Sara Maitland
Thriving wildlife, close communities, less pollution – let’s learn from the lockdown
Almost the day the lockdown started, so did the springtime in Galloway. Here in southern Scotland, like elsewhere, we had endured one of the wettest and dreariest first quarters of the year and then, quite suddenly, with the
Solstice, we turned a corner and moved into a radiant spring.
Oystercatchers and curlews don’t seem to go in for selfisolation or restricting their travel and both arrived as usual at the end of March – heartcheering, encouraging and highly sociable!
The impact of the pandemic has been a bit different for those of us who live very rurally. Overall, Dumfries and Galloway has an extremely low population density (about 60 people per square mile compared to the UK average of 727; only Highlands and Islands is lower) and the hill country away from the coast is markedly emptier than that. Social distancing has not been one of our major problems.
Moreover, almost everyone who lives between the tiny village of New Luce and the Ayrshire border 10 miles to the north (fewer than 10 households) is either retired or works in agriculture and is therefore an essential worker (very nearly half a million people – 1.5% of the UK workforce – work in agricultural production) and the employees at the signal box on our single-track railway are, too. We have no school-age children within four miles of my home. We are generally fairly used to being ‘under-serviced’ – for instance, we have no rubbish collection up this glen, we take our own to the village bins – so we’re not missing it. Life goes on.
Additionally, we are, like many other rural villages, resilient and profoundly supportive. I’ve had more than one neighbour, realising that I am over 70 (although I achieved that status only days before the lockdown occurred) ringing to offer to collect my bin bags or just check whether I needed anything. Shopping is organised communally for those who are self-isolating. I suspect we’re not atypical of many other similar small communities (see page 46). And that does feel very good.
So I’m not going to pretend that there are not, for me, some rather wonderful side effects. The most apparent is the peacefulness – no cars on the roads, no aeroplanes in the sky – which seems to have led to an increase in birdsong. Curlews and oystercatchers seem to be audible all day. Their smaller colleagues sing and sing. The sweet bleating and gambolling of the new hill lambs is more noticeable.
CLEARING THE AIR
We also know – although the full effects of this will not be apparent yet – that the quality of the air itself is measurably improving and that has to be good for the countryside. For example, I’ve written before about the damage to wildflowers that the nitrogen-driven increase of fertility of the road verges inflicts (a direct effect of cars). Some of this may, of course, be due to weather, but I do honestly think, for example, that I’m seeing less new plastic rubbish on the roadsides and more butterflies. At the least, no one can now question the damage our ‘normal’ does to the natural world.
I am not claiming that the pandemic is in any way a good thing. Poverty, loneliness and anxiety (as well as sickness and death) are painful realities that we would all be better off without. But there are upsides too, and lessons to be learned. Let’s try to learn them – and remember them.
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