| Environmental and conservation posts supporting my design collection covering topics l feel passionate about. |
| I have always been involved with wildlife of one form or another. |
| I have always been enthusiastic and loved animals and bugs and what many class as creepy crawlies, ever since l was considered knee-high to a grasshopper! When young and living in Australia with my family in the seventies and l wasn’t hunting redbacks in rockeries or making huntsman spiders, my pets l had a mini-zoo under my bed filled with ants and caterpillars are woodlice and other ‘insecty wotnots’. In Malaysia in the sixties, l could be found in the monny drains hunting frogs and being eye to eye with swimming cobras and watching horseshoe crabs scuttle on the flats when the tide was out. Or capturing plate-sized butterflies with the locals from the kampung, and if not, trying to net tropical fish out of the sea itself. For many years of my adult life, l worked as both a private animal keeper and breeder as well as an exotic livestock broker supplying exotic animal species to zoos and private keepers alike, and if not doing that, then l worked with dogs or horses or both. Now l work with earthworms, photograph fauna and flora, and work with wildlife and wild environments. It’s almost like l have completed a full circle in my life. |
| Making Our Mark and Reducing Our Impact! |
| I am unsure when l became as hyper-focused on ‘go green, environmental issues and eco-friendly topics’ as l am today. As in the specific date or time, month or even year, l think slowly the perils dawned on me around 1999, when l was in my mid thirties. But, for the last twenty-plus years, l have been acutely and actively aware of our world’s severe problems. I don’t say for fun l am ‘inspired by nature; l say it because it is the truth. I have a lot of passions and a genuine love for wildlife and conservation on planet earth. One of my main goals was to make my mark with whatever l turned my attention to and where l could if possible reduce my impact and tread carefully. I volunteer in the Gazen Salts Nature Reserve because l want to feel good about doing something positive, give back to my community, and experience a sense of purpose, a sense of achievement, and accomplishment. I enjoy the camaraderie of working alongside other like-minded volunteers. I will write on the benefits of volunteering at another time. But in a basic nutshell being a volunteer is good for your soul. |
| It’s hard to pinpoint what l am primarily passionate about with any absolute accuracy as the topic is quite vast. Still, if pushed to award my main concerns, l suppose l would respond with waste management and instant obsoletion, overpopulation, deforestation, single-use plastics and ocean protection, biodiversity – animal cruelty, loss of species and habitat destruction and intensive farming methods. They are my main ones, yet there are many more, but l am only one mind, and l can only task myself with so much or l would risk burning out! The list of global concerns is profoundly disturbing. My concerns whilst troubling are, in many ways, simply the tip of a much more giant iceberg. One only has to look at climate change and the distinctly noticeable troubles we have seen in the last ten years to realise that global warming is not just another conspiracy theory! To be serious, climate change has jumped disturbingly in leaps and bounds since the start of the millennium. The world has just got warmer! I remember a different set of seasons as a child growing up, and l have lived in a few countries other than the UK, so I can set specific landmarks as to what was compared to what seemingly is now. The world is changing, and humankind has brought this around. It is no longer a future issue. It is an issue that we are all living with today. Climate change isn’t a myth. It never was. But still, society has a rather convenient way of ostracising and elephantining subject matters it wishes not to confront head-on. They are numb to most of the issues our planet faces every year. Not all of society, of course people are generally becoming much more aware. Looking back, say as little as ten years ago, we now have a more significant shift of concern from the public on the wellbeing of good ol’ planet earth. The savvy science communities started to sense something back in the later eighties with hotter seasons, whilst other more hands-on scientists witnessed the shifts in the sixties. More astonishing is that climate change was discussed in the early 1800s! So it’s safe to say that it has been an issue for a while now. |
| It doesn’t take a lot to reduce our impact on planet earth. If we all work together and tread carefully, we can all make our mark. We can become more environmentally friendly, more eco-conscious and organically minded. It’ll not take much for us all to do our bit. |
| Five things you start today to reduce your impact. |
| Don’t be so keen to mow the lawn all the time. Allow parts of your garden to grow wild and help your pollinators. Be mindful of plastic waste and single-use packaging and supermarkets that use these. Support your local grocers, buy or grow organic produce, and remember to eat more seasonally. Try eating less meat and consuming more vegetables and fruit. Don’t throw everything away that you don’t want anymore – look at ways of recycling or upcycling, donating to charity or even giving away friends. Reduce food waste where you can and be mindful of what you throw away. Try your hand at keeping a compost heap, or find a community gardening group who will gladly take your food waste. |
| Published Design Tales Directory |
| Are You 3 Rs Minded? |
| How Can We Bee Helpful? |
| Never Too Small |
| Herbs Bee Specific |
| Stop Palming Off Our Orangutans |
| “The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved..” Richard Rogers |
Earthly Comforts 