ENVIRONMENT | COUNTRY LAD TO AMATEUR ENVIRONMENTALIST
Pulling myself away from the window with it’s enticing view, at the end of my last article I’m now back in the present and the first thing I hear is your question 'So, what is shifting baseline syndrome (SBS)?’ Well can you remember what you did yesterday, last week, month or year? Can you remember 5, 10, 20, 30+ years ago? John Parsonage
THE STRUGGLE F
... it has been many years since I have seen either a lapwing or snipe in these fields
Undoubtedly there will be some things you can recall but there are probably many more you forget. This is the same for each successive generation and it’s the things we don’t pay attention to the less obvious things they are easily forgotten. Too many of us, myself included, have most probably paid the world / environment around us not enough attention. Therefore change and development over time has drastically altered the environment to the detriment of many species (and ultimately ourselves!) but this negative impact isn’t seen because each generation can only really remember back to it's youth (not accounting for those who actually care). We don’t remember or know what our grandparents saw or indeed what their grandparents saw and this is fundamentally the concept of SBS. We are only making decisions on what we know / remember not on the concentrated knowledge built up over a period of time. This can lead to flawed judgement and a weakening of standards / acceptance of poor quality or industry practice. So why is this important and how does it relate to our immediate present in
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our local communities? We are told we are facing a climate crisis and an equally important accelerating process of mass extinction. Some believe it, others don’t. Like a lot of things in life I try to form my decision / opinion based around my own personal experiences. I thought back to my youth, effectively a mere blip in evolutionary timescale and I myself can see the changes on my doorstep. I then think back to what changes my parents, grandparents and previous generations must have seen and experienced and it is genuinely quite concerning.
In our local parish there are a couple of grass fields which have always laid wet but especially more so in the winter. One used to have loads of Snipe in the winter (a small well camouflaged wading bird) as did the local drainage ditches especially in a harsh winter. The other used to have a good number of Lapwings on (another wading bird) but it has been many years since I have seen either a Lapwing or Snipe in these fields. When you used to travel from Deeping to Peterbough on the old A15 you could see large flocks of Golden Plover and Lapwing
