It is an astonishing fact that there is a broad road towards nature that has surprisingly few footsteps upon it.  All the great religions affirm the presence of a Deity – or a multiplicity of deities – who reigns over all. The universe and all it contains is one expression of the existence of this Presence.

Surely, therefore,  there is a basis for religious organisations to take  leadership roles in the protection of nature? Nature is in deep trouble and needs their help.

World religious leaders could play a tremendous part in conservation. Hundreds of millions of their followers would listen to what they would say. Surely it would not be too much to ask that the great religions would set aside one day each year as ‘conservation day’ when they would speak in their temples and mosques and cathedral and churches to their people that all of us are involved in the conservation of nature. Just one day a year! In this simple way the religious could collectively become a powerful movement for good in the protection of species and their habitats.

Mohammed and the Buddha and Jesus of the Christian Faiths all sought solace  in caves and in solitary places in which to meditate on the great mysteries of human existence. There seems to be a quality in wilderness that allows great spiritual minds to discover what they seek. More reason that religions would want to protect such places.

In a spirit of co-operation between all, a religious world wilderness reserve might be established by the great religions. This undertaking would be a non-contentious issue that  would allow religions the opportunity to work in harmony from which all would benefit from such close working together. If strangeness between those who worship in different ways is ever to be eliminated it could start with clerics meeting together in relaxed circumstances – and where better than in a place of striking beauty that is a manifestation of the hand of the Deity?

Religious leaders might like to reflect on giving one day a year to the environment.

In addition they might like to consider entering an adventure together to set aside a wilderness area, free from exploitation. In such a place clerics of all religions could meet and be at ease with each other and know that they are all seeking the same enlightenment and merely travelling along different paths. Nature would clearly benefit too.

(A short extract from the book – Planet Dancing.)

Regards to all.

Patrick

Two buzzards were poisoned in Ireland recently:magnificent birds that put it around to other birds when they are in town. I had the privalage of seeing one over my place every day for three weeks last year. And what a fuss he made dominating the skies.

We don’t have many buzzards in Ireland. The few we have we should cherish. Yet we poison them!

And what do we lose? We lose the opportunity of joy in a child’s eye, and indeed in the eyes of adults too, when we are denied seeing these beautiful birds in their aerial manoevers.

So what needs to be done? National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers have the primary responsibility for the protection of these birds. But rangers, too few in number, cannot be everywhere. So that leaves the rest of us. If we are sincere about conservation then ALL citizens need to be the eyes and ears in protecting our wildlife and reporting what we see or hear.

When someone goes out at night to set poison the likelyhood of that person being caught is slight. But when such a person is indeed caught the weight of law must be extremely severe as a warning to others. We need to see these beautiful birds as part of the high art of the natural world. We need to give them, under law, the same degree of protection we give to the art of Manet or Goya or Rubens. Only then can we say that we are a nation that values its wildlife.

The USFWS Southeast informs me that the killing of an eagle in the USA carries a penalty of $100,000 and up to one year in a Federal prison. If we are serious in Ireland in protecting buzzards and eagles and other birds of prey we need to have in force similar deterrents.

Patrick

Luther Standing Bear in the book Land of the Spotted Eagle offers us much wisdom in how we should see ourselves in out relationship to the natural world. In talking to children the Lakota would place a hand on the ground and explain – We sit in the lap of our mother. From her, we and all other things come. So we sit on the ground and become conscious of life about us in its multitude of forms.

Something else the Lakota has made observation on is the behavour of (many) white boys. Observations that seem to be particularly relevant today in many boys in our towns and cities.

I have often noticed white boys gathering in a city street, jostling or pushing each other in a foolish manner . . . their natural facilities neither seeing, hearing not feeling the varied life that surrounds them. There is about them no awareness . . . and it is this dullness that gives ugly mannerisms full play. 

The Lakota also said that lack of respect for growing things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. Does this not ring a bell in modern city living for many teenage boys, white or otherwise?

Many young men in deep and broad cities have become detached from nature, giving their allegiance almost exclusively in many cases to supporting a chosen football club as though that alone is all that is of importance in their lives. If they are confined to living in a twenty-story apartment block should any of this surprise us!

Something else too. A teenage boy needs, at some stage, to engage in an initiation event that allows him to cross the line into manhood. Such an event must be of a significance nature for the community in which he lives to acknowledge that the boy has now indeed become a man. Being accepted into the adult world in this fashion gives the new man pride in himself and gives him a firm stake in the community which has now accepted him in this fashion. Going into the bush armed with only a spear to kill a  lion is an unbelievably brave thing to do. Returning to the village such a boy will be greeted by the adults with admiration and without hesitation be accepted into their ranks. Never again will he feel compelled to prove that he is a man because all will know it to be true.

And this brings us back to teenagers living in cramped conditions in vast housing estates or high-rise apartment blocks. How are they to prove at some stage in their lives that they too have passed into adulthood in a way that garners wide social acceptance in their community?

Joyriding and theft and vandalism doesn’t quite do it. These activities don’t carry the broad social approval that the young individual craves. Sportsmen, whether football players or golf or tennis players who display particularly fine skills and yes, bravery, can achieve acceptance in this way. But not all of us can be good at sport. So something else is needed: something to allow certain young males to display grit and physical endurance. Society needs to facilitate such maturing boys to test themselves through hard physical endevour.

The term ‘transition year’ in secondary schools is particularly apt here. Part of this year should be set aside for particular male teenagers to test their metal against hard physical endurance in an activity that benefits their community. Of equal importance the community should see what these teenagers are doing for their benefit so that the good work is widely recognized and the teenagers involved clearly identified for the work they are undertaking on behalf of the community. The nature of such work will vary depending on the particular needs of the community and so that would need to be discussed and agreed at the community level.

Many teenagers who feel that they have no stake in society would benefit by such programmes and perhaps, for the first time, feel to be embraced and valued by their communities for the good work undertaken by them.  If that work were to include projects to benefit nature in their area then the wisdom of Luther Standing Bear would become apparent to these young men.

I believe that there needs to be discussions in communities on this.

My best regards to all.

Patrick

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In spite of all the good work of conservation organisations and thousands of individuals around the world we are still losing species. What seems to be missing is that there is a lack of a broad consent across the world that this draining away of species to extinction should stop. At this stage we need a world event for nature to galvanize people into truly becoming concerned for the continuation of species.

What is suggested here, and this is elaborated upon in greater detail in the book Planet Dancing, is that we come together to organize such an event. What I have in mind is that we put in place a structure to collect coinage from children from around the world to create the first Children of the World Nature Reserve. We would establish such a reserve in a part of the world particularly rich in wildlife: probably in the tropics or in the semi-tropics.

Children from many countries who contributed a little of their savings to the project would know, when they go to bed at night, that they had helped to establish a safe place for animals and birds and insects.

But the establishment of one more nature reserve is not the point at all.

The nourishing of awareness of nature in millions of children should be the goal. Through web-sites and newsletters the children would be kept up to date of things happening in their reserve.  It could be the discovery of a new species of butterfly or news of the first recorded nesting of spoonbills in the reserve: that sort of thing. Of equal importance they would be given some understanding of what is required in the management of such areas. In time these children, on growing to adults, would carry with them this informed appreciation of nature and an understanding of what is needed if species are to survive. Such heightened awareness would feed into their business and political judgments where there is an issue of conservation on the line.  By such a process millions of children around the world would gain a conservation ethic that can only be to the benefit of wildlife.

Clearly the organizing of such a world event would be considerable. But that is not a reason to brush such an idea aside. Across the world we have thousands of conservation organisations and thousands of conservation-minded citizens who are concerned that something needs to be done if we are not to continue to lose species. Children are the key: they are much more given to change than adults. We no longer have the luxury of sleep-walking  past the problem.

At this stage we need nothing less than a major event to draw world attention to this continuing problem of extinctions. I encourage conservation organisations and conservation-minded people to join with me on this blog in debate on how we might best organize for the creation of the first Children of the World Nature Reserve.

I saw this as a heading in a Florida newspaper 30 years ago – and how the same sentiment must resonate with a lot of people today!

Over the last two years I have heard many stories of economic hardship: one elderly lady told me she cried for a week when she lost her savings in bank shares. Our heart-felt best wishes must go out to her and to the many others caught up in this extraordinary down-turn of events.

In third world countries poverty and conservation are locked in a deadly struggle. But it is a novel experience for more developed countries. For many caught up in this grim reality holding steady until circumstances change is the only option.

Visiting national parks and wild areas will not pay the bills. But in walking or hiking through such places people can discover and unexpected and sympathetic friend in nature. Such places can ease a person’s frame of mind by helping them to unravel some of their jumbled thinking that may be pressing down on them. It can allow them to see their situation as a lighter load than they might at first have thought. Wilderness areas can help clean the mind of clawing details of no importance. Hiking in such areas can give a person space to better evaluate what is truly important in their life. What seems insurmountable in a busy city can be rationalized and reduced in an ancient forest or on a mountain track, the rocks beneath your feet millions of years old. In such surroundings people can find that they can snap out of their self-absorption: they can accept life whatever their circumstance and get on with living.

If you are one of the many who now find themselves in an unsettling economic circumstance then by allowing nature in such places to meet you in your distress – you can discover that there is benefit in that.

I hope that what I have expressed here is of help to some.

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A Mori Pole in the Economist uncovered something of interest. In 2007 (which was pre-recession time) 19% of people in Britain saw pollution as of concern. However, now in recessionary times, this has dropped to 4%.

Damage to the environment is, it would appear, not a consideration for those who have lost their job or who find themselves in reduced economic circumstances.

This should not be a surprise. A person’s basic needs of food and shelter takes priority over art and culture – and yes nature conservation. This is a given and needs to be acknowledged: in particular during a deep recession.

People finding themselves in sharply reduced circumstances have not become hostile to the idea of conservation. It is just that their focus is now elsewhere and will remain there until the recession in time melts away.

There is a lovely African saying. It varies in the telling but it goes something like this:

Each morning in Africa a zebra wakes up and while brushing his teeth he thinks to himself – today I must run faster than the fastest lion if I am to survive.

Each morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up and while putting on his shoes he says to himself – today I must run faster than the fastest lion if I am to survive.

Each morning in Africa a lion wakes up and says to himself – today I must run faster than the slowest zebra or the slowest gazelle if I am to eat. 

There is such wonderful wisdom packed into this story. If Charles Darwin had been aware of this story would he have needed to travel on the HMS Beagle at all?

A short article in the New Scientist of August of last year has stayed to trouble me ever since.

The practical side of conservation can, on occasion, carry with it soul-wrenching decisions.

This article reveals that around the mid 1980s only 18 Black-footed Ferrets remained in the wild in the USA. If they were not to become extinct drastic action was needed. Towards this end the entire wild population was taken into captivity with the admirable intent of building up the numbers in a protected environment before releasing them back into the wild. And it worked. By 2010 somewhere around 750 of these animals were back in the wild. Who could not but praise such good work?

The ferrets while in captivity were fed both dead golden hamsters and dead prairie dogs. But the real heart-felt decision for the scientists followed from a necessary train of thought. It was not intended that the new-born ferrets would remain forever in captivity. In time they would be released into the wild and therefore would need to acquire hunting skills if they were to survive. And how was this critical element of the captive-breeding-release programe to be accomplished?

Live hamsters and live prairie dogs were placed into a large pen where the young ferrets would learn the skills needed to hunt down and kill their food. There can be no doubt that fear and stress would have been experienced by the prey animals.

There is a great moral dilemma in this. It is here for the scientists who had to make such a heart-felt decision so that young ferrets would survive in the wild. But let us be clear here. It is equally a moral dilemma for those of us who are keen that species don’t pass to extinction. Let us not blame the good scientists who had to make that awful decision that a particular species would not become extinct.  Remember this – habitat loss, brought about by us, was one of the primary reasons why these ferrets were reduced to such endangered numbers in the first place.

Food for thought in this – any comments?

I lived in Canada for a number of years. While there I had a fine turtle as a pet – until one night a raccoon broke into the turtle’s enclosure . No more turtle.

I note that a raccoon was recently discovered in Ireland: presumably an escape from a garden. Raccoons are omnivorous and opportunists and will take what wildlife they can find and have no hesitancy in upending refuse bins and scattering all about them for food items. I learned that the hard way while staying in a cabin in a forest in Ontario. The Forest and Wildlife Service in Ireland, with responsibility for the protection of native species, would be mindful to take seriously this news of a raccoon on the run.  Raccoons would be quite capable of colonizing this country.

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It is an illusion to think that the protection of nature is the responsibility of great global organisations working on our behalf.

Protection starts with small decisions made by each of us: decisions when taken together become telling.

It starts not with education or academic qualifications but in our awareness of the magnificence of what is to be found around us.

Day following day nature demonstrates her value to us in her beauty and mystery and in her endless varieties of life. She presents herself in the silence of fog on Spring mornings; in the choirs of great rivers; in the symmetry of sunflowers; in the dance of trees at storm-time.

By such wonderful gestures she is infinitely more effective than any words of mine could ever offer on her behalf.

But one thing that is not in her gift – she cannot prevent what we do.That is for us. And that starts by seeing her as the friend who gave life to all of us. We need to welcome her as we would a favourite aunt and allow her to be part of all our discussions.

The next time we go walking in the countryside we might tip our hats to her and not pass her by unseen.

In such simple things we will discover our steps back to our place in the comfort of it all.

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