When Enough Is Enough -Leave

 

I posted this out today because in all honesty I feel like I have wasted five years of effort and energy:

With a combined membership of over 6000 I have tried to interest members of the Bristol Naturalist Society and Bristol Nature Network for over 5 years to become involved in active field work, take part in and help with the fox and badger work and apart from a few "Likes" nothing.  I have updated on the Fox Deaths Project as well as the Fox and Badger death registers. Nothing.

An editorial in Nature (06 04 2014) is titled Natural decline Nature  508, 

pages7–8 (2014) reads in part:

volume

"Few biology degrees still feature natural history. Is the naturalist a species in crisis?

"What has become of the naturalists of yesteryear — the vicar with the magnifying glass and pressed flower collection, or the gentleman scientist with butterfly nets and a shotgun? Those dedicated observers of the natural world in all its complexity are still among us. But they are harder to pick out now; they are men and women, students and citizens. And they clutch not sample jars but smartphones.

"In an article published late last month (J. J. Tewksburyet al.BioSciencehttp://doi.org/r5g;2014), Joshua Tewksbury, a naturalist and director of the Luc Hoffmann Institute at the conservation group WWF in Gland, Switzerland, and 16 colleagues issue a call to arms. They chronicle the dismaying diminution of support for natural history — that branch of science that encompasses the careful observation and description of organisms and their relations to their environments. Like all good scientists, they offer the data to support their assertion."

Well unless it is for a handy social media "Like" photo I am afraid that the smart phones are not a great new asset. I set up the Ashton Vale and Bristol Wildlife Group in 1994 having moved to an area that Avon Wildlife had designated a "wildlife deprivation zone" and on my very first night I observed low flying barn owls, a brace of fox walking along the road, three hedgehogs -one being the largest I had ever seen, field mice as well as many insects and moths. Over the next week I began cataloguing the local wildlife. I seeded wild flowers and other plants despite opposition from locals who wanted "none of that rubbish". I counted 22 species of wild bird visiting the garden  and I have never stopped observing and recording because that is what a naturalist does.

Calls put out regarding dead and injured badgers in the area back in 1994 (after the old badger group had become defunct) received no responses and so I set up the Bristol Badger Group cataloguing badger activity in and around the City. This while starting and asking for assistance in various projects.  The absolute silence was deafening. It still is.

Otters, foxes, badgers, hedgehogs and all other wildlife I shall continue to work and report on but for me the BNS and BNN has been of little help while lost and found pet pages offer far more help and information.

As of today I am therefore leaving both groups to continue my work, the work I have now spent 50 years on and will continue to do until the long box arrives.