Nick Harvey Sky

A week ago today it was the ‘glorious 12th’, the day in the year when the grouse hunting season begins. From then until the 10th December, red grouse will be hunted on moors across Britain in driven shoots where birds are ‘driven’ towards rows of guns by beaters. Hunting is always controversial, but the start of the season this year has been particularly so. A concerted campaign, led by Chris Packham, has been calling for driven grouse shooting to be banned by highlighting the environmental damage that the management of the uplands to boost grouse numbers does. Moors are burned and blanket bogs are drained, releasing carbon and other species such as hares and raptors are illegally persecuted and killed. The plight of the hen harrier has been the focus of the campaign, and a Hen Harrier Day at Carsington Water on 11th August drew 1,500 people. The debate over driven grouse shooting has stimulated such attention that Labour has called for a formal review of the practice and a petition to ban it is almost at 70,000 signatures.

Rational arguments have been made by both sides about the environmental, social and economic benefits and impacts of driven grouse shooting. As with a lot of online debate though, as it has roared on it has becomingly increasingly toxic. Each side paints the other as the personification of evil and are increasingly unwilling to engage the other as rhetoric deteriorates to the level of death threats on both sides. Chris Packham and fellow campaigner Mark Avery had their planned appearance at the Game Fair cancelled, with some rumours it was due to threats of violence. Both sides have emotional investment in this issue which means that the slide into mud-slinging has been incredibly rapid. A Daily Mail article even drags Carrie Symonds into the fray, telling her it is her job to be seen and not heard now she is the ‘Prime Minister’s consort’.

Despite the argument being deafening in some corners of the in internet, like many environmental issues this remains a fringe debate and unknown to many people. This is also the case for land policy more generally, even though the statistics over land ownership and access rights in the UK are quite shocking. An easy response that gamekeepers and land owners can give to any criticism of their practices is ‘I know my land better than you, people who don’t live in the countryside don’t understand how it works’, but ecosystems and landscapes do not just provide benefits to those that live in them. City-dwellers enjoy trips and holidays in the country and everyone enjoys flood protection, clean air, clean water and climate regulation. Others simply like to know that they live in a country where wildlife is thriving, even if they never see it. It comes down to the fact that you are not an owner of land, you are a custodian of it, for others in society and future generations. In the same way that doctors go into the profession knowing that their skills are a public good and they feel duty-bound to help in any emergency they witness, it should be an integral part of land-ownership and management that it is done in the public good, for all of the public. How glorious can grouse moors be then, when just a handful of people enjoy using these swathes of land in a way that does such harm to both people and other animals?

There is a lot of evidence that suggests both people and nature lose out when they do not interact. Being in nature is good for our mental and physical health and people are much more likely to both care about nature and contribute to its protection if they have positive formative experiences in it. Within the conservation sector, the term ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ (NDD) has been coined to describe the growing separation between children and the natural world.

I fiercely believe that the protection and restoration of the natural world is crucial, both for its own sake and for the benefits it provides to humanity. I believe that unless we convince young people of this, there is no hope for the future of nature. Recent research shows that there is a low point in people’s connection to nature at roughly 15 years old. Focusing on young people around this age could help them enter adulthood feeling a greater connection to the natural world that stays with them for the rest of their lives.

Whilst NDD and the growing gulf between people and the natural world are serious problems, there is a simple solution - get young people out into the natural world. It doesn’t have to be for weeks on end, and it doesn’t have to be excursions led by experts in natural history. You just have to be outside and willing to share your excitement and enthusiasm. Last week I was lucky enough to do this while spending five days volunteering at a residential camp run by Action for Conservation (AFC), a charity aimed at inspiring young people to take action to help conserve the natural world.

It was an incredible experience and rewarding in more ways than one. Most of all, it provided me with the opportunity to share my love of nature. When I am on a walk with friends, it usually isn’t long before someone tells me to shut up after a long spiel about something naturey. In stark contrast this camp allowed me and other like-minded volunteers to offer up our knowledge to a group of interested young people. It is gratifying to know that I am doing something concrete to help tackle the disconnect between young people and nature, and seeing a tangible change in them.

Some of the young people we were working with haven’t spent much of their lives outside of London and certain moments of their interactions with nature stick in my memory. The look on a young person’s face as he held a yellow hammer and released it during a bird ringing exercise with the British Trust for Ornithology. The collective gasp as we announced to the group that a strange yellow rectangle with coiled strings that we found on the beach was a shark egg case. Being asked during a talk about my PhD research whether a rhino horn would be able to go through a car door. Finally, on a slightly less altruistic note, the camp gave me the chance to reconnect with British nature myself and act like a big kid for five days. To run about on a beach, to lie down in the woods and stare at the sky, to see a bat hunt over a pond and to walk barefoot on cold, wet grass. All things I haven’t done in what seems like an age.

The young people that I met on camp give me great cause for optimism. They are far more engaged than I was at that age. I wasn’t worried about global environmental issues at the age of 13. I’m not sure what I spent most of my time doing, but I certainly wasn’t thinking about climate breakdown, single-use plastics, the decline of biodiversity and what we can do to counter all these things. The power that young people have to bring attention to global environmental issues is shown by Greta Thunberg and the global climate strikes. Protests are an important part of any movement, but activities that engage young people with the natural world like these camps are vital as well. They will be the generation that makes great strides in solving these problems that threaten our very existence, we have to ensure we give them the tools and the motivation and support to allow them to do so.