I live in a bit of a bubble of people who know a lot about nature and the environment and spend a lot of time talking or writing about it, so I’m interested to hear what normies think about nature in the UK, i.e. What state its in, what state it should be in, how we should do it, how much of a priority is it etc?
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They’re called counties over here, not states
I’ll get my coat
We need better animals. Our animals are rubbish. A badger is probably as good as it gets. Although hedgehogs are pretty cool.
But we need something like lions, maybe a rhino, polar bears are pretty good too. If its within your power, can we maybe arrange a swap, all our spiders and wasps for a few exciting animals. Not loads, but enough to start populating.
Fucked, not fucked, I’m too pessimistic to think anything can be done.
I was in a similar bubble around twenty years ago but have since moved away.
I was concerned about the lack of chaffinch numbers until this year. There was a noticeable drop but I think they are getting better based purely on the numbers I’ve seen. I was very sad and yet partly elated to see a dead otter this week (roadkill)
I live in a farming community and I feel like many of the farmers are working towards helping nature but I’m not sure if this is legislation or financial incentives causing this.
I see red kites every day and I understand red squirrels have been spotted locally.
My astronomy head wishes people would turn their lights off at night.
I don’t know if my contribution to your question was helpful but that’s it.
Don’t mind it as long as it stays outside where it belongs.
Dinosaurs. We need more of them in the wild, not those that inhabit the Jurassic park known as Westminster.
We should be allowed to hunt them freely too.
So far as I can tell it’s generally in an absolutely terrible state, but I don’t really know what to do about that
I’m not involved professionally but take an interest in ecology so I’ll give my two cents.
There’s a definite lack of ‘real’ wilderness and biodiversity compared to most other places but equally that applies to most of Western Europe. The lack of things like apex predators can cause heated debate but it would be interesting to their introduction. One thing that I think is interesting is how many plants aren’t really native, the fact that there’s only 3 native conifers here blows my mind and compared to other places, even in Europe, there’s a lack of species. Britain seems to be an island that’s too young to have interesting endemic species like Australia but no wandering migrants like the wolves that are spreading back into Germany.
I think that people are more aware of certain issues but ignorant of others, I see more stuff about bees and wildflowers (sadly the latter can be focused too much on ‘cornfield annuals’ IMO). There’s no real awareness of things like Ash dieback or the plight of other pollinators like moths, hoverflies and God forbid, wasps.
One thing that bothers me is the sterility of most gardens in new build estates, there seems to be no accommodation for wildlife unlike older style gardens with flowers for pollinators and natural grass, but obviously that’s not everyone and some have trees in them at least.
I’d say mainly pessimistic but there’s some room for optimism with increased awareness and things like more wildlife oriented gardening and wildflower patches being left IMO.
I love being in nature. I’d like to do more to protect our badgers and hedgehogs and bees and all that. I get proper excited when I see a heron. What depresses me is the amount of littering, especially where I live. There’s so much plastic crap in the woods, it’s got to be bad for the wildlife.
I love that Britain doesn’t have wildlife that can kill you. No bears, no massively poisonous insects or snakes, nothing that’s gonna eat you.
Biting insects can fuck off though.
We have a lot of nature reserves near me and there’s a huge number of creatures there you can’t find for miles around. The problem is inbreeding. So every few years the rangers will scoop up 30 or so adders and swap them with another 30 from another are of the country. I think they do this with other isolated species in other areas. Roads are apparently the biggest issue so there need to be more tunnels under them for small animals to pass.
Id like to see more land re-wilded and done in a way where there are corridors between conservation areas. There’s no need to mow the entirety of every field. A 10 metre perimeter around each farm would be a start. Win-win as it attracts more pollinators.
It’s not in a good place.
Insects are much fewer than they were – especially butterflies and bees. Hedgehogs are a rarity now, and the number of different bird species coming to the garden is definitely fewer.
I do see councils, schools and locals sowing more wild flowers though, so that’s good – but we need real action across the board to try to reverse the decline
Strangely enough, around here it seems to be getting better – the outskirts of Croydon.
I’m seeing a lot more sparrows, greenfinches, chaffinches, etc around. Sparrowhawks are much more common and twice in the last couple of weeks there’s been a pair of buzzards wheeling around over the local parks and woodland, something I’ve never seen here before.
We’ve always had foxes and there’s a badger sett a few gardens down with associated fences holes through all the gardens).
That most Brits only care for extremely cultivated, Victorian-style “nature” i.e parks, heaths, gardens and such. And even that stuff is seen as a bit stuffy and old-fashioned. Truly wild places are deeply uncomfortable for a lot of people here. Being in different countries you begin to see how alien nature is to most people in Britain. I guess it’s the price we paid for being the first industrialised country in the world.
As a nature-normie, one thing I have taken notice of is how dirty the rivers are. It’s actually really disheartening – they’re like a murky colour with these chunks of pure filth (not moss or algae) coagulating on top. Rivers often give off a really awful smell too. It’s a shame really
It’s nice if you can get far enough away from cities and humanity in general.
Really, look around any city and you will see all kinds of random waste dumped on the ground, humans in general are a shitty species with no consideration for their environment. But, if you go far enough away from people, the UK is incredibly beautiful.
I (17F) care about the climate, i think we should eat less meat and turn the land over to regrowing our forests, specifically on flood plains to help prevent flooding, try to reintroduce more native and dying out species into this forest and also help grow things in urban areas to allow people better health and access to food (e.g. fruit trees) . Ecology is really important.
Its fucked. Its always been fucked and its now changing because of climate change, we will get more southern species and more invasives settling but either way its still fucked.
Little wilderness, we’re overpopulated, lack of legal hunting turns adaptive sport/hunting (hounds and running dogs catching genetically inferior specimens more often) into pest control (the rifle and shotgun don’t discriminate).
There’s a fascination with animals that have died out here being reintroduced,much less interest in saving what we have.
Our native population of humans is declining, so these issues would slowly start to disappear, sadly we’re currently suffering a mass migration of invasive people which offsets it.
Going on my previous comment. Uk Heathlands are awful. They are monocultured heathers used to raise game birds. The lake district has pretty much zero native forest remaining, it has also had its soil changed significantly by grazing and pretty much all the old growth forest is either gone or too fragmentated to be of any ecological use. Kent has a lot of old growth forest but its mostly fragments, this is shifting the climate towards a grass land type. Especially in north kent! (Although shrubs will dominate given the chance)
So, as a relative “normie” who is not particularly interested in nature (although, I am concerned about it), I read Wilding by Isabella Tree and was subsequently inspired to visit the Knepp estate in Sussex last year. Maybe given your interest you’re familiar with this and will have an opinion, maybe you think it’s all wrong I’ve just been strung along or something (and I would like to hear), but I was really taken with this book/project and think it gives a positive solution to aspire to. I think we could do with more of this type of thing.
I’m not involved in anything conservation wise but I do know that our rivers and coastal waters are being polluted with raw sewage on a regular basis because the companies responsible have been given a free pass by the government.
Save the red squirrel abs headge hogs.
Water companies need to be forced to stop polluting all over the place, the waste water scandal is horrific.
Apart from that UK has a pretty good system and emphasis on environmental protection (with the new emphasis from defra on restoring historic woodlands and flower meadows being good).
Oh and why is it site surveys for major projects always seem to find evidence of some super rare bug or insect at the lady minute? (Example being that new theme park that has construction stopped).
Scotland seems like its ravaged in parts, see some great forests then see the managed forests and just look a mess, patchy and decimated in parts.
I dont know much about it but doesn’t look good.
I guess the mitigation strategies and “principles for off site mitigation” would be good places to start if you’re interested.