The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (32 page)

This becomes clearer if we look at a very basic concern for the future, how to feed the 9 billion people expected to be inhabiting the earth by the middle of the century. In 2011 the British government’s Office for Science published a piece of horizon-scanning which addressed the issue head-on, entitled
The Future of Food and Farming
: it was a comprehensive look at the workings, now and in decades to come, of the global food system and how it could meet the challenges it will face. The
report made several major recommendations: for example, that new technology which is controversial, such as the use of genetically modified organisms, should not be ruled out; and that the elimination of food waste should be of high priority. But one recommendation in particular caught my eye: the report proposed that no significant amounts of new land, such as tracts of rain-forest, should be brought into cultivation, as this would release climate-changing greenhouse gases on a dangerous scale – in which case, ‘the global food supply must be increased through sustainable intensification’.

After nearly seventy years of intensive farming, with everything that has been done to nature, in other words, the land that is in use for growing crops across the world will have to be made to work even harder still. The report showed itself aware of the environmental risks and the qualification ‘sustainable’ is important; but in essence, ‘intensification’ just means more and more chemical inputs, more fertilisers and especially more poisons, more ’cides – more pesticides, more herbicides, more fungicides, more molluscicides – and I found myself posing the sort of bizarre question which perhaps has never been framed in any human mind before: what does the twenty-first century hold for insects?

It seems to me that one of the prices of feeding 9 billion people in the years to come will be to sacrifice them. We may adore the charismatic megafauna, the snow leopards and the mountain gorillas, but very few of us are bothered about creepy-crawlies (other than butterflies and moths), which is doubtless why there has been so little awareness of the staggering decline in insect numbers that has emerged, in recent years, as a disturbing environmental phenomenon, indeed, as one of the defining ecological features of our age. Yet creepy-crawlies don’t only creep and crawl; these are ‘the little things that run the world’, playing key roles in a myriad ecosystems, and their disappearance has profound dangers – finally recognised, of course, in
the recent concern over the widespread vanishing of honeybees and other pollinators (two-thirds of our crops and fruit are wind-pollinated, but the rest need insect pollination). You may say, at least we will always preserve the pollinators; but I will wager you a pound to a pinch of snuff that there is a scientist somewhere, right now, probably in a pesticide company, toying with the idea of whether we can genetically modify insect-pollinated crops to make them able to be pollinated by the wind. No, insects will be surplus to requirements; they will have to go, as so much other life will have to go, so many species, so many habitats, so much of nature which has given us joy, as humankind appropriates to itself every bit of the natural world which it can grab; and the unmistakable signs are already there, with the insects especially, whose abundance in my own country has vanished in my lifetime, along with that curious phenomenon which once made their profusion so spectacularly manifest – the moth snowstorm.

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What are we to do? We must feed our brothers and sisters. Who could argue against the alleviation of hunger? Which of us can so far step outside our species as to deny another person the right to eat? But what, then, about the earth, what if our needs as humans do indeed overwhelm it and consign its vibrant and wondrous life to the rubbish heap of history – what is our reaction to be? Too bad?

For nearly one hundred and fifty years now, people have been trying to defend the natural world in an organised manner: with their early appreciation of wilderness, which I have described, the Americans led the way, designating Yellowstone the first national park in the world in 1872. (The equivalent moment in Britain came considerably later, with the formation of the
Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves for Britain and the Empire, by Charles Rothschild, in 1912, or perhaps Rothschild’s earlier purchase of Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire and his donation of part of it to the infant National Trust, with the stipulation that it be managed for the protection of the swallowtail butterfly.) Since then, the conservation movement has swelled to a substantial size, and become international: there is now a worldwide network of protected areas covering virtually every country, as well as a large group of wealthy, powerful, and committed non-governmental bodies across the globe that are dedicated to the defence of nature and its biodiversity.

It appears impressive. Perhaps even more impressive has been the role of individuals in caring for the natural world as the pressures on it began to mount. To give one striking instance from my own country: the lady’s slipper, the blowsy, gaudy, most spectacularly beautiful of Britain’s native orchids, was believed to have been driven to extinction in the early twentieth century by the rapacity of orchid collectors, until in 1930 a flower was found in the wild in a remote location. For the next forty years this one plant, which could have been uprooted and put in a large pocket in a matter of seconds, was protected tenaciously by a small group of botanists, whose principal tool was secrecy; and from 1970 its protection was overseen by a small government-backed committee (also secret) which organised round-the-clock volunteer wardening in the flowering season; until finally in the 1990s the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, worked out the difficult and hitherto-unknown trick of how to propagate
Cypripedium calceolus
in the laboratory, and the English lady’s slipper was saved.

It was saved by a handful of people, all fired by their love of nature. And there have been other such cases. The love is real and can work wonders. But even their achievement is put in the shade by the sacrifices individuals have made, and are daily making, to defend the natural world away from the relative
safety of Europe. For example, between 1990 and 2010 nearly 150 rangers were killed trying to protect the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to the majestic mountain gorillas, which are among the world’s rarest animals but are located also in the centre of Africa’s most terrible war; while, on another continent, at least 57 activists were killed in Peru between 2002 and 2014 trying to prevent the illegal destruction of the rainforest.

For it is becoming clearer than ever that despite the imposing size of the conservation movement, as things stand neither its individuals nor its organisations nor its aid dollars look like holding back the tide of destruction that is going to rise throughout the twenty-first century. There may be protected areas in every country, but delineating a protected area on a map and making it work properly can be two very different things, especially in the developing nations, and there, the illegal and often violent invasion of national parks, whether to take out their timber, mine their gold, kill their animals, or hack their forest down for farmland, is becoming one of the most heartbreaking aspects of the mounting assault on the natural world. The rhinos of the Kruger National Park in South Africa, for instance, began to be poached nearly a decade ago with the rise of the belief in Asia that rhino horn was a potent cure in traditional medicine; the subsequent surge in the slaughter, in this supposedly protected area, almost beggars belief. In 2007, 13 animals died; in 2008 the figure was 83; in 2009 it was 122; in 2010 it was 333; in 2011 it was 448; in 2012 it was 668, while in 2013 it reached 1,004. The reason why conservation is failing around the world is quite evident: it is the scale of the assault, itself a direct reflection of the extent of human numbers. It is not just parts of the natural world and its wildlife which are now at risk: it is nature itself. The protection is piecemeal; the threat is systemic.

At the outset, I criticised the two formal defences which have
been put forward in a systematic way to counter the threat and to check nature’s ruination, the pursuit of sustainable development and the argument of the worth of ecosystem services. I believe both are noble undertakings which have made and will make major contributions to conservation, but, as I said at the start, I believe they are flawed: sustainable development for depending on the goodwill of humans who may not themselves be good, and ecosystem services for being limited in what the concept may seek to protect. But it is time now to say that something even more vital is missing from them both: a belief.

Both can engage the intellect; neither can engage the imagination. In the late 1990s the British government gave £41 million to establish a high-profile world centre for sustainable development, the Earth Centre, built on a disused colliery site near Doncaster in South Yorkshire and intended to be a prestigious mass visitor attraction. There were hardly any visitors. It opened in May 2001, closed just over three years later, and is now forgotten. No one is going to stir the soul with sustainable development, no one is going to write poems about it, any more than they are going to write poems about TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity). These may be vitally necessary, but both are mere intellectual constructs; they can fill the minds of policymakers, but they cannot reach the hearts of people.

It is beliefs which do that; I mean, beliefs on the grand scale, faiths, and the briefest glance at history shows what beliefs which fire people’s hearts can do. Consider the spread of Christianity, the spread of Islam, the power of the Renaissance, the power of the Reformation, the power of the socialist project. These are great events, but they are fully matched in historical significance by the calamitous event we are entering upon, the destruction of the natural world; and it seems to me, only a similar belief on the grand scale can hope to hold that back.

That belief, that faith, is available: it is the belief in nature’s
worth. People
are
going to write poems about that; they have done so for thousands of years. But something until now has been absent from the love of nature, from the delight in spring flowers and birdsong and the sense of the reawakening year, from the wonder at dolphins and the wonder at the dawn chorus: the modern understanding we are reaching, that there is an ancient bond with the natural world surviving deep within us, which makes it not a luxury, not an optional extra, not even just an enchantment, but part of our essence – the natural home for our psyches where we can find not only joy but also peace, and to destroy which, is to destroy a fundamental part of ourselves. Should we lose it, we would be less than whole. We would be less than we have evolved to be. We would find true peace impossible.

If we add that understanding to the love so many people already feel for nature, then we have, as it might be said, a new kind of love. It will be a love which is informed, but it will also be a love which, recognising the scale of the threat, is engaged, a love which, in delighting in a flower or a bird, or a meadow or a marsh, or a lake, or a forest, or a range of grasslands, realises it may not be there next year, and will do whatever it can to protect or save it; a love which can be fierce.

Such a belief, on the grand scale, can do great things, as even a single love like that has real worth; but thousands of loves like that have real power, since ordinary people’s feelings are the beginnings of political will.

Now as the twenty-first century crashes upon the natural world like a tsunami, with all its obliteration and merciless unthinking ruin, let this new love be expressed; let it be articulated; let it be proclaimed.

Acknowledgements

Many of the themes in this book regarding the natural world and the grim threats now facing it are ones which I have discussed at length over recent years with a small group of naturalist and writer friends: Mark Avery, Tim Birkhead, Andy Clements, Mark Cocker, Peter Marren and Jeremy Mynott; and which I have discussed further in the alliance of the arts for the natural world, New Networks for Nature, set up by Messrs Birkhead, Cocker and Mynott, with John Fanshawe, in 2009 (and indeed the immediate spark for this book was a presentation I gave at the second N3 meeting in 2010 which dealt with the vanishing of abundance, entitled ‘The Loss of Nature and The Nature of Loss’). I would like to thank them all, and many other members of N3 who share the same concerns, especially Katrina Porteous and Ruth Padel.

The list of other people who have helped me with
The Moth Snowstorm
and given generously of their time is, alas, too long for them to be thanked in detail so I can only name them. They are: Nick Askew, Phil Atkinson, Chris Baines, Helen Baker, Joanna Bromley, Mark Carwardine, Brian Clarke, Darryl Clifton-Dey, Franck Courchamp, Mike Crosby, Sarah Dawkins, Paul Donald, Richard Fox, Rob Fuller, Bob Gibbons, Lynne Greenstreet, Chris Hewson, Les Hill, Andrew Hoodless, Nigel Jarrett, Paul Knight, Georgina Mace, Graham Madge, Louise Marsh, Harriet Mead, Peter Melchett, Richard Moyse, Ian Newton, David Norman, John and Jane Paige, Debbie Pain,
Mark Parsons, Fiona Reynolds, Fiona Roberts, Chris Smith, Richard Smith, Denis Summers-Smith, Paul Stancliffe, Mike Toms, Paul Toynton, Gill Turner, Kate Vincent, Kevin Walker, Martin Warren, Cass Wedd, Colin Wells, Ian Woiwod and others.

Separately, I would like thank Nial Moores in Korea, as well as Spike Millington and Charlie Moores, and in Seoul, David Butterworth and Kim Jinyoung, who were enormously helpful; and I would like to thank the many people who helped me to see all fifty-eight British butterfly species in a single summer: Mark and Rosemary Avery, Robin Curtis, Clive Farrell, Polly Freeman, Mandy Gluth, Liz Goodyear, Dan Hoare, Neil Hulme, David Lambert, Andrew Middleton, Matthew Oates, Steve Peach, Tom Prescott, Jeremy Thomas, Martin Wain, Dave Wainwright, Michael Walter, Martin Warren, Bernard Watts, Ken Willmot and others.

For help with research and editing, I would like to thank Rebecca Lawrence and Marigold Atkey, as well as Simon Blundell, Librarian of the Reform Club, and Lynda Brooks, Librarian of the Linnean Society of London; and I am especially grateful to Ian Newton and Jeremy Mynott, who read the book in typescript. Any errors which remain are of course mine rather than theirs.