Happy Earth Day! It’s such a glorious time of year; a time always to recall Housman’s poem, if you will indulge me.
Loveliest of the trees the cherry now…
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
All the white blossoms, whitethorn, wild cherry, hedgerows decked soon becomes hawthorn blossom, to now the sweetest smelling wild apple blossom. Such heralders of spring, the joy of hearing a first skylark or seeing the first brimstone butterfly, these creatures remind us of renewal. Whilst our fabulous flora and fauna go about their springly business, those of us old enough sadly aware of the massive decline in numbers, for my children the shifting baselines of what is normal keeps me awake at night. I cast around for good news in the environmental world. For often it feels that there is little to be hopeful about.
And yet, ELF is about hope, we are about supporting the hopes and desires for better environmental outcomes, working with the amazing panoply of grassroots communities that we work with, at the local level. Whilst those who contact ELF are doing what they can to protect the nature that they love, there remains optimism. Keeping it local. Doing what we can at the local level, where often global news is too overwhelmingly sad.
For ELF too, much interested in rights of nature and rights of rivers, the bubbling movement that is occurring in the UK now, supported by a growing international movement, there are now 27 countries across the world, who have recognised rights of nature in one form or another. This then for ELF presents hope. Talking to a young woman yesterday, she said, she has been suffering from eco-anxiety for years but finds rights of nature gives her hope of how things might be done differently. Indeed the work that we are involved with, with the young student lawyers through the clinic networks also reveals a great desire for a shift in attitude. Bringing nature into the room of decision makers, which is a key part of the work we are doing at ELF supporting local group Love Our Ouse in their efforts to have a River Ouse charter endorsed by the Council by February 2025. There are other examples too around the UK of an increasing interest in rights of nature This gives me hope. In the end this is all we have.
And so to this quarter’s newsletter, we wish to bring some examples of ELF’s community stories, the local people reaching out to us and what we have done to aid them, shining a particular spotlight on industrial farming practices where we have seen a pulse of enquiries, which are injurious to both communities and nature.
