After the Walk for Wildlife, how to take the next step

I said I'd go on a walk to save the swifts back in June so wild horses wouldn't have kept me away from Hyde Park last Saturday.

The day dawned grey and overcast as my daughter and I headed for the beginning of the walk and, sure enough, as we walked towards the stage and the crowd of people beginning to gather the rain that had been threatening began to fall, heavy at times.

Wildlife folk are in general a hardy lot so, donning waterproof jackets and putting up umbrellas, we stood and listened to music from Billy Bragg and Grace Petrie and short speeches from influential people in the world of nature and nature writing, such as Robert Macfarlane (co-author of The Lost Words which was distributed to Haringey Primary Schools this year thanks to The Big Green Bookshop) and Dave Goulson (dressed as a bee naturally) as well as Chris Packham, the organiser. However, the real spotlight was on the young people that Packham has gathered around him to energise the young generation to fight back against the terrible losses that the natural world is sustaining in the war on Nature.

It felt like everyone was there from badger protection groups to bug lovers, the save our swifts banners walking beside the save the trees signs. I saw Tottenham groups, people I knew,  it felt like we might be in on the beginning of something big. 

For all our sakes, I hope so.

The first People's Manifesto for Wildlife was delivered to Downing Street by Packham and his young "ministers" with 10,000 sodden but cheerful walkers roaring him on. 

It's a start but the next step can now be taken. Even if you couldn't make the walk, you can do this thing.

This is a political movement. Although the Walk was not tied to a political party, some MPs were there but nowhere near enough of them. They need to become a bigger part of the debate if we are to bring about a cultural change to government and public policy making that centres the natural world. We can't pretend as the environmental movement can be inclined to do that this is above politics. 

So the next step is to write to the local MPs ( I tweeted David Lammy about it but, inevitably, there was no response). The brilliant Mark Avery explains here how to go about contacting your MP and what to say. Send them this link to the manifesto but apparently they're going to get a paper copy too.

Let's ensure it's not put to one side for another day.

Today I read an essay about Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" which was published on this day 27th September in 1962. It was a book I first read in my teens and which brought me to the environmental movement. Then, I believed that, in the 21st century, we would have stopped waging the war  "... against nature, and because man is part of nature,...also man’s war against himself." However, as I reach middle age it seems we are not only still waging it but we're doing so with a suicidal ferocity. 

The final lines of the essay by Maria Popova are heart-stabbing. 

"I think of that piercing Adrienne Rich line channeling the great 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, another scientist who fundamentally revolutionized our understanding of the universe and our place in it: “Let me not seem to have lived in vain.”

Let’s not let Rachel Carson seem to have lived in vain."

Write the letter.

Please.