A tale of 2 rivers: an illustration of the ecological mess this country is in. Just before lockdown, I walked the #Ver, one of the chalk streams that - with the exception of a few in northern France - are unique to southern England. It was dead.
Then on Friday I was taken by @Feargal_Sharkey to walk the #Itchen, one of the most famous stretches of fishing in the world, & which is still just about holding its own against water companies desperate to extract its water & fill it with sewage.
Compare and contrast the Itchen & the Ver at identical stages of their length. The waters of the Itchen still flow, still sustain life.
The waters of the Ver are gone. Extracted by a predatory water company. Left to die by the Environment Agency. The river is dead, and everything that depends on the river is dead.
And we have the nerve to lecture Brazil or Indonesia when we are heedlessly sacrificing our chalk streams - a unique ecological habitat - on the altar of greed.
Anger at this should transcend politics. If only @ExtinctionR & fly-fishermen would make common cause, & take each other's arms, & form a human chain along the length of the Ver to protest its murder, what an extinction rebellion that would be.
So, in a spirit of optimism, @ExtinctionR, meet @VerValleySoc. @VerValleySoc, meet @ExtinctionR.
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