Why I’m Walking for Wildlife

It’s a waste bin, it’s the Earth – go on, guess the symbolic meaning…

I promise this will be my almost probably last post about my sponsored walk! On 28th April 2018, I will walking from Aberaeron (in West Wales, UK) to Lampeter (er, still in West Wales, UK). I thought you should know why (apart from the obvious “because he’s totally bonkers” reason).

Wildlife worldwide is in crisis and it isn’t just cute furry animals, pretty flowers, or the other living things lucky enough to have come under Sir David Attenborough’s scrutiny. There is pretty much no order of life that hasn’t been negatively affected by human activities. One of the problems that humans appear to have is why the loss of an ape, a snail, a frog, a tiny water-borne flea or a mammoth elephant might matter.

When I say every living thing is connected to every other living thing, some of you will roll your eyes and zone out, probably thinking I am a lost hippy from the 60s. OK, feel free to do that. It doesn’t change the fact that every living thing is connected to every other living thing. So what you do to stuff affects everything else, and vice versa.

Places like Denmark Farm provide a sanctuary for wildlife, a place where nature happens, despite human activities. If it were to close, it wouldn’t be too long before another native habitat of a pile of British flora and fauna would disappear forever.

It seems no government ever really cares enough about the global environment to protect its native wildlife. It gives huge grants to companies to build infrastructure deemed “essential” whilst failing to see anything other than political and financial gain. Conservation Centres like Denmark Farm struggle on, feeding the rural economy and maintaining the precious ecosystem as best it can. Without that most unnatural of things, money, it simply cannot survive just like the short-tailed bumblebee (declared extinct in 2000).

Here’s the bottom line: destroy the flora and fauna and you cease to have a viable planet to live on. Unless there is some infrastructure company about to build us a new one (where are the Magratheans when you need them?*) then being able to travel from Leeds to London in an hour or so will be utterly, utterly pointless.

That is why I am Walking for Wildlife, for Denmark Farm and the Planet Earth.

Please give generously at: https://localgiving.org/fundraising/21miles4denmarkfarm/

THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH!

 

oOo

• Legendary planet builders, according to Douglas Adams.

My Humble Ophinion

A Wing of beauty

When I saw this on the back door, I had to find my camera and hope the little fella would stay still long enough for some close-up shots of its wings. I am always amazed at how nature deals with the mechanics of flying in all its forms. When you look at how fragile these wings appear to be, it is small wonder our mythos is filled with people emulating these, usually with disastrous consequences (wings held together with wax designed for sunny days? Daedalus, what were you thinking? You should’ve stuck to labyrinths.).

More body

This is, of course, an Ichneumon fly, one of the many varieties and the one that has been to the fake tanning parlour most often. Its legs look as if they are plastic and the antennae look like the string-stuff you use in strimmers.

Crazy Day-glo Orange legs

It is only after I looked up this chap’s Latin name – ophion luteus – that I discovered it can sting.

Turns out, you can go off Mother Nature really quickly.

oOo