Mya-Rose Craig
The activist, birdwatcher and author shares her experiences and hopes for the future
Your family has long been involved in the birding community. Do you think you would have found your way into it without their influence?
As a dual-heritage white British and thirdgeneration British Bangladeshi young woman, I think the chances of me taking up birding or being part of the UK birding community without my parents already being into it would have been extremely low. I am enormously grateful for their influence and their determination to ensure both my sister and I went out into nature as much as possible from an early age. I understand I am privileged to have had these experiences and feel sad that others who are of minority ethnic or urban backgrounds never experience the beauty and tranquility of nature. That is why setting up Black2Nature and running nature camps for other young minority ethnic young people and their families is so important to me.
Why do you think we need diverse voices in the ornithological community? As a British Sylheti woman, my mum has always been a huge role model to me.
I hope I can be that role model to other visible minority ethnic (VME) children and teenagers. It’s essential to have ethnically diverse voices within the ornithological community, because at present it is only 0.6 per cent VME, meaning that it does not have knowledge of those communities and so finds it impossible to engage with them.
This is the first time you’ve placed your own – and your family’s – story at the centre of your work. How did that feel? It was incredible to have the opportunity to write my book, especially as I had the space of the Covid-19 lockdown to write it. I had been thinking about this book since I was nine years old, even having some of the chapter names. However, it was totally different to be thinking about a cohesive book. Lots of birding tales went into it but I then deleted them, so the whole thing was a journey for me. I also had no idea at the start that I was going to write anything about my mum’s mental illness, as it seemed too private, but our family story didn’t make sense without that context.
What do you want people to take away from your book?
My most important message is that things are often not as they seem on the outside. While I might have seemed lucky to have travelled so much, going birding around the world, as a child I would have given it all up in a second for my mum to be better.