Our wildlife is being STARVED, POISONED and CONCRETED over. But it’s not too late for YOU to stop it

IT IS sunny and warm in the garden. My poodle Scratchy is lying in the shade of the chestnut tree and I can hear him snoring. He is 15 now and spends more and more time sleeping – and snoring.

I listen to his gentle wheezing and smile. I love him, and his contentment makes me happy. But then I love life, all life – animals have always brought me joy and have fuelled a lifetime’s curiosity and interest. And concern.

I sit down and look over a wildflower patch I’ve sown. It is pretty colourful – plenty of flowers, plenty of nectar – but I realise there is not much buzzing going on. There are no bees, no hoverflies, no butterflies flitting – in fact I haven’t seen a butterfly all morning. I get up and go searching but I find nothing. Not a tortoiseshell, peacock, or even a cabbage white.

Just 50 years ago, as a child I could clamber over a fence into some wasteland behind my home in urban Southampton and see hundreds of butterflies and tens of species: the always-nervous wall butterflies, sparkling small coppers, jewel-like blues, and big and bolshie red admirals.

But now, even though my garden looks wonderful, lush, green and rich, there’s nothing much here. And there is a very real – and very sad – parallel between it and our countryside. Our land is green, but it is not nearly as pleasant as it might be.

Somehow we’ve all grown used to this. We know our hedgehogs and water voles have all but vanished. Some of us are armed with piles of depressing statistics but we’ve seemingly forgotten what they actually mean. Astonishingly, 44 million birds have disappeared from our fields and woodlands since 1966.

A child growing up in England today is unlikely to ever see a sparrow. Why? Their numbers are down by a shocking 90 per cent. We talk about ‘losses’ but nothing has been ‘lost’. Lost means inadvertently misplaced – instead, our wildlife has been killed, starved, poisoned, ploughed up or concreted over.

We are orchestrating an ecological apocalypse in our own backyard, and worse, we are trying hard to ignore it.

Well not any longer. On Saturday, I’ve organised the first People’s Walk For Wildlife in Hyde Park, London, and I am inviting everyone who has any sort of concerns about the health of our landscape and the creatures that live in it.

It’s an invitation to those who may not agree on the detail of how to fix things but who agree that things need fixing. Together we will stand shoulder to shoulder and peacefully ask for change.

Of course, we would like to see a more urgent response from the Government, with both more incentives and mandatory requirements for everyone to help protect species and their habitats.

For example, why do we persist with the removal of hedges from our countryside, which immediately deprives wildlife of food and shelter through winter?

But I don’t believe it’s all about ‘them’ doing things.

It’s about all of us doing things for ourselves, whether that’s the conservation movement as a whole or us as individuals.

The greatest difficulty may be people’s reluctance to change what they think and do on a daily basis – even when it becomes clear that it’s wrong. I think all gardeners know that if they use lots of slug pellets they won’t have any hedgehogs, song thrushes or slow worms because these animals, once so common in gardens, need slugs and snails as food.

Yet trying to break this habit seems difficult. Responding to new scientific findings, ideas and techniques will be key to us surviving ourselves, let alone protecting our wildlife.

So please come and walk with me and Scratchy – dogs are welcome of course, but no barking!

I’d like every last person who has a real interest in the health and wellbeing of our landscape, and who wants to engender a proper respect for the life that tries to live there, to down tools and join in.

And if you can’t be with us, here are a few other things I urge you to do:

Introduce a child to nature. Let them touch and feel it, take them for a walk and give them the freedom to explore, climb a tree, catch a bug, eat blackberries, or even find a feather and take it home. Simple things can inspire a lifetime of interest.

Stop using pesticides in your garden. Find other ways to control ‘pests’ without killing them. Research their ecology or behaviour and manage them passively. Alternatively, just become more tolerant and learn to love all life – not just the cute and cosy things.

Take advantage of any opportunity to visit a farm. Learn about where our food comes from, how it is grown and about the difficul- ties farmers face. We must build effective partnerships with good farmers, so understanding their business is important.

Join in with social media campaigns, share your concerns, explore new ideas and discoveries, sign petitions, find a voice and join others who are using theirs to spread awareness and make a difference. Numbers count – be counted.

If you are a member of a conservation charity, communicate with them. Don’t just pay your membership fee – get involved, volunteer if you can, and tell them what you think they do well and where they should try harder. You are a shareholder in conservation.

For more details about the People’s Walk For Wildlife, visit chrispackham.co.uk

OUR LAND IS GREEN BUT IT’S NOT NEARLY AS PLEASANT AS IT MIGHT BE