SHE WEARS IT WELLIE
Carrie’s in eco-friendly summer dress and boots as she champions puffins in her first public speech
IN a £225 ‘eco-friendly’ dress and charity shop wellies, Boris Johnson’s environmentalist partner Carrie Symonds made her first public speaking appearance yesterday.
The Prime Minister’s girlfriend was at Birdfair – dubbed ‘the Glastonbury for birdwatchers’ – where she condemned the trophy hunting of puffins in Iceland.
She said she had been horrified to see pictures of dead puffins in a newspaper article, particularly because she had enjoyed watching the birds with Mr Johnson at a Yorkshire reserve.
She also used her appearance at the event at Rutland Water Nature Reserve to speak out against the scourge of plastic pollution in our seas.
‘We all share this crowded planet and should all try to take care of it,’ she told her audience. She said she always ‘tried to remember to take a canvas bag’ to the supermarket, and added: ‘I’m wearing a sustainable dress.’
Her floral Liberty print dress was by British designer Justine Tabak, who uses ‘sustainably sourced’ fabrics in her dresses, which are made in England. Miss Symonds, 31, also wore green wellies from a charity shop, and carried a red handbag and an animal print umbrella from Boots.
Formerly head of press for the Tories, she is now an adviser at US-based charity Oceana. While she has kept a low profile since Mr Johnson took over at No10, yesterday’s event suggests she will use her position as the Prime Minister’s girlfriend to highlight environmental issues.
In her speech, Miss Symonds said: ‘Just last month I took my first trip to the stunning Bempton Cliffs [a nature reserve in East Yorkshire] ... gannets, razorbills, guillemots, all soaring and screeching and diving with the majestic backdrop of those sheer chalk walls.
‘But what I really wanted to see was a puffin. We spent hours looking. I was on tiptoes leaning over the cliffs, craning my neck, peering through my binoculars, desperately trying to glimpse one.
‘We were about to give up, about to go home. But suddenly – there he was. And when I saw that puffin in all its glory, I was just delighted. When he turned his head and I caught a glimpse of that rainbow bill... I knew I’d found the right guy. It was magic, something I’ll never forget.
‘And then, just a couple of weeks later I saw another puffin. But this one wasn’t waddling happily in and out of his burrow. No. He was pictured in a newspaper, his bloodstained body lined up alongside dozens of others, all slaughtered by socalled “trophy hunters” on trips to Iceland.
‘I ask you, why would anyone want to shoot a puffin? Why would anyone want to destroy something so beautiful, then stuff its poor lifeless body to keep as some kind of macabre trophy?’
She added: ‘When we look at trophy hunting, at habitat loss, at climate change and the catastrophic levels of plastic pollution in our oceans – a million sea birds die every year as a result of ingesting plastic – we see why events like Birdfair are so important.’
BBC wildlife presenter Chris Packham, who appeared on the same platform as Miss Symonds and businesswoman Deborah Meaden, told the Daily Mail that he was ‘very pleased’ that she was speaking out against the trophy hunting of puffins.
‘I knew I’d found the right guy’