“What’s the point of wildlife?”

Countryfile Magazine recently asked online readers if otters were on their “wildlife bucket list” and hopefully, from hilltop to

shoreline, you have enjoyed a bucket’s worth of wildlife this summer across Britain.

But rather than just ticking it off your list, let’s take a moment to appraise the point of wildlife in our lives today. Do we really need it everyday? Are we spending too much on iconic species at the expense of the less charismatic? What it has got to do with our groceries – and what would our lives be like without it?

Human lifestyles certainly have a detrimental impact on wildlife. The Government has become increasingly aware of the danger to – and value of – the environment, perhaps triggered by popular mood. In 2011, the Government received the highest-ever responses to a white paper: the consultation for the ‘Natural Choice’, a paper setting out the government’s vision for the natural environment over the next 50 years, received over 15,000 replies. However, while admirable feedback, that is just a tiny fraction out of our 64 million population, the majority of whom perhaps still miss the point of wildlife.

Wildlife at bayIt seems we want wildlife to be there – but not necessarily to get too close to it. Television fits that bill admirably in sating our requirement, but when the time comes to partake in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, we are affronted by red-in-tooth-and-claw nature, as a sparrowhawk devours a blackbird. Or we are repelled by acts that reflect our own needs, such as the author Jeanette Winterson killing and eating a wild rabbit.

As predominantly urban dwellers today, the more urban we’ve become, the less we see the point of wildlife – when, in fact, the more we need it. We should all have an interest in protecting wildlife on our

country views

doorstep or in our backyard, but despite the fact that it’s recognised as contributing to our well-being, lifting our soul, pollinating our crops and turning the soil, many of us survive from day-to-day without any contact with wildlife, and ignore its shrinking state.

From park to garden, moorland to farmland, ditch to river, our increasingly squeezed wildlife shares its home with the same habitat that we use for farming, leisure and houses.

We spend millions every year on wildlife-friendly schemes on agricultural land to

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We spend a fortune conserving nature yet most of us don’t understand its importance to our everyday lives, says Rob Yorke

offset the impact of food production and stump up cash to prevent rare species from sliding into extinction. As we spend less of our income on groceries now, we compensate by setting up legacies to conservation organisations to hang onto wildlife later.

These organisations set the agenda on our behalf, and tell us they need our cash to do it. Earlier this year, the RSPB tweeted that it had 1.1 million members – yet, some argue that even with fine intentions wrapped in an otter-printed teatowel, there has been precious little benefit to wildlife.

Responsible choicesWhere’s the personal responsibility? Can we afford to just look at wildlife, enshrine it, yet refuse to understand how much we must participate in its – and ultimately our own – survival? Perhaps the white paper should have been named ‘Food Choices’ to connect us with wildlife via our own consumption.

For this inextricable link – between food, flora and fauna – undoubtedly creates tensions. We want wildlife, we love wildlife, we have an inherent need to connect to it – but we are eating its habitat. Not quite literally, but pretty close. We eat breakfast before we go bird-watching. The growing of our porridge oats (organic or not) erodes the habitat in which wildlife survives.

The more we understand wildlife, the more we realise its value to us, either as insects and moths acting as pollinators, as worms conditioning topsoil or as sea eagles and red grouse contributing to rural economies. More than a spade-full of wildlife is required to fill up our everyday bucket, as not only are our lives enriched by wildlife, but it pointedly enables us to thrive. CF

We want wildlife, we love wildlife,

but we are eating its habitat

Rob Yorke is a rural commentator and surveyor based in the Black Mountains, South Wales. As a hunter-naturalist, he is passionate about informed

countryside debate – even if he has to take a contrary view. Follow him on Twitter @blackgull

16 BBC COUNTRYFILE October 2014