Your right to roam

As a child growing up in East Anglia, I was lucky enough to be taken on regular trips to the heathland of Suffolk. Foraging for parasol mushrooms, watching muntjac darting through the forest, hearing bitterns booming in the reeds - I learned to take immense joy in the creatures of this land. 

So I’ve felt keenly aware these past few years of the ebbing away of our nature - felt a creeping sadness when, increasingly, a country walk yields little or no bird, rabbit or deer sightings. It’s indisputable, our countryside grows quieter and quieter. 

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Factually speaking - we’ve lost 70% of biodiversity since 1970. We’re the most nature depleted country in Europe. And it’s only getting worse.

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So when my partner gifted me a book called ‘Wild Service’ for my birthday this year, I was immediately intrigued. Compiled by those behind the ‘Right to Roam’ movement, the book is a collection of essays and musings on nature and our relationship to it - with a focus on access. 

I found myself deeply and unusually moved by the book. Each entry a beautifully worded gut punch, marrying both stark facts - with poetic reverence, and again and again driving home our own essential identities as creatures of this earth - and our right to roam it.

It also left me outraged by how much of our access to the land we have been systematically stripped of. How normal it now feels for those of us who do ‘go to’ nature to stick to field margins. And how many of us (despite all of us being intrinsically soothed and nourished by meaningful time spent in nature) don’t have any access to it at all…

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Only 8% of the UK constitutes ‘open access’ land, with some 2,700 hectares of this being technically inaccessible. And around 7.8 million English households, most of them poor, have no access to nature near home - and even less transport options to reach it… 

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So, inspired and wanting to do more to both bring back the countryside symphony of my childhood - and increase access to it, I leapt at the chance to join many of the authors of the book for a weekend at a farm near Loughborough. 

It would be two days of learning and planning and networking - facilitated by Right to Roam members including Nadia Shaikh, Guy Shrubsole, Paul Powlesland and Dr. Amy Jane Beer. 

Over two days, around 70 of us gathered under a bell tent and in farm buildings to learn about how to spot wildlife crime, support and understand farmers, build community, engage the press, and hear how racism and classism underpins many of what we consider to be core and necessary conservation practices. 

I urge you to read the book, seek out a local Right to Roam chapter, or visit the Right to Roam website to learn so much more about what they’re up to and draw your own conclusions. 

But in no particular order - here are my biggest learnings from Wild Service, and my weekend with Right to Roam:

• By locking nature away - whether as a landowner, or crucially in the name of conservation, we are depriving people of their innate rights to roam and know this land on their own terms. And it is only through truly knowing the land and its inhabitants, that we can nurture it.
• Without access to nature - we can’t protect it. When nobody knows the land, or can see it, that land can be exploited, poisoned and damaged without any witnesses.
• Nature isn’t something we should have to ‘go to’, and it certainly shouldn’t be the preserve of people who can pay to access it. We must strive for less delineation between our urban environments and 'the countryside' - less visiting a charity-owned nature preserve, and more meeting and greeting of nature in our daily routines.
• You are part of nature, and while it may be dormant, your connection to it is profound and innate. It can feel tempting sometimes to label humans as the problem - and while many of the daily choices we make are contributing to climate breakdown - it is important to acknowledge that not so very long ago many of our ancestors were guardians of this land, working alongside and in symbiosis with the many plants and creatures around us. 
• While indigenous nature knowledge in the UK has diminished - there is still time to learn from our elders and those who are actively protecting the land.
• Immigrants to the UK have their own native understandings and relationships with nature, and we can learn from one another about nature guardianship.
• Non-organic intensive agriculture is undoubtedly doing enormous damage to nature - but many farmers are under pressure to produce crops at immense speed and for tragically low prices, feel persecuted, alone and misunderstood. Building bridges and putting pressure on supermarkets to pay farmers a fair price for their produce is a better way to tackle this than villainising.
• Above all, we need to bring everyone on this journey. The more of us that feel connected to nature, know when it is or isn’t healthy, and what needs to be done to protect it - the more allies nature has to protect it against the greed, indifference or ignorance that have so ravaged it.

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Reading list:

• Who owns England?
• Braiding Sweetgrass
• Wild Service
• Trespasser's Companion

Organisations:

• Riverford - get fair about farming
• Trash free trails
• Raptor Persecution
• Right to Roam
• Lawyers for Nature
• River Roding Trust
• Wild Card

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