Thanks Paul. Great to be here too! No I don’t have a website or page for our project yet, being affiliated with the library unfortunately ties my hands slightly. I’d like to have a FB page for the ‘Hedging & Wildflower Project’ and for our monthly Tetbury Library ‘Nature Club’, but there are strict rules from GCC and the powers that be on the social media development team about official FB pages and websites and we’re not allowed to do them. But certainly as a private person, I’ve been thinking of setting up something about making gardens mini havens for nature and linking them up to create a patchwork of wildlife friendly spaces as well as ideas to transform small unloved/urban spaces like the area around the library. Having lived in the countryside my whole life, I’ve seen first hand the devastating reduction in species, how modern agricultural practices have destroyed habitats from topsoil to scrubland. Forget insects squashed on car windscreens, when I was a kid you had to keep your mouth closed when cycling or you’d have a mouthful of bugs! Nowadays, the reduction in flying insects is frightening and with them the loss of animals and birds that feed on them. Just breaks my heart and unfortunately so many people have made it a country v city issue, when in fact lots of country folk like me are just as against modern agricultural practices and awful things like fox hunting precisely because we’ve grown up and witnessed them first hand. Government needs to encourage farmers to work with nature not against it and become wildlife advocates like those regenerative farmers on Wild Ken Hill and the Knepp Estate and organic farms like Riverford who for years have used clever planting and wildlife rich habitats to reduce pests instead of drowning the land in chemicals. We have a long way to go.
