It is sometimes said that humanity is at war with nature, but the word ‘war’ implies a two-way conflict. Our chemical onslaught on nature is more aki… - Dave Goulson

One man’s weed is another man’s wildflower.

Even today there are deniers, sadly including the previous President of the United States and many of his followers – but then there are also people who argue that the world is flat.

Similar issues affect the 211,000 km² protected by the USA’s sixty-two National Parks. These are supposed to be wilderness areas unaffected by man’s activities, yet many are affected by oil and gas drilling, or by invasive species, while quite a few allow hunting, and climate change is affecting them all. The Everglades National Park, for example, is being damaged by over-extraction of water to irrigate crops, by fertiliser and pesticide pollution, and by no fewer than 1,392 different invasive species, spanning everything from Burmese pythons to spreading spans of Australian tea trees.
It is clear that trying to set aside areas for nature has not been adequate as a strategy to prevent biodiversity loss – though nature reserves undoubtedly have value – and that we need to do much more. We do not have to continue headlong towards environmental Armageddon, but to halt this process requires us to recognize that our current strategies are not working, and that we cannot carry on as we have in the past. It is not too late to save our planet, but to do so we need to learn to live alongside nature, to value and cherish it, to respect all life as equal to our own, especially the small creatures.