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email this page to a friendBritain’s hedgehogs and dozens of other species of mammals, insects and plants could be extinct within the next 25 years, according to a new book backed by the famed TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough.
The book, Silent Summer, has been written by 40 prominent ecologists as a tribute – and worrying follow-up – to Silent Spring by the American biologist Rachel Carson which, in the early 1960s, sounded the first warnings that human activity was killing off swathes of animals, birds and plants.
That book virtually created the environmental movement and in this new tribute, Sir David writes the foreword in which he warns that modern farming and urban development is killing off dozens of species of small creatures like moths, butterflies, insects and even snails.
Although these are not usually causes of concern, he argues, they are in fact the beginning of the food chain which feeds larger species of mammals, birds and fish including hedgehogs.
The book could have an effect on the coming general election because, although the use of pesticides and other intensive farming methods have been subject to controversy for many years, it places much of the blame for the threat to nature on Britain’s soaring population.
This is due to reach 70 million – and perhaps even 75 million according to some estimates – by mid-century, mainly due to immigration, because of the demand for more housing, schools and infrastructure development in the countryside.
Feedback received on this subject:
50 years on from Carson; 2 years on from Georgina Downs' momentous victory in the High Court and the judgment against the Government for their failure to protect rural residents (and local eco-systems) from agricultural spraying.
Basically, the Government, industry and the judiciary are sticking their fingers in their ears and saying La la la!
Currently DEFRA are supposed to be seeking the views on whether there should be mandatory or voluntary measures to;
1. Alert residents before spraying (equality with bees, no less !!- beekeepers legally have to be given 48 hours notice.)
2. Also views are being sought whether the public can be trusted to have the mandatory right to direct access to the information on what they are being exposed to!
"Voluntary measures", so beloved by the industry, have failed to protect water from contamination. So why should voluntary measures be thought to work here?
Georgina's case was "belittled", her evidence, (including that from the Government’s own data) was overturned in the Court of Appeal by Justice Sullivan because he didn't like the fact she wasn't a qualified scientist or doctor!
So will the judiciary, industry, Government or current opposition party take any more notice of Sir David and his qualified and eminent scientists contributers?
Which ever party wins at the next election and by the track record of the last 50 years, I very much doubt they will. The public have until 4th May to vote for mandatory right to access to information and to be given prior notification before spraying.
There is the option for prohibiting spraying in areas where there are vulnerable groups (this definitely, in the new EU law, includes residents!) Spraying therefore should be banned in these situations.
Non chemical methods would preclude the need to do either; would in the long term be more cost effective and less damaging to the public, ecosystems, flora and fauna alike.
Anonymous
