Blogs

The public eye has been increasingly cast out towards big blue in recent weeks.

We may be up to our eyeballs with worrying environmental issues to deal with on dry land, but let's not forget that two thirds of the earth is covered by the deep blue sea.

Lately newspapers have been full of stories about the threat of extinction to sharks, the lack of protection for dolphins and the decline in fortunes of the majestic bluefin tuna, hunted to critical levels to fill the menus of upmarket sushi restaurants.

The story has even made it onto the big screen with the cinema release of Charles Clover's documentary film End of the Line which has forced many people to sit up and take notice of the devastating impact of over fishing.

It's easy to overlook the environmental impact we have on our oceans because as a landlubber species devoid of fins and gills be don't spend an enormous amount of our time in the briny. In fact we've been wandering with our feet firmly on dry land ignoring the plight of our seas for far too long.

But fear not, because with your help we can do something to make a difference.

The Marine Bill is a chance for the UK government to put legislation in place to protect our seas and if you want to become one of the foot soldiers of our Make the Marine Bill Count Campaign then click here and you'll find everything you'll need to know to help you put pressure on your local MP.

Long line fishing kills 100,000 albatrosses every year and these gigantic masters of the sea are heading for serious trouble if something isn't done. You can find out more at the Save the Albatross page and get involved in the campaign.

There are many wonders and mysteries lurking in the world's oceans. But if we don't take advantage of the momentum which has recently begun to pick up pace to make a real change now, we could be sailing blindly into very treacherous waters.

 

Responding to today’s statement by the Prime Minister on plans for an international deal on climate change, Ruth Davis, the RSPB’s Head of Climate Change Policy, said:

 

“Today’s statement on climate finance has at last broken the conspiracy of silence surrounding the issue in the EU. Although a £100 billion is far short of the ambition required, Gordon Brown has given us fresh hope our leaders will find the courage to act.

 

“Money to support emissions cuts in the developing world and to help people there adapt to climate change is also crucial in getting an international deal.

 

“We welcome the Prime Minister’s recognition of the critical role played by tropical forests and look forward to action on the promise to explore forest bonds as a way to fund forest protection.

 

“It’s also good to hear the UK are considering a range of new ways to raise money internationally, including through shipping and aviation.”

 

Today saw the launch of the Government’s consultation on the future of coal in Britain.

This is a big issue because coal is the bad boy of climate change. Most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today has come from burning the stuff and it accounts for about half of global emissions each year.

As far as we are concerned, climate change is the biggest threat to life on Earth and we are already seeing its impacts on our wildlife.

Warmer waters in the North Sea have led to a fall in the number of the sand eels eaten by many of our seabirds. This in turn has led to starvation in seabird colonies and a crash in populations.

The Government wants to keep a lid on climate change but also needs to keep the lights on and it believes coal will have to do some of the work.

In looking for an answer to this conundrum, it has pinned its hopes on carbon capture and storage or CCS, which traps and stores the carbon released by burning coal deep underground.

Under the Government’s proposals, new coal-fired power stations would only be built if they captured a ‘substantial proportion’ of their emissions. Once CCS technology was proven to work, they would have to upgrade and capture all their emissions.  

There is a potential snag here, which you may have spotted. No one actually knows if CCS will work at a commercial scale. It should. In theory. But no one knows for sure. The Government wants four demonstration projects set up and is proceeding on the assumption these will have proved CCS works by 2020.

Let’s hope so.

In the meantime, the RSPB’s view is that requiring all new coal plants to have a limited amount of CCS is not enough.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Milliband, has shown his willingness to face up to the coal problem by scrapping plans for 10 new coal plants with no CCS at all. The question now is whether he can finish the job.

First off, that means getting the demonstration programme right. Public money should be spent wisely.

If as planned, E.on's new Kingsnorth power station in Kent only captures a quarter of its emissions, then it will be pumping out twice as much carbon a year as the whole of Nepal, with its population of 30 million.

There is no excuse for that, CCS demo or no. Public money would be better spent on new plants which can capture all of their emissions from the start or on fitting CCS to plants which would be running anyway - reducing emissions rather than increasing them.

And if CCS isn't commercially viable by 2020? Our climate and our wildlife cannot be allowed to pay the price of such failure.  Right now, the Government are planning to delay a decision on what to do with all the coal plants, which could by then be chugging away.

Climate change isn't a problem you can punt into the long grass.  We need certainty now that, with or without CCS, emissions from coal will be ruled out by 2025. 

In April, Mr Miliband told the Commons “the era of unabated coal is over,” which sounded like the start of a health care plan for the climate. Today's consultation shows us that such a plan is still possible, but there is a very real possibility we could end up with nothing more than a sticking plaster. 

The RSPB isn’t just about birds.

 

That’s a message that we’ve been trying to tell in a lots of different ways recently - the latest is all tied in with out new garden survey event: Make Your Nature Count.

 

Don’t get us wrong, we love birds. They’re the reason we’re here. They are why we get up in the morning and they’re what keep us awake when we go to bed at night (quite literally when we’re out surveying the nocturnal corncrake).

 

But as anyone who loves wildlife knows, no species exists in isolation. Birds feed on plants, bugs or small mammals - and they all rely on habitats from farmland and woodland to rivers and seas. Birds are a big, beautiful and very important cog in a wider ecological machine that keeps our natural world fizzing and vibrant with life.

 

So, enough of the preachy stuff - what’s the reason for this big sloppy wildlife love-in?

 

Well many of you will be well aware of our Big Garden Birdwatch event which takes place every spring and sees the nation heading out into their gardens to tell us all about the starlings, song thrushes, greenfinches and long tailed tits who visit their bird tables and nest boxes.

 

Now with the launch of Big Garden Birdwatch’s sister event Make Your Nature Count this week we have been asking people to head out into their gardens with pen and paper handy once again - but for the first time we are asking people to tell us about all kinds of creatures from frogs and toads to foxes and hedgehogs.

 

The data has started to come through thick and fast and one of the most surprising results is the number of people who have been visited by badgers. Early statistics from the survey suggest that one in ten people has seen a badger in their garden. And they’re just the ones they’ve managed to see - imagine how many more brush past our flower beds and veggie patches while we’re asleep in our beds!

 

Since the bear and the wolf became extinct on our shores many years ago, the badger has enjoyed the lofty status of Britain’s largest wild carnivore. So the fact that so many of us comes into regular contact with them on our doorstep is truly remarkable.

 

The RSPB was set up in 1889 to protect birds whose feathers were being used to adorn ladies hats. But 120 years on and we’re big enough to admit that some of the UK’s most amazing wildlife doesn’t have any feathers at all.

 

A little over two and a half years ago, my life changed dramatically and irreversibly.  I became a father.
 
What had been rather worthy but abstract discussions about the world that future generations will inherit, took on a whole new meaning.
 
Working for the RSPB, I'm lucky that I can play some small part in lots of things that I feel are helping the natural world.  With the support of over a million members, we're able to save threatened species, protect special places and help improve the quality of our environment.
 
But there are times when whatever clout we can exert feels inadequate.  Especially when faced with global issues funded by faraway governments and faceless corporations.
 
This week three such issues have been in the news and have left me feeling angry.
 
1) Overfishing. Monday saw the launch of 'The End of the Line', a new documentary film based on a book by   environment journalist, Charles Clover.  I haven't seen the film, nor have I read the book.  But when someone like Charles says we may be the last generation able to eat fish, I know we're facing a crisis.
 
2) Climate change.  It's impossible to avoid the media's daily dose of doom and gloom about the threat of global warming.  So much so, it's tempting to simply tune out.  Yesterday I got a jolt when I read an account from my colleague, Ruth Davis, who's at the climate talks in Bonn.  The shameless and selfish pronouncements  of the Japanese government are an alarming reminder of the huge mountain we have to climb.
 
3) Deforestation.  The Times reports that Asia Pulp and Paper has acquired another massive logging concession in Sumatra. Vast swathes of rainforest will be destroyed and Sumatran orang utans, elephants and tigers will be pushed ever closer to extinction.  All so we can continue to shove cheap paper into our photocopiers and printers. The RSPB, in partnership with Burung Indonesia and BirdLife International, is doing its bit to save Sumatra's rainforest through the Harapan project. But there's only so much we can do.
 
Of course there's still a chance that we can stop these issues from becoming irreversible disasters.  But it's a slim one and it needs massive, concerted effort.  Knowing that I'm not alone in being angry gives me some hope, because anger can be a powerful catalyst for positive action.  
 
But the thing that makes me angriest of all is this - it won't be long before Daniel is old enough to ask me how we allowed the world to get into this mess.  I don't know what I'm going to tell him.
 
 
The End of the Line.
Ruth Davis's virtual postcard from Bonn.
Save Sumatra's rainforest.

Our climate change team are in Bonn at the moment. They're with negotiators from all around the world for the latest round of talks aimed at securing a new global deal on climate change before we go to Copenhagen later this year.

The stakes couldn't be higher. The deal will need to help avert the threat of a humanitarian and environmental disaster that will come with runaway climate change.

In a 'virtual postcard' from Bonn, Ruth Davis, our head of climate change, shared the following with me. It shows quite clearly that we all have a role to play when it comes to tackling climate change, and our political leaders are no exception.

"Just at the time when we need it most, it seems the ambition of many Governments is draining away. All I can see in the negotiating rooms are countries defending vested interests, at the cost of the common good. The chasm between the ambition of the wealthy and the needs of the poor and the voiceless – which includes a lot of the wildlife on earth – is so cavernous that I get dizzy if I look into it for too long."

But as Ruth pointed out to me, there is really only one alternative to getting dizzy – and that's to get busy.

"Every day, the conference centre fills up with more symbols and sounds of public discontent. There's a tattered old toy polar bear, who has been here for months with a notice round his neck asking for change, not spare change. He's been joined by a small group of animated trees, presumably refugees from a logging concession. And in the main corridor leading to the negotiating rooms, there's a display of messages from children asking their Governments to negotiate them a future.

What we can't see, but we can feel, is the sense of a gathering storm – a storm of anger, created by the gap between words and deeds; and the gap between ordinary people, and the politicians and officials who claim to represent them on the world stage."

Ruth told me about how the Japanese Government stepped into this storm earlier today. A fierce debate has been raging in Japan about what kind of an emissions reduction target they should put on the table for these talks. A recent and highly authoritative analysis of global emission reduction needs published in Nature showed that large industrialised nations like Japan will need to reduce their emissions, on average, by around 40% from 1990 levels in the next decade, to avoid dangerous climate change.

"The Japanese Government examined a range of different options," she told me, "ranging from a relatively respectable 25 percent cut, to a frankly disgraceful suggestion of no cut at all. Almost two thirds of the Japanese public were willing to go for the biggest cuts, because they know the urgency of the climate crisis.

But in response to this mandate from their people, the Japanese delegation announced just an 8 percent reduction target. They announced it to other delegates, and to the media, in a room from which NGOs like us were excluded. We can only presume it's because some rich countries did not wish to have the shocked response of civil society groups beamed immediately around the world.

There is only one rational response to today's announcement, if you care about the natural world, and that's outrage. Back in the UK, we know that our Government, including the Prime Minister, has been working tirelessly to persuade the Japanese Government to go further. We also know, that UK officials here in Bonn are as downcast as we are. But sometimes private diplomatic efforts, important and welcome though they are, are not enough."

We can only watch and wait for the outcomes of the UN talks. But we need to hear that our Government hasn't given up on a global deal that actually matches the scale of the climate crisis. We need to hear them say that nothing but deal that limits climate change to two-degrees is good enough - and that an 8 percent reduction target is simply not good enough for a two-degree deal.
 
Perhaps it's a tall order, to ask our Government to be the ones to bridge the gulf between real climate needs, and actual climate ambition – and even harder to ask them to be honest about the size of that gulf to an anxious population.

But, as Ruth concluded, "These are desperate times, and in desperate times, we look for heroes. Certainly, we need them right now in Bonn."

If you're going to make a bold statement, you might be tempted to use a lot of words. Perhaps you'll quote grand people from history. You might even want to pop an exclamation mark on the end of your pronunciation.
 
But you shouldn't always be tempted to go so far. Sometimes, a simple statement can be loaded with bold meaning. Let me try one on you:
 
Nature matters.
 
When I first read these two words the other day, I couldn't help but agree. But it made me think: why does it matter? I know why it matters to me, and my life would be a whole lot poorer without nature in it. But why does it matter for my neighbours, or the people I sit next to on the bus?
 
Well, not least because it does things for us that make this world a decent place to live: climate control, flood protection, clean water, and healthy soils – all of these are reasons why nature matters. They're hidden reasons, but they're very good reasons.
 
Here's a more obvious one: it matters because contact with the natural world can enrich our lives. It makes us feel better. If you visit a nature reserve, go for a stroll in the countryside, or even just spend a bit of time in your garden, you're likely to feel this benefit.
 
There are other important things in the world. Economic prosperity, industrial progress, financial growth – however you phrase it, all these things matter too. And in times of economic turmoil, they can appear to matter an awful lot.
 
But are they mutually exclusive to the cares we have for the natural world? Do we need to put the environment to one side, in favour of material wealth?
 
Thankfully, we don't think so. It's why we use the term 'sustainable development'. It's the process by which things can change for the better without trashing natural resources, and diminishing the services nature provides.
 
And it's why we've launched a report today, 'Think Nature', to make it clear why the natural world needs to be put at the heart of political decision making, if we're to halt the loss of our wildlife and wild places.
 
Politicians are looking for a way out of the current financial crisis, and we must show them why continued investment in wildlife makes sense. We need to urge them against an economic recovery plan that sacrifices wildlife for economic progress.
 
In simple terms, we want governments to invest in things our children will thank us for. That's not many words, and there's no exclamation mark - but what bolder statement could we wish for than that?

 

The view from the depths of a recession is bleak, but a recovery will come.

Pundits and the world's media are trawling financial indicators looking for signs that the worst is over and green shoots are sprouting. The depth of our environmental crisis can also be read in indicators and harsh statistics - but without the sure and certain knowledge that the good times will come again.

Over the next few days countries across the European Union will be electing a new crop of Members of the European Parliament. How should the next Parliament be judged? By busted economies and the length of the gravy train, or by taking the chance to set an agenda for a truly environmental Parliament?

Back in 2001 the EU set itself the target of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010. The signs are strong that it will fail. Europe has not been short on environmental ambition and has some of the best and most effective policies anywhere in the world, but what it gives with one hand it takes with the other.

Reform of the many EU policies that damage biodiversity is essential; starting with the Common Agricultural Policy. Budgetary reform must enable the protection and management of the crown jewels of Europe's wildlife sites - the Natura 2000 network of protected sites.

Change is in the air; reform to benefit our natural environment is possible if the new European Parliament is bold and visionary. An early test will be the EU's performance at the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009.

The costs of failure will be measured in the global environmental disaster inherited by our children. The prize for success is economies based on greater sustainability and efficient use of scarce resources.

Our next crop of European politicians will be elected in the teeth of serious political, economic, environmental and climatic storms - their leadership should use the momentum for reform to secure a safer and more sustainable future for Europe's nature as well as for its citizens.

Find out more by visiting www.rspb.org.uk/euroelections

It’s not often you get to witness wildlife history in the making, but that’s exactly what happened to RSPB press officer and photographer Grahame Madge this week. Here’s his personal account of a once in a lifetime encounter with a very special bird…

 

Birds are in decline and their populations are tumbling across the UK. While that statement is true for many familiar species from the cuckoo to the house sparrow, news this week from Wiltshire shows it is not all bad news. In fact, let’s be honest, there is some wonderful news!

 

For the first time since 1832 great bustards - the world's heaviest flying bird - have hatched chicks in the UK.

Since 2004, the Great Bustard Group has been working for this moment to reintroduce one of Europe’s most charismatic birds. After years of heartache and near financial ruin, the project has recorded its greatest success, with not one, but three chicks.

 

As I watched a female meandering across the grass sea of Salisbury Plain with two of her chicks I was struck by the fact that this was a scene from Britain’s past. In fact so few of us have been lucky enough to clap eyes on them that the number of living people who have seen a wild great bustard chick in Britain is probably fewer than the number of MPs standing down at the next election.

 

Even better, I was despatched to help capture this scene for posterity. As the bird died out in Britain only seven years after the invention of photography. Clutching telescopes and tripods, I felt like a pioneer trying to capture scenes not seized before.

 

Through the heat of a baking hot day on the Plain, my hazy images shot through a telescope reveal the unmistakeable form of a female bustard with two chicks. I’ll concede the images have done little to advance photography, but for me, these images are a priceless reminder that wonderful things are possible.

 

Over the last half a century many of Britain’s birds have declined perilously. But let’s take heart that over the same period the crane, the white-tailed eagle and now the great bustard are making a comeback thanks to dedicated conservationists.

 

There is a long way to go before the great bustard project can be considered successful, but for the moment - the speed of a shutter - everyone passionate about restoring Britain’s countryside should pause for a moment’s reflection that the previously unthinkable has happened - another long-lost species has a delicate toehold in our isles.