At the beginning of the year the UK Treasury commissioned and published for the very first time a full assessment of the economic importance of nature. Professor Dasgupta, the Cambridge University economist who carried out the assessment, concluded that our prosperity has come at “devastating cost” to the ecosystems that support us. “Nature is our home,” he said, “good economics demands we manage it better.”
The problems are global but the solutions could lie much closer to home. Can we make the herculean task of better managing nature into a local thing, a thing we can all contribute to in some small way? Here are some things to consider.
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Lots of people help us pick up the litter in the reserve. Let’s go a little tiny step further and sort the litter; let’s take the drinks cans, plastic bottles, paper and card home with us and put it into our kerbside recycling boxes. Then, if your taste is for activism, ring the council (0300 456 0102) to make sure all the recycled plastic isn’t just baled up and shipped off through a legislative loophole to some developing country.
Set yourself tiny plastic-free targets. Treat yourself, your dog, the reserve and the planet to some compostable poop bags. If you don’t have a compost heap at home, exercise your new-found activism and ring the council (0300 456 0102) to ask how you can be sure that your dog’s poop, in its compostable poop bag, will end up in the council’s composting facility, not buried in some anoxic landfill site.
Join Wiltshire’s Climate Strategy Consultation, complete their online survey before October 17th and make your voice heard, the louder the better, as the county plans for our uncertain future.
Read Wiltshire’s Draft Climate Strategy 2022 -2027, paying particular attention to page 24, Natural Environment, Food and Farming. Then put your activist’s hat on, ring the council (0300 456 0114) and ask how they can reconcile their proposed commitment to enhancing biodiversity with Waddeton Park Ltd.’s planning application 20/00379/OUT to build 180 houses in the green fields between Trowbridge and Southwick, serviced by 500 metres of new road through a field of old grassland, with a bridge over Lambrok Stream, which will take out an ancient hedge on its way through.
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[1] Sarah, litter picking [2] Plastic waste baled for export [3] The improper disposal of non-compostable poop bags [4] Waddeton Park Ltd.’s planning application 20/00379/OUT to build 180 houses in the green fields between Trowbridge and Southwick.
It is payback time and every last little bit will help: every can recycled is a little less metal mined out of the ground, even one plastic bag less lessens the demand for oil, enough protesting voices can become a cacophony that a county council will have to listen to in the end. Nature is our home and the time has come to defend it.
Header picture by DKG
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 
There is more and more evidence that places like Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve are vital for our children and grandchildren. It is also clear that groups like The Friends of Southwick Country Park are vital if these spaces are to be defended from development. One cannot rely on a local authority to defend them as the authority has many different objectives that Central Government sets it. One of these is more housing, but there are also other objectives that do not necessarily seem threatening, but can nibble away at the reserve. We need to be vigilant!
We do indeed need to be vigilant. And we need to hold our governments, national and local, to their promises.