These days, the buzz words are ones like “polarised”, “deeply divided”, “tribalisms” and so on. Whether you look in the Atlantic, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times or El Pais, everyone admits that we spend most of our time trying to find ways to hate each other. That’s why we at LSS have decided to launch a Quest, gentle readers, a veritable Quest,to try to find a few organisations that might actually draw people together. And today we are going to start with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and their international partners.[1]
In 1889 a remarkable woman called Emily Williamson realised that the insatiable demands of the fashion industry were already driving many bird species to extinction. There! That word, in 1889, readers, is that prescience or what? Well the society she founded grew so rapidly that it got a royal charter in 1904, and has never looked back. Because they realised that it’s all about birds and people, the two go together Long John Silver and his parrot. If ou are going to conserve a bird species then you have to conserve its habitat. Which in turn conserves a biome of incredible richness, a possible source of antibiotics, and a major area for carbon capture. And they’ve been doing it ever since, with the help of international partners like Birdlife International. So,overseas readers, there’s something for you after all.
And the bringing people together? Well, we’ve always wondered why Conservatives don’t do more about Conservation, as the etymological root of both is so screamingly obvious. Actually we find that most RSPB people we meet are conservative, at least with a small c, who know perfectly well that conserving the wildlands conserves us all. As for the others-liberals, social democrats, socialists and the like- you got your environmental wings a long time ago. But even the most earnest folk need to relax sometimes. What could be better than wandering the salt marshes or combing the woods, in aid of this society and its laudable goals?
We are not members of the RSPB, nor ever have been. All the more reason then to praise and advocate them as the first of our organisations which might start to bring us together again. Saving birds may possibly save people.
[1]https://www.rspb.org.uk/
[2]https://www.birdlife.org/contact-us/
#conservative #ecologist #progressive #bird #habitat
Learning, Science and Society 