Page 62 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #12

NEWS FEATURE
“ You don't have to be a white, able-
bodied, middle-aged, middle-class
cisgender male to write about nature.”
section,” she says. Here, she’s referring
to proposals for the uplands that suggest
putting vast tracts of our dales and
fells into public ownership. “You can’t
say, 'It’s alright, we’ll buy you out', and
expect that to be okay, when you’re
proposing to strip farmers of their home
and identity.”
Overall, Ellis says, there was a feeling
that people from her background and
with her views would not have
been welcome at the march. “Because
I grew up in a shooting community,
my love for wildlife is 'not valid', and
that is soul-destroying.”
Andrew Gilruth, director of
communications at the Game & Wildlife
Conservation Trust (GWCT), was also
critical. “Out of frustration of things not
happening to the degree they would like
crowd: Andy Rouse; ox-eye daisy: Erica Olsen/FLPA; School children: David Woodfall/NPL;
them to, they are trying to make them
golden eagle: Markus Varesvuo/NPL; Mark Avery: Matthew Taylor/REX/Shutterstock
happen by coercion,” he observes. “If
children are not interested in wildlife,
then we are going to force them to be.
And if you go down the coercion route,
people start to find a way round it.”
Mainstream conservation groups,
on the whole, have been supportive of
what Packham is trying to achieve –
despite Packham criticising them
in the introduction to the manifesto.
“The UK’s conservation community
cannot be selfish,” he says. “We must
let bygones be bygones, all put our
egos back in the box and forget about
corporate strategies or ‘our competitors’.”
"Is it a fair point?" is the question
62 BBC Wildlife
Chris Packham is already
planning to stage
another event next year.
put to RSPB director of conservation
Martin Harper. He says: “I have worked for
environmental NGOs for 22 years, and I’ve
always worked with other organisations.
The campaign for wildlife law reform and
the Marine Act were multi-partner advocacy
campaigns, and most of the big species-
recovery and landscape-scale projects are
done in partnership. Yes, we have to do
more together but I’ve never used the
phrase ‘competitor’. These are allies, and
always have been.”
Harper nevertheless applauds Packham’s
“great leadership of the conservation
community” and the way he pulled people
together with no organisational support. In
the manifesto, 18 ‘ministers’ presented ideas
for 17 different ‘ministries’ (one ministerial
position was a job share between two young
conservationists). The ideas Harper singles
out were Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Ministry
of Natural Culture and Education’, which
advocated putting nature at the heart of
the curriculum, from nursery to secondary
school; and Carol Day’s ‘Ministry of
Wildlife Law’ about building environmental
rights into new legislation. “These ideas
address the problem of how do you get
the underpinning of nature in decision-
making,” Harper says.
There were also specific ideas on how
to increase representation of women and
people from ethnic minorities within the
conservation sector. As the ‘Minister of
Social Inclusion’, writer and ecologist
Amy-Jane Beer says, “You don’t have
to be a white, able-bodied, middle-aged,
The People’s
Manifesto for Wildlife
Here are some extracts from the
manifesto. Read the full document at:
www.chrispackham.co.uk/a-peoples-
manifesto-for-wildlife.
MYA-ROSE
CRAIG
MINISTRY OF
DIVERSITY IN
NATURE AND
CONSERVATION
O Environmental organisations
to find ways of “making nature
relevant” to Visible Minority
Ethnic (VME) people.
O Print, online and broadcast media
to become more diverse in their
content and use VME role models.
O Provision of public transport
from inner cities to national parks
and nature reserves.
O Universities to provide support
to VME students taking nature-
related degrees, to combat
racism and isolation.
MILES
KING
MINISTRY OF
FOOD AND
FARMING
O Introduction of a fertiliser tax to
fund environmental clean-ups and
conversion to organic farming.
O Pay farmers a fair price for food
they produce – in return, they must
farm in a more sustainable way.
O 10 per cent of every farm to be
managed for wildlife through field
margins, planting wildflowers and
restoring ponds and wetlands.
O Public education to reduce meat
consumption and food waste.
Farmland covers
around 70 per
cent of the UK.