Filth and the fury: Is Scotland heading towards natural disaster?

That’s precisely what Roger Morgan-Grenville, one of Britain’s leading conservationists, did. He set off from England’s south coast and trudged to Cape Wrath in northern Scotland, over 57 days. His journey, recounted in his new book Across A Waking Land, makes some uncomfortable comparisons between England and Scotland.

First, bad news for England: Scots “feel closer to nature” than the English, and Scotland’s government is deemed better on conservation. Then, bad news for Scotland: we’re filthy. There’s far more litter blighting Scotland than England. But the bad news for both countries matters most: our ecosystems are visibly collapsing, putting nature – and all that depends on it – in peril.

Morgan-Grenville began his trek when one astonishing statistic shook him: “Ninety-six per cent of all mammalian biomass [all mammals on Earth] is humans, their pets and their livestock. The other 4% is every elephant, rhinoceros, fox, rabbit, whatever. We’ve killed everything else.”

Roger Morgan-Grenville.

leading conservationist Roger Morgan-Grenville

Danger

So, he put on his boots and strode off to investigate the state of devastation across Britain. Humankind has caused a whole cluster of nature-related crises, says Morgan-Grenville: climate change, species loss, water shortage, water degradation, soil degradation, and air pollution. But only one – climate change – “has the microphone”.

That’s a “dangerous state of affairs”. We need to confront all these threats. “Species loss will kill us long before climate change.” Humans are adaptable – we’ll likely survive climate change, albeit with lives made more brutal – but we won’t survive mass species loss.

Insects, birds, plants and animals are simply disappearing, putting humans in jeopardy. “Do a long summer drive and your windscreen is clean,” Morgan-Grenville says. “One year green finches don’t come back to the bird table. House martins stop turning up. Rabbits go. Take three metrics: 50% of oxygen we breath originates as phytoplankton photosynthesising in oceans; every third mouthful we eat is pollinated by insects; every third pill is plant-based.”

During Communist China’s “Great Leap Forward”, Morgan-Grenville notes, Mao ordered the eradication of sparrows, as they ate grain. But sparrows also eat weevils in rice. Their culling triggered famine, killing millions.

“We don’t fully understand what collapsing ecosystems will do to us,” Morgan-Grenville adds. “I saw evidence everywhere I walked: systems are beginning to collapse – 60% of species loss is down to habitat loss; 85% of habitat loss is down to farming. So, fundamentally, the problem is the decisions we make about the food we

eat and how we produce it. But we can fix it.”

Birds

ONCE, in the Sussex village where Morgan-Grenville lives, spotting birds of prey in the sky was rare. But after banning egg hunting and DDT (which kills insects in the food chain), and prosecuting raptor killing, there are now “buzzards, kites, hobbies, hen harriers, even white-tailed eagles” to be seen.

The point is: “Nature is resilient. If you’re killing something by standing on its throat, but you remove your foot while it’s still breathing, it’ll get going again.”

A former soldier, Morgan-Grenville sees parallels between human violence in war, and human violence against nature. When species fall “below tipping point, they won’t come back”. Morgan-Grenville fears Curlews are approaching that point. What struck him most on his journey was the “lack of nature’s bounty, of bioabundance”. His walk took place during spring, yet he barely heard birdsong.

Today, people become excited if they see one swallow – “our grandparents saw swallows everywhere”. Hedgerows were silent and still. “I expected loads of life – raptors eating songbirds, that eat invertebrates, that eat plants – but some idiot mowed the verge and the plants are no longer there.” Once plants go, so do invertebrates, songbirds and raptors. “We’ve lost 70% of our wildlife in 70 years.”

The loss only becomes clear when we see how much wildlife returns in areas that are rewilded. “You’re suddenly looking around going, ‘God, I haven’t heard that [birds singing] for a while’, or ‘goodness, about 80 linnets came out of that hedge, I haven’t seen that since I was a boy’.”

Denatured

THE public must stop focusing on “charismatic species like red deer and eagles”, and worry more about birds vanishing from our gardens. Brits have become “denatured. We’ve removed ourselves from being ‘in’ nature and see ourselves ‘above’ nature. We don’t think we’re part of nature. That’s the basis of the problem”.

At best, Britain has “islands” of nature reserves, when we should be preserving wildlife “on a landscape scale”. Terms like “rewilding” are “comfort blankets”, letting us think action is being taken when in fact “very little has been rewilded”. “In 57 days, I saw very few environments unaltered [by humankind], whether that’s intensive farming in Gloucestershire or managed grouse moors [in Scotland]. We’ve gradually given nature nowhere to go.”

Even our love of dogs imperils nature. “There are 13 million dogs running around,” he says. That gives ground-nesting birds few places to live.

“We’ve built our lives with no thought to nature. You chemically spray sugar beet fields then 10 years later go, ‘God, remember we used to have birds around here?’.”

England

THERE’S hope, though. “Scots,” Morgan-Grenville says, “by and large feel closer to nature than English people. It’s a generalisation, but true.” A sentimental attachment to nature is important: it spurs action. “It’s partly because there’s fewer of you and much more nature.” When Morgan-Grenville “walked off the Pentlands down towards Edinburgh”, he “heard red grouse just before I got to the motorway – that’s almost in earshot of the Parliament.”

That would be impossible in England, given the difference in geographical size and population. Scots are literally “physically closer” to nature and therefore emotionally closer.

Scotland’s wildlife NGOs and nature wardens also have “more faith that the Scottish Government is taking biodiversity seriously than in England with the UK Government. There’s a feeling that the Scottish Government is coming up with solutions.”

However, the debates in Scotland around issues like deer culling, reintroducing beavers, grouse moors and salmon farms has more “ferocity” than in England. Fights between NGOs and private shooting estates, big business and eco-campaigners, or farmers and conservationists, have become “black and white”. The answers, Morgan-Grenville believes, often lie “in the middle”. Nuance is needed. Uncompromising environmentalism will destroy jobs and communities, unfettered capitalism will destroy nature. Morgan-Grenville seeks pragmatic balance. Despite the ferocity of Scottish debate, at least we’re having a discussion. “England is worse than Scotland in this respect … the debate is further on in Scotland,” he adds.

He would stay one night with Scottish gamekeepers, the next with conservationists. Both, he discovered, wanted the same outcome, despite animosity. “Good gamekeepers, good landowners, and conservationists all want to see increased biodiversity, but often tend to arrive there by different routes. The biodiversity emergency requires all of us to talk constructively with people whose range of views we might not necessarily agree with.”

Deer

MORGAN-GRENVILLE turns to Scotland’s deer-stalking industry. NGOs like the John Muir Trust, which manages big estates, keep deer populations to strict national guidelines: five per kilometre. “If you own a sporting estate, though, and you’re reliant on deer for income, you look on deer as a balance sheet item.” So sporting estates “are very reluctant to be told by outsiders that they [need] a lower density … less deer, and potentially less income … To be fair, many are ahead of the game and reducing densities, but by no means all.”

Managing deer is crucial for other species to thrive. “They eat trees before they can grow,” Morgan-Grenville says. He can walk past woodland and know how bad the deer management system is by the lack of young trees.

“The Scottish Government “is going to have to get heavy” with estates. The more trees eaten by deers, the less cover for birds like capercaillies, which are “doing badly as they’ve got no cover to nest in”.

Despite Scotland’s bitter debate, “even in cities there’s 80% approval rate” when it comes to culling deer. In England, it would be much more “Bambi has the right to live”, he adds.

Neighbouring estates owned by NGOs like the National Trust and private business should collaborate, conducting the same deer-management policies across huge swathes of land – tens of thousands of acres – so conservation happens on a “landscape scale. That’s how you get big improvements”.

Collaboration is beginning around Schiehallion in the Highlands.

Litter

ALTHOUGH he favours calmness, the amount of litter strewn across Scotland makes Morgan-Grenville furious. “I remember walking up the 10 miles of the A9, the footpath that runs up to Dalwhinnie, and it’s just a s*** heap. Everyone has chucked litter and I was just wading through rubbish. It wasn’t nearly as bad in England. When I walked from the Forth Bridge – Inverkeithing up to Crossgates and Kelty – it was just unbelievable what people had chucked out. “Litter is much, much worse than I found in England. You would just be gobsmacked.” Litter clearly affects biodiversity, damaging habitats and food sources.

Morgan-Grenville saw how climate change had altered the seasons on his journey. That means creatures which change colour to match winter snows in the Highlands, like mountain hares, remain white during warmer winters, making them easy prey. “The climate is changing faster than the bird’s camouflage is evolving.” We’ve created “the escalator to extinction”: animals go to higher, more northerly ground as the climate changes. “At a certain point, they run out of north and uphill.”

Reintroducing beavers to Scotland gets caveated approval. They’re “fantastic biodiversity engineers”, creating new habitats through dam-building – but only if reintroduced correctly. Put beavers in the wrong place – like “grade one farmland on the River Tay” – and they are a “menace”, eating trees and undermining riverbanks. Most are located well, though.

However, Morgan-Grenville stayed with Scottish farmers “pulling their hair out as their land was being degraded by beavers”. Likewise, sheep grazing must be properly located. Sheep “overgraze” land, stripping off the top layer, killing the soil. Yet due to the Highland clearances, “so much of the upland economy is based on sheep farming”.

We need less sheep farming, but that’s hard for “farmers already losing money. That’s where you need government to help the transition and say, ‘look, we’re going to damage your living, but we will support you’.”.

Grouse

SIMILARLY, Morgan-Grenville adds, many environmentalists say all sporting estates should be turned into ecotourist estates without thinking of the impact on jobs. “Big shooters leave big tips which helps the local economy,” he notes. “Bird-watchers tend not to leave tips. The uncomfortable fact is that shooting still brings in extra money into a decent number of low-income pockets, whereas the challenge for ecotourism is to demonstrate sustainable and reasonably paid jobs when and if the shooting ones go.”

Nevertheless, Morgan-Grenville feels Scotland’s “driven grouse-shooting business knows time is up. It’s very odd to have 20,000 acres given over to the harvesting of one bird for a few people”. He thinks “walked-up grouse-shooting”, that’s less intensive and involves fewer shooters, will survive, however.

Licensing will gradually see driven grouse-shooting decline. But, he adds: “It’s very easy to say ‘ban it’. When you go to these estates there’s many good people – fourth, fifth-generation underkeepers – and you’re saying to them basically ‘sorry mate, life has moved on, pack your bags’.” Scotland’s urban population often fails to understand this will bring “hardship and sadness … We live in this ridiculous adversarial world where we’ve left versus right, town versus country. We turn everything into a fight.” Shouting never solves matters, he believes. “Solutions will be reached if people talk with a willingness to change their minds.”

Salmon

SCOTLAND’S salmon industry is a “classic example” of a toxic standoff. It brings 3,000 jobs, Morgan-Grenville notes, and without jobs there are no schools and communities, but it also pollutes seas and has “horrendous welfare issues”. The mass use of sea eels as feed takes a food source from puffins, endangering an iconic species. To Morgan-Grenville, the harsh answer is that salmon simply must become more expensive.

It’s produced too intensively and in huge quantities because we want it cheap, he says. Clearly, that means salmon becomes unaffordable for the poor. “Sometimes you have to say ‘we need to eat less of something’ – like cattle.” Cattle numbers should be halved too, he adds.

It’s a constant trade-off between jobs and cheap food versus the environment. This dilemma plays out in the current controversy around Scottish HPMAs – highly protected marine areas – which limit human activity in designated waters. “We’ve trashed the seas around these islanda,” Morgan-Grenville says, “pulled more out than is in the gift of the sea to give us.” He has “huge sympathy” for inshore fishermen who may be affected as they are often “sustainable and low impact but end up paying the price for offshore fishermen”, such as scallop dredgers, “which are horrendous”.

HPMAs are “proved to work” – they have brought life back to barren waters. Yet “it’s very easy for politicians to just slap this across big areas because it seems to be doing good. If you’re a sustainable local fisherman who’s suddenly told what you’ve been doing for 30 years is no longer possible, there’s not much natural justice”. The answer is compromise: don’t be “heavy-handed” – target HPMAs properly.

Morgan-Grenville is no fan of corporate tree-planting offsetting carbon emissions. “It’s an excuse for not decreasing use of fossil fuels,” he says. He mocks claims that industries like Formula 1 can be carbon neutral by 2030 simply by planting trees. It’s like robbing banks and donating to charity. However, politicians love tree-planting, he says, as they can count trees and make election boasts. But the truth is that “an embarrassing amount of trees die because they aren’t looked after. Climate change mitigation strategies can’t be a one-trick pony. We need to incentivise people with carrot and stick to use less fuel”.

Money

WHEN it comes to the heated debate around Scottish land reform, it’s not who owns the land which bothers Morgan-Grenville but what they do with it. The irony is that “green gold” – money earned from carbon offsetting like tree-planting – increases land prices, making community buyouts more expensive.

However, political obsession with economic growth achieves nothing, Morgan-Grenville believes. “It’s only getting us into this hole.” Is he sympathetic to the Scottish Greens? Yes, he says, but then adds that he wants to vote for someone who would win. So, does that mean he wouldn’t vote Green? He would “cheerfully vote for the party that most demonstrated that it took the biodiversity emergency seriously, even if I disagreed with many of its other policies”.

He supports Extinction Rebellion’s aims, but questions tactics which deliberately inconvenience citizens. “It’ll just make them p****d off and less likely to change their behaviour.”

The bottom line is: “If you love nature, you can’t be neutral. You must be an activist.” Whether it’s writing to MPs, changing shopping habits, protesting, or publishing books like Morgan-Grenville, citizens “can’t just sit in their armchair and say ‘I’m really worried about nature’. You need to say ‘I’m not bloody going to let anyone mess it up’.”

As an aside, he feels the countryside is too “male and pale”. Britain’s population is 13% ethnic minority, but only 1% go to national parks. Ethnic minorities must feel “welcome” in rural areas. He also noticed how few women were hiking because of safety fears. “I expected much more of a reflection of society, but sometimes it was like walking into a mirror.”

Heroes

DESPITE how bleak the future may look, heroes abound. Morgan-Grenville lavished praise on projects which “remeandered” the Upper Tweed. During the Industrial Revolution, many waterways were straightened, killing off habitats. Remeandering sees otters, salmon and kingfishers return.

Scotland’s Trees For Life project is also a “local hero”. Scotland lost around 95% of its ancient Caledonian Forest, but across the Highlands, from Ullapool to Inverness, there’s mass volunteering under way to replant. Seagrass is being replanted around the Forth shoreline, and farms are getting together to create clusters of regenerative farming, which ensures agriculture doesn’t ruin the land. Creatures like the Purple Emperor Butterfly are coming back.

We need more local heroes, he says. “I’m just very conscious that if I’ve grandchildren,” Morgan-Grenville adds, “I want them to at least have the experience of nature that I had as boy.”