It's Still Life

Day 11. Write an essay on the importance of protecting local wildlife habitats.

Sunday’s Soapbox at Speaker’s Corner (284 words, 2 minutes of your time)

Let me put it this way – the loss of one species within an ecosystem, whether plant, insect or animal effects them all. Protecting one protects them all. And us.

So when the chef at your local pub decides to pitch a new menu to a posher clientele, and he pulls up all the wild garlic from the banks of the chalk stream, I’ll tell you, he’s not considering the damage done to pollinators, the bees and wasps and butterflies. They rely on a plant’s blossom to survive. And when that same chef thinks, Oh, I’ll put shaved wild fennel salad with Portuguese orange dressing on the menu, he doesn’t consider the air-mile-footprint for those oranges that he’ll squeeze for the juice alone, nor does he know or even care, that wild fennel is favoured by slugs and snails, which are coincidently a hedgehog and bird’s favourite meal, assuming that any hedgehogs are still in your neighbourhood because we’ve put up fencing between our houses that blocks their established snuffling routes.

Wild foraging is not nature-based thinking, and it’s not food without cost, contrary to what TV chefs tell us. It endangers our landscape, and threatens our natural heritage. Perhaps we’d be more aware of the crisis we cause for wildlife, when we forage for food in woodland, if all our food was pulled from the supermarket, like we’ve done for the bees and butterflies.

Let me put it this way – we went mad when the supermarkets had no toilet paper a few years ago. Enough said, I think.

ps: I’m watching bees climb in and out of foxgloves in my garden, and I am forever grateful for that sight.

Written for #thewildness challenge, Day 11. Artwork is created using Midjourney. Imagery and poems ©Misky 2023.