Living Adventurously There is a Broken Connection Between Cities and Wildness - Living Adventurously 13
Professor Ian Rotherham is an expert on a range of environmental issues, including urban wildlife, extreme weather, flooding and climate change. He has published extensively in academic journals, and has released a number of books on UK wildlife and the environment. Ian is a man positively bursting with enthusiasm and knowledge and ideas.
Ian poured forth a cheerful stream of lessons on the environment, eco-tourism and rewilding.
We talked about the cultural severance between cities and wildness, and the reassuring dictum that you can change the world, a little bit at a time: perhaps by beginning with rewilding your back garden.
PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE LIVING ADVENTUROUSLY PODCAST
(It’s completely free, zero hassle to do (click here), but really helpful for me trying to get a new podcast off the ground. If you’re feeling extra kind, please leave a review on the app – that really helps.)
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn (“Alexa, please play the Living Adventurously podcast”) or on your favourite podcast platform such as Overcast, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Breaker, Soundcloud, Castbox, Castro.
THIS PODCAST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY KOMOOT
Your very own outdoor experiences are waiting for you. Go explore more with komoot. Use the voucher code ADVENTUROUS to claim your free region maps bundle.
The personalised planning and navigation tools ensure you plan the adventure that’s perfect for you. Komoot is Europe’s number 1 outdoor app, with route planning and navigation functionality, and strong community-driven inspirational features in the form of recommended Highlights and inspirational route Collections. It is used by nearly 10 million adventurers worldwide. Komoot is becoming the app of choice for cyclists and hikers the world over, with rapid community growth in the UK, the US and other parts of Europe.
You can see my ride’s route on komoot here.
SHOW NOTES
- If you enjoy listening to this episode over a cup of coffee and think it might be worth the price, you can buy me a coffee here: www. ko-fi.com/al_humphreys
- Keep up to date with future episodes (and my other adventures, projects and books) with my free monthly newsletter: alastairhumphreys.com/more/subscribe
- Say hello on Twitter and Instagram: @al_humphreys
- Ian Rotherham's blog
- Ecotourism should not only be "take only photographs, leave only footprints", but we also need to try to help people in a benign way.
- Adventure literature is often about "defeating nature" rather than pausing for a while or caring for the landscape.
- We need more respect and awareness when dealing with the vulnerable resource of the natural world.
- How best to minimise your damage and maximise your positive impact
- Rewilding, in all its guises, (including rewilding the mind) can save the NHS millions, as well as all the other benefits.
- Sheffield Trees Action Group
- The communities that are able to protest about their environment are usually the most affluent ones.
- Trees give you a sense of place and seasonality. They are therapeutic and spiritually uplifting.
- The new urban wild and bringing wild to the people
- Cultural severance in urban landscapes - a broken connection between cities and wildness
- Feral - George Monbiot
- Shadow woods - Ian Rotherham
- You can change the world, even incrementally and a bit at a time. Rewilding your garden is a good start.
- Globally and in Britain, in terms of nature conservation, biodiversity and sustainability we are indeed in a very bad way – essentially the ecosystem is broken and we need to mend it
- The problems are not as simple as carbon = climate change = plant lots of trees! Such naïve thinking is actually dangerously misconceived
- Rewilding offers a radical new approach to resolving many of the issues in ways which are, paraphrased from Lawton (2010), bigger, bolder, better, more joined …..However, this idea needs to connect with a far wider community especially in urban areas
- Additionally, approaches have to be paid for and not just with ‘ecosystem services which are community goods’ – but with MONEY ….. (This is a fact not popular with politicians for example!)
- I suggest that farmers & farming have to be part of the SOLUTION and are not, as often portrayed, the problem
TRANSCRIPT
Below is the transcription of our conversation. It’s done by AI so is perhaps a wee bit ropey here and there. If these transcripts prove sufficiently useful then I will make the effort to clean then up and make them better. Do let me know if you think it’s worth my time to do that. (Or, better still, do it for me…!). If you’d like to listen as you read along you can do that here:
https://otter.ai/s/4mbmzPCyRr2gYKfRXYdvbQ