numb, that was no sweetener but some tranquilizer.
If you think that one sent me weird, let’s try the mitigation pill. I have to say my heart sinks when I hear that word. Deeply flawed conceptually, how can you mitigate for land grab? Once grabbed, it’s gone. It’s a Dodo, it’s dead, extinct, a Norwegian Blue nailed to a perch (I apologise for the attempt at dark humour but it does bring out the hysteria). Then they’ll talk about managing the little bit they have so kindly left, how they’ll stick up education boards and make the paths all nice ‘n gravelly. The cosmetization of nature. Glossy interpretation boards, brightly shining acrylic where nature is distilled down into soulless two-dimensional images attempting to echo life affirming three dimensions. They actually do supplant natures reality, lifeless distractions leaving superficial memorial impressions which are lost by the time we get home, and of course there’s always a possibility they become extinction boards a simulacre of what once was. You don’t get memories from shiny boards.
Not hard then to see which side of the fence I’m on….the one that says freedom for our bodies and minds to roam as no amount of barbiturates can take the edge off stealing nature.
The Raven is symbolic of the freedom, space and nature that is inherent at Swanscombe Marshes. Symbolic of how nature can enthral and excite and allow our spirits to soar, yet each time we let these precious sites slip through our fingers another candle of hope is extinguished and our souls diminished. No amount of mitigation can make up for destruction of nature, as Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven croaked its ‘nevermore’.
And Buglife likes Swanscombe Marshes too – they have a petition to save Swanscombe Marshes.
[registration_form]
Unfortunately it’s as the TV programme headlined – location, location, location.
When you add that to the land costs which would be fairly cheap as well, it reeks of development promise.
Looking from the satellite image, I’m surprised they have not at least by now put in some sort of marina or yachting facilities. I was in Kent in September, going bird watching around these sites; the average person would look at all these Kent sites and come to the conclusion – what a dump!
Land development is all about facilitation, and there’s a lot going for this site.
The creation of jobs, wealth and future enterprise is a smoke screen, a sweetener if you like for the real purpose, development of this area will make someone or organisation extremely wealthy.
If we look at the Government announcement about the underpass to Stonehenge, that statement immediately put the land price up both sides of the A303. Land agents would have been on the phone to these landowners, asking “how much”?
As access to the West Country and the M3 and the north is now open and perfect for further development – facilitation!
A pretty good example is the Hindhead Tunnel, I did some of the original drawings for the project, now we have in Hampshire one of the biggest housing developments in the country, and there’s more to come.
I don’t have an answer on where we go from here, no one is really interested in saving a tiny bog plant and that includes our nature charities. It’s usually at this point that I question with all that money we pump into them – are they really worth it?
thank you Thomas. What irks me most about this site is it is not up for residential development they intend to build a `fun palace! whatever that is!
‘Britain’s answer to Disneyland’ no less!
Shudders
Surely Britain’s answer to Disneyland is ‘No thanks’.
When I was working in the Thames gateway Forest Enterprise tried hard to create a bigger vision for green space around the edge of London but we failed to get the various players to understand that they could be part of a bigger picture – conservation, access, landscape, local environment never came together and so we end up with a pleasure park instead.
Right now there’s an equal failure to build on the personal experience of millions cooped up, trying to avoid each other on crowded paths, of why green land right where they live matters. The Natural Capital Committee found green space around towns and cities one of the issues they felt they had hard evidence for – they recommended 250,000 hectares of new ‘community woodland’ and estimated economic benefit of £500m per annum – but the conservation sector has rejected natural capital, and a potential route inside this impenetrable Government. So you get a pleasure park instead.
“my heart sinks” – I know that feeling.
I read today in the local Press that a new wild play trail with sculptures and a fairy forest is to be created in the heart of Bransgore. This aims to encourage exploration of nature and exercise outside. The £7,000 trail is being funded by the New Forest NPA through the release of developer contributions (aka bribes) from new residential developments in the National Park, to support public open space provision in the area.
The Wild Play Officer for the NPA is really excited about it. I’m surprised she is not “thrilled”, which would be more “on message”. Features of the new trail will include nature-based sculptures, rustic benches, carvings on benches to provide prompts of activity, balancing and stepping logs, a tiny fairy forest to promote imaginative play and exploration, viewing screens with viewing holes at different heights.
These developments are clearly designed to make me feel unwelcome, but no matter, look, I’m not everyone and I won’t be around for ever or even much longer. Other places to avoid are Ashurst, Sway and Holbury where similar pleasure parks for the unimaginative were created through the Our Past, Our Future Landscape Partnership Scheme with HLF funding.
The best time of all to visit the New Forest is in late March when on a foggy day a long line of Belted Galloways and their calves might emerge silently and unattended from the fog on Deadman Hill and disappear again only to live on as a treasured memory.
‘nature-based sculptures’
There is a plague of kitschy chain-saw sculptures along ‘nature trails’ in country parks and such-like up and down the country. It is a shame that we apparently cannot be expected to simply enjoy the wildlife that might exist in these places without them being tarted up in this way.
This plague, Jonathan, is not confined to country parks, the RSPB and wildlife trusts are ardent practitioners of the same compulsion to ‘decorate’ their nature reserves with various objects of questionable artistic value. I am so fed up with money being wasted on such objects that I struggle to even renew my annual subscriptions, let alone donate extra funds. I expect wildlife charities to promote ‘The Wild’, I can enjoy man made creations in museums and galleries where they belong.
I agree Sandra – I did not intend to suggest that country parks were the only places affected.
This development is, at least in part, a good example of the problems arising out of politicians’ love for simple, mindless rules. Development of brown field sites is good! The project is nationally important infrastructure! What on earth could possibly be the objection to this project? As Thomas says above, to the uninformed person the land looks like a dump. But the characteristics of the site which lead the uninformed person and the politician to conclude it is a valueless wasteland mean that it is fact a wildlife jewel on London’s outskirts that desperately needs to be spared this desecration.
We cannot expect the many who probably ‘get’ the attraction of a roller-coaster ride a lot more readily than they do the presence of the brown-banded carder bee, the sea aster bee or indeed the raven, to recognise the value of this site. The authorities, though have been informed of its value by Buglife and others and proceeding with the development is an act of gross environmental philistinism about which they cannot plead ignorance.
We have legislation and a planning system that are supposed to protect important sites for nature. We have a government that has made and periodically repeats ‘commitments’ to protect nature and to leave it in better condition than it found it in. If we had a Natural England that was functioning in any way near to what we should expect of a national authority for wildlife it would be furiously arguing against this development and loudly pointing out how it flies in the face of these commitments and supposed protections. Sadly for the bees, we don’t.