Earlier this year, the Guardian highlighted how nature is declining in the UK and how development pressures are threatening biodiversity (Revealed: 5,000 English nature sites at risk under Labour’s planning proposals, 3 June). Your recent article (Britain one of least ‘nature-connected’ nations in world – with Nepal the most, 1 November) also shows that, despite our high levels of environmental membership, the UK remains one of the least nature-connected societies.
When I first visited the UK in the early 1970s as a child, I was enchanted by the countryside and London’s parks. I absorbed BBC nature programmes, marvelled at the AA Book of the British Countryside and thought Britain was a land where nature thrived. Forty years later, returning as an ecologist, I realised the reality: it’s one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth, with around 98% of native woodland lost.
