IN this third week of advent we get to grips with biodiversity. Bio means, biological, and diversity means many different types.
And on planet earth that means everything alive under the earth and everything that either grows, like plants and fungi, and all the other different animals and insects which includes birds and creatures that live in water; everything alive. Therefore, a living planet has life and a large variety.
Mars is a planet but would be said to be a dead bio planet if it did not have fauna and flora; which is alive.
This week in Montreal, Canada, the UN Secretary General, said at the meeting on biodiversity, ‘humans are using the land and sea as one big toilet, and we are poisoning our planet and endangering humans and all life on Earth.’ An extraordinarily strong statement!
We in the UK cannot point a finger to other countries and say, ‘this must stop.’ The reason for this is the UK has one of the worst biodiverse landscapes of most other countries. This is because since the industrial revolution, the UK has cut down most of its forests, built factories and houses on wild meadow land, and the rest of what’s left is for food growing.
As you can see, there is not much left for wildlife. Land is divided up mainly for three different uses: Housing and commercial business; farms for food; open land including hills and moors for wildlife and wilding.
In the last 170 years the UK has been taking land out of wildlife uses and either building estates on it, or growing food on it for our blotted population.
The problem is the UK has a small landmass and has a very large population ratios to open land compared to most other countries. The question is, can we reverse this wildlife extinction in time before they are all dead and gone? Just to remind us all, the world is in the middle of sixth official biodiversity extinction.
The Earth-shot awards last week were very encouraging, but the big picture for us in the UK is really daunting. We and the government are fooling ourselves if we think we can reverse this situation without saying something that seems to be off limits, but If you read this column regularly, you will know I like to say the truth – land is lost from wildlife mostly due to a fast growing population, which in the last 50 years has been driven mostly by all types of immigration, (not including short-term work visas) that’s it, the statistics don’t lie.
Business and government say, ‘that we need more young people to pay for an ageing population.’ If that is the plan, and It seems it is, then no significant rewilding will happen in the UK until it is an unliveable barren-land, just filled with humans.
As Professor James Lovelock said many years ago in his famous book on the Earth, ‘we need to reduce the population in Britain by about half, that’s if it’s to be a viable place to live both for humans and wildlife.’
The lack of vision and science in governments for years has lead us all into a dark la-la land cul-de-sac, with nowhere to go but back to a plan to save the wildlife, rewild and STOP the population growing in the UK. And please, no more lies on taking land from wildlife, and saying, ‘we have put in mitigating plans for wildlife.’ It’s not true and doesn’t work!