Garden Wildlife Matters
We have formed this charity because we believe in its title. Only in recent years has the dramatic reduction of biodiversity – the number of different species of all animal and plant life and the quantity of each – become headline news in this country although the process probably began over 200 years ago at the start of the industrial revolution.
Climate change is also a contributing factor. In relatively few years we have gone from widespread scepticism that climate change is happening at all to realising that it is a major threat to life on planet earth as we know it.
The good news is that we are now aware of the problems of both the loss of our natural habitat, the impact of climate change and the link between the two. Much is being planned to tackle both. There are now growing numbers of examples where habitat has been restored and the wildlife has returned. The contribution we can make in our own gardens may seem insignificant considering the scale of the problem we are facing. But there are about 22 million private gardens in Britain which between them are a significant proportion of the cultivated land in this country. Some will remember the success of the British cycling team in the 2012 London Olympics. This was attributed to their adoption of the Japanese “Kaizen” principle that any change that would improve performance by even a tiny amount should be made because the cumulative effect would be worth it. We can apply this to our gardens making them more wildlife friendly step by step and cutting out anything we do which is harmful to wildlife. The next step is to work with your neighbours to create larger areas of wildlife friendly gardens.