An insect’s take on coastal squeeze

There’s no denying it: our coastlines are changing more rapidly than ever. But crumbling cliffs and receding or stabilising dunes also have a profound effect on coastal wildlife. Matthew Oates, one of the National Trust’s nature experts and a keen butterfly enthusiast, tells us what coastal squeeze means for the Glanville Fritillary butterfly on the Isle of Wight, and why learning about insects is key to their conservation.

Many of our rarest terrestrial plants and animals are restricted to the coastline. A number occur there because they are genuine coastal species – they’re salt-loving plants or their associated invertebrates, or they’re strongly dependent on the sea’s influence in other ways. Others are species which have effectively been evicted from inland Britain, and are staging last ditch stands along our coastline, out of the way of modern agriculture and urban development.  There are also quite a few for whom our southern coasts form the northern limit of their European range – they’ve got a toehold here and could spread if our climate becomes warmer. 

A number of these are highly specialised. There are specialists of brackish mud, the diverse types of salt marsh, acidic or calcareous sand dunes, ‘hard’ cliffs on diverse firm geologies, and ‘soft rock’ cliff specialists – plus their parasites and predators.  Then there are of course various birds, including summer and winter migrants, which move in to feed on coastal vegetation, like geese, or which probe for invertebrates, like waders.  Then there are the true marine species, animal and plant, and those associated with the inter-tidal reaches.

Compton Bay, Isle of Wight: Paradise for soft rock cliff invertebrates.
©Matthew Oates.

The soft rock cliff invertebrates are an interesting group. They consist mainly of mining bees and digger wasps, ground beetles, assorted flies, and some Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). For many of these, our soft rock coasts form the northern limit of their European ranges, especially the coastline from Dorset to the Isle of Wight and around East Anglia. A specialist report on this fauna by the invertebrate charity Buglife identifies 29 invertebrates which are wholly restricted to these habitats, like the rare Cliff Tiger Beetle, plus at least another 75 with a strong affinity. These beasties include creatures of cliff pools, seepages and runnels. There’s even a daddy-long-legs that hangs out under cliff-side waterfalls. 

Looking at rockpool creatures at South Milton Sands, Devon.
©National Trust Images/Ben Selway.

The threats to them are coastal protection works, sea level rise, adverse climate change, ignorance and even conservation disinterest. Sadly, we do not know as much about many of these species as is necessary for their effective conservation. 

But perhaps the best known of these coastal invertebrates is the Glanville Fritillary, named after Eleanor Glanville. She was the first lady of entomology, and her will was overturned on the grounds of insanity due to her interest in bugs. She discovered the butterfly in Lincolnshire a little before 1703, whilst hunting an errant son. Since then, her fritillary has become all but restricted to the Isle of Wight, where its headquarters are the crumbling cliffs of the island’s south-west coast. The butterfly periodically breaks out from there, to breed on the south-facing slopes of the island’s whaleback downs and even forming short-lived colonies on the Hampshire coast. It’s a boom or bust species, expanding wondrously in good summers but contracting to its most favoured cliffs during wet summers (so, it’s bust at present). In other words, it’s hugely affected by weather.  

Glanville Fritillary, male. ©Matthew Oates.

Any significant change in climate will alter the status and distribution of the Glanville Fritillary radically. Increased storminess could make the cliffs too unstable for the simple vegetation it depends on, and poorer summers could knock it out altogether as it occurs here towards the northern limit of its European range. But if our summers actually become drier (whatever happened to ‘global warming’ in the UK?) it could quite quickly recolonise the mainland. After all, it’s an insect, which means it seeks nothing less than world domination.

Are you a fan of the Glanville Fritillary? Or just want to share your insect stories with us? Feel free to comment at the end of this post.

National Children’s Day 2013: let children’s imagination run wild

Today, 15^th May, is National Children’s Day UK. The day celebrates childhood and right of all children to be able to develop – naturally and happily – to their full potential.

In a piece on the Trust’s Outdoor Nation blog earlier this week, Hattie Garlick, director of the Save Childhood Movement, wrote of the importance of giving children the freedom to let their imaginations run wild and their creativity flourish. Adults, Hattie claims, need to recognise and value children’s creative instinct.

‘National Children’s Day, she writes, ‘is about making sure that, at least one day a year, we stop to appreciate and liberate that instinct in our kids’.

‘It’s the easiest call to arms ever issued to adults’, she adds. ‘On May 15^th, simply step back and let them take the creative lead, wherever that ends up.’

Children playing in the garden at Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd, Wales. ©National Trust Images/Arnhel de Serra

National Children’s Day UK is a new initiative of the Save Childhood Movement, a partnership created to address fears that currently exist about poor child wellbeing in the UK. The National Trust is one of the organisations supporting the movement.

The National Trust is fully supportive of National Children’s Day UK’s aim to get children outside and into their neighbourhoods. We are working to try and enable children to get outside and forge a strong bond with nature. We are deeply concerned about the growing trend described in last year’s Natural Childhood report of children spending less time outdoors in nature than their forebears.

Earlier this month the National Trust re-launched its list of 50 things to do before you’re 11¾. A list of fifty outdoor mini-adventures, it aims to get children active outside and spark an interest in nature. From making a mud pie to searching for creatures in a rock-pool, there a plenty of things to fire children’s imagination and creativity.

We are proud to be part of The Wild Network. Founded by the RSPB, AMV BBDO, BritDoc Foundation, National Trust, NHS Sustainable Development Unit, Play England, Play Wales, Play Scotland, Playboard Northern Ireland and Green Lions, the Wild Network is a new partnership of organisations committed to creating a movement to connect children with nature. Over the next three years The Wild Network will be supporting a series of projects and campaigns aimed at ensuring children in the UK have the opportunity to forge a close bond with nature. The Network’s first project is a new, feature-length documentary film, Project Wild Thing. Released this summer, the film follows director David Bond as he investigates whether children in this country are becoming disconnected from their natural environment and, if so, what can be done about it. You can follow his progress through his weekly blog on Outdoor Nation.

To celebrate imagination and creativity this National Children’s Day, why not share your childhood memories of playing in nature. We’d love to hear from you via twitter (@NTExtAffairs).

Why did the brown moo cows cross the road?

In this blogpost the National Trust’s Head Ranger for the East Devon Coast and Countryside, Pete Blyth, talks about the “brown moo cows” that inspired him to help others forge a lifetime connection with special places.

Cows have been grazing at Hughenden park, High Wycombe, since the early 1800s

Why would a grown man be moved to tears by a herd of cows?  Because they are special cows, obviously.  Okay so slightly more information might be needed here…

My lifetime connection to the countryside and the Trust started aged about three, when my mum used to drive me past the Trust’s Hughenden manor on the way to go shopping in High Wycombe. I don’t remember exactly when it started but on one of these trips we were lucky enough to see the herd of cows crossing the road from the Trust’s parkland to the farm to be milked. That was it, I was transfixed, and my poor mum had to make sure we timed all future trips to see “the brown moo cows, crossing.” If we missed them it was a major catastrophe.

The life changing event for me came when aged about four, mum took me to Hughenden for a visit and I was privileged to meet “the man who looks after the brown moo cows.” This member of Trust staff took the time out of his busy day to explain to four-year-old me why the Trust had cows, and how important they were in managing the estate.

I already knew about the countryside, but that was the moment when I realised that it didn’t just happen, but was managed and looked after – and that was what I was going to do. While my friends all wanted to be pop stars, or engine drivers, or fighter pilots, I was going to be “the man who looks after the brown moo cows.”

Fast forward 36 years, I am driving past Hughenden and there they are. The next thing I know I have tears of joy streaming down my face while I incoherently explain to my bemused colleague that it’s “the brown moo cows” and even better still, “they are crossing the road!”

Having fun in Salcombe hill woods (Credit: Claire Mountjoy/Ecoexplorers)

As part of our work to get people outdoors and closer to nature, my team is supporting a local business “Ecoexplorers” in running a pre-school forest school playgroup in our woods at Salcombe Hill, East Devon. We’ve busted out a story time circle for them from the undergrowth, and furnished it with logs and branches from our woodland operations. Every Wednesday morning the site rings to the sounds of young children getting the chance to build dens, toast marshmallows over open fires, sing songs, make leaf sculptures and collages, and generally have fun doing all the things that I did as a child, but which many kids today wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to do.

Children from Ecoexplorers get to grips with nature (Credit: Claire Mountjoy/Ecoexplorers)

A few weeks back I was at the site just as the session was ending and a little boy came up to me and proudly said, “Look I’ve got a stick.”  I agreed that yes indeed he had, and a very fine stick it was indeed. Pointing at the trees around the site he asked, “How do the big sticks become little sticks?” Seeing how important this was to him I put aside my woodland grant scheme paperwork and spent maybe 15 minutes explaining in simple terms how we manage the site, why we cut trees down and plant new ones, and how the work we are doing now will mean that there’ll be a woodland for him to enjoy with his kids when he reaches my age.

A young Ecoexplorer investigates Salcombe Hill woods (Claire Mountjoy/Ecoexplorers)

I met his mother again more recently and she told me that he hasn’t stopped talking about our encounter and how he wants to “help make big sticks in the future.”  This was the moment when I realised that I’ve achieved my dream. I may not have actually become “the man who looks after the brown moo cows” (though as a member of the Trust family I am proud to count him as a colleague), but instead I’ve become “the man who looks after the place with the big sticks.” Now its my responsibility to ensure that local kids have a chance to forge their lifetime connection with our special places, and if our sites and experiences have as much meaning for even some of them as the “brown moo cows” have had for me then it will have been a success.

Wild things in the city: meet the interns!

She rolled, head over tail, down the grassy embankment before coming to stop in a tumbled heap beside the pavement. A passing car hooted its encouragement.

Breathless, Eva jumped up. ‘I’m re-experiencing my childhood’, she laughed. ‘That was really good!’ Around her, looking suitably impressed, stood the five other new interns in the Media and External Affairs department  at Heelis, the National Trust’s central office in Swindon.

Taking advantage of rare patchy blue skies, we had ventured out of the office and were heading for a local park in the centre of Swindon. We planned to try out some of the activities on the Trust’s re-launched list of 50 things to do before you’re 11¾. We had barely left the office when Eva, who works on international affairs, spotted the grassy embankment and demanded we stop and have a go at the second ‘thing’ on the new list: roll down a really steep hill.

Re-launched last week, all the activities on the new 50 things list have been chosen by children from across the UK. From climbing a tree to camping outdoors, they are things that can be done anywhere – by anyone.

50 things to do before you’re 11¾ forms part of the Trust’s efforts to connect children and nature. We believe that every child should have the opportunity to spend more time in nature. Unfortunately, many children in the UK aren’t able or willing to spend time outdoors and in nature. A recent study by JCB Kids for their Fresh Air campaign found that children today are spending half the amount of time playing outside as their parents used to when they were children. . Some leading naturalists fear that if children aren’t brought up with a close bond to the natural world, they won’t care enough about nature as adults to want to fight to conserve it. ‘No one will protect what they don’t care about’, argues Sir David Attenborough, ‘and no one will care about what they have never experienced’. 

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Why 11¾?

Some studies indicate that the most significant period in a child’s development in relation to the natural world occurs in ‘middle childhood’ (ages 6-12), before the age of 12. The RSPB’s measurement of children’s connection to nature has taken children from a similar age range (8-12) in order to create its baseline measure against which other children’s connection can be compared.Although it’s important that children forge a connection with nature before the age of 12, the 50 things list is not the sole preserve of the under-12s. They can be enjoyed by people of all ages – the shrieks of laughter coming from the interns as they climbed the tree in our central Swindon park are testament to that fact. They expressed genuine regret that, as adults, they didn’t do things like climbing trees as often as they used to as children. ‘I think I just got old and boring’, sighed Laura, who works on the Trust’s planning campaigns. Smiling, she said, ‘I need to start climbing trees again.’

Which she did. Immediately. And barefoot, too.

Many of the activities on the 50 things can be enjoyed anywhere. You can make a mud pie in a national park or your local city park. We spent a happy time climbing trees and making daisy chains in a local city park, bordered by grey tarmac and greyer office blocks. For Laura, the list represents a way to ‘get out in nature and connect with the wildlife that we’ve got on our doorsteps’. ‘It’s a way for kids to get dirty. It’s a way for kids to have some fun and just connect with the environment around them.’

What we’re doing

We recognise that 50 things is only part of the solution to getting children engaging with the natural world. Following last year’s Natural Childhood report and inquiry, we are now working with a number of organisations to build a partnership, known collectively as The Wild Network. The founders of this movement to connect children in the UK with nature and the outdoors are the RSPB, NHS Sustainable Development Unit, AMV BBDO, BritDoc, filmmakers Green Lions, National Trust, Play England, Play Wales, Playboard Northern Ireland and Play Scotland. Starting in June, The Wild Network will launch a series of campaigns and projects to tackle the barriers to children getting outdoors.

Our first project will be a new, feature-length documentary examining children’s disconnection from nature. Premiering at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival in June, Project Wild Thing follows director David Bond as he appoints himself Marketing Director for Nature in a bid to ‘sell’ his wonder product to apathetic children – including his own.

 Whilst it isn’t the catch-all solution to children’s dislocation from nature and the outdoors, 50 things to do before you’re 11¾ is bursting with fun activities and could help spark a lifelong interest in the natural world. The intern working on the Neptune Coastline Campaign, Howard, put it simply. Watching Morwenna scrambling across a knotted tree trunk, he smiled. ‘It’s just a great list for adventure and excitement.’

Life among landslides: what does nature’s kick mean for our coastline?

We recently blogged about ‘Jurassic Toast’. In this post we talk to Tony Flux, our Coastal and Marine Advisor for the South West, about the rise in coastal landslips and what the power of nature means for this changing coastline.

Walkers are warned about the recent landslip at St Oswald’s Bay, which is owned by the Lulworth Estate

As a piece of one of Britain’s most trodden coastal paths crashed into the English Channel last week, it served as a startling reminder of the indomitable power of nature.

The plummeting of some 80 metres of Dorset cliff, just a few hundred yards between the tourist hotspots of Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove, was the latest in a line of landslips to have hit England’s south coast.

While coastal erosion has always shaped our shores, carving out a wealth of geological interest along the Jurassic Coast, landslides are seemingly on the rise and experts are pointing to last year’s heavy rainfall as the trigger.

Research published this week by British Geological Survey, revealed that in the past four months there were 16 cliff falls between Bridport and Chichester, compared with 22 for the whole of 2012.

The Trust’s SW Coast and Marine Advisor, Tony Flux, said: “There’s definitely some correlation between extremes of weather and increases of landslips.

“In the last 12 months we have seen a spike in rock falls at places, such as Sidmouth, Hive Beach, Portland and at Swanage. Over at the Isle of Wight there have been slips and slumps and falls. And even when you get to Sussex and the White Cliffs there have been falls there.

“But it shouldn’t be interpreted that the world is falling apart and the south coast is being lost – that’s just not the case,” he added. “The Jurassic coast is continually renewing itself and we have had fall after fall after fall over thousands of years.

“It would be wrong to try to prevent or stop these landslips from occurring because it exposes new material, new fossils and new excitement for people.”

The National Trust cares for around 700 miles of coastline, including a quarter of the Jurassic World Heritage Coastline and numerous coastal sites within the Cornwall and West Devon Mining World Heritage Site.

Caring for this active coastline costs the Trust more than £1,800 per kilometre every year. But we think it is worth it. And we are not alone because since 1965, when the Trust’s Neptune Coastline Campaign was launched, more than £20m has been raised and thousands of volunteer hours have been donated to support our coastal and conservation management work.

“We’re not in the business of trying to prevent people from exploring our beaches and coastline. We have a wonderful South West path that people can explore at no cost,” Tony said.

“But there are safety issues, so we’re going to great lengths – not just the National Trust, but in cooperation with the Coastguard agency, local authorities and all the rescue services – to educate people and thereby avoid and reduce any risk.

“For a number of years we’ve done risk assessments and we have warning signs where we think there’s a heightened risk. But it would be a crime to start building concrete walls and fencing, which would stop people from seeing the beauty of the cliffs as they are. Really it’s about common sense – which 99% of the general public have.”

To find out more about the National Trust’s coastal and conservation work, click here

Saving our coasts: an interview with Dr John Whittow

When Enterprise Neptune was launched on 11th May 1965, it was to become one of the greatest ever campaigns to protect our coastlines. Howard Bristol, who is working on the Neptune Coastline Campaign 48 years later, interviewed one of Neptune’s leading figures, Dr. John Whittow.

John was a young university lecturer in 1964, when the National Trust asked him to report on the state of our coasts. Howard asked John how he first got involved with Neptune, and how he became aware of the problems facing the British coast.

Land use in Wales: one of the original maps drawn up by Dr. John Whittow. The annotations show some of the ways the coast was being exploited

How did you first get involved in the project of mapping the coastline of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland?

When I was at a coastal conservation meeting in Denmark, I was approached by J A Steers, Professor of Geography at the University of Cambridge. He mentioned that the National Trust was interested in surveying the coast of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and asked if I would be interested in getting involved. When we met again as part of a small working party in autumn 1964, I was asked if I could map the coastline and gather the results within a year.

So I organised a group of students, postgraduates and members of staff from my Department of Geography at Reading University, and we did a reconnaissance survey on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. When we had worked out a methodology, I allocated all the different stretches of coastline to the students. And off we set, in the summer vacation of 1965, to map the entire coastline of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

What were you looking for?

We were looking at the present state of the coast, not from a qualitative, but from a quantitative point of view, and I categorised it into seven or eight different types of land use. Having received all the working maps back, I made fair copies, and hand-coloured them according to the various categories of land use. I then grouped them into three categories. Firstly, land beyond redemption (built-over land which would never be won back). Secondly, land which was managed and could possibly have been restored in future. And lastly, the rest of the land, which was productive (mainly agriculture and forestry), but not developed. We were trying to identify which parts of the coast could be acquired in the future by the National Trust, with the aim of conserving it for visitors to enjoy.

Had you been aware of the scale of developments before you started?

No. My wife and I mapped a large stretch of the North Wales coast, from the Conwy estuary and Anglesey all the way down to the Barmouth estuary and beyond to where the county of Merionethshire met the country of Cardiganshire. It was only then that I became aware of the way in which the coast had really been used by holiday camps, caravan parks, and the Ministry of Defence (i.e. part of category 2). There was an enormous amount of military equipment still left around, for example at Orford Ness, which had been absolutely ruined by the Ministry of Defence – after all, it was only a few years after the war.

Nuclear Powerstation at Winfrith, Ringstead Bay, Dorset

Are there any examples which particularly stood out?

The East Anglian coast, a low-lying coastline with an enormous number of caravan parks and holiday villages – that stood out. Similarly, the entire coastal area south of Brean Down on the southwest coast was also overwhelmed. There was virtually no undeveloped part of it.

The Neptune Coastline Campaign has been one of the National Trust’s biggest successes and a fabulous thing for the coastline of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Did you realise how big the campaign would be?

At the time, I didn’t think that it would be on-going for so long. Now we’re approaching the 50th anniversary, and we’ve acquired more than 700 miles of coastline, which is an extraordinary achievement. We hope, funds being available, that we can continue, because the ultimate aim was to purchase 900 miles.

When did Enterprise Neptune become about broader coastal issues, such as wildlife habitats, coastal erosion, and coastal squeeze?

When we were negotiating with the Ministry of Defence to purchase Orford Ness in the 1990s, there had been one or two problems with coastal erosion. I pointed out that we were on the shores of the North Sea, which was, geologically speaking, a sinking basin, and we were already talking in terms of climate change and possible rising sea levels. The two working together would mean that this stretch of coastline – not within my lifetime, but certainly within 50 to 100 years – may suffer very severe erosion and be swept away down to Essex.

Abandoned buildings at Orford Ness National Nature Reserve, Suffolk

However, it was only in 2005 with the publication of Shifting Shores, that we saw the term ‘managed retreat’ being brought into the conversation. It was evident that massive engineering projects would be astronomically expensive and ineffective, so it was decided that in certain places we would have to let nature take its course and form its own defences, such as at Porlock Weir.

What do you think is the greatest legacy of the Neptune Coastline Campaign?

The coastal landscape is something that I consider part of our historic heritage, so I think that the greatest achievement of Enterprise Neptune is to have given access to the coast, and yet conserved the best possible scenery of our coastline for public use and public enjoyment. Some areas have been a real success, such as the Northumberland coastline. I had originally mapped it as beyond redemption because they were tipping coal into the sea, but this is now one of the Trust’s flagship coasts where it has won the coast back again.

Do you think there’s still work to do?

Yes. In the next 18 months we will be carrying out a new survey to see what the state of the coastline is today in comparison to the maps of 1965. When I carried out an interim survey for the National Trust in 2000, called the Millennium Report, I was quite dismayed to see that 5-7% of the coastline had been lost to development over 35 years. Of course, we all know that people have to have houses to live in, and industry has to evolve and spread, but if we continue to build over our coastline when there are alternatives, we are destroying some of our most important natural heritage.

If there’s one thing that you could say to someone visiting a stretch of British coastline, what would it be?

Take your litter home.

What is your favourite location on the coast? And what does it mean to you?

It has to be my homeland of Pembrokeshire. My ancestors have been in Pembrokeshire since the year 1100, and I was the first male member of my family not to be born in Pembrokeshire, but I go back there often and have relatives living there. It is a wonderfully complex coastline, with geologically interesting coves, beaches and headlands. It’s relatively unspoilt, which means that it offers as pristine a coastline as one can expect to see.

View from the Western edge of Dinas Island, Pembrokeshire

Why do you think the coast is an important place for so many people?

A number of reasons – to get away from urbanisation, for a breath of fresh air, to see new vistas, have the ability to walk and roam – and of course the Welsh coastal path is now complete. Our coastal heritage really is one of the jewels in our crown.

Climate Change – Jurassic Toast

In Britain no one lives more than 75 miles from the sea. From the emotional attachment to the beaches we played on as children; to the historic notion of ruling the waves, the sea and the coast is an important part of our national identity. But with the levels of erosion increasing and sea levels rising, climate change is going to have a ravaging effect on our shores. Many of our favourite places will start to look very different in the coming years.

 The coast is a canary for climate change and whilst it is a dynamic environment the rate of change is rapidly speeding up. The National Trust cares for nearly 700 miles of coastline, almost one tenth of the coast in England, Scotland and Wales. With Sea levels predicated to rise by one Metre in the next 100 years, The Trust Coastal Risk Assessment delivered striking results; 60% of National Trust owned coastline could be affected by erosion highlighting the need for more adaptive approaches to prepare for coastal change.

 Consequently the National Trust has adopted a policy of adaptation, planning changes to major infrastructure where needed, acquiring coastal land and looking at the daily management of coastal sites.                                                        

The traditional response to coastal change has been resisting it through hard defences, often in the form of rock or concrete. Through evidence and experience we now have a better understanding of the forces of nature and the consequences of working against them. Many of our sites on undeveloped natural coast are now suffering the knock-on impacts of hard engineering further along the coast.

 

On the StudlandPeninsula in Dorset, the six kilometres of sandy beach attract over a million visitors a year. The southern section of the beach is being eroded by two to three metres a year with the sand being deposited on the northern part, so the peninsula is not suffering a net loss overall. However, the cafes, toilets, a shop, car parking and beach huts on the eroding southern section are under threat. The Trust has moved the beach huts twice and is now seeking a way to relocate many of the other buildings and infrastructure.

East Head on the Sussex coast is being starved of its essential supply of sand and shingle from the shoreline to the east due to the hard defences protecting housing on the Manhood peninsula. The defences are increasing and concentrating change to an internationally important sand dune formation and giving rise to problems for other coastal users. There is no guarantee that hard defences work in the long term: they are often only a temporary solution. As sea levels rise and severe storms increase, it will become ever more difficult and expensive to build and maintain strong defences. They can also disfigure the coast and cause environmental harm by moving the problem to another location. We believe therefore that hard defences should only be used as a last resort.

 

Whether it is accepting that some buildings will eventually be claimed by the sea or working with a local community to rebuild natural defences like sand dunes, the Trust is thinking long term, working in harmony with nature and collaborating with communities and organisations to ensure the best out come for all.

Read more about the National Trust’s response to the impacts of climate change on the coastline here: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/big-issues/energy-and-climate-change/

Sparkle and stories: connecting kids with nature through outdoor play

Last week Natural Childhood intern, Tom Seaward, looked at the part learning outdoors could play in reconnecting children and nature. This week he focuses on outdoor play.

Weaving through the conference crowd, the two children marched to the front of the room, wide nervous grins across their faces.

The year 2 pupils from Waterville Primary School had come to talk to delegates at last month’s Play England conference on outdoor and adventure play, ‘Explore. Play. Connect’, about getting muddy and making pizza on their class visits to Shiremoor Adventure Playground, North Tyneside. Sat in the middle of the hall, surrounded by hardened play experts, was me, feeling green and inexperienced and looking more nervous than the children.

The two children were followed by their headteacher, Mark Nugent. Asked how he could justify taking his pupils out of school and away from the curriculum, he spoke of the ‘sparkle’ in the children’s eyes at the end of the afternoon as they got on the bus and the enduring stories that they told about the day’s adventures.

Generating this ‘sparkle’ in the short-term, playing outdoors, like these children were able to at Shiremoor, creates stories to last a lifetime. Love Outdoor Play, a partnership led by Play England advocating children’s right to play outdoors, has found success on twitter, asking its followers to share their memories of outdoor play. Playing outdoors is fun, free and healthy. It has, for example, been shown to reduce symptoms in children suffering from ADHD. Moreover, all children have the right to play, enshrined in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. The importance of that right was highlighted by last month’s General Comment on play, issued by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Children playing amongst the trees at The Argory, County Armagh ©National Trust Images/Arnhel de Serra

Adventure playgrounds like Shiremoor offer a safe outdoor space for children to play and explore freely. Forest Schools, such as that at Ashridge Estate in Kent, give children the opportunity to learn how to build dens or track wild animals through play and instruction. Initiatives like Playing Out in Bristol, set out to reclaim the streets for children to play in.

Increasingly, however, children appear disinterested in playing outdoors. A new poll commissioned for JCB Kids’ new Fresh Air campaign, launched this week, found that children today spend half the amount of time playing out as their parents did when they were children. 43% said they would rather watch television than play outside with their friends, 42% prefer to play on the computer. There is a clear link between access to natural space and physical health and mental wellbeing. Research published last week by the European Centre for the Environment and Human Health demonstrated the connection between availability of green space and reported levels of wellbeing in city dwellers.

Yet despite the many opportunities and the frequently stated health benefits, children aren’t spending as much time playing outdoors as their parents did.

Why?

Last year the National Trust published the Natural Childhood report. Written by broadcaster and naturalist Stephen Moss, it identified some of the barriers to children getting outdoors. Expanded upon in the report from the Natural Childhood Inquiry, they include: the rise of indoor entertainment (as highlighted by the JCB research), traffic dangers, lack of quality green space, constraints in the education system, socio-economic factors, and an unreasonable health and safety culture. Whilst some of these are clearly very real barriers, others perhaps owe more to imagination and media exaggeration than fact. ‘Stranger danger’ and the fear of child abduction is a prime example of this. This fear of ‘strangers’ poses a real barrier to children being allowed to play outside unsupervised. A third of adults surveyed in 2007 for Play England thought that the threat of paedophiles was a barrier to children playing out. Yet an NSPCC report published last week argued that children are at greater risk at home from sexual predators operating online, than they are playing in the park or the streets.

Some barriers to children playing outdoors are, like ‘Stranger Danger’, command lots of media attention. Not enough is made of others. Too often, for instance, the value of play is linked to learning and education. Outdoor play is valued as a medium through which to teach and the value of play for its own sake is ignored.

Building upon our Natural Childhood project, the National Trust has come together with RSPB, Play England, NHS Sustainable Development Unit, Britdoc and filmmakers Green Lions, to form a partnership, The Wild Network, aimed at addressing these barriers. We don’t just want to see more children playing outside. We want children in the UK to be able to forge a stronger connection with, and develop a closer interest in nature. To that end, this summer we’re launching a new movement to connect children and nature alongside a new feature-length documentary film, Project Wild Thing. Find out more here.

Tom is the intern on the Natural Childhood project. To find out more about the National Trust’s work to reconnect children and nature visit the Outdoor Nation blog.

Singer Laura Mvula: Why feeling grass between your toes is a city essential

“I’ll fly on the wings of a butterfly, high as a tree top and down again, putting my bag down, taking my shoes off, walk in the carpet of green velvet,” sings rising British star Laura Mvula.

The spellbinding singer-songwriter’s single Green Garden, taken from her debut album Sing to the Moon, is a breath of fresh air in more ways than one.

Birmingham-born Laura told the National Trust the track was inspired by memories of getting outdoors and playing in the garden as a child with her two siblings at their family home.

Recent studies have shown that parks, gardens and green space in urban areas can improve the wellbeing and quality of life of people living there.

The National Trust’s co-founder Octavia Hill fought for the protection of woodland, parks and green spaces for urban dwellers in the nineteenth century.

Now with the government’s current drive to boost housing figures under the National Planning Policy Framework and “growth duty”, coupled with cuts to park maintenance budgets, the protection of these valued green spaces are still at risk.

Laura told the Trust how important it was for her to have green spaces to play in while growing up in a city landscape…

Lickey Hills in Birmingham, managed by Birmingham City Council

Growing up in Birmingham, what did parks and green spaces mean to you? 

“It’s so important to have parks and green spaces in cities, especially for children who don’t have outdoor space at home. Just having somewhere to run free and explore can make such a huge difference to your childhood.

“It would be such a shame for people to lose out on communal parks and green spaces!”

 Where is your favourite/most inspiring outdoor place in Britain and why?

“One of my favourite places is the Lickey Hills in Birmingham. This is where my husband Themba proposed.”

What can we expect next from you? 

“I’m off to America for a couple of weeks to do some shows there and then this summer I’ll be playing lots of festivals in the UK, which I’m really excited about!”

Laura Mvula’s debut album Sing to the Moon was released on March 4 and is available to buy online and in stores now.

Find out more and watch the Green Garden music video at www.lauramvula.com

The National Trust’s Patrick Begg reflects on the role of wind schemes in a green energy future

Chris Goodall’s challenge to the Trust’s ambitious renewables programme (“Why is the Trust investing in renewables while fighting a windfarm?” The Guardian, 19 April 2013) raises some important questions, not just for us but for the nation in general.  In particular, his questions prompt us, as a nation, to reflect on what we want from our land in a crowded, but still in many parts an inspirationally beautiful, country.

For the Trust, we are very clear that well-designed and sensitively located wind schemes can play a part in the UK’s future energy mix.  In principle, we stand four-square behind the need for a much more assertive shift to renewables, of all types, which will hep tackle climate change and promote a more secure, resilient, low-carbon energy future for the UK.

The North Front of Lyveden New Bield in Northamptonshire

 Equally, we will continue to stand up for very special places like Lyveden, or wild areas of coastline where the views out are as cherished and sensitive as the views in.  And that’s the big point here: some things, we believe, are too important to be traded off.  Reducing the debates on future energy deployment and technologies to a simple £s per KwH equation is risky in the extreme.

 These are three-dimensional questions which, in the Trust’s view, must embrace a broader range of factors.  The power of natural beauty and the often transformational effects that experiences of wildness, aesthetic genius or true depth of history are forces for good in the UK and must have their champions.  Our core purpose asks us to stand up for beauty when it is under threat and an increasingly loose planning system has sharpened our appreciation of this responsibility.  Surely it’s also unsurprising that major landscape interventions near our places – owned in the first place by the Trust because of their national significance – carry the biggest risks.  We’ll continue to be unapologetic for standing up for their wider setting and intrinsic qualities.

Badly designed infrastructure of any kind is a growing risk to some of the UK’s most fundamental assets: our internationally unrivalled built and natural heritage which underpins some of the biggest sectors of our economy.  In a renewables context, I also worry that the polarisation of debates to an argument between climate fanatics and climate sceptics is unhelpful in the extreme.  One group is unbendingly committed to renewables at any cost; the other equally trenchantly anti. The latter using wind to obscure the wider range of options for switching to renewables, or even to underplay the need for changes in lifestyle that will reduce overall demand for power.

The Anafon river where the Aber community hydro will be installed

We believe that our programme can help bridge some of these divisions.  It’s not by accident that we’re focussing on micro-generation, mostly via hydro schemes and wood-fuel.  Most people would recognise that our 250,000 ha of land give us an unrivalled opportunity to generate energy.  We’ve looked hard at the technologies that will work with our places and are also looking at schemes where there is the potential to broaden out the benefit to local communities. We want to demonstrate what can be achieved when the landscape or heritage context is challenging.  Our hydros, for example, will produce real energy grunt, yet we believe they can be designed and fitted to local, wild settings in the fells and valleys of Cumbria and Wales. 

We have an amazing natural treasury of resources and renewable power is one of the dividends to be realised: but not at the cost of other, equally important dimensions.

By Patrick Begg, Rural Enterprises Director at the National Trust