Countryside suffers transport racism, says campaigner
A TEENAGE environmental campaigner who called the countryside racist has called for improved public transport to help ethnic minorities access the countryside.
Mya-rose Craig, known as Birdgirl, said some black and minority ethnic people see the countryside as “elitist and possibly racist”, and much more work is needed to overcome barriers and make the countryside more accessible.
“I live in the countryside and I remember being 14 and me and my mate bunked off school because we wanted to go to town to go shopping,” she said. “We didn’t even do it because there wasn’t a bus – we were just stranded in the countryside.
“It shows there is a wider issue of a lack of public transport in the UK.”
The teenager, from Compton Martin in Somerset, has been a keen ornithologist for almost all her life and is the youngest person to see half of the world’s bird species.
The 19-year-old has a large following on Twitter, where she posts as Birdgirluk, and began running nature camps when she was 13.
Miss Craig has set up the organisation Black2nature, organised two conferences, given more than 50 talks and written articles in her fight for equal access to the natural environment for all communities.
At the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Miss Craig, who is of British-bangladeshi background, spoke of the challenges she faced in confronting racism in her work. “I think it’s been quite a rough journey, to be honest,” she said.
She said the conferences she held had thrown up a number of challenges black and ethnic minority people face to access nature, such having the right clothing or being worried about dogs.
“They saw it as elitist and possibly racist, and they were scared,” she said.
Miss Craig was joined at the event by Anita Sethi, who wrote a book about walking across the Pennines after being racially abused on a train.
“Black and minority ethnic people are treated as if they don’t belong in countryside,” Ms Sethi said.
“I think this stems from the toxic idea of Britishness.”