Bridport Times March 2020

Page 78

Literature

Curlew Kerrie Ann Gardner

RED SIXTY SEVEN

F

Sara Hudston, Writer

orty years ago, there were 40 million more wild birds in the UK. What a loss! In the Marshwood Vale, where I live, there were once nightingales in the coppices and skylarks in the meadows. They are long gone, eliminated by changes in farming practices. Both species are now on the UK Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern. More than a quarter of British bird species are facing extinction or steep decline. Habitat loss, pesticide use and the increasingly chaotic climate are the chief causes. RSPB research shows that by 1990 we had lost half the population of our farmland birds. By 2010 it had halved again. Are you one of the few people still reading this? It’s understandable if you want to give up and turn away in despair. The temptation to ignore the environmental crisis often sends me scurrying to the Pursuit of Hoppiness to hunker down with my friends. You see, I’ve got solastalgia, and yes, it’s painful. Solastalgia is the distress caused by environmental change in places you know well. Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the word to describe, ‘the homesickness you have when still at home.’ In my writing, I pay close attention to the landscape and living world around Bridport, so I notice what’s happening. It’s not a separate world from us – we are part of a community that includes all the beings in the area, the human and the more than human. That means not only the

78 | Bridport Times | March 2020


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