Our Living Churchyard - November

There’s so much going on in the world at the moment that is giving people real pain and difficulty in their lives – the terrible tragedy that is Ukraine and the high inflation at home that deeply affects so many of us – that you may be forgiven for feeling that the protection of the environment is a trivial luxury that we can’t really allow ourselves at this time. I want to argue why I think it’s not trivial, not a luxury and indeed now becomes more relevant than ever.

In 1859 Charles Darwin closed one of the most famous books in the history of science with the words ‘It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.’

Darwin’s understanding forms a foundation on which the science of ecology which is still being built. As recently as the 1980s, scientists defined five kingdoms: plants are producers of resources; animals are consumers of resources; while fungi, bacteria and protists – microbes which live mainly in the soil - are decomposers. These groups all interact with, and are dependent on, one another. Living things are not simply a collection of different life forms that happen to coexist, but rather part of a cyclical process, which makes it so important that we don’t disturb one life form without understanding the effect this will have on all the others. We’ve been disrupting the cycle for many years now; we’re just beginning to appreciate the implications of this for the human race.

In 1615, the astronomer, physicist and mathematician Galileo was investigated by the Roman Inquisition who concluded that his view, that the earth was not the centre of the universe but that it rotates around the sun, was foolish, absurd and heretical since it contradicted Holy Scripture. He was tried by the Spanish Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. Our views today of how the environment works are very similar. We feel that we are at the centre of the ecological universe, the rest of which revolves around us. This can only be described as taxonomic chauvinism: in most ecological processes members of other kingdoms, such as microbes, fungi and plants, are far more important than birds or mammals.

Fortunately, each of us can make a difference. Join a conservation body and work with them. Create your own wild space, where you can allow nature-friendly plants to flourish. You’ll be surprised how quickly wildlife comes back to claim its own, and to delight you with its beauty, once you give it even the smallest helping hand.

Nigel Symington, nigel.symington@gmail.com