Antisocial media
Lucy McRobert (Opinion, December 2015) is right about sexism in nature conservation – even at 13 years old, sexism impacts me.
At the age of seven, I was in a BBC Four programme about birding, after which I was subjected to abuse on social media. A boy who birded would have been seen as normal, but because I was a girl I was labelled “bored and unhappy”.
There are teenage boys with high-profile, male mentors who are seen as the future of conservation. It’s much rarer for girls to have mentors, and when they do something great they are not promoted in the same way.
I have been cyberbullied, and when I was 11 a group of older male birders targeted me with 150 comments on social media, including a sexual remark. There are few better r feelings than finding g a new park right on your doorstep that you have not yet explored. I could not believe my luck when I discovered Francisrancis King Park, British Columbia, Canada, which up until now had completely missed my radar.
I decided to walk a main trail in the park that included a patch of old-growth forest [a forest that has attained great age without significant disturbance]. Old-growth forest was once found across Vancouver Island, but logging has decreased its range to a few patchy areas.
On entering the forest I saw the ground carpeted in fernsferns, the trees covered in moss and lichen and the evergreen trees standing tall. Along the trail I heard the peeping of chickadees and bushtits, and the ghostly call of a raven.
Coming face-to-face with an old-growth tree is one of the best experiences with nature I have had. I cannot wait to visit this park again and walk amongst the giants of the forest.
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