Book Review - ‘The New Wild: Why invasive species will be nature’s salvation’ by Fred Pearce

This is a challenging and eye-opening book that demands an open mind of the reader, especially the reader who is steeped in decades of conservation theory and accepted wisdom about how to deal with alien species.

Starting from the premise that “Everything is visiting. Nothing is native”, Pearce shows us multiple examples of questionable alien species eradication policies, whether based on biased research, focused on small areas with the most damaging aliens, or founded on statistics wrongly quoted and requoted in many different settings. The result in many cases has been interventions carried out with almost religious fervour, even when the foundations for them are shaky.

Another Pearce motto is: “Conservationists favour the weak and vulnerable; nature favours the strong and wily.” The author explains how alien species can in fact strengthen native ones, and how species-rich areas are more robust.

At the heart of the arguments put forward in the book is the belief that the idea of ideal ecosystems, with every niche taken, is a myth. Pearce says that species are not co-evolved to fit niches and that the idea that they are is central to an ecological belief system that has similarities to religious beliefs in a Garden of Eden.

Indeed, this book questions whether the very concept of ecosystems is valid. As an artificial framing of nature, the ecosystem approach ignores the possible usefulness of aliens in colonising disrupted and novel environments such as logged-over forests or abandoned farmland.

Pearce identifies many negative unintended consequences of a blinkered approach to nature’s newcomers. He regards the very term ‘Alien invasive species’ as “a catch-all for nastiness and a recipe for muddled thinking”, as it conflates alienness with invasiveness. It also encourages indifference to nature away from where we expect to find it. He introduces uncomfortable parallels between a belief in the need to eradicate alien plant and animal species and hostility to foreigners in human communities.

Several ideas that emerge in the book run counter to received ecological thinking: that most greenfield protected sites are not biodiverse, due to pesticides and plough damage, and that there is considerable value in brownfield sites that is being ignored.

The bottom line: nature is not as frail as conservationists think. Nature doesn’t care about distinctions between urban and rural or alien and native – and novelty, rather than stability, is the norm in nature. The idea that we can save threatened species and return Earth to how it ‘used to be’ is doomed to failure.

The conclusion is that there are no perfect ecosystems, nor is there compelling evidence for the theory that there is a “global stock of species” that must be maintained. In contrast to these widely held ideas about ecosystems, Pearce insists that disruption is essential to evolution. This is an unexpectedly uplifting thought as it opens up new possibilities for how we can work together for the best outcomes for all of nature. 

by Michele Witthaus

At our meeting to discuss 'The New Wild', Michele also read us the poem below, which she'd written during the Covid-19 lockdown. She kindly agreed that it could be shared here!

Ecosystems Management for Beginners

The muntjac are grazing too close to the road
but keep quiet or they’ll be culled.
They have no inherent right to life
as they’re invasive, you see.

Opinion’s divided on foxes in towns,
snapped posing on garden paths;
some would prefer them hunted down
because they’re invasive, you see.

Grey squirrels are at the feeder again,
displacing your wild feathered friends.
But before you chase them, ask yourself:
Are they as invasive as we?

Eco Church Conversation

We were invited to attend an Eco Church Conversation event at Holy Trinity Churcy in Leicester to talk to people about how their churches might like to get involved in local activism. The Eco Church awards programme covers five areas:

• Worship and Teaching
• Buildings
• Land
• Community and global engagement
• Lifestyle

Other areas were represented by Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire, the Wildlife Trusts, local university projects, Leicestershire Swift Project and many other organisations! It was a very interesting day of conversation and new connections.

Book Review - The Secret Network of Nature by Peter Wohlleben

This book shows how complicated eco-systems can be – with some of the links being quite surprising. For example, the link between salmon and trees. On the north-west coast of North America, where the soil is low in nutrients, growth rings on trees show that there is a direct correlation between the number of fish that made their way upstream but were caught by mink, foxes, birds of prey, and carried off into the forest, nibbled and then left leaving the bones, rich in nitrogen in the forest. Data shows that Sitka spruce in these areas grow up to three times faster with the fish fertiliser. In some trees, more than 80 per cent of the nitrogen they contain can be traced back to fish. The conclusion of this fact is that if we disturb the fish runs by building dams or changing the water courses we also disturb the growth of the trees. He discusses animals, plants rivers, rocks and weather systems and how these delicate systems interact with each other to keep the balance working as a whole.

Wohlleben says nature is more complicated than the finely calibrated movement of a clock and if we carelessly remove one little cog – it can trigger a reaction that upsets the whole balance of nature. He further adds that sometimes helping a species also changes the balance as well. He concludes that we interfere all the time and we should just leave things alone – on as large a scale as possible and let nature sort itself out.

This book is written by a German writer and is a bit technical/scientific in places. Wohlleben says he began giving lectures and let his family listen to the recordings but they told him he was boring. He realised he used too many technical terms so he says he has revised his work and stopped doing that in his writing. He says he writes a better story now – read the book and decide yourself!

Our questions to Leicester's General Election candidates

As the General Election approaches, we've put together a survey to ask Leicester's candidates three questions about key environmental issues. If you're still undecided about who to vote for and if you care about the environment, their answers might help! Here are our questions and the answers we've received so far:

1. The High Court has ruled the government's existing climate plans are unlawful and ordered the government to write a new one. How will you ensure the new climate plan delivers action that shares the costs and benefits fairly?

Rahoul Naik, One Leicester (Leicester West)

"I think the ruling from the High Court earlier this year shows how inadequate the Government's proposals and thinking around advancing to net-zero and reducing carbon emissions are and continue to be. It has been disappointing to see the Labour Party's position change too often with investment reduction in the billions. If elected, I will work with parties across the government to fight for a climate plan that is realistic, progressive and focussed on delivering for the country. We must ensure that any climate plan puts people first. That means, focussing on reducing energy bills, increasing infrastructure for electric vehicles, continued incentives for transition to air source heat pumps and solar panels. There is a lot we can do and learn from our European neighbours, there just has not been the political will to do so. This has to be led for the people, brokering relationships with businesses but ultimately for the sake of the planet."

Mags Lewis, Green Party (Leicester East)

"By working with legislators, climate experts and groups, to ensure rhetoric and ambitions regarding climate degradation are underpinned by law and enforced."

Aasiya Bora, Green Party (Leicester West)

"Our Climate plan will:  

- Introduce a new Rights of Nature Act, giving Nature rights itself. 

- End the scandal of sewage pouring into our rivers, including our beloved River Soar; water companies will be back in public ownership.

- Extend people’s access to green space and waterways close to where they live with a new English Right to Roam Act.

- Set aside 30% of our land and seas by 2030 in which nature will receive the highest priority and protection.

Our wealth tax on those with assets of £10 million or more will help to pay for it. We want grant funding for businesses to decarbonise annually. These would be targeted at small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), which account for around half of the UK’s private sector emissions.

A Green government would additionally set up regional mutual banks to help drive investment in initiatives which create local jobs in the green economy."

2. Leicester has very high levels of poverty. This has worsened due to rising energy prices. Home insulation reduces the energy needed to heat a home, and therefore a household’s energy costs. It also reduces the carbon emissions causing climate change. If you are elected as an MP, will you support a government funded, nationwide, street by street, home insulation programme? What will you do to work for this and ensure that your constituents benefit from such an insulation programme? (This question comes from our partners, Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire.)

Rahoul Naik, One Leicester (Leicester West)

"I think it is a great travesty that so many people are living in poverty in Leicester and particularly in Leicester West. Many of these people work, but are in such low paid jobs that they are unable to make ends meet. There is a strong case for the link between carbon emission reduction and ending poverty in the UK. Home insulation is part of that solution and I would definitely back a funded nationwide plan that would bring the benefits of lower carbon emissions, warmer homes and lower bills to all in the UK. I would be a leading voice in the fight for this in Parliament and ensure that Leicester West is used as a beacon of hope for this programme and get the ball rolling further right here in Leicester."

Mags Lewis, Green Party (Leicester East)

"Yes, this is party policy. We will also end the two child benefit cap, lifting thousands of Leicester children out of poverty."

Aasiya Bora, Green Party (Leicester West)

"Elected Greens will push for a local-authority-led, street-by-street retrofit programme to insulate our homes, provide clean heat and start to adapt our buildings to more extreme climate conditions. This would mean investment to: - insulate homes to an EPC B standard or above as part of a ten-year programme. - insulate other buildings to a high standard - provide low-carbon heating systems (e.g. heat pumps) for homes and other buildings."

3. France has banned the use of pesticides in public spaces, to protect people and biodiversity. Would you support a ban on urban pesticide use in the UK, to make our parks and green spaces safe for people and more wildlife-friendly?

Rahoul Naik, One Leicester (Leicester West)

"Yes, I would support a ban on urban pesticide use and I'm sure, like in France, it would be a success and this could be extended further than just public spaces. We have a biodiversity crisis in the UK with many regions working on Nature Recovery Strategies as we have seen a serious decline in UK species and a upward trend of nature loss. I think we have to look strategically at how we can improve and increase biodiversity again in the UK and it starts with game-changing policies like the ban on pesticide use in public spaces."

Mags Lewis, Green Party (Leicester East)

"Yes, as it causes health issues for humans animals and wildlife flora and fauna- our bees are precious!"

Aasiya Bora, Green Party (Leicester West)

"The Green Party wants an immediate end to the emergency authorisation of bee-killing pesticides. Leicester West has many many gardens and school grounds which have been paved over which aren't even being used for car parking. A pilot guided education programme on the importance of bee friendly bushes and cultivating green spaces in our urban areas will help with creating more habitats for our bees."

Wildlife-Friendly Schools Celebration

We joined the celebration of the Wildlife-Friendly Schools project at Highfields Adventure Playground along with the Sustainable Schools team, Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire, Insecta Collective and others. Every group provided an activity for children, so our young visitors were very busy! At our table, we planted nasturtiums in pots made from newspaper and created a giant collage of a nature-friendly garden, which we'll be taking to the Restore Nature Now march on 22nd June.

Book Review - The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole

Our Green Book Group chose to read this because the author used to work for Friends of the Earth! Guy Shrubsole is a similar age to me so his memories of coming to environmentalism through campaigning to save the rainforests as a child in the 1990s were very familiar. Like him, I drew pictures of tropical rainforests at school, replete with monkeys, vines and parrots, and thought that the rainforests were all in South America. What we missed back then is that Britain has its own temperate rainforests, although only fragments remain.

The western parts of England, Wales and Scotland have high rainfall and therefore provide the perfect conditions for woodland to become rainforest, where mosses, lichens and ferns festoon the trees as epiphytes (a.k.a. plants growing on other plants). The author explains that these rainforests feature in our folklore, like the Welsh cycle of stories known as the Mabinogion, and our modern mythology, like the Lord of the Rings. This shows that they were once more widespread. However, they've mostly been cut down and prevented from regenerating by the overgrazing of sheep and deer. The fragments that persist are often still not protected properly and hadn't even been mapped until Guy Shrubsole crowdsourced information through the Lost Rainforests website and created an incredibly useful Google map. 

Through the book, the author visits many of these rainforest fragments and talks to the people trying to protect them, to learn how special this habitat is. However, their ecological importance has often been overlooked. One horrifying chapter tells the story of a couple who bought an estate near Totnes in the early twentieth century and cut down an area of rainforest to replace it with 'more productive' conifer plantation! To add insult to injury, their estate manager lobbied the government to encourage more landowners to do the same. But there are also stories of hope; the overgrazed gulley of Lustleigh Cleave re-grew its rainforest in a few decades when the commoners removed their animals, thanks to a dormant seedbank waiting in the soil and the industry of squirrels and jays. Nature can recover, when it is allowed the space.

The photos in the book and the lovely descriptions of mosses and lichens left us all wanting to visit one of Britain's rainforests. We're now planning to get a guide to temperate rainforest plants and go on a Leicester Friends of the Earth road trip!

Book Review – Back to Nature, By Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin

This book was written by Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin during lockdown. It is a book describing how Chris and Meghan feel about nature through some personal stories and it is interspersed with scientific information about wildlife.

It contains lots of interesting facts about Roundup and pesticides which I think, as a group, we can use for reference. He also discusses how Monsanto (the company that owns Roundup, now Bayer) lobby politicians and other officials to make sure they approve its use. How annoying!

Chris discusses National Parks and how they are not national and governed by local landowners so often work to benefit themselves and their estates – not particularly working for the good of the environment and nature. He relays information about shooting regulations on some big estates in the parks and how inadequate they are in our country – not being as regulated as in other countries which of course leads to a bit of a ‘free for all’ and a lot of abuse by landowners. The other annoying bit of information I learnt here was how we subsidise the medicals for gun licences as the people applying for the licences don’t need to pay!  Goodness knows why not when most of these people applying are from the richer portion of our society.

In the book Chris explains how he became an environmentalist – the route that led him to where he is today. He rants a lot in the novel at the establishment but he does say he feels that people are waking up to climate change and becoming more aware of its problems.

Finally, Chris explains in the book how during lockdown he couldn’t travel. He said how in the past he had ‘travelled to the plains of Africa and the jungles of South America or the frozen north or south of the planet.’ He continues how lockdown made him realise that to access the ‘purest exultation that the natural world had to offer’ he just needed to sit in his garden ‘for an hour with a handful of dirt and a dandelion.’

I think there is a lesson here for all of us on how we need to get ‘Back to Nature’ to save the planet and in effect save ourselves.

A very thought-provoking read.

Ask your MP to vote for Ten Minute Rule Motion on peat ban - Tuesday 16th April

The government promised to ban the sale of peat by the end of 2024 but they are dragging their feet and show no signs of introducing legislation. Theresa Villiers is introducing a Ten Minute Rule Motion on Tuesday 16th April that would force them to take action if enough MPs support it. Please contact your MP and ask them to vote for the Motion!

If you don't have your MP's contact details, you can look them up on the Write to Them website. We've written a template email below. Do add a personal comment if you can, as that will make it more powerful. Are you a gardener who uses peat-free compost? Have you ever visited a peat bog and been awed by the biodiversity? 

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Dear [MP's name],

I am writing to ask you to vote to support a Ten Minute Rule Motion secured by Theresa Villiers on Tuesday 16th April, calling for the end of peat use by the public. 

The government promised to end the sale of peat in 2024 by introducing legislation. They have told organisations like Friends of the Earth that they will introduce measures when parliamentary time permits. However, time is running out and no measures were mentioned in the King's speech. The Ten Minute Rule Motion provides a crucial opportunity to get the issue debated and voted on in Parliament. If it is voted through to a second reading, Defra would have to draw up a legal framework for a Bill and the government would have to fulfil its promise.

Over the last 10,000 years, UK peatlands have sequestered 5.5 billion tonnes of carbon - nearly 40 times the amount of carbon stored in our woodlands. Peatlands contain about half of the UK's stored carbon. Globally, peatlands store about half a trillion tonnes of carbon, trapping organic matter underwater. Digging up the peat enables oxygen to get to it, so the organic matter starts to decay, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The environmental damage caused by extracting peat for compost is immense. It releases huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Peat bogs are also excellent areas of biodiversity, so peat extraction contributes to habitat and species loss. You can read more about the importance of peatlands for biodiversity on the Wildlife Trusts' website.

Using peat in horticulture is completely unnecessary. There are more sustainable alternatives to use in bagged compost. Gardeners including Monty Don and the organisation Garden Organic advocate growing without using peat and provide information for gardeners on how to do that. We shouldn't be destroying a valuable habitat and an important carbon sink for our gardens.

The text of the Motion as it appears in the House of Commons order paper is as follows:

HORTICULTURAL PEAT (PROHIBITION OF SALE): TEN MINUTE RULE MOTION

Theresa Villiers

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the prohibition of the sale in England of horticultural peat by the end of 2024; to provide for certain exemptions from that prohibition; and for connected purposes.

Notes: The Member moving and a Member opposing this Motion may each speak for up to 10 minutes.

I hope you will be able to support this. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

[Your name & address]

Survey reveals love of parks in Leicester

We have spent the last few months analysing the data we collected in our park users survey last summer and the results are clear: people in Leicester love their parks.

We questioned 157 people using seven medium-sized parks in Leicester: Appleton, Willowbrook, Stokeswood, Evington, Hamilton, Humberstone and Spinney Hill Park (the same parks we were assessing for our nature-friendly park award). The majority visited their local park at least once a week, with many people visiting every day. The people interviewed were broadly representative of Leicester’s population, with 49% female and 46% male, a range of ages from 16-75+ and 52% of Asian heritage. 

People were asked to name the four things they liked best about their park and aspects of nature were mentioned most often - greenery, trees, water sources and wildlife. 

The parks provide people with access to nature and greenery, in contrast to their urban surroundings. We know that having access to nature is important for people’s physical and mental health. People felt that the parks are open, friendly, peaceful places. They are drawn to them for exercise but also to watch wildlife and relax. 

The City Council use chemical pesticides as part of their management of the parks, to control vegetation. We asked people how they felt about that and over two thirds (68%) were opposed to it. They were opposed to the use of pesticides in principle and felt they damage the environment and cause harm to wildlife and people. A majority of interviewees (85%) supported the Council using more natural methods. 

We’d like to see the Council listen to people’s views and stop using these harmful chemicals in Leicester’s parks and green spaces. People go to their parks to connect with nature. More wild plants mean more insects, more birds and more life! 

The survey also revealed that people want the Council to develop the parks with more information provision and more support for wildlife, with things like bird and bat boxes. 

The full report and the appendices are both available to download. 

Tree planted in Evington Park for nature-friendly park award

Yesterday, we planted a tree in Evington Park in recognition of the park winning our nature-friendly park award. (See all our posts about this project here.) 

There is some excellent work happening in Leicester’s parks to encourage wildlife and we wanted to celebrate that. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with more than one in seven of our native species facing extinction. It is therefore more important than ever that we make space for nature in our cities. All of us involved in this project have really enjoyed visiting all the parks and we were amazed at the range of wild plants and animals we found. We are so lucky to have these green oases in our neighbourhoods. 

We donated a native Crab Apple tree to celebrate the award, which will provide blossom for pollinating insects and fruit for the birds. We brought it to the park by bike trailer, along with a plaque which they presented to park officers. The event was attended by Evington councillors, Deepak Bajaj, Jenny Joannou and Zuffar Haq, the Police and Crime Commissioner Rupert Matthews, who was visiting the area that day, a representative of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, local residents and some children from a Leicestershire school who wanted to learn how to plant a tree! 

Deputy city mayor Cllr Elly Cutkelvin, who’s responsible for the city’s parks, was not able to attend but sent the following message: 

“We work hard to ensure that our parks and open spaces are a haven for both people and wildlife, so it’s great that our efforts have been recognised by Leicester Friends of the Earth.

“The trees, ponds and planting in our parks provide a wide range of habitats for insects, birds and small mammals, helping to create space for nature in the heart of the city.

“I’m delighted that Leicester Friends of the Earth will be planting a tree in Evington Park to acknowledge its designation as a nature-friendly park, and I hope that people will enjoy visiting their local park to discover the wildlife on their doorstep.”