How does this impact on Community Wellbeing? Re-establishing people's connection with the plants and animals around them improves well-being, fitness, and pride in the area. This in turn will also speed up action on protecting our loved ones' futures. Why should the Committee focus on this as part of their future work? Biodiversity loss is one of the main factors in the accelerating collapse of life on earth - life which we depend on for survival. Clean air, safe water, reliable food supplies and a tolerable temperature range are crucial to maintaining communities. Biodiversity plays an irreplaceable role in maintaining these.
Re-establishing wild areas around us will quickly reverse the decline of local wildlife.
Learning about, and connecting with the environment is a no brainer. It empowers you because you feel like you can contribute to a global future while also rooting yourself in, and having ownership for, the place - whether you live in it, are visiting it or working or studying in it. Ordinary people generally don't know enough about the connections between land use, land management, biodiversity and their place and their lives. We need to do this better at a local level.
Les is more. I think we need to do less spraying of weed killer at the sides of paths etc and less cutting of grass. Not less maintenance but less invasive management of wild spaces and places where nature could thrive if we just left it alone.
The rise in mental health issues, self harm, stress, suicide in the young, all ages, is deeply concerning. Biodiversity, nature, wildlife, green spaces, trees can have profoundly uplifting effects. Watching a flock of geese fly high overhead is a wonderful sight. Thinking of wildlife has been found to be an effective means of lowering blood pressure. Councils must grasp that parks are vital spaces for health-not empty sites for commercial ventures like dire Underbelly - & please no more Roundup
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