Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

We have a massive enthusiasm for wildlife in this country.
Hugh audiences for wildlife programmes.
Vast membership of conservation groups.
But our wildlife is disappearing at astonishing speed.
So what is going on?
Thread: 1/25
theguardian.com/environment/20…

There’s a complete disconnect between our love of wildlife and action to protect it.
There are several reasons for this.
1. An astonishing failure by the conservation groups to demand much better and
to mobilise their members.
Let's unpack this
2/25

We practice what I call “back to front conservation” in this country. We latch onto a particular species, that might be of no global conservation concern, and pour vast resources into protecting it, often at the expense of far rarer species and richer ecosystems.
3/25

When I say “expense”, I don’t just mean money. I mean that by creating habitats for particular, favoured species, we destroy or exclude habitats for many others, often much rarer ones.
4/25

Take the practice by major conservation NGOs of cutting, grazing and burning the land to preserve upland heather or grass, because of the handful of target species this favours. In the west of the country, this prevents the land from reverting to temperate rainforest.
5/25

Temperate rainforest is a much rarer and richer habitat. Burning the land to conserve wildlife is like burning a library to conserve books.
6/25

When you look, by contrast, at the Netherlands, where there are now 200 major #rewilding sites, a large number of species that no one was thinking about, including some extremely rare ones, are turning up unexpectedly. They are now *crossing species off their Red List*.
7/25

Our conservation NGOs have failed to mount an effective challenge to the major cause of wildlife loss: farming. Despite their vast size, they've allowed it to keep beating our wildlife to bits, by biting their lips when they should be making a massive noise.
8/25

Part of the reason for this is the weird split in our minds between industry (“bad”) and farming (“good”): that goes back to Wordsworth and beyond. All I ask is that we apply the same environmental standards to farming as we do to other industries.
9/25

But we have a storybook image of farming that bears no relationship to the realities of the industry, so we struggle to understand that not only current farm practices, but also the *extent* of farming, are the primary drivers of destruction.
10/25

Farming in this country extends across vast areas where it makes no sense: places with poor soils and bad weather, where it continues only through lashings of public money. This land would be much better used for widllife recovery. But the NGOs won’t lobby for it.
11/25

We are fixated in this country with the built environment and its expansion. This is important, but it covers only around 5% of the land. If we care about wildlife and ecosystems, we should be focusing mainly on what’s happening in the other 95%.
12/25

The NGOs also fail to challenge the extraordinary fact that most of our National Parks are basically sheep ranches or grouse shoots. Why aren’t they demanding much, much better? Why do these destructive industries seem to have them under their spell?
13/25

The RSPB (@Natures_Voice) can’t even bring itself to join the massive public demand to ban driven grouse shooting. Instead it undermines it, by calling for this uniquely destructive practice to be, er, licensed. Why?
14/25

What makes all this far worse is the failure to mobilise their memberships. @Natures_Voice, @WildlifeTrusts and @nationaltrust still have a patrician, early 20th-Century approach to campaigning. You send us the money and we’ll represent the issues to the powers that be.
15/25

It’s a failure, and it’s disempowering. Contrast their top-down, leave-it-all-to-us approach with the way @ExtinctionR and #Fridays4Future have completely changed the conversation about climate breakdown. That’s what we need for our wildlife and ecosystems.
16/25

2. An astonishing failure by broadcasters to convey the realities of what is happening to the living world. For 30 years, the main UK broadcasters have deliberately and systematically purged environmental content from their schedules.
17/25

Those who have argued for environmental programming have been met, literally, with a stream of invective. Some of the channel controllers and commissioners (now thankfully all gone) were so foul-mouthed and arrogant they made Paul Dacre look like a choirboy.
18/25

If you challenged them, they would say “people don’t want to watch it.” They produced no evidence, except that a previous programme had flopped (probably because it was rubbish). Imagine saying “that politics film bombed, so we’ll stop covering politics”!
19/25

I *think* the broadcasters are now waking up to these failures, and realising that one of the reasons they have lost so many young viewers is that they haven't been telling the truth about the world. I really hope this apparent shift is real.
20/25

3. The comprehensive capture of government by the farming lobby. The environment department, DEFRA, has come to stand for Doing Everything Farmers’ Representatives Ask. It improved under Michael Gove, but is sliding back to its default position under Theresa Villiers.
21/25

Yes, government should listen to farmers, but it should also listen to everyone else. The same regulatory standards should be applied to farming as to any other industry. But they aren’t. Regulation is far weaker than it should be. Monitoring and enforcement are a joke.
22/25

The regulatory bodies are terribly underfunded and demoralised. They are in no position to stand up for nature.
23/25

Neither government nor the opposition currently give our wildlife and ecosystems the attention they deserve. They are seen as second- or third-tier issues. But they should be treated as a national priority.
24/25

And because the big groups punch so far below their massive weight, there’s no pressure on politicians to do better. The conservation NGOs must either lead the necessary shift, or they will be swept aside by people’s movements.
25/25