Thursday 10 September
Thankfully, I’m feeling a lot better today. The weirdness if the world we are living in at the moment is hard to grasp at times. Again, I’m not sure if its an age thing and that I am simply reflecting on what were seemingly simpler times. Or, maybe things are just crackers.
Whatever is the case, I am finding it hard, once again, to come to terms with it all. This was a common feeling back in March, at the lead up and early weeks of lockdown. So, we now have the ‘rule of six’ introduced by the government where only groups of a maximum of six people are allowed to gather. Portugal and Hungary have been added to the growing list of quarantine countries where you have to self-isolate for 14 days after you return. And behind all of this, the R number is now firmly over 1, and the curve of confirmed cases is heading in the wrong direction.
But for me, today had even more disturbing news than all of the above. The World Wildlife Fund has released the findings of a long running investigation into the impact of the human footprint on life on planet earth. What is particularly pertinent to me is that the report spans from 1970, the year I was born, to 2016.
It makes for some pretty grim reading. The headline being that there has been a 67% decline in the global number of vertebrates. But, it doesn’t end there. As a species, we are using the planet’s natural resources faster than they can be replaced. And the earth’s freshwater environments are being destroyed and 84% of their vertebrate population has disappeared.
“Seventy-five percent of the Earth’s ice-free land surface has already been significantly altered, most of the oceans are polluted, and more than 85 percent of the area of wetlands has been lost.” WWF Living Planet Report 2020
There is also little sign of this trend ceasing anytime soon, let alone reversing.
It makes me realise, especially when I was walking around our local lanes this evening, how important it is to look after my own little patch. To stand up when it is under threat, either from pollution in all its guises, or from ‘developments. Building houses on top of green land. It makes me feel ill. But not in the same way as I did yesterday.
The Bald Birder 