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How do we keep nature open to all?
200 Plays3 months ago
The wonders of nature, including the wild animals that share our spaces, are undeniable.
And the great outdoors can be so good for us - mentally, and physically; helping people to appreciate the importance of animal welfare, and the natural world around us, in so many ways.
But why is nature so important for us? And is everyone sharing the benefits right now? And if not, does society need to do something about it?
Broadcaster and journalist Kate Quilton chats to ornithologist, author, blogger, and activist, Dr Mya-Rose Craig - also known as 'Bird Girl'. She discusses why birdwatching means so much to her, how nature can transform the lives for young people, and her work to ensure everyone, regardless of their background, enjoys and experiences nature, and everything good that comes with it.
She is also joined by chair of the National Trust René Olivieri. The National Trust has found three quarters of children want to spend more time in nature, and is urging governments to ensure youngsters live no more than a short walk from outside green spaces. René talks about the power of nature, and why people don't need to go to the countryside to enjoy it.
The Animal Futures podcast is part of the RSPCA Animal Futures Project, which explores five possible scenarios of what the world could be like for animals in 2050. People can have their say on the future of animal welfare by joining The Big Conversation, and playing the RSPCA’s Animal Futures game.
Host: Kate Quilton
Guests: Dr Mya-Rose Craig and René Olivieri, CBE
Produced by: Mark Adams, Chris O'Brien, Emily Prideaux and Jo Toscano.
Animal Futures Project: https://www.rspca.org.uk/whatwedo/latest/animalfutures
Animal Futures Game: https://www.rspca.org.uk/webContent/animalfutures/
Animal Futures: The Big Conversation: http://rspca.org.uk/bigconversation
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Animal Futures' Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
RSPCA presents Animal Futures, hosted by Kate Quilton. Episode four, how do we keep nature open for all?
Benefits and Barriers to Nature Access
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to ah RSPCA Animal Futures. I'm Kate Quilton, broadcaster and journalist, and I am so excited about today's episode. We often hear that getting outside and experiencing the great outdoors is really good for us mentally and physically.
00:00:28
Speaker
But is everyone spending enough time outside enjoying the sights and sounds of nature and wildlife? And if not, what are the barriers?
Meet Maya Rose Craig: Ornithologist and Activist
00:00:38
Speaker
Today I'm chatting to ornithologist, author, blogger and activist Maya Rose Craig, also known as Bird Girl.
00:00:45
Speaker
From a very young age, she's been working to try and ensure everyone can experience and enjoy nature, regardless of their background.
Maya's Birdwatching Journey
00:00:52
Speaker
She spoke to me about what bird watching means to her, the importance of nature and how Britain's great outdoors should be a space everyone can enjoy.
00:01:03
Speaker
My Rose, an absolute joy to meet you. And when I look through all the things you've achieved, and we're talking, know, mean, you've written your incredibly brilliant bestselling book, Bird Girl.
00:01:17
Speaker
You're a big advocate for climate change and all of the issues related to that. You hold a Guinness World Record. Throughout all of that, the theme that is screaming to all of us is nature.
00:01:32
Speaker
nature is clearly integral to your life. Tell me a little bit about that. like How did it all begin? It's a slightly strange story for me because for me, it's it's birds. That's always been my access point to nature. i'm kind of slightly quick to a crazy extent in love with birds.
00:01:48
Speaker
um But for me, that's been my reality my whole life because I come from a family of people um who love nature but love birds. And so I was literally, i was nine days old the first time They took me watching and I've been doing it ever since.
00:02:04
Speaker
And so i kind of had this, looking back, what I think of as, to be honest, a really beautiful childhood, kind of out in nature, exploring the landscape. And I think in terms of kind of all of my campaigning and my activism, that has really shaped it. And that is kind of the place where it's come from is that love of birds.
00:02:22
Speaker
What is about birds in particular, do you think? Yeah, I find it so hard to explain because I had quite a weird moment as I got a bit older and I started school where I realized not everyone was obsessed with birds.
00:02:38
Speaker
And that was quite a strange realization for me. um And so I've kind of spent the rest of my life trying to explain to other people why I am obsessed with birds. But I think... um I just find them incredibly beautiful. I think even kind of the small brown ones, I think are gorgeous. If you give them a look, I think the fact that they can fly is obviously incredibly cool.
00:03:00
Speaker
But I think also, um i love birds as a part of nature because they are so present. um And whether you're in the middle of the countryside or the middle of the city,
00:03:13
Speaker
there will be birds flying around. And i I think it's really lovely that there is this one part of nature that no matter where we are, um we kind of can maintain that connection, um which I guess is why I've been able to maintain that connection as well.
00:03:30
Speaker
Does your earliest memory involve birds? It does. That's it. I mean, they're that integral to your life. Okay,
The Role of Birds in Maya's Life
00:03:38
Speaker
tell me about it. I've got a handful of memories that could be my earliest, and actually all of them involve birds, um which I think kind of indicates...
00:03:48
Speaker
what I was doing during that period of my life when I was kind of three years old. um One of them is us looking for a rare species of duck. I don't actually remember which one um out in the Lake District. And i do I remember just spotting this duck in the middle of a lake by itself.
00:04:08
Speaker
um That's still very distinct somehow. And I've got another memory of us being out at sea on a boat, um looking at kind of seabirds that's really special. So they they really have been with me forever. My fourth word, I think it was, was birdie.
00:04:24
Speaker
so Wow. Oh, that's incredible. And so for you, when you look back at everything you've done and everything you've achieved, how have birds, and therefore nature, how have they unlocked your life? have they unrit enriched your life?
00:04:40
Speaker
it's quite weird to think about my life without birds. Um, and that I think I'd probably be a completely different person, which is quite, yeah, quite strange to think about.
00:04:52
Speaker
Um, cause like I said, I'm not sure I would have gotten involved in any of the environmental activism or campaigning that I've been doing for 10 years now. You know, I've spent nearly half of my life doing all of that.
00:05:08
Speaker
And I don't know if I would have ended up in that place, or at least as young as I was when I ended up in that place without kind of this love of birds that therefore meant I had kind of a deep concern for the state of nature.
00:05:20
Speaker
um but I think also something that I talk about quite a lot is the importance of nature for people, not just for the sake of nature itself. Um,
00:05:33
Speaker
especially in terms of our well-being and quality of life. And I think for me, nature is also something I've returned to throughout my life in order to kind of manage my own well-being and mental well-being and health and all of those things, um which I think is another reason that I don't really know where I'd be without it. So but I guess that's another reason why it is so integral to kind of who I am now.
00:05:59
Speaker
When did your activism start?
Maya's Early Activism and Impact
00:06:01
Speaker
My first campaign was when I was 12. I mean, that's incredible. That is incredible. Yeah, it's kind of crazy to look back on. It felt much, it felt quite reasonable at the time, actually, in that, um,
00:06:16
Speaker
I felt very angry and very sad at the state of the world. And by that point in my life, I actually already had an online blog um with a decent amount of ah readers. So I kind of ended up at quite a young age with this fairly visible platform. And then I remember there was this terrible oil spill in Bangladesh an incredibly important mangrove forest that's um, very important for various species of duck, but also one of the last places where the Bengal tiger lives and things like that.
00:06:52
Speaker
And it just was not reported in the West. I remember waiting for kind of the big BBC expose that just never happened. Um, and eventually i wrote just my, my own little blog post, my own little article, um, which had very positive feedback. I had lots of people going, like, Oh, I didn't know this was happening. This terrible.
00:07:14
Speaker
Um, I ended up um mailing it off to an American or some American nature magazines and one of them published it. And um that ended up raising, I think, $30,000 for um so the water charity that was trying to deal with it at the time, which again, to this day is insane. But I think that was kind of a lesson learned very early on that I could help and I could make a difference, which I think is why I continued to engage in kind of campaigning and then activism from that point onwards. Because i again, I kind of felt like
00:07:55
Speaker
I had a duty
Empowerment through Activism
00:07:56
Speaker
to. And also, I think when you're feeling very upset and frustrated about the state of the world and the state of our environment, I think doing something about it um or being proactive in some way, always it always helps.
00:08:11
Speaker
Wow. I mean, at just 12 years of age, starting a campaign that ultimately raised $30,000, thirty thousand dollars mean, that must have felt so empowering at a moment when you were feeling the despair of, you know, what are we doing?
00:08:26
Speaker
How can this be happening in the world? Yeah, absolutely. i think it was ah very strange experience. I think especially as kind of children, you do often feel like your voice doesn't really matter or people...
00:08:42
Speaker
you know, will literally tell you that they don't really care about what you have to say. um And so I think being able to carve a space out for myself where I was going to be heard and I was going to make myself heard was very empowering. And I think, again, that that was a very important experience to have had because of the amount of resistance that I felt over the years subsequently in terms of all of the work I've done, um where people just really don't want to hair what you have to say sometimes. And kind of, I always, wait when I'm talking to kids actually, and and girls, especially ah the thing I always say is the biggest lesson than I learned or the most, my most valuable trait maybe is my willingness to be really annoying and really loud and to kind of carry on bothering people until they listen to what I have to say.
00:09:33
Speaker
I can't imagine you ever being annoying, just to say. Oh, well, if people don't want to hear what I have to say. They definitely we do. And I'm very okay with that. But yeah, so I think it was a really, really valuable experience.
00:09:49
Speaker
And how do you feel about where young people are at right now with these issues that we face?
Youth Engagement with Climate Issues
00:09:58
Speaker
I remember it was very exciting for me when ah Youth Strikes for Climate suddenly appeared a few years into what I was doing. And suddenly there were loads of other people my age who were kind of very passionate and very vocal and going out to protest these things.
00:10:12
Speaker
um And so that that kind of felt like a real... a buzz of energy for me. But then on the flip side, you know, you've got a lot of people who, you know, um ah really aren't engaged with these things. And I think there was a BBC survey that said that over 50% of people in my generation think that we're doomed and there's nothing we can do, um which isn't true. And I think, I think in some ways there's maybe a bit of a cop out in that, um you know, if you just go, there's nothing we can do and immediately give up um and just kind of accept that the, you know, quote unquote world's ending, kind of what's, what's the point?
00:10:57
Speaker
um So I think there's kind of that, these two sides of awareness in terms of my generation. But then there's just a lot of people who genuinely don't really know what's going on and therefore have no idea why they should care about these things.
Solutions to Climate Change
00:11:12
Speaker
Um, and I, I do a lot of work, um, working with both kids and teenagers to kind of engage them with nature and the outdoors, give them the opportunity to go out into nature.
00:11:26
Speaker
um but we also have conversations about the state of nature and the state of the planet. and most of those come from a complete, a place of complete lack of information.
00:11:39
Speaker
but do you feel, do you feel the groundswell of hope? Do you feel that? Yeah, I think, um to be honest, over've I've reached a point where I think being hopeful is, you know, slightly radical in that if a lot of people have just kind of given up so they don't have to change, you know, they can accept, you know, whatever the impending end it all so that they don't have to stop buying their fast fashion and driving their car.
00:12:06
Speaker
um I think the thing that both frustrates me the most and one of the things that gives me the most hope in terms of our environmental issues is that we know exactly what the problems are and we actually have already invented all of the solutions.
00:12:22
Speaker
um You know, in terms of climate change, the issue is not... really discovering the new science or trying to interpret the patterns.
00:12:33
Speaker
It is political and it's social and it's cultural. um And so in some ways that's just one, it's a very big one, but that's the final hurdle that we need to surpass in order to create a positive transition.
Founding 'Black to Nature' Charity
00:12:52
Speaker
Let's talk about black to nature. Now, ah why did you set it up? and Tell me a little bit about it. Yeah, so Black to Nature is my charity that I've been running for nine years now. but Again, just check, you're 22.
00:13:10
Speaker
am. I was 13.
00:13:14
Speaker
You set up a charity at age 13. That's pretty phenomenal. that's pretty phenomenal God, it's... And so what brought you at age 30? What were you noticing? And what where did you see, okay, something's got to change, something's got to give?
00:13:28
Speaker
Black's Nature is all about engaging more young people, especially ethnic minority young people, with nature and the outdoors. So we run a lot of, ah you know, residential camping trips, bringing these kids out into the depths of the countryside for four days and things like that. And a lot of the kids we work with have literally never left the city, never seen a green space, really.
00:13:54
Speaker
But it kind of Originally, just came from my own personal experiences in that I'm half Bangladeshi, my mum's Bangladeshi, and growing up, I basically never saw anyone that looked like us out in nature, out in the countryside. And that was always kind of the accepted reality. I never thought about it too much until I got a bit older.
00:14:21
Speaker
and i I don't know, because it was because it was on both sides. You had people in environmental spheres going like, oh, you know, there are just certain types of people that we can't that won't engage with nature,
00:14:39
Speaker
But then on my um Asian side, the family, I also had people going like, oh, you know, birdwatching, that's a white people thing. And I was like, I know that can't be true because I like it. But I couldn't really prove, i couldn't put my finger on it. couldn't prove them wrong. And I think,
00:14:54
Speaker
The final straw came when, for unrelated reasons, I was organizing kind of a a nature camp weekend
Success and Barriers in Minority Nature Engagement
00:15:02
Speaker
when I was 13. loads of people signed up and stuff, but everyone else who signed up was a white middle-class teenage boy, um and which is who just was birdwatching at the time. and i was And it felt so much more personal when it was one of my events that I'd organized.
00:15:20
Speaker
Um, and so I kind of decided i went into the city and i kind of, um, spent time talking to people in community, black and Asian communities, explaining why they should be interested.
00:15:36
Speaker
and i managed to get a small collection of teenagers to come out on this camp. And again, before, um, kind of online, I had loads of people being like, oh, you know, you just can't engage these people with nature.
00:15:49
Speaker
um and long story short, I did. um and it went really well and they all kind of came away with some relationship with nature. And that was kind of all that my goal was. um I ended up turning it into an actual charity rather than a one-off event because after this,
00:16:10
Speaker
I had lots of nature NGOs who were very excited I'd managed to do this. They all wanted me to come and like visit them in their various HQs for me to tell them all my secrets of how I did it because they'd been trying for decades. And um i was a thirteen and the I had just could have gone and asked people if they wanted to come.
00:16:34
Speaker
Basically, I ended up organizing a conference called Race, Equality and Nature the following year. um And it seemed to be the first time these charities had ever talked to people from these communities because they came in and they went, right, here's the list of reasons why we don't like going out into nature.
00:16:53
Speaker
And they're like, wow, yeah, okay. it was kind of during then I realized that this was both a much bigger issue than I'd ever really realized, but also i'd realize it made me realize that was something...
00:17:08
Speaker
It was very close to my heart and something that I was interested in dedicating a lot of my time to. And so since then, Black Nature has worked with literally hundreds of kids and run like, I...
00:17:24
Speaker
cannot even think how many events over the years. um And, you know, basically every one of those kids has come away with a relationship with nature in some shape or form. and every time breaks, it kind of disproves what everyone was saying. But also, like I said earlier, I think having a relationship with nature is so important in terms of kind of health and wellbeing. and ah to be honest, as a human right, like the NHS has been doing green prescribing for like,
00:17:59
Speaker
nine years now, but also in terms of the state of our nature, we were talking about people engaging with environmental issues. And, you know, I'm a strong believer that people have no reason to care or engage with these issues if they've never experienced the things that we're losing.
00:18:19
Speaker
um And so, yeah, I think engagement with nature is very important in terms of working towards solving or working towards that shift we need to solve our environmental issues.
00:18:33
Speaker
Why do you think those barriers to nature effectively exist? I guess the difficulty is there's so many different barriers and during this conference it was really interesting because there was such a range and it went from kind of the the physical, so literally people not having the right clothes, the right footwear to handle the British weather, there not being public transport or affordable public transport out into the countryside, you know, things like that where people physically weren't able to go out into nature.
00:19:08
Speaker
But also then on top of that, there were kind of these bigger cultural issues. People felt like this was not a space that belonged to them or where they were welcome. You had some people literally talking about fear of hate crime if they went out into the countryside, which is really upsetting.
00:19:24
Speaker
um Which I think is why a lot of the work that we do is about trying to explain to people why it's worth the effort of going into these spaces and why they should care about engaging with nature.
00:19:39
Speaker
um which I think again, once that is something that someone's experienced, they do understand that or they have an understanding of that. Um, but it's kind of crossing that first hurdle of getting people out there in the first place that can, that as you talk to them for very understandable reasons, be really difficult.
00:19:58
Speaker
And once you expose these kids to nature, if they haven't previously spent much time in nature in their lives, what differences do you see?
Positive Changes from Nature Exposure
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the nicest one is we've been running events for so long now that we have kids that we've known. he Actually, um a boy that came to the event on the weekend, he just started year nine and I met him when he was seven years old, which is ah crazy. um And that those are really special because you can kind of see these kids' journeys in terms of their relationship with nature over obviously a really long period of time.
00:20:37
Speaker
um And, again, for understandable reasons, a lot of these kids turn up and they are really not interested in being there and they think nature's really boring and their parents probably made them game, which is why...
00:20:53
Speaker
we, one of the reasons we have a focus, we do so many different activities, um, you know, from kind of more creative stuff to scientific to competitive. Um, because I, I do feel that if someone finds nature boring and doesn't enjoy it's because they haven't found the right activity for them.
00:21:12
Speaker
And so we have a lot of conversations with these kids about wellbeing as well, actually. So with the younger kids, it can be as simple as kind of You know, if you're feeling angry or upset or unhappy, maybe go and find a tree or a green space and just sit there for 20 minutes. and And so i think for me, some of the... nu in some ways nicer than any kids going like, yeah, I'm going to go and like become a conservationist. um It's kind of the kids who come back and they're like, yeah, you know, when I walk to the school bus in the morning, I look at the birds flying by and, you know, like just the kids who,
00:21:52
Speaker
now that they have engaged with nature, they have this relationship with it and they notice it wherever they are. um Like I mentioned earlier, I love birds because they're everywhere.
00:22:02
Speaker
And that's one of the reasons that, as well as the fact that love them, that i use birds as a jump off point when kind of working with these kids. um But yeah, it's kind of, for a lot of them, I think nature has become kind of a safe place and nature's become a safe place as well. um And I think that's really, don't know, it makes it makes me very happy, i suppose.
00:22:27
Speaker
Do you think right now that access to nature is an issue? I absolutely do, yeah. And there are studies to back back that up. um And i think there are probably three prongs as to why that's a bigger issue, kind of especially ignoring the issue of race within all of
Challenges to Nature Access
00:22:50
Speaker
that. And one of them is that people are incredibly busy trying to survive especially at the moment cost of living crisis it's seen for understandable reasons it's kind of very as a frequency of almost to kind of be going on walks at the weekend um the second one is it's very difficult for a lot of people to get to a decent quality of green space both in terms of
00:23:14
Speaker
access in terms of you know financially see we just really don't have very much nature in the UK compared to ah population um and so I think this has meant that it very often is reserved for quite a small number of people within our population um And so I think also returning some of our nature, creating more habitat, creating more spaces for it, whether that's, you know, in the middle of the city or in the countryside, we've got to let go of some of our green fields and let them be kind of marshes and woodlands again.
00:23:56
Speaker
um And so I think kind of all three of those together have created
00:24:03
Speaker
you know, a country in which it's really, really difficult, even if you wanted to, really difficult to maintain that relationship with nature, which I think is really tragic and also reinforces the idea that environmental issues are kind of a side issue to the rest of our lives because the environment is kind of a side thing within our lives.
00:24:24
Speaker
You're so right. It's almost like there is this mirroring, isn't there, in the kind of physical manifestation of it in terms of where it is on our agenda. And it's mad because I always think about the fact that if you wind back a thousand years, I think the stat is something like 95% of the yeah UK was covered in woodland.
00:24:47
Speaker
So we're talking, you know, ah thousand AD. yeah Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then you look at where we are now because we've had the absolute privilege of industrializing, right? It's a privilege to do that. It is.
00:25:00
Speaker
We chopped all our trees down and we industrialized and we reap the benefits and now we live in the kind of society that we do. and yet globally, all other communities are trying to do is do the same.
00:25:15
Speaker
And we're saying, no, you can't. Because actually, we just did it before you. um But now you can't. But we need your rainforest because they are the lungs of the world now.
00:25:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think I actually, I look back on the industrial revolution as kind of the turning point in terms of the UK's nature, because I think people don't realize, because we think of our countryside as being very green, but both, I meant in the fields, that those aren't nature, those are deserts, basically.
00:25:45
Speaker
Those are monocultures with very little biodiversity, and they're kind you could you could regard them as dead spaces. As you get in there, you don't hear insects, you don't see insects, you don't see many birds.
00:25:56
Speaker
I think because of that, people don't realize that we're one of the most biodiversity depleted countries in the world. um But I think also the industrial revolution in that period where we were absolutely ripping our countryside apart, as well as kind of there being a mass migration into the cities, is when, in my opinion, access to nature became a privilege because it was no longer the poor rural people who lived out in the countryside. It was the wealthy who were able to spend their weekends in the clean air and I think we don't like to acknowledge that that dichotomy still totally
Breaking Down Nature Barriers
00:26:32
Speaker
exists.
00:26:32
Speaker
You still have people in the cities struggling with poor air quality who are kind of, you know, stuck working versus people who are able to spend their weekends off in enjoying something that's incredibly essential for our health and well-being. And so i guess it's figuring out how to break those barriers down a bit.
00:26:56
Speaker
And so for you, when you look at what can be done, you you know, what is going to have the greatest impact? Does it lie with schools? Does it lie with the government? What do you think?
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah. um
00:27:12
Speaker
I don't know. I think, to be honest, it needs to come from different directions at the same time. I think the grassroots work is incredibly important I think that's the only way you can truly engage in a conversation with people, with with communities. And I think to an extent it does have to be tailored.
00:27:31
Speaker
I'd love for schools, schools are so overburdened, but I'd love for them to have the opportunity to have the ability to foster green relationships, even as simple as...
00:27:44
Speaker
God, I don't know, schools receiving funding to have actual green spaces rather than just being like squares of tarmac and concrete. um I can't imagine for some kids even just having ah few trees in the space where they learn how beneficial that would be.
00:27:59
Speaker
um But I think also there is absolutely ah government responsibility to facilitate access to nature and to get young people to understand why they should care about nature.
00:28:13
Speaker
um And that could be anything from... you know, increasing quality of green spaces in
Virtual Reality vs. Real Nature
00:28:22
Speaker
cities to, um you know, organizing schemes to get young people outdoors to just improving their environmental communication. And I think in some ways, actually, the people who have been most effective at all of this so far have been the environmental slash climate change activists. I think some of them have been very good at crossing that bridge or kind of bringing these two things together.
00:28:51
Speaker
and when you, so when you're presented with maybe some of the bleakest outcomes, if we gaze into the crystal ball, okay, so kids experiencing nature through a VR ah headset, that kind of thing.
00:29:04
Speaker
What do you think about that? I don't personally think that that is nature, that is p are And I think to to use that slightly dystopian example, i think that it can be educational, it can be entertaining.
00:29:22
Speaker
But I think for me, one of the importance of spending time in nature is to physically... be there and kind of soak it all in I suppose. I think that's where the benefits come from.
00:29:34
Speaker
i think probably scientifically all as well. Yeah, I think you're right about that. It's, you know, if we were to measure cortisol levels and, you know, you know, pulses, heart rate, blood pressure, all the things.
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, it's the same as someone watching Attenborough documentary and going like, yeah, i've i've I've engaged with my nature for today.
00:29:59
Speaker
um But I think it kind of, ideas like that kind of belie what we understand the biggest issues to do with access to nature to be, which is that it's, it it ease and its quantity and so i think even now it would be far easier for people to engage digitally oh it is and people are engaging digitally rather than physically with nature ah future that I would very much like to avoid yeah I'm with you here here absolutely Maya Rose it's been an absolute joy to have a chat with you thank you so much then thank you Kate it's been great
00:30:43
Speaker
Wow, Maya's story is so inspiring.
Inspiration from Maya's Activism
00:30:47
Speaker
I'm just bowled over by her tireless work from such a young age, campaigning for our climate, the preservation of nature and wildlife, and her determination to break down barriers to ensure everyone gets to experience it.
00:31:00
Speaker
If Maya has inspired you too, we would love to hear from you. The RSPCA wants to know your thoughts. Have your say by taking part in Animal Futures, The Big Conversation.
00:31:11
Speaker
Search RSPCA Animal Futures or check out the links in the show notes to find out more. Next, I chatted to René Oliveri, CBE. He's the chair of the National Trust and a former chair of the RSPCA.
00:31:25
Speaker
I spoke to him about his lifelong love of nature, his experience of chairing some of the UK's environmental and cultural juggernauts, and why he's so dedicated to improving access to nature for everyone.
00:31:41
Speaker
Renée, a joy, a joy to chat to you Professionally, it's pretty amazing to look back at what you've done over your career in terms of your relationship to nature is clear professionally.
00:31:54
Speaker
You've got Wildlife Trust, Heritage Lottery Fund, RSPCA, and now National Trust on your CV. i would love to hear about your personal connection to nature.
00:32:05
Speaker
When did it all start for you? I grew up on a farm. um You'll be astonished to hear from my accent that I'm from the West Coast of the the States originally, but I've been here in the UK for 45 years was hard work, um and I think a lot of the I didn't enjoy it.
00:32:21
Speaker
um But every once in a while, I'd get off into the woods or I did some hikes with my um uncle who was a wildlife photographer, and suddenly had a but different bit of my brain would switch on and I wouldn't think about you know the wood I had to chop or the cows that needed feeding or milking. I had lots of cows by hand growing up.
00:32:40
Speaker
and that it was hard work. And I have huge respect for farmers because they work incredibly hard. I've been back once and i and I say, how did you miss the fact that this is
René Oliveri's Environmental Journey
00:32:49
Speaker
an amazing, beautiful place, a marginal place where um the the woods give over to um to basically the Oregon desert? And at these margins, you often get lots of interesting wild life. So I had animals around me, nature around me growing up.
00:33:04
Speaker
And then I forgot about it. but What do you do? You know, you you're a young person. you You go move into a city ah and suddenly nature seems a long way away. ah Then I saw a film called Animals. It's not about them. It's about us.
00:33:18
Speaker
And this was wake-up call to me because it showed me in all kinds of ways how we were mistreating animals. And particularly, I became alerted to what was happening with factory and farming.
00:33:31
Speaker
So being a publisher, i was a publisher working in for Blackwells in Oxford. I said, well, I have an opportunity to do something about this. And I became ah good friends with a philosopher named Peter Sanger who wrote the book on animal liberation.
00:33:47
Speaker
We did a book together in defense of animals. We did a bioethics companion. I started a bioethics journal. um And I did some books as well, or commissioned some books on factory farming, on animal psychology. um So I was publishing in philosophy and economics, and I think that background in philosophy and economics was really a good way of trying to understand what was happening in the world with respect to our treatment of animals, with our respect to our treatment of um nature in in general.
00:34:16
Speaker
um So I did quite a lot of publishing, got involved that way. or Just as I retired, ah one of the Blackwell family members died, left a huge estate. And I was one of four trustees, later the chair.
00:34:28
Speaker
And we were able to decide whatever we wanted to do to give that money away. And we were going to, it was a spend out charity. And over 10 years, we gave money to the environment and to farmed animal welfare.
00:34:40
Speaker
Okay. I don't know that we knew the connection. The connection really is obviously industrial farming, intensive farming. What we saw it directly is that we just saw these were underfunded areas really as a grant maker.
00:34:52
Speaker
And being also, we wrote a book about it, giving our all, being also only in for the short term, only for 10 years, gave me a real sense that actually we needed to make an impact to support organizations that we're going to endure beyond our demise. And so then I followed ah some of that money into the Wildlife Trust, where I learned really how important it was you want nature to be looked after, to engage with local communities, because they're really, really strong the Wildlife Trust in each of the areas that they're in. and that And that community connection was really powerful.
00:35:22
Speaker
From there, I moved across to the heritage, which funds both nature and environmental programs. This part of the national lottery scheme. And I began to see that our natural environment, or our built environment were inextricably linked and that both were equally important to people and to to communities.
00:35:38
Speaker
The RSPCA, I've just been an animal lover forever. We supported the RSPCA, particularly in dealing with the expansion of farmed animals in confinement, ah the number of animals that aren't actually leading good lives. And in the RSPCA is in a position to lead and is leading on on that. So that was really...
00:35:58
Speaker
um an important moment for me. I really enjoyed the RSPCA and it seemed like the natural next step is animals are part of the natural world People are part of the natural world. um History is part of the human history and natural history intertwined.
00:36:14
Speaker
um The natural next step was ah the the national trust. So for you now, do you find this, I guess, um Does the industrialization of farming, is that what takes up more of your brain when it comes to nature?
00:36:32
Speaker
do you think that's the biggest factor in the change that we've seen over the years?
Agriculture and Environmental Impact
00:36:38
Speaker
So 10,000 years ago, agriculture was invented. Transforms the way people live.
00:36:45
Speaker
Transformation civilization begins, ah you could say. And um the landscape is transformed by us and our relationship to nature is changed. We continue to to ah have an impact on on the environment and we continue to to farm. And then um another the twist happens.
00:37:02
Speaker
And this is, during 50 years ago, the Industrial Revolution and the industrialization, not just of factories and and the machinery, but actually of the land. yeah You've got pesticides and from artificial fertilizers.
00:37:15
Speaker
You've got manpower, animal power being replaced by fossil fuels. And then there's another twist 100 years after that. This happens at the end of the Second World War.
00:37:26
Speaker
Population is growing rapidly. um Everybody's worried about food security. um Science is advancing. ah You've got this new economics of globalization, specialization, agriculture.
00:37:38
Speaker
So you get this green revolution where new crops, protection to chemicals, new fertilization, production, production techniques, new machinery, and boom, here we go forward again, supporting now um an amazing number of people on the planet, but at the cost of the natural world, obviously, because that agriculture was expanding into the industrial landscape. And guess what? Creating all of these um unintended consequences, um fueled on by the economics that we have, economic models we have, which don't take full account of the costs that we're incurring as we exploit
00:38:13
Speaker
ah The natural world used to be most of us were employed on the land. They don't need us anymore to produce the food in this intensive mechanized environment. So people are uprooted, moved into the cities. And we know looking forward that it's already 70, 80, 80 percent, 90 percent of the population is going to live in cities.
00:38:33
Speaker
And that means that we're more divorce divorced from the natural world, from where our food comes from, what value we get out of the natural world, what it does to underpin our very existence. And um that, of course, gets us back into this this whole access question and why that's so important for people to reestablish that connection and realize these things really matter.
00:38:52
Speaker
You need to understand where your food comes from. It doesn't just magically come out of the air. And you need to be happy with the way that the food is produced. You need to be happy with the consequences of this. those fossil fuels, um that mechanization, that concentration, the economies of scale and all that thats that's made it possible.
00:39:11
Speaker
um It had some unintended consequences. So we had more people living in crowded, unsanitary conditions in cities. There was sound pollution, there's water pollution, there's land pollute pollution, a lot of unintended This wasn't something that I blame anybody for. They didn't really know that these bad things were going to happen as a result in climate change.
00:39:34
Speaker
Who could have known about that in the 19th century? But what did happen at the end of the 19th century is um a couple of people who cared about climate change providing ongoing access to every man, to the landless people, to nature, beauty, history.
00:39:51
Speaker
They got together and they said, actually, we need to do something about this. So the National Trust was founded to provide a living landscapes, living living rooms actually for people to get out into, to breathe fresh air, to enjoy nature, beauty and and history.
00:40:10
Speaker
Wow. So that was the intention of the National Trust right from the very beginning. It's always been about access to nature. that's But it's become more than that. So relatively small organization. Of course, one of the things that you can appreciate in your environment are also important buildings, important artifacts that humans ah have have made too.
00:40:29
Speaker
um But this crowded the crowded nature of people living in cities and not having access to nature was was the first thing
National Trust's Role in Nature Access
00:40:37
Speaker
that happened. So how do you how do you make sure that people have access to this stuff?
00:40:41
Speaker
Well, one of the ways is you buy it. or you're getting given to you, and then you promise that you're going to keep it forever for everyone, and you're going to make it open to everyone.
00:40:51
Speaker
So the next big event in the life of the National Trust was 1907. Parliament um passed an act Uh, and it really gave the the trust of the opportunity or the potential to make its acquisitions inalienable.
00:41:07
Speaker
I mean, who else does this? That basically we have lots of things we can never sell. We have to look after them in perpetuity. So then you have this big um a dilemma in the 30s and 40s and 50s, all these big estates, big houses, big gardens, people can't afford to look after them anymore.
00:41:26
Speaker
The Country Houses Act comes into effect. And because there are certain tax advantages, we took over big estates, big houses. And that's when you get this much bigger, much more ah division between or ah combination of us looking after built places, natural environments, a million art ah artifacts,
00:41:44
Speaker
but also looking after ah nature and looking after places like the Lake District yeah for everyone, for forever. Then what happens, this is now still a small organization. It's only got a couple of hundred thousand members, you know a million or two in revenues a year.
00:42:00
Speaker
Everybody sees that the coastline is disappearing under development and neglect. um The golf courses, caravan parks are springing up and pretty soon no one's going to be able to access this amazing coastline.
00:42:12
Speaker
So the National Trust starts this campaign, the Neptune campaign, raises a lot of money and gets its hands around 800 miles of the ah the coastline, provides this coastline, is free for everybody um to access. And that was also another point about access access to nature for everyone for for free.
00:42:34
Speaker
Today, ah that the National Trust has 5.4 million members. It looks after 250,000 hectares of land. It's one of the biggest landowners in the country, 40,000 volunteers, 500 houses, a million objects.
00:42:51
Speaker
It is the biggest conservation organization in Europe. um And we see the the combination of ah natural history and human history of the built environment and the natural environment.
00:43:06
Speaker
We see that is really um important for people to to see that in the round. And we think all of that is is equally important. We spend about 180,000, 180 million pounds a year on conservation, but we spend a lot of money providing access, 25 million visitors a year.
00:43:23
Speaker
um And a lot more of that ah in terms of people just being able to walk across a National and Trust land. More than 90% of it is free for anybody to go into. So we do look after our members, love our members, but actually we're there to provide a benefit to everyone in the nation. That's our that's our charitable purpose.
00:43:41
Speaker
There's lots of stuff I didn't know there about National Trust. That's amazing. um When we look at the issue today with access to nature, what are the fundamental issues you know, you can say that it's ah it's a location issue. You can say it's ah a cultural issue.
00:43:58
Speaker
Actually, there are lots of different barriers, and they're not mutually exclusive. You know there are lots of reasons why people don't get out into nature. So, you might be might be physically disabled. It's difficult to get out and into nature.
00:44:10
Speaker
um There aren't the right kind of pathways and and and access. It might be that you think it's expensive. You haven't got the money to travel there or the leisure time. could be where ge geography or in the middle of a city, it's difficult difficulty to to get to those places.
00:44:24
Speaker
could be cultural, historical. But it also could be true that you go out there you feel bit out of you know step. you know Other people don't look like you. You know you don't feel comfortable.
00:44:35
Speaker
um You don't feel you belong. You don't have the right clothes. You don't have the training. You might get lost. um And it could be you just lack awareness that these opportunities are out there and that this is something you could be missing out on. So all of those things are really, really important.
00:44:52
Speaker
and And you need to take them in the round and address them. You need to break down those barriers one by one. And we can only do that by working with lots of other
Community Involvement in Nature Access
00:45:02
Speaker
people. So just to give you some of the examples of things that we're we're doing. So we've got these...
00:45:08
Speaker
with a bank, Starling Bank, we've got the next generation workshops where you take kids out, teach them about stuff, um ah give them information, go on and expeditions with them.
00:45:21
Speaker
um We have something called Walk Together Pathway, where you can get together with people who are perhaps from your same ethnic group or from ah your same ah social circle.
00:45:31
Speaker
and You'll go out there, we're creating walking companions or walking guides. We want to have a thousand of them. These leaders will say, hey, we're going to go out and do X, Y, and Z next next Tuesday. Why don't you join us?
00:45:43
Speaker
We'll sort out transportation. We'll take a walk in an amazing place and we'll have a great social time as as well. But the other the other thing we need is people like um the person who you were interviewed just before me. We need ambassadors, people who are out there yeah beating the drum, not just old guys like like me in suits who are saying, this is cool, this is fun, it's easy, ah you're going to get a lot out of it. It's great to be. readed But by far the most important thing, Kate, we need to do Stop thinking it's about getting kids and getting families out into the countryside. There are obstacles to doing that.
Integrating Nature into Urban Spaces
00:46:19
Speaker
We need to make sure they have nature on their doorstep. So one of the big, are probably our biggest single project on this axis, right? is this nature cities and towns, which we're doing with the heritage fund.
00:46:32
Speaker
And the idea is they're providing a lot of the money, but we'll provide a lot of money too, is to make nature available to people in the places where they live. Um, a lot of local authority funding has dried up over the years. a lot of parks have been neglected. We all, we all see that there is green space, brown space that could be made available to be people be made interesting.
00:46:55
Speaker
So we want to do this hundred UK cities and towns. We've got 5 million more people to have access to nature within yeah five, 10 minutes of the place where they live.
00:47:06
Speaker
We want a lot more kids to be able to bike ride and play and in parks, green space, next to blue space as well, which is really important for us as well, in the cities itself. So the whole thrust our new strategy is not thinking about ah this is what we've got to offer. Why don't you come and enjoy what we've got to say.
00:47:24
Speaker
What have you got near you that we could help you enjoy, we could put into a fit state so that you can access and have have fun in it and learn about things and get the benefits of nature, which there are many.
00:47:36
Speaker
Do you think fundamentally that there's an issue around us as a population valuing it? No, I don't. 42% of the population sees themselves as um a gardener, and many more of them in cities would love to be doing gardening.
00:47:55
Speaker
we've got um butve We've got the national treasure called the David Attenborough, ah you know who is probably the most ah well-known naturalist in the world, this great ambassador for ah for for nature. It's no accident that David Attenborough comes from um this country.
00:48:13
Speaker
And I'll give you an example, which is really, I think, poignant. The Sikkimur Gap Tree. Yes. Now that Sikkimur, when that tree, it's a single tree and it on its own, and it wasn't for the location and everything, it's not so unique or so old.
00:48:30
Speaker
The grief, the outpouring of grief about that across the nation was astonishing. Yeah. We've got a lot of saplings we're sending around to people so that it will you know have its its progeny, will have a life spread across the UK.
00:48:46
Speaker
But the number of people who were really deeply upset and concerned about that, and so we see that as a kind of clarion call ah to nature. This is not the abusive nature way we want to to deal with nature. but One of the things we should be really proud of, Kate,
00:49:00
Speaker
is in this industrial ah revolution age, the RSPCA was born. The National Trust came out of it. These are the two leading, world-leading organizations and in their field, and and both of them have to do with our relationship to nature. So I think we could feel really proud that we made those initiatives in other on countries either envy them or try to emulate and the activities ah of those two organizations. So No, we've we've got it in our blood.
Nature's Role in Child Development
00:49:30
Speaker
we're We're nature lovers and we should be representing that, be proud and actually um be a a role model, I think, to to other countries.
00:49:38
Speaker
Do you think kids are becoming more disconnected from the natural world? National Trust said that 75% of kids wanted to spend more time in nature, but parents say accessibility is an issue. I worry that and it's a bit like bilingualism. If you're learning a second language early on, um voila, you become bilingual like that.
00:49:57
Speaker
You know, i my wife is German. I i speak German. I'm never going to. I started learning German in my 20s. I'm never going to be as bilingual as as my kids kids are um So I think getting that connection early on or nurturing that connection, which is probably there already and not letting it die away is is really important.
00:50:18
Speaker
um What we're we're trying to do, first of all, a lot of our places are ah free. We get free passes. We have media free passes for kids. We get millions of those out every year. So we need to get kids into the spaces that we look after and having a good time and making that part of their ah daily life.
00:50:34
Speaker
But we also need to make sure they have access to great green space near them and places to play. And we need to get them out into the countryside and let them test their skills, test their mettle, learn stuff. So doing stuff with the scouts, with Outward Bound, with community projects to get people you know out into the countryside. still We're doing quite a lot of that, and that's that's really important. and And also learning skills, giving them the opportunity to to to learn nature skills, to learn how to be ah a ranger as well as ah a stonemason. So we've got a lot of apprenticeships and we think training, giving kids the opportunity to see it ah career in nature, career in heritage is really important to us as as as well.
00:51:16
Speaker
um, this, these passes, uh, that ah we we will do more of them and we'll do more with community groups, do more off our places to say, what can we do for you?
00:51:26
Speaker
Can we open open our gates and let more people in? And we'll try to make sure that it isn't just superficial contact, that the, quality, so the quantity, but the quality of the contract and, and, and that we were getting underrepresented ah groups and kids. We, too few kids, they like kids come with their parents, maybe when they're, when they're, you know five, 10, 15 years old, and then they kind of go away. We don't want them to go away.
00:51:51
Speaker
We want them to to continue this, this contact ah over time ah because they're passing on the values to the next generation. We don't want that break really in off nature and accessing nature and feeling that nature is part of everyday life.
00:52:04
Speaker
And do you find that in your membership, that there is that break and then people return to the National Trust later in life? Oh, I'm not relying on it. ah You know, the world is changing around it. Yes, lot of people think that will happen, and maybe that does happen when you retire, if you go to National Trust places during the weekday. Yes, you will see more older people, but I think they're missing out. You know, we should they should be enjoying this all through your life. you're just You don't just...
00:52:29
Speaker
you know, have a dose of nature, you know, as a kid and then come back and have a dose, you know, you should be enjoying the the this most marvelous creation around you um all the time. We need to just all step back and stop being, um having our agenda. It's us parents as um and adults, we have to set the agenda. And the way we do this it seems to me, is by thinking really about our children and our children's children and about future generations. And remembering, of course, all the time that um the average person in this country is 45 or something, you know, they're likely to be around in 40 years' time. That's the length of time that we have our ah strategy for. And the world is going to be a very different place, not necessarily all for the better unless we change things.
00:53:16
Speaker
But more importantly, our kids are going to be around ah you know, towards the end of this and the century and their children are going to be around as we move into ah the new century. So to my mind, that by far the biggest thing that we need to do is be thinking about Long term, bigger, better, more joined up spatially too, which is I always keep going back to the history, where we came came from, how did we get into this position?
00:53:40
Speaker
What are the good things we got from our ancestors? What are the bad things, the problems they've left us with? Well, let's use that as a way of... priming us to think about the future that we're going to make for our children, the thing, the legacy we're going to have. And at the moment, we have some great things that we can believe is higher levels of technological progress and educational levels, better health in the round than ever, ever before.
00:54:06
Speaker
But there's no denying that the thing that's all based on the thing at the foundation of the economy of health, of education, all of that is nature. And we're doing a bad job.
00:54:18
Speaker
You know, nature is not at as good a state now. You read the State of Nature report from um the RSPB. Nature is in a much worse state now than it was 50 years ago. And the trends are all going in the wrong direction.
Long-term Environmental Solutions
00:54:31
Speaker
So if we if we put ourselves in the eyes of these children children and we project ourselves forward and try to visualize what's going to happen if we continue on current trends and say, do we really want this to happen for our kids?
00:54:45
Speaker
I think that's where we start to say, no, we're making short-term decisions. We're not making the wrong-term right decisions to invest in the future of our children and their children. The human species is as a young species, really. We could we can have many more generations ahead of us and behind us. Well, their interests or are actually fi be foremost in our minds. And one of the things that's great about the National Trust is it's independent.
00:55:10
Speaker
It has this um commitment to permanence, to we're for everyone, forever, nature, beauty, and history. um So we need to be thinking about all the time, what would people 100 years from now have wanted us to do today for their benefit?
00:55:27
Speaker
Um, and, and actually if we do that, we'll be looking after our kids and their, their kids, we'll be doing right things. it but too much as the salience thing, you know, what's in the news today. What's, um, you know, the problem I've got to face. yeah I understand that, but as a society, we need to take more of a step back all the time and say, what do we need to do?
00:55:45
Speaker
That's right for the longterm. And if we don't change track right now, and if we don't. work towards a different future. Where do you think we're headed?
00:55:56
Speaker
If we look into the crystal ball around 2050, are we headed? where are we headed Well, I mean, the i'd I'd say let's do the things that we said we're going to do. So like we are about preservation, um presentation, promotion. So we do have some campaigning issues. And so I would i would be saying support local communities to provide access, recognize this access to nature.
00:56:19
Speaker
It's hugely important for health and development um socially and and mentally and um emotionally and physically. Let's leave the environment in a better state than we found it.
00:56:31
Speaker
Let's get to net zero as quickly as we can. Let's work on this 30 by 30 of land set aside for nature. These are the things that are already out there that we know to do. Let's clean up our, our ah rivers and let's, for God's sake, let's watch what's happening to our soils because they are really the bedrock on which everything's, you know, soil quality is okay. Probably most everything else is okay too.
00:56:54
Speaker
I think people are getting the wake up call. If we listen to the guys who are looking in the crystal ball and seeing what dangers lie ahead, I think there will there there will be more awareness of those kinds of things ah ah going wrong and that it's not going to get better unless we do do something about it.
00:57:12
Speaker
And for me, the biggest the the biggest reason to improve access is because, um frankly, we don't prioritize as ah as a government. We don't prioritize um as individuals, nature at the moment.
00:57:27
Speaker
David Attenborough, the great David Attenborough said, if if we want to look after things, we have to experience them, to care about them. So the more access, the more experience we get, the more people will value this, the more they'll demand that we do things about it, the more willing they'll be to do things themselves to put this put this right So I'm hoping that we're going to get a groundswell of you know a mass movement and everybody's going to say, hey, we can't treat animals like this any longer.
00:57:54
Speaker
ah We can't and ah treat our nature like this. And guess what? It's not right. It's not the good thing to be doing, but it's actually not good for us either. ah you know How can you treat nature badly?
00:58:06
Speaker
How can you treat and animals badly and be a good citizen? It's a I think we need a new resurgence and redefinition of what being a citizen is about. a citizen is not just about being, um you know, a good member of the the social community and voting at election time.
00:58:24
Speaker
I think it's about saying, know, we have a responsibility to nature. We have a responsibility to other animals. We have a responsibility to look after this, what Peter Singer called this widening circle of moral concern because we know more.
00:58:38
Speaker
I mean, and in the 19th century and the industrial revolution, they couldn't have known all this stuff that was going. We have no excuse. We now and know what we're doing and we kind of know pretty much what we have to do to put it right. We just need to have but the will and the determination to do those things. So I'm i'm i'm optimistic.
00:58:56
Speaker
I'm optimistic we're going to turn this around. René, thank you so much. That was fascinating. That was fascinating. Keep fighting the good fight. This is amazing. Thank you. I've really enjoyed talking to you, Kate.
00:59:10
Speaker
Clearly, there's so much great work going on to ensure all of us can benefit from nature, be near wildlife and have access to green spaces. In a changing world, it's clear that having nature in our lives is still as important as it has ever been.
00:59:26
Speaker
Find out more by searching ah RSPCA Animal Futures. Thanks as always for listening and we'll see you next time. Animal Futures was hosted by Kate Quilter.
00:59:37
Speaker
With thanks to our guests today, Bird Girl, Dr. Maya Rose Craig, and Renny Oliveri, CBE. The series was produced by Mark Ellams, Chris O'Brien, Emily Perdue, and Joe Toscano.