From The Telegraph:
Britain is losing generations of young naturalists because of laws banning children from collecting birds’ eggs and fossils, according to Sir David Attenborough.
The broadcaster said he would never have been able to pursue his interest in wildlife if current legislation had been in place when he was a boy. The Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 prohibits the removal of eggs from the nest of any wild bird, while being found in possession of a dead wild bird – or any part of one – is also an offence.
Fossil–collecting is banned at Sites of Special Scientific Interest and is covered by numerous other guidelines.
Speaking to Radio Times, Sir David, 86, said few children now ventured out to explore the natural world. He agreed that the situation was “a disaster in waiting”.
He said: “Part of the reason for that is easy to identify, and that is because it’s no longer allowed – no longer legal – to be a collector.
“I openly admit that I collected birds’ eggs. And I knew when the right moment was when you could take one and the bird would lay another, so you didn’t damage the population.
And I learnt a lot from that. Now, I think it’s in the ledger of law, if you were to pick up a feather and put it in your pocket it would probably not be legal.
“And not to be allowed to collect fossils…”
His comments were supported by Chris Packham, a fellow BBC nature presenter, who said: “I can’t believe that future generations will learn their trade on television, on the internet and in libraries, because the passion has to come from the heart.
“You’ve got to want to set your alarm clock to go out and sit in a hide. Young people in particular are so disconnected from the natural world.
“I wouldn’t reprimand a young boy that I found climbing to a nest these days. I’d give him a bunk up into the tree.”
Speaking on the BBC Radio 5’s today programme Mr Packham added: “There are absolutely no young people enjoying our countryside. I feared we have turned out countryisde into a dark and dangerous place for children. They don’t engage with nature. They aren’t picking up fossils, watching fox cubs in the early morning.”
Egg-collecting has been implicated in the extinction of certain birds– most notably the great auk.
The great auk was once found on both sides of the North Atlantic, and it was hunted for its meat, feathers, and oil.
By the 1840’s, they became very rare, and museums and collectors wanted taxidermy specimens and eggs, and many a poor fisherman and egger supplemented his income through killing auks and robbing their nests.
But the vast majority of birds living in Britain today are not in the same situation as the great auk.
I once collected a nest of chipping sparrows and put them in my chicken egg incubator to make them hatch. They never did.
And when I was in eighth grade, my high school’s geology club went to the local road cut to dig around in the sandstone for trilobite fossils.
I cannot understand why these acts are now illegal without exception.
This is more of sign that the population of the United Kingdom is almost entirely alienated from the natural world, which means that this nation will have hard time coming up with rational conservation and wildlife management policy.
I hope that this country doesn’t become like the UK.
I hope that we recognize our wild heritage and our proud conservation history and work to preserve it for countless generations.
But we must engage our young people in the natural world.
We must make them experience nature in its fullest. Let them collect bugs and snake eggs and keep jars full of newts and tadpoles.
Let them marvel as children, and they’ll want to save it when they become adults.
That’s what happened to me.
Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries were very important to me when I was child, but if I couldn’t go out in the woods and experience it on my own, I don’t know if they would have had the same effect.
We do need to protect sensitive species from harassment and exploitation, but we also need to allow people more freedom to experience natural world as it is.
Only then will people understand why we have these laws in the first place.
Without a direct connection to it, the natural world becomes something like a cartoon.
And cartoons are not real.
You cannot manage or conserve cartoons.
They can only be what we will them to be.
My epiphany in this regard occurred when my youngest daughter, who is a 5th grade school teacher, told me that many of the boys in her classes were afraid of insects and other “crawly things.” Huh? How could this happen, when I was a kid I lived for collecting spiders, catching worms at night for fishing, digging up fossils, etc.
BTW:, I love David Attenborough as well, but find his voice absolutely mesmerizing–I fall asleep w/in minutes of tuning into one of his shows–the most effective “sleeping pill” I’ve ever encountered.
Me, again. Have you ever listened to the version of Planet Earth with Sigourney(sp?) Weaver’s voice? I can’t stand her smooth, nagging tone. The picture is beautiful but I have to turn off the sound. LOL.
Don’t believe I have,, but if I did I’d probably have flashbacks to the ‘Alien’ series of movies. That would not be particularly restful. ;^)
I’m quite the opposite. I love her tone. I hear the smooth, but not the nagging. I actually find it rather soothing and mature. But then, I was always a fan. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder?
This is why it’s extremely undesireable to overlegislate environmental matters, the way a lot of those in the environmental movement want to. It makes me feel almost physically ill to think that the US might become like Britain – where citizens aren’t allowed to protect themselves and children can’t collect a simple fossil.
It`s a facile and silly argument that not collecting birds` eggs will stop children interacting with nature. What stops them is their parents. If children are to interact with nature, their parents have to guide them and encourage them to do it.
Well, in country areas they do. And as a child I was taken birdwatching – much more constructive than pointless egg collecting (which I remember from childhood as having more to do with little boys being macho about tree climbing than about a genuine interest in nature).
But in urban and suburban areas it just doesn`t happen. Children are encouraged to take an interest in nature…by sitting at home watching David Attenborough. Not by going out into the country and looking. Out there they might get hurt – not by our wildlife, which is harmless, but by other sinister adults, who lurk everywhere.
And those brought up in this way have no knowledge of how to educate their children about wildlife and the outdoors.
And so it goes on.
Elizabeth
Oh yes, and fossils. I think the old boy is losing it a bit. You can collect fossils, except on certain SSSIs. An SSSI is a site officially designated as of Special Scientific Interest. We don`t have too many of those, and in Scotland you can collect even from those, provided you ask for permission….don`t know what the law is in England.
http://www.ukfossils.co.uk/
http://www.ukfossils.co.uk/national_collecting_code.htm
Elizabeth
The answer as usual, lies in: 1) Using common sense and social vice legislative pressure to guide public behavior. The prime example of this approach in the US is the anti-smoking campaign, which has been much more successful than either Prohibition or the War on Drugs. 2) Education–an informed/engaged public is much less likely to engage in activities we deem antisocial.
Sure egg collecting may be banned but children have available a powerful tool that Sir David could only have dreamed about and that tool is the digital camera. Cheap to purchase and cheap to run it allows the user to collect without taking anything away from the natural environment. Sir David should appreciate this as “Bootlace movie cameras” were the tool that allowed him to take film cameras into the wilds and produce his Zooquest documentaries. Photography teaches children patience and to observe the world around them and should be encouraged by parents. Instead of pining for what has been lost we should celebrate what we have gained!
Times have changed. Russell has aptly pointed out new tools that are available to children today.
Tristan Gooley’s Natural Explorer (UK) explains how we can teach our children to become explorers today.
I can give you many anecdotal cases of how I have personally seen parents teaching their children to be ‘Natural Explorers’ without disturbing nature.
Quite sad. I can see my home state of California inclined in a similar direction with all the now illegal things my parents got to experience growing up even in the suburbs. Laws like those do seem to prevent kids from having that adventurous spirit, but I feel it is only part of the puzzle.
I grew up in the suburbs and was raised to be afraid of all those “bad buys” and “strangers”, but I’ve been obsessed with nature since childhood. As one of the seemingly few city kids in my generation who didn’t grow up in front of tv and video games, I would instead spend hours building bug farms, watching birds and squirrels, enjoying parks, and jumping at every homeschool nature activity I found. If I wasn’t set on pursuing art as my career, I would probably be trying to get a degree in biology right now.
So, in a nutshell, I think another major part of the problem in the UK (and many big US cities) is that kids are allowed to settle for the easy access of electronic entertainment when they’re missing out on something so much better right outside their back door.
You are quite right.
To state the obvious, the major source of our current environmental and social problems is overpopulation (always the elephant in the room because of religious sensitivities.)
Eighty years ago, when Mr. Attenborough was growing up (hde was b. in 1926) the world population was about 2 billion. At that density the impact of small boys on bird populations was negligible (although commercial hunters obviously had an impact.) Today, our population is 4 times that and we are as a whole more connected and homogenized. Thus any natural product/pursuit that becomes a fad (ex. Rhino horn for knife handles, bear gall bladders, tiger bones or fish oil for medicinal applications, ivory for jewelry, et al) has the potential to have a huge impact. I agree that billions of children collecting bird’s eggs would be a disaster. But mediated collecting–perhaps even returning the eggs to the nest after examination makes a lot more sense than outright taboo.
As for substituting hands-on with digital experience, until such time as full-sensory VR becomes commercially available, electronic media will never be a substitute for field activities (I can’t imagine Retrieverman ever settling for a virtual walk through the woods.) Even w/ VR, one runs the danger of confusing fact w/ fiction. After all, creative individuals could easily staff virtual worlds w/ Unicorns, Dragons or Sasquatch, or even worse, people riding dinosaurs, and calling it fact.
I think restrictive laws do two things
1, puts people off the whole area associated with that law, if its too complicated/risky to do soemthing just don’t bother!
2, creates resentment and means people do it anyway but in a more destructive way maybe to avoid being found out.
Adam
I don’t know about other countries but the bird populations in Britain have declined tragically and so of course collecting eggs must be illegal. When I was a boy during the 40’s our technique was to walk underneath the hedgerows bordering every country road and field and just look up. At every other step one could see a nest outlned against the sky. The unwritten rule was to take only one egg.
We all had our egg collections but the birds still flew in great clouds around us.
Then with changes in agricultural methods including the use of pesticides and fertilisers the era of degradation began. Sadly it can never be as it was, but at least there is growing awareness that whatever can be done must be done. I like the way in which relatively wild areas are being physically linked up and farmers are being encouraged to leave wide borders of natural grassland around their fields. For some years now the policies of setting aside some of the fields and planting new woodlands are now beginning to bear fruit.
Beyond the shores of these small islands we can still only guess what the effects of climate change will be for various areas of the world.
The Brazillians, for example, are finally beginning to realise that the precious rain forest is basically growing on a fragile soil which can sustain nothing except the natural vegetation which has evolved upon it. But will this prevent the illegal loggers from cutting it down, who knows.
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I’m a 13 year old boy who grew up around and in the countryside as a younger boy I used to spend a lot of time walking around the woods and farm with my grandparents and now as a teenager I have alot of time on my hands and i find the natural world especially birds and they’re behaviour very interesting and I think that everyone should be allowed to collect eggs but of only the common species of birds I think that the police should have a register of all the people in Britain collecting eggs and have 5 yearly inspections of their collections so no rare bird egg is collected and if for example a raptor egg was collected the fines and imprisonment would still apply.
I do agree with what was said the younger generation of Britain don’t go outside and run off to explore they’re local copses or woods anymore; I talked to my friend once and he said to me ” yea well I only really excercise my thumbs” it’s rediculas. My grandfather collected eggs when he was a boy and he had a great time I’m told.
I think we should let people collect eggs and openly display them, however it must have rules and regulations for it to function properly.
I found this forum very moving thank you
Ollie cox
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