Nature News from RSPB Scotland

EPISODE 22 SAVING OUR WILD ISLES

• RSPB Scotland

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Stephen and Kate are looking back at the amazing wildlife featured in the Wild Isles series. They are also looking forward to the plans being made to protect and renew it. James How from RSPB Scotland's Loch Gruinart nature reserve on Islay gives us the inside story of how the Wild Isles team filmed White Tailed Eagles hunting Barnacle Geese. Stephen chats to one of the people who has taking part in putting together the People's Plan For Nature. And there's all the usual nature news.

LINKS

Search for Saving Our Wild Isles on the BBC iplayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
Learn more about the People's Plan For Nature https://peoplesplanfornature.org/
Read more about the gamekeeper case we discuss here https://www.rspb.org.uk/about-the-rspb/about-us/media-centre/press-releases/gamekeeper-pleads-guilty-to-shooting-sparrowhawk-on-scottish-grouse-moor/

Unknown:

This is Nature News from RSPB Scotland.

Stephen Magee:

Hello and welcome to our podcast Nature News from RSPB Scotland. I'm Stephen Magee. This is where we bring you stories about nature from global news to the little things we're noticing every day.

Kate Kirkwood:

And I'm Kate Kirkwood. There's never been a time when staying in touch with nature and acting to protect it has been more important.

Stephen Magee:

We're keen to hear your nature news, whether it's the little moments you've experienced our your thoughts on the big issues affecting the planet. You can contact us on Twitter @RSPBScotland or you can email us at podcast.scotland@rspb.org.uk.

Kate Kirkwood:

And please do subscribe and leave us a review because it helps other folk find us in the podcast jungle.

Stephen Magee:

Hello, we are down by the river.

Kate Kirkwood:

We are.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, the Water of Leith, it's kind of my patch, kind of your patch.

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, it's the top end of your patch, beginning of my patch.

Stephen Magee:

Beginning of your patch, yeah yeah, so it is looking extremely spring-like today. There is a lot of green stuff going on. There's some flowering stuff going on, birds are... even although it's like the afternoon birds are singing, yeah yeah.

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, it's good...

Stephen Magee:

I think that's a Nuthatch? I'm pretty sure that's a Nuthatch, yeah, so...

Kate Kirkwood:

Lots of lovely green fragrant things as well there's lots of few-flowered leek and wild garlic on the go.

Stephen Magee:

And of course the river, so it is...yep, that's definitely a Nuthatch, fantastic.

Kate Kirkwood:

That's an amazing call.

Stephen Magee:

So yep, what we are going to talk about today is really following up on Wild Isles. And also we're going to chat to you a wee bit about some of the things that you can do with the energy that has been created by Wild Isles and some of the activity that's going to be ongoing but first, as ever, we will begin with our nature news. So my nature news... I had a little wander a few days ago when it was sunny and just had a lovely like little warblery moment when they were...so I was in some birch trees like over at Blackford Hill. And there were loads of Chiffchaffs, the Chiffchaffs seem to... I don't know, I'll need to ask a grown up, but the Chiffchaff has seemed to come back or at least start singing slightly sooner than the Willow Warblers.

Kate Kirkwood:

I've not heard any Chiffchaffs yet.

Stephen Magee:

Right so, loads of Chiffchaffs. And then there was in the tree next to the Chiffchaff there was a Willow Warbler, it was like one of those things where you get a little field guide in reality

Kate Kirkwood:

Haha, that sounds lovely.

Stephen Magee:

So it was really good. You know, if I just seen them, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but being able to hear them. It was fantastic. It was great. What about you?

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, again, more springy kind of moments of just noticing the changes. I think everything... I think sort of as we described in the intro, everything's just gotten very green and very lush. And it really begins to feel like everything's waking up, the trees are beginning to kind of...ohh, they're beginning to maybe think about putting their leaves out and it's maybe still a wee bit early, but it's still feeling like spring is like beginning to hit momentum and it's going to keep going which is lovely.

Stephen Magee:

It's just kinda slow going through the gears, isn't it but it's really picking up the pace.

Kate Kirkwood:

Definitely.

Stephen Magee:

Now as ever, it's not just about our nature news. It's about what's going on in the wider world as well. The results came out recently for Bird Garden Birdwatch. First of all, thank you to the almost 700,000 people who took part - amazing numbers.

Kate Kirkwood:

That's amazing, so good.

Stephen Magee:

The number one was the House Sparrow again. Have to say though, I mean that's... there are also some quite sobering things in there...

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, some losses

Stephen Magee:

And particularly with the House Sparrow is they reckon that since we started doing Big Garden Birdwatch, we've seen something like a 60% decline in the number of House Sparrows reported despite them still being the number one bird reported. And we've also seen some pretty serious drop offs in finch numbers.

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, that is worrying. There's sort of disease within spreading within finch populations.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, trichomonosis. So there's various diseases and you know, hitting greenfinches particularly hard, so you know as ever the Big Garden Birdwatch, it's exciting, it's great thing to do. We're very grateful to people for doing it but also worth keeping in mind that it does show us like some of the difficulties that are affecting these relatively common bird populations.

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, really valuable data and also just for people's enjoyment and people's sort of... connections to nature is very, very important.

Stephen Magee:

It's important thing to do. Other thing, which is a mixture of good and bad news, a gamekeeper called a Rory Parker who was working at the Moy Estate in the Highlands of Scotland pled guilty to shooting a Sparrowhawk. Now, that is obviously... it's depressing to still be talking about this and it is depressing that it happens. The good news is the RSPB Scotland Investigations Team filmed this happening, and were able to see it through and make sure you know, contribute to the prosecution. So in that respect it is a victory, you know, he was fined one and a half thousand pounds and it is an indication at least to people who are considering doing this stuff that folk are watching and that there are consequences.

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important that people are aware that they can be prosecuted for these crimes, they're not, they're not just things that have no impact. And again, I suppose it's just a testament to the hard work that investigations teams do to make sure that these people and their behaviours are actually prosecuted.

Stephen Magee:

So as we said, the main thing we want to have a chat about is Wild Isles, it has been amazing.

Kate Kirkwood:

Oh, it's been so lovely having a kind of sort of something iconic to look forward to on a Sunday night. I'm a big fan of like, various different pottery and bakery series etc. But it's really nice to have nature back on our screens again. And really something. Something that's almost tangible, I think, because of the focus of Wild Isles being on the UK.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, no, it's I think so that UK thing has been the thing that's been really interesting about it. You like me, right, watch a lot of natural history programmes. I grew up watching natural history programmes. I think there was something different about the emotional temperature of watching something that felt closer to home and looking at things, and even I mean, I'm very lucky with my job, I get to go a lot of amazing places, but looking at some of these things, and the extra level of insight that you get from the time that natural history filmmakers spend observing behaviours that otherwise you would never get to see.

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, absolutely. I think all of the iconic footage, all the amazing things that people have never captured before. I mean, there's natural history kind of filmmakers who've been making films for decades. And they're capturing natural phenomena that have never been captured before, which is amazing. And so to actually speak to those people and hear from those people and hear their stories about the number of years its taken, or the number of attempts or the number of near misses, I think just brings that sense of really how special what we're looking at is because they've spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours trying to capture this one moment. And they've obviously got the eye for it, they've got the skill to be able to do that. But then to be able to share that story as well to show how difficult it has been, I think is really important too.

Stephen Magee:

So highlights for me would include the glow in the dark Starlings you know, when they use the thermal cameras to really bring that kind of otherwise quite sombre, kind of lifeless pine plantation to life with all these birds using it for shelter. Now, in the marine episode, I think they were sea slugs, but the weird squishy things that started kind of flying in the water. Absolutely crazy and things that you just wouldn't, you know, you would think if you were thinking and this is to my shame, you know about really diverse colourful marine environments, your mind obviously goes to like coral reefs and all that kind of stuff. But these weird squishy things that are cutting about in Scottish waters are just as fascinating and amazing and like the scallops, the flying scallops as well.

Kate Kirkwood:

I loved all the marine stuff, I watched it fairly recently and it did make me realise that actually I don't ever want to be a Brittle Star. I don't ever want to be anything that's predated on by a seven-armed Starfish...as much as it was sped up, they look voracious hunters.

Stephen Magee:

They do and when they said it turns its stomach inside out onto the... I was, I don't know if you've ever, have you ever watched like the Werner Hertzog thing about the sea?

Kate Kirkwood:

That's a bit Art House. It is a bit Art House, but like if you Werner Hertzog say's something he's kind of like 'the relentless march of death' it made me think about all. Definitely has that feel about it.

Stephen Magee:

But like obviously there were just some amazing bird things in it you know, the tree-nesting Goldies, the White Tailed Eagle - we'll talk about that in a minute, White Tailed Eagles on Islay, anything to do with the seabirds side of it as well just amazing stuff captured.

Kate Kirkwood:

And really really beautiful footage as well like there is some amazing... in the grasslands episodes, so anyone who knows me knows I love a Hare. And just it was really amazing to capture all that footage of the sort of the breeding behaviours of male and female Hares and I just thought that was really stunning to capture that up close. And I've just I've loved every...every episode has always had a standout moment. And I really, as I said, really enjoyed the ocean and marine episode for all the, so the different varieties of creatures and the weirdness of them as well.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, I think that strangeness. So one of the standout things to watch was the sequences that they captured on Islay of White Tailed Eagles hunting Barnacle Geese. And I was up on Islay recently and I took a bit of time out with James Howe, who's our Senior Site Manager up there and got him to explain a bit to me about how that footage had come about. It's a hard life. I am sitting in a hide at Loch Gruinat on Islay with James How, Senior Site Manager. Hello, James.

James How:

Hello.

Stephen Magee:

The sun has come out. The wind has abated slightly, right in front of us there's Peewits cutting about, there were Golden Plover with lovely flooded ground in front of us. And this place will be familiar to viewers of Wild Isles right?

James How:

It will be yeah.

Stephen Magee:

Tell us what happened here and what it was like to be part of it.

James How:

So we had the Wild Isles team up here filming the Barnacle Geese to start with and then White Tailed Eagles, and some Golden Eagle stuff. And the real excitement was trying to get the White Tailed Eagles hunting the Barnacle Geese, which was a shot which came over in the first programme.

Stephen Magee:

That sequence was absolutely stunning. How much work did it take to get that from, well, you know from scratch?

James How:

A lot. First of all, the behaviour that it showed that was visible... it only really started a few years before that. And we weren't even sure when the eagles would come back.

Stephen Magee:

Just so people understand because because the success of the White Tailed Eagle reintroduction means that birds have been coming back, right, to places like Islay and now we're getting these buildups what of like lots of birds in the winter where the feedings good.

James How:

Yeah, so I think probably the Scottish population is now got to a level where we're starting to see more social behaviour within the eagles, which is what we should be seeing in a naturalised population. And, yeah, we're getting quite a gathering, or we started to get quite a gathering of eagles on the reserve here when the geese arrived in October, and through the winter, while the geese were here. The most eagles we've had together is 17, which I saw all together on the sand from my kitchen window, which is quite nice. But that behaviour actually probably only started in 2018. So I had a phone call with the director, Nick, about this about the eagles and the geese. They were wanting to get the geese and we mentioned the eagles in 2019 and early 2019 and we talked about it and he decided to give it a go but we didn't actually know how many eagles or whether they would hunt the geese when they came over or not. So it was all done really on the possibility that it was going to come off

Stephen Magee:

More in hope than anything else.

James How:

So there was a lot riding on it. They brought over I think three cameramen for that shoot and spent the best part of two and a half weeks with us then. And the behaviour did carry on and it is now really quite an established pattern of behaviour that we're seeing out there which is great. But they didn't get the footage they wanted in those two and a half weeks. They got lots of footage, but not the catch of the eagles and the geese, the eagles catching the geese and obviously this is the first time that this behaviour has been filmed in the UK and it may be the first time it's been filmed anywhere, for all we know. And it is, as you've seen, quite spectacular. So they came back the next year to get it. And we put up these scaffold towers so that they would have an uninterrupted views over the salt marsh area and what is known as the granite flats. But it's our wet grassland area that we're we're looking at today. So which is tremendous, and the highest point on it is just one metre above sea level. So it is really flat. And you can, the scaffold towers gave us just the views that they were needing. We also use some scouts. So we had people like myself dotted around with radios or phones just phoning in when we saw the eagles coming. And that allowed the cameramen on the towers to get onto these eagles straightaway and to follow them. And eventually they they did get some really good shots, which will be all shown on the TV.

Stephen Magee:

It is an incredible sequence.

James How:

Yeah.

Stephen Magee:

And particularly, that once that one bird has got on to the barnacle goose, there's then a whole other sequence of...now, let me see if I got this right, kleptoparasitism where one bird tries to steal food from another bird.

James How:

Yeah.

Stephen Magee:

Is that something you'd seen before as well? Were you expecting that?

James How:

Yeah, we were. And it was, that's part of this, the behaviour that we're seeing them undertake here that, that it seems to be a training ground almost, lots of young birds that come together, these eagles are nearly all juveniles, one or two of them learn how to catch the geese very, very well. It always takes the goose when they've caught it to a much more isolated position. So they won't get disturbed on the saltmarsh. And then the other eagles seem to gather around it and they, it's almost like they're learning how to catch prey, they throw it up in the air, and another one will swoop down and catch it. It's almost like it's a school. That is what we really came to...

Stephen Magee:

It's a pretty gruesome school.

James How:

It is pretty gruesome and yeah, I think from my point of view, I mean, it's amazing when you see an eagle fly through a flock of 5, 6000 geese and single out a goose, fly it down, take it in the air and carry it off. Amazing, but it is a little bit sad.

Stephen Magee:

Because I was gonna ask you because you spend all this time managing for geese, watching geese, you know, waiting for the geese to come back, that huge buildup of birds in the early autumn. But it's also super exciting to have, like our big predators back as well. You know, it's a bit of a dilemna.

James How:

Yeah, I mean, I do find it exciting seeing the eagles going after the geese. And I think that it's great to see, it's amazing to think that we've got them back. And it makes this whole habitat seem far more complete. Having that apex predator, as well as the large flocks of herbivores, it just makes the whole ecosystem seem better. So, from that point of view is great. Yeah, from the goose point of view, I've been working with the geese here for 25 years. I've got to know quite some individual geese, you know, they are ringed that come and feed outside my house or in front of the height here. I've watched them for years and years. And when I see a goose being caught by the eagles, it's always with a slight bit of sadness that it might be one of the geese that I know, you know. And yeah, as I say the geese have become quite a part of my life. Every winter I look forward to them coming in October, that noise of them arriving. That chatter, the hum of life I call it - they never stop. There's a hum and it goes on right the way through the winter. And the first thing you notice in the spring when they've gone is that there isn't that chatter. But thankfully, we've got it replaced with the call of Lapwings, Curlews and all our breeding waders and of course Corncrakes which is very nice to hear.

Stephen Magee:

When you've got people coming here and filming I suppose it's a chance for a much wider range of people who might never be lucky enough to make it to where we are sitting today to experience Islay, its wildlife, you know, with the full - that you know that the full spectrum you know, overwhelming nature right of the diversity of birdlife and other wildlife here. How do you feel being involved in a process that helps with that, that helps present that to that wider constituency, and what do you want that wider constituency of people to take from it?

James How:

I think from my point of view, I mean, I live and work out here and it can feel remote from humanity sometimes. But, you know, we work here to create these habitats. And they're pretty damned amazing. And we've got a lot of birdlife, a lot of wildlife come in here, we can do that. Well, I can't do that as well as these experts from Silverback who came and filmed this series, is show get that out to people show that to large numbers of people, they have that expertise. And that was, it's really nice to work with people who have that expertise to get the shots to know what those shots are going to look like, and to know how they're going to look on television and to show people what we have and what we've worked so hard to preserve. I think the message that I would like people to take away is that all this wildlife isn't so far away, this is in the UK, you know, I travelled up from London in a day, you can get here, it's all within our country. So we still have these amazing spectacles. And I think lots of people don't know that. So that's a really big message. I want everybody to appreciate that we still have this stuff, you can come and see it. But also, that this stuff is still fragile. It all does need our help. So when you've seen it, appreciate it, marvel at it, but have that realisation that we've got to work to keep this, every day, we have to work to stop these things disappearing. And that's sort of how I go to work every day and I would like other people to to have that realisation that we've got it, let's not lose it.

Stephen Magee:

And sitting here today, looking out at the glittering water on the flats as the clouds scur across and the Peewits are up and displaying and there are flocks of Golden Plover kind of twisting their way across that sky as well, it's something worth saving right?

James How:

Oh, god, yeah, yeah. Really, I mean, this is something worth saving but there's so much worth saving. And I mean, that the whole series, as you know, there's habitats that I didn't know existed in the UK that I've seen on this programme. And I think there is so much that needs saving. And we, we rely on it more and more I think as the pressures of life and the pressures of commercialism affect us. But what we do tend to do is take it for granted that it'll be there. And I think you know, what we all - what will happen to us all if we suddenly wake up one day, and we've got those pressures from work or whatever it may be, and it isn't there to help us through the day. So we really need to just make sure that we don't lose stuff. That's my sort of prime objective with with how I work is that I want this place not to have lost a single species in the time that I've been lucky enough to manage this, these reserves. And if I can gain species, fantastic. And if I can gain numbers of species that's also great, as in numbers of birds altogether, or otters or any of the other wild paths that we're lucky enough to have here.

Stephen Magee:

So one of the things that James said that stuck with me was his hope that what having people like the film crew around is that actually does is it's able to engage people who never get the chance to see things for themselves right, and I think on a broader level, I think that's what this Wild Isles thing has been about.

Kate Kirkwood:

Oh yeah, absolutely. Like we have been really privileged to have this glorious insight into things in nature in our amazing Wild Isles that most people in their day to day lives will not get a chance to experience and if you do you're incredibly lucky. I think something we become quite kind of desensitised to is these amazing wildlife experiences because of the jobs that we do and the places that we go and the people that we engage with. But it's very easy to forget that actually, that's not most people's experience of nature and being outdoors.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, and this is something that allows them to engage with that. The other thing that's different about Wild Isles is that it is a co-production, you know, that we are involved in with other environmental NGOs involved in actually making the programme. And there's also there's an extra programme on the iPlayer that I really recommend people should check out if they get the chance, which looks at the challenges that nature faces in the UK. But also, there's some really positive stories about a lot of the kind of solutions that are on offer there as well. And also, there's the Save Our Wild Isles campaign, we'll put the link for that in the notes as well, which is very much about trying to empower people if they've watched the programme, and hopefully, they've been engaged and hopefully, they're thinking a bit about some of the messaging that's in there about the challenges that nature faces, the crisis we're facing in terms of nature and the climate, there are things that you can do, right, to offer people hope in that respect.

Kate Kirkwood:

And I think as well, what it really does show is that our urban spaces are rich with wildlife, if we create safe havens for it, I think Cody Dock, for example, is a really, really clear example of how, as a really diverse kind of community, you can have access to spaces and experiences that living in inner city London, a really industrial part of the city that you might not normally have access to. So I think that was a really, really beautiful example of how nature is still part of our cities.

Stephen Magee:

The other thing that ties in with all this in terms of the RSPB's work is the people's plan for nature, right? If people haven't heard about that, that's a process that we've gone through where we first of all had an open consultative process where we asked people to get in touch which tens of thousands of people took part in to talk about their priorities when it came to nature, you know the problems that they saw the potential solutions. And then a more focused process which brought together 103 people who were selected insofar as we could, but you know, work within independent facilities chose to do this so it was all about board, bringing people who as far as we could represent a demographically representative like sweep of the UK today.

Kate Kirkwood:

And that in itself sounds like quite an undertaking as well, so really a lot to think about. But also really important part of the process. And a really important part to be transparent about as well.

Stephen Magee:

We'll put a link to it the show notes but that process, those people met in Birmingham, they spent a lot of time hearing evidence from folk who had all kinds of different kind of expertise to bring. So that's people who are experts on the, on the environmental side of things, experts in the wildlife side of things, but also talking to people like from farming communities and other communities that have a really important role to play. And one of those people was Pauline McCrann, who lives in South Queensferry. And I caught up with her to find out a little bit about what it was like to be involved in that process and what she got out of it. I'm standing on the banks of the Forth looking across at the three bridges and I have got Pauline McCrann with me. And Pauline took part in the People's Plan For Nature. First of all, how did you get involved in that? Why did you want to do that?

Pauline McCrann:

Well, it was a little bit of a fluke, Stephen, having applied for a People's Assembly to help the Scottish Government formulate policy on a whole different set of details, but mostly government policy, nothing to do with nature. And then the company who tried to recruit the people for the Scottish Government sent me an invitation to talk about nature and what we can do to restore our nature. So having mulled it over and thought, I'm not really sure I know too much about nature, I thought no I'm going to go for it, because I've got an opinion and it's worth being heard, so.

Stephen Magee:

It's because that's one of the things I think is really interesting about your involvement, because obviously there are over 100 people involved in this assembly, all different kinds of backgrounds. But nature wasn't - you didn't get involved in this because nature was a massive passion for you.

Pauline McCrann:

No, not a passion at all, no.

Stephen Magee:

So how once you got in there and you start hearing about things, what was that like? And how did your feelings about nature change?

Pauline McCrann:

I think it was, it was revolutionary to me and very emotional because I learned things I thought, you know, there were, there were dots I could have joined and maybe just understood that, but I didn't. And some of the information and the stories and the life experiences of our food providers and our nature custodians drew me and others in the assembly to tear sometimes, you know, it was, it was unbelievable how I felt, I did not think I would feel like that about how a farmer was trying to run his farm. It was unbelievable.

Stephen Magee:

I think that's really, no, it is. It is interesting, is it because you might think I might even have thought when I was reading through some of the stuff about this, that this might be quite a dry or an academic exercise, but it wasn't.

Pauline McCrann:

No, no.

Stephen Magee:

Tell me some of the things that really landed with you emotionally.

Pauline McCrann:

Do you know the structure, they obviously spent a lot of time on the structure of the speakers and the topics. It was phenomenal how they directed us through a thought process. Then we took notes, we debated and presented our findings. I mean, it was so well organised.

Stephen Magee:

When you were doing that to be - when you were discussing it with your fellow participants.

Pauline McCrann:

Yes.

Stephen Magee:

What was that process? Like? Was it - were there hard bits in that?

Pauline McCrann:

Yes, because you had some quite strong people and you had some quite shy people, the different views of different people again, they mixed up the folks on the table so you had some English people, Scots Irish, you know, mix of people and diversity.

Stephen Magee:

To make it as diverse as possible.

Pauline McCrann:

Oh absolutely, yes. And the discussion, sometimes became quite heated. And you know, I don't care about squirrels, you know that. As long as long as there's a squirrel, I don't care if it's red or grey. And you're thinking we've - right, let's get back onto the topic. So it was very interesting.

Stephen Magee:

Did you find it easy to come to a view about things that, like you've said, of things that maybe you've never thought about before? You know, was it easy for you to settle on 'oh right, now I understand that' and 'I get it', or was that a bit of a struggle?

Pauline McCrann:

It was a bit of a struggle. Because we were being presented, I could never be a politician, by the way. Like I wouldn't do their job. But we were being presented with right okay, what's the compromise? You want wind turbines but you're really screwing up the bottom of the ocean? But you want one wind turbines, but you want oysters and lobsters and things. What do you want us to do? So it was great to have to come to a point where you had to make the decision - what's best for the area of the country, you know, the world.

Stephen Magee:

Taking a wider view, trying to take in that big view and that is really challenging.

Pauline McCrann:

I never knew there were things at the bottom of wind turbines, you know, oysters or maybe not oysters, mussels or things...

Stephen Magee:

All things like invertebrates and feeding seabirds and all these other things which really complicate all that stuff, yeah.

Pauline McCrann:

I didn't even know that, nope, I'm thinking lets get the wind turbines in and let's get the...no wait a minute, you know where there's other things to think about.

Stephen Magee:

Was one of the other things that was surprising to you to learn about how depleted nature is in the UK because I think cause living here and looking out at the Fifth, I mean, we've seen Oystercatchers come down here, there's Chiffchaffs singing in the woods, it can feel like everything's going pretty well. But it's not. Was that a shock? And how did that make you feel?

Pauline McCrann:

Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, I mentioned to you earlier, Stephen, as we were walking along, we had some folks from really quite built up rundown areas of the country. And, you know, the first thing I heard a couple of them say was the first time I saw a tree was when I was in the train coming down to Birmingham. I don't see trees. I don't see greenery, there's no grass. The grass is muddy. The kids are playing on it playing football. There's no grass, nothing. And I'm so lucky as you see, we can - and I used to walk down here every day during lockdown to the gates of Hopetoun House and back about three kilometres and all I can hear is birds, I can't hear, a little drum of traffic in the background, but all I can hear is birds and I can smell the river. I mean it's beautiful. So so very lucky. But there's a vast number of people who aren't so lucky in the cities, they just don't have access to anything where they can go walk, chill, you know, recharge their mental health and experience nature, see dogs running around, squirrels in the trees, birds flying, and they can't see that they don't see that. And that's criminal. And that was one of the things we were looking at too was development, housing development, and how we can encourage that kind of thing in development, maybe by policy, new policy in the government, you know, you've got to make green space available, you have to.

Stephen Magee:

When it came to the end of it, and you saw the conclusions that the group had reached, right.

Pauline McCrann:

Many conclusions.

Stephen Magee:

The many conclusions, cause it is an awful lot. How do you feel, do you feel, first of all do you feel proud of that, but also, do you feel hopeful or hopeless about it?

Pauline McCrann:

Hopeful. I see...and I don't know whether there's a big David Attenborough Wild Isles influence, a Wild Isles influence going on, but every programme I see whether it's the news, or the One Show, or you know, Country Watch, or all these, they are all talking about the same thing. We're nearly on a precipice, we have to take a step back, you know, let's, let's not be, let's, let's take, take time, and just pull back and see and see what we can do to make these small changes all add up, and make the changes that we need to save our planet and save nature.

Stephen Magee:

I think one of the other things that I felt reading it was that if we were being asked one thing by that group of people, it was to work together, you know, to reflect what you had done in the room. And to bring, you know, to put aside whatever your, you know, cultural divisions are, you're coming from different places, that what it requires is absolutely everybody to do their part.

Pauline McCrann:

Yes, absolutely. And be aware of those compromises and those cultural differences, and those regional differences and legal differences, be aware of all of that, but fundamentally, work together.

Stephen Magee:

So it was great to get a chance to chat to Pauline, I think the thing that really stuck with me from talking to her was, was almost like a sense of responsibility, right? Because if you have a process like this, where you're inviting people to take part in good faith and give their time and engage with stuff and go through a process, which she reflected like, you know, at times was quite challenging, right, you know, try to bridge gaps in people, right, you've then got an obligation to take it seriously. And if there was one thing that jumps out having read the, you know, the report that they produced at the end, but also speaking to Pauline, is that what the people who took part in that are asking is for everybody who has a role to play here, to work together and to find compromise and solutions, right that people can't stay in it, you can't stay in your little environment organisation silo or your government silo, or your science silo right or your citizens silo, right. Everybodys- and that's quite hard to do.

Kate Kirkwood:

It is definitely really difficult to do. And the idea of putting yourself in someone else's shoes or trying to understand an alternative perspective that is potentially entirely counter to one's own like values and ethos, or even just experience of the world. I think that is a really challenging thing to do. And actually, I can imagine some of the emotions that will have been brought up in some of the I suppose a bit of soul searching that will have gone on, when through that process of kind of actually reflecting on yes, I've sort of have these values and beliefs about the importance of nature and acting on the climate crisis but how you go about doing that is definitely it's a complex issue, but also one that really needs to be had conversations about. You can inspire people to act with messaging, you can inspire people to act by telling them about the reality of what's happening, which I feel is what happened at the People's Plan for Nature, was people were actually informed about things that maybe they just weren't aware and not out of any bad faith, just they just weren't aware that these things were things that are happening. So you have to have all these different parts to really kind of take action together.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah. Anyway, the important thing about it is it is a process, not an event, right. So I'd say we'll put all the links for this in the show notes. Do please have a deeper dive if you've got time, you know, have a read into it, think about how it might be relevant to you,. Let us know. And if you want to let us know, right, you can contact us @RSPBScotland on Twitter, or podcast.scotland@rspb.org.uk.

Kate Kirkwood:

I would really love to hear what people think about the outcomes from People's Plan for Nature. And I'm really looking forward to reading RSPBs response to it.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah and that response, you know, will be forthcoming. And as I say - process, not an event. Anyway, that's it for this week. When we come back in May, we're going to be thinking a bit more about sound, I have got a few things kind of up my sleeve. I don't want to tempt fate. But anyway, suffice to say it will be hopefully some stuff about...

Kate Kirkwood:

I'm waiting with bated breath!

Stephen Magee:

Something to do with sound and spring, let's leave it at that. But anyway, if you get the chance, leave us a review.

Kate Kirkwood:

Yeah, like and subscribe and share it with someone who's never heard it before.

Stephen Magee:

Absolutely. But until next time, thanks for listening and goodbye.

Pauline McCrann:

Bye.