We all want a world where our climate is stable, nature thrives, and where all people have health, happiness, and prosperity – it’s our human right, right?

Unless we change things, we are on track to breach the 1.5°C temperature increase limit set by the Paris Agreement by 2030. The breach risks irreversible environmental degradation and runaway climate change that will affect all our societies and economies.

An essential ally against the climate crisis is nature. We are losing nature at an alarming and unprecedented rate.

If you want to make some changes at home to protect nature, boosting the biodiversity in your garden or outdoor space is a great place to start.

Biodiversity and climate are inextricably linked, you can’t fix one without the other. Help wildlife to thrive in your garden.

Birds of a Feather

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George Frederic Watts, The Wounded Heron, 1837, oil on canvas (Watts Gallery Trust)

On a guided tour of the George Watts Gallery, near Guildford recently, I was surprised to learn about the Victorian artist’s ‘protest pictures’.

Born when our own Percy Shelley was at the height of his powers writing his controversial poems of protest, I felt the two would have got on well, with their artistic commentaries on the ruthlessness of the governments of their day.

One painting which felt particularly poignant was called, ‘A Dedication (to all those who love the beautiful and mourn over the senseless and cruel destruction of bird life and beauty)’.  It depicts an angel weeping over an altar littered with kingfishers and other small birds.

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Transition Horsham seed swap

How to Grow in Harmony with Nature

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Transition Horsham seed swapDid you know that farming more in harmony with nature can not only replenish the soil (without the need for manufacturing and transporting factory-made chemicals long distances in plastic bags) but can also produce crops throughout the year because different foods can be grown together, in the same way as they are on an allotment?

By planting a variety of a different crops each month, and especially by planting crops amongst fruit or nut trees, even more food can be grown in a small area.

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Silent Spring

Sixty Years since Silent Spring (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Silent Spring

Recycle. Repair. Save fuel. Care about Nature. They’re becoming mainstream now. But it wasn’t always thus.

Sixty years ago, things were very different. Big science and technology dominated everything. Problem with insects munching your crops? Destroy them with DDT! Want to get to the shops faster? Try our new ’59 saloon with fuel consumption lower than the Dead Sea! Everything was going to be newer, shinier, faster, bigger-and largely made of plastic.

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Child in Tree

A Fond Farewell for our Green Queen (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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children and natureAs one of her final decisions, the Queen chose to mark her Platinum Jubilee this year with the Queen’s Green Canopy, a unique tree planting initiative which invited people from across the United Kingdom to “Plant a Tree for the Jubilee”.  The first wave of planting took place in the spring, and as we mourn her passing, how fitting it seems that the second planting season will be taking place, from October until the end of the year, creating a living memorial to a wonderful monarch who embodied dignity and wisdom, and who stayed up to date and informed in her serious passion to serve, right up until mere days before her passing. Read more

Crystal glass and bees

It’s Crystal Clear…We have a water crisis (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Crystal glass and bees

A surprise from a zoom I attended last week was that many people are unaware that we have a real water crisis here in Horsham District, the first ever in the UK on this scale.  The huge water shortfall means that all building work is now on hold while solutions are sought.

Southern Water provide drinking water for over a million properties, and remove and recycle the waste water of almost five million people.  Quite a task!

Although we have 205 reservoirs, this provides only 7% of our water.  The majority comes from underground aquifers, with around 25% being taken from rivers.

The cost of this service from 2020-2025 is around £1,000 per property, with improvements ranging from digitisation, artificial intelligence and machine learning to re-vamping the 3,500 pumping stations and 40,000 kilometres of sewers.  Over a thousand options are being modelled including banning non-essential water use and building a desalination plant at Shoreham.

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Rainforest

The Importance of Rainforests (First Published in West Sussex County Times)

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RainforestI have been blessed to spend 20 years working in the Ecuadorian Amazon and Choco cloud forest, a world away from my home in Pulborough.

It has been like having parallel lives.

The UK has one of lowest levels of tree cover in Europe at 13%, globally ranking 136th out of 189 countries. Looking down from a plane over our green desert fields, we can see how few trees there really are with only tiny patches of ancient woodland remaining, maybe unaware that here in England our level of biodiversity is painfully low.  Although the woodland cover has doubled in the last 100 years this is mainly with non-native conifer plantations, where very little diversity can exist.

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Swifts

Swift Action Needed: Citizen Science for Horsham Swift Box Project (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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SwiftsSwifts have been thriving for about 70 million years, when they would have been nesting in crevices in rocks and trees alongside the last of the Tyrannosaurs. But despite millions of years, something has now gone dramatically wrong, and UK numbers have plummeted in the last 25 years.

These extraordinary birds can remain in the air for three whole years because everything else apart from nesting is done on the wing.  Only when they reach maturity and start to build will they touch anything solid.

No other bird can fly faster in level flight. They eat insects, drink raindrops or water from a lake, even mating and sleeping on the wing, up near Earth’s stratosphere.  Their huge eyes are surrounded by bristles that act as sun visors and their feet are incredibly strong and so needle-sharp and tiny that they are unable to hop or walk, so they fly directly into the holes, cling to walls or slip into spaces where they can easily drop back out again.

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Conserving the Coastline for People and Nature (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Photo by Christine Hartley

Keeping our coastline safe and sustainable is everyday work at Worthing Coastal Office. Rob Dove and his highly trained team cover the beaches from Shoreham to Ferring in all weathers. They run foot patrols, quad bikes, a jet ski and a powerful rib. Much of their work is about people: finding lost children in summer, first aid, by-laws and clearing up after illegal beach fires. But they know nature must go hand in hand with people.

Plastics of all sizes are an obvious issue.  A particularly deadly problem for the wildlife is the abandoned fishing nets which kill hundreds of creatures. These nets are collected by the beach wardens along with other plastic and made safe. Injured animals are cared for until experts can restore them to health.

“Despite everything, our water quality is good!” declares Rob encouragingly.  “We see seals, dolphins, and huge shoals of mackerel.

“As covid reduced human activity, the animals seemed to gain confidence and moved back in.” Read more

The Mystery by Clive Cobie (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Beneath our feet is a world that many do not even consider to be part of us, yet within two handfuls of healthy soil are more living organisms than people on our planet. It is within the first four inches that most food chains start; at the microscopic levels, bacteria eating protozoa and nematodes. These […]

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Sussex teenagers unite to take action on climate by Max Moorcroft (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Sussex Green Living’s Youth Eco Forum is a young persons’ environmental group where we speak about current news and creatively demonstrate climate activism in many forms. The YEF was founded in June 2020 in the hope of connecting like-minded teenagers to make a difference for our planet during a period of disconnection… so we started […]

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Nature Networks by Isabella Tree (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Imagine a beautiful Persian carpet. Then cut it into a thousand squares. What do you get? Not a thousand smaller Persian carpets but a thousand scraps of cloth unravelling at the edges. That’s what’s happening to nature in the modern landscape, the scraps becoming ever smaller as the threads begin to trip us up. It is causing the Sixth Mass Extinction – a catastrophic loss of biodiversity affecting the whole planet.

We can see the unravellings all around us if we know how to look. A patch of ancient woodland surrounded by a monoculture of arable is vulnerable to ‘edge effect’ – the drift of chemical sprays, exposure to wind, extreme heat and frost – eating away at habitat on its periphery. That single ancient oak in the middle of a field of wheat has its roots assaulted by ploughing every year. The fine fungal filaments – or mycorrhizae – leading off its roots in search of nutrients are drenched several times a year in agricultural chemicals. The tree can no longer communicate underground with other trees. It is like a lone elephant in a zoo, deprived of the society of its herd, doomed to die alone. Read more

Kelp forestSylvian Cleymans

Sussex Kelp Forest Leads the Way by Keir Hartley (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Kelp forest

The new kelp forest off the Sussex coast is becoming real. That’s the message from Councillors and wildlife and fisheries experts. And it puts Sussex in the forefront of efforts to combat global warming, habitat destruction and the return to a cleaner, more sustainable world.

The marine forest which stretched between Chichester and Rye was destroyed by storms and trawling in the 1980s but is now being restored.

“Given the extent of kelp loss it may take many years for kelp to recover to the density and distribution once known”, says Tim Dapling, Chief Officer for Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority.  “Early information appears to show changes in the environment already taking place since trawling management was introduced in March 2021. It will be very interesting to see changes in 4-5 years time.” Read more

Seal of success! by Keir Hartley (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Seals on our Sussex coast show that conservationists are getting something right. It’s not just Gavin the well-loved harbour seal who sports with paddle boarders in Littlehampton; we can see these marvellous creatures now in Chichester harbour, Eastbourne and in the Adur, where two seals named Bramble and Rivier (who swam in from Belgium) have generated their own following.

According to Zoologist Stephen Savage of the Sea Watch Foundation, it’s a wonderful sign that our waters are clean enough to support food for these large animals. “They like mullet, flatfish and crabs mainly” he explains, “but they hunt anywhere in tidal or brackish water, even as far up as The Black Rabbit at Arundel.”

Stephen, who is County Recorder for Sea Mammals, has studied seals since 1997. The public have been stalwart supporters. Initially he collated sighting reports, but eight years ago increasing seal numbers allowed him to build a picture of populations in Sussex. “We hope to learn even more through citizen science” says Stephen.  “The interaction of seals and people will significantly add to this story.” Read more

Beyond Be-Leaf by Catherine Sleeman of Horsham Youth Eco Forum (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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On Wednesday 14th July, Sussex Green Living’s Youth Eco Forum led a day of outdoor activities in an area of ancient woodland near Billingshurst. The event, named Beyond Be-Leaf, hoped to give young people who would not usually have the opportunity to get out in the countryside a chance to get hands-on and creative, learning about the natural world. Youth Eco Forum Member, Flora Burleigh reflected that the best thing about the day was, “simply observing the students as they were immersed in nature, watching them be inspired and actually having the opportunity to pay a closer attention to the woodland environment.”

Year 7 and 8 pupils from Tanbridge House School, Christ’s Hospital School and City of London Academy Southwark spent the day learning about the local wildlife, woodland management, and positive climate solutions. They had the opportunity to explore their connection to nature through creative writing and dance workshops as well as learning woodcraft skills and going on a nature walk. Some of the young attendees had never been to the countryside before and this made the event a particularly exciting and revelatory experience. Read more

Youth Eco Forum

Beyond Be-Leaf: A Day in the Woods by Liz Stack

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Experience Education Employment Environment by Morag Warrack (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Keith Colin at Sompting

Earlier this month I had the great pleasure of being shown around two of the four sites managed by Keith and Liane who, along with a great team of trustees run the charity Sustainable Sussex.

Volunteer Fiona, who lives in a flat 20 minute’s bike ride away, told me, “I’ve been helping for two years now.  It was a real lifesaver during lockdown!”

The small area (it’s less than one acre) is rich in birdsong – all the more noticeable as there is little or no traffic noise.  The scent of elderflower blossoms fills the air as swallows swoop low over the small fields. Read more

Gardening to save the planet by Kia Trainor CPRE Sussex Director (first published in West Sussex County Times)

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Female Orange tip

Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at the University of Brighton. His books, include ‘The Garden Jungle’ and ‘Gardening for Bumblebees’.

At a recent talk, he explained that we need insects to pollinate our food crops.  In the UK some growers are now employing people to hand-pollinate their plants, because insect numbers have declined so dramatically.

We can help here though. The area of gardens across England is over 4.5 times that of national nature reserves, so by gardening for nature together we can make a difference.

As part of the CPRE Sussex ‘Festival of Spring’, Prof Goulson explained how we can garden to save the planet: Read more

Fun family bird spotting

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Why not learn your A – Z of Common British Garden Birds   We are all becoming more acquainted with our homes and gardens. We have rediscovered the simple pleasures of watching the birds come in and out of our space. If you have found yourself becoming something of a twitcher, you might want to […]

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Should we pay to breathe?

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WE PAY FOR FOOD AND WATER WHY NOT FOR AIR? Every one of us depends on oxygen without ever questioning where it comes from. Almost half the oxygen we breathe comes from the oceans and the other half from plant life. Whilst millions of tiny trees are being planted, old intact ancient forests full of […]

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Wildlife friendly gardening

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Our Horsham Climate Cafe on 5th September was an inspiring and informative talk about Wildlife Friendly Gardening.  Every green space is critical for our wildlife, even your garden, as all our UK gardens form more space than all the UK nature reserves!

Carrie the founder of Sussex Green Living opened the event with a reminder that we humans are not at the top of a wildlife pyramid but are simply part of the web of all life.  All the living things in an ecosystem depend on all the other things – living and non-living for continued survival – for food supplies and other needs.  Humans, animals and plants depend on a complex system of food for survival. Stressing the importance of using bug hotels, bird boxes and bat boxes in our gardens, but be aware that bats need about 1,000 mosquito type insects per hour, so a pond is almost essential!

Joanne Knowles was our second speaker who is passionate about encouraging us all to seek out peat -free compost. Read more

Help keep Rookwood green

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The Keep Rookwood Green bio blitz on Saturday 15th August was an outstanding success which a stream of timed arrivals of families who went to record the wildlife.  The council plan to build 1,100 new houses on Roowood Golf Course, which is located next to Horsham’s nature reserve, this area makes up 28% of Horsham’s large green space.  This wildlife-rich natural world is vital for our wellbeing and survival, once built on it is lost and gone forever.

You can listen to the talk by Keep Rookwood Green and see their presentation here.

People are being encouraged to write to their councillors, sign the Keep Rookwood Green petition and carry out their own bio blitz on a day which suits you and any friends or family members. Use this map and log to plot your finds, take photos and share them in the social media with this hashtag #foundonrookwood. You can find Keep Rookwood Green social media details and the petition on this page.  Read more

Help Keep Rookwood Green!

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Join the Keep Rookwood Green Campaign on Saturday 15th August to become citizen scientists at this bio blitz, help carry out surveys to help record all living species in the area. You can book timed tickets for staggered visits through this Eventbrite link or learn more here  www.KeepRookWoodGreen.org.

Watch the talk Keep Rookwood Green gave at our Horsham Future Forum meeting on Tuesday 16th June here.

 

 

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29% of Horsham’s green space could be lost

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HELP KEEP ROOKWOOD GREEN PLEASE!

On Tuesday 16th June our weekly Horsham Future Forum and Youth Eco Forum attendees listened to an excellent talk by Peter Simpson, Trustee of the Friends of Warnham Local Nature Reserve and Sally Sanderson, Chair of Friends of Horsham Park. Friends of Warnham Local Nature Reserve, Friends of Horsham Park and the Horsham Society have formed Keep Rookwood Green Alliance and are campaigning to retain Rookwood Golf Course as a public green space.

Those of us on this week’s Zoom call were shocked to learn of the ecological damage and the 29% loss of Horsham’s large green space that will occur if 1,100 houses are built on Rookwood Golf Course. The decision will be finalised before August and there is a short window of opportunity in which we can influence Horsham District Councillors. The more of us that make our views known known, the greater the chance that we will be heard and that we can Keep Rookwood Green!

Here are some ways that you can get involved: Read more