Wildlife knowledge dying out, warn nature campaigners

Parents unable to teach their children about common birds and animals

PARENTS today are so out of touch with nature and cut off from the countryside that more than a third admit they could not teach their own children about British wildlife, a survey published today claims.

Research has found that seven out of 10 people also feel they are losing touch with nature.

The findings appear to describe a nation significantly removed from its land and natural habitats, where people have little knowledge of the country’s wildlife.

Large numbers of people could not identify an oak tree or even a barn owl, while a significant proportion said they had never set eyes on a hedgehog. When asked about common birds, four fifths claimed they could not identify a chaffinch.

An estimated 13 per cent of people said they had not even been to the countryside for more than two years.

The research, for a farm partnership backed by organisations including the The Wildlife Trusts and the Prince’s Countryside Fund, looked at how connected the public is with British wildlife and the natural world.

The study, for the Jordans Farm Partnership, found 69 per cent of those questioned felt they were losing touch with nature, while 37 per cent of parents confessed their knowledge was not enough to teach their children.

Janel Fone, director of marketing and development at The Wildlife Trusts, said: “We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to experience the joy of wildlife and wild places in their daily lives. She said the research “provides an interesting insight into how connected people feel towards the natural world”.

The survey is the latest to highlight the lack of wildlife knowledge among the public. Another poll found that more than half the people asked failed to identify a sparrow. That research in April, backed by the RSPB, found that of 2,000 adults who took part, more than a quarter could not say for sure they had ever seen a blue tit, and a fifth did not know that a red kite was a bird. Conservation groups fear that the public’s decreasing knowledge makes it harder to campaign for the protection of wildlife.

A report issued in 2016 found that more than one in 10 of the UK’S wildlife species are threatened with extinction, while the nation’s most endangered creatures have plummeted by two thirds since 1970.

The State of Nature report compiled by more than 50 conservation groups warned that historical loss of woodland and industrialisation had left the UK “among the most nature-depleted countries in the world”.