August 2021

Prof. Brian Cox concluded one of his recent documentaries about the cosmos by saying that “we are here because we have to be”. I have just been watching the wildlife in our garden, and there are fledgling jackdaws calling to each other and their parents, collared doves trying to defend their nest from a magpie, a grey squirrel eating an unripe apple in our fruit tree and a Planet Earth-coloured blue tit taking sunflower hearts from a bird feeder. This is in a background of tall birch trees, an herby lawn allowed to grow with clover and birds-foot-trefoil and a pond full of metamorphosing tadpoles/frogs. All there because they have to be!

I try not to make value judgements about the organisms in the garden, simply because they have to, or should, be there. However, it may be that we humans have to sometimes attempt to correct mistakes of the past by ‘gardening for wildlife’, which does sometimes mean making value judgements, i.e., weeding, especially in favour of those animals and plants that have been rendered rare by some of our human predecessors.

Every plant and animal species has a history, jackdaws are a type of crow and all crows originated in Australia before radiating naturally around the globe due to their ability to fly. Grey squirrels originated in North America but were introduced by humans to Britain in 1876. They have decimated Britain’s native red squirrels, but are still innocent animals with entertaining behaviour. If we get too judgemental about an organism, we could end up persecuting them all unfairly for some reason or another. After all, we are part of nature as well. However, the natural world needs management because we humans have a responsibility of stewardship due to our disproportionate numbers and impact upon it. As Sir David Attenborough has said “We have overrun the planet”. Do we have a moral duty to carefully share this blue, yellow, green, white and black Earth with all other forms of life that should be where we find it?

When I was a teenager, I discovered a lovely piece of prose called ‘The Desiderata’ (Things Desired) written by Max Ehrmann (1920) who pre-empted Prof. Cox’s words as it includes: …”whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should ”.