Beccy Speight, Chief Executive, The RSPB: We’re just over sixty years on from Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book Silent Spring, published in 1962, exposing the destruction of wildlife by pesticides. While there have been so many conservation wins between now and then, the evocative title unfortunately seems to ring truer each year.
Last Sunday was International Dawn Chorus Day, a time of year where historically, like it or not, the birds may wake you in your morning slumber. I always sleep with my window open to hear the joy of it, but this year it is noticeably quieter than normal.
Where I live in Nottingham there used to be what I called the 60s ‘wall of sound’ of blackbirds in the evening – I would get home from work and there would be echoing bank upon bank of singing blackbirds. That doesn’t exist now. The best dawn chorus I have heard recently was when I woke up at Cameron’s Cottage on our Franchises Lodge reserve in the New Forest – and I thought ‘wow, that’s the dawn chorus I remember from growing up’. But it’s in so few places now.
It was a common, shared joy and now it is becoming something you increasingly need to go to a nature reserve to hear. As the most recent State of Nature report shows, our wildlife has declined and is continuing to decline. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, so it’s no wonder that my experience of birdsong feels much more limited than when I was younger. There are many drivers of this loss, the most significant being climate change and changes to farming methods over the past decades.
With the recent warning from the UN’s climate chief that we have two years to take action to avert far worse climate change, we do not have time to waste. And it’s vital that we protect and restore nature whilst we work to tackle the climate crisis – the two are inextricably linked. Nature is a key ally in our fight against climate change and holds the solutions to many of the adaptation challenges we face. For example peatlands, if properly restored, as well as providing carbon benefits, can provide us with better water in our rivers and help prevent flooding downstream. Working with nature is a win win situation.
There’s proof that concerted efforts around conservation do work. A study from the University of Oxford provided the strongest evidence to date that nature conservation efforts are not only effective, but that when they do work, they often really work. We have reason for hope. The researchers also outlined the challenge that I know all too well - how to fund conservation on the scale needed to halt and reverse declines in biodiversity and give these proven methods the best chance of success. But when we look at a recent report from the Green Finance Institute that warned that further breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s, the economic argument for substantive investment is clearly made.
And let’s not forget the benefits of nature, and birdsong specifically, for individuals. It’s not always easy to seek out the things that ground us. But nature always does. Increasing evidence shows that being in nature really does have the power to boost our health, happiness and wellbeing. Nine out of ten people enjoy hearing birdsong and believe it benefits their mental health. Our society needs it. We need it.
We recently announced that next month we are marching for nature shoulder to shoulder with 100 other organisations. Together, we can raise our voices in celebration of our beloved birdsong, and make sure we reverse our quietening spring.
