By Karen Bateman WE ARE sat at Ed’s table, drinking weak tea. Ed has been telling me about Eastern Curlews, how their wingbeat is slow and deliberate, how these cautious birds are flogged on their route from the Arctic Circle to Australia, and how he believes their melancholy cry is an innate awareness of the decimation of their species. In turn, I tell Ed how my nanna would predict the weather by the behaviour of birds. If swallows swooped low across the backyard she would rush outside and unpeg her knickers before showers came. Pied Wagtails roosting in the cavity of the chestnut tree, or a squadron of geese that flew south before autumn’s end, meant a harsh winter was ahead. A blue-sky day kicking pebbles at the seaside could end up with us all hustled to the car. ‘Chivvy up now before bad weather hits,’ she’d say, with a nod toward the seagulls huddled near the barnacled legs of the pier. Living in the North East of England there was always a decent chance, in predicting inclement weather, that she would be right. Predicting fair weather days was a little trickier. Observing birds to take measure of our surroundings is nothing new. In the middle ages, folk would predict the severity and length of winter from the breastbone of a dead, local goose and though this particular practise is not grounded in science, recent studies suggest birds can read difference in barometric pressure, giving credence to some weather folklore. | Karen Bateman was highly commended in the Bass Coast Prize for Non-fiction for her essay Ed and the Birds, a very personal response to local environmental degradation. A dialogue between a naïve narrator and a learned friend, it contains an immense amount of complex information packed into an easy to read format. Ed and the Birds is clear eyed about the enormous challenges but with a vestige of optimism and humour based on the response of one person, “a plodding optimist”. |
Ed is a committed letter writer, a dedicated Landcare volunteer and a lifelong bird watcher. What Ed doesn’t know about birds, isn’t worth knowing.
‘Well, we don’t have the distinction of seasons here, the landscape changing features of the northern hemisphere …’ Ed answers before he veers off on a lengthy tangent about spotted quail thrush and the difficulties they endure, then switches back to ask if I’ve heard the Currawongs.
I have heard the Currawongs. I tell him that at the weekend, while searching for mushrooms on a friend’s farm, I found a large fairy ring hidden behind some pine trees. From here I could hear the Currawongs call to each other from the topmost branches.
‘That’s the sharp start to autumn,’ Ed tells me. ‘They’re altitudinal migrants. They come down to the lowlands during cooler months. It’s a sign that the cold has come to the high country. What do you think of the environmental draft?’
‘Huh?’ I reply, trying to keep up with the switch in conversation.
Ed’s mind works like lots of little tributaries, his thoughts run in different directions before they meet up at the source. He has a way of looking at environmental problems that is multilayered; he has an ability to see all the interacting variables within any given situation and whilst this can make for difficult, linear conversations, it does result in well-rounded and considered solutions.
‘The environmental sustainability strategy? I emailed it to you. Your thoughts?’ Ed prompts.
‘Well,’ I take a moment to consider my answer. ‘It looks like it was put together by graduate students who got their facts from Wikipedia.’
It really is the best I can say. It’s a lot of pomp and ceremony, very little substance and with no real strategy that I can decipher. He sighs and shakes his head. It’s frustrating for him. Ed’s knowledge of environmental strategies is prodigious. He can talk for hours (and often does) about the necessity of floristic diversity and density to encourage a rich variety of mammals and birds. He expounds the ecological importance of habitat corridors for aquatic and terrestrial fauna. He worked for years in riparian landscapes, trying to manage those fragile biological resources amid increased bureaucracy and public indifference.
Ed reads me a scathing review of the strategy that he has emailed to the shire. He has pulled them to task for rushing this plan, for their superficial, lacklustre response to the pressing environmental issues that this town faces. He has offered his time and considerable expertise to the council. He has offered to write the strategy for them. He is not a man to sit back, throw up his hands and admit defeat.
‘Hmmm, yep, so frustrating’, I mutter, dredging my brain to think of something useful to offer and coming up with an inadequate ‘If only you worked there …’
If only Ed worked there! Catchment and Climate Change, Open Spaces and Bushland, Sustainability and Climate, Environment and Sustainability, Ed would be a force to be reckoned with in any of these areas, but he is on the wrong side of the workforce, overqualified, over 50 and over humbling himself in interviews with know-nothing twenty somethings. So, Ed takes work where he can find it, seasonal, a day here, a week there, anything to plug the edges. Generally, though, you would find him at the creek that sludges along the side of his house, knees dirty and gloved up, following a blackberry tangle or bothering clumps of onion grass.
Ed’s section of the creek (and I use this term intentionally, for he has taken ownership of both this bit of the creek and the nub of reserve that corners the northern section of his block) looks well managed and well cared for.
Recently, Ed tells me, he did the Aussie backyard bird count. Every day, for seven days, he went out to various locations and for twenty minutes counted the bird species he spotted. In the six to seven years he has been managing this section of the creek the difference has been significant. This year he counted twenty-four to twenty-six different species, of which only six to seven were exotic. Up the road, just 400 metres or so, he counted just twelve species, with most of the species being exotic.
‘It just goes to show’ Ed says, ‘Birds will not live where there is no protection’.
Birds, like most creatures on earth, are driven to survive and procreate. To facilitate a decent bird habitat, you need a variety of vegetation layers. Different birds live in different layers, so providing ground cover, grasses, small to medium shrubs, as well as a few native trees, is necessary to attract a variety of species.
When I plant, I tend to pick a few native plants that look pretty and them plonk them in the garden, shovel on a bit of mulch and consider this a job well done. When Ed plants it’s a whole different experience. He plants with the little birds in mind, but always with a wider view to the interconnected nature of birds and their environment. He picks his plants carefully, a considered mix of differing heights and densities, a variety of plants that will provide nectar, fruit, berries and seeds. He thinks about the understorey, fallen branches, rocks, leaf litter, he thinks about nesting sites and materials. He plants spiky plants to create a buffer between the little birds and their predators, native grasses for seed source and hiding spots. He concentrates on plant complexity, principally middle level plants, with an increased range of leaf characteristics to attract a broader range of insects. Essentially, he creates a food source for the birds he wants to attract.
In comparison, one thing that besets normal parks and reserves is the idea of large trees and open spaces. This is ideal for the larger bird species, the Honeyeaters, the Wattlebirds, and especially the noisy miners. They are aggressive. They are competitive. They are colony nesters, with all the aunties and uncles helping raise chicks in one big extended family. They are highly successful birds. But for the little birds? They are either chased out or eaten.
I had only observed the bigger and the introduced bird species in my garden. The aggressive New Holland Honey Eater, the noisy Wattle Bird, warbly Australian magpies that swooped the dog, the Common blackbird and starling. Actually, if I am being completely honest, I hadn’t observed the birds at all. I returned home one day, several years ago, to find Ed in my garden during the Aussie backyard bird count week. He had taken it upon himself to count the birds in my garden and then provide me with a comprehensive plan of action on how to tempt the little birds back into my garden.
I have a few large trees but very few low to medium shrubs and no ground covers, apart from scrappy couch grass. This makes it easy for the larger species to bully out the smaller insectivores and nectarivores. Ed told me I needed to diversify my planting and suggests broom spurge, beard heath, some medium tea trees, maybe I should shovel up that pile of moulting paper bark and chuck it under the shrubs and while I am at it, why don’t I plant out that front corner as it’s basically going to waste?
I took Ed’s advice and followed his direction, initially as a sort of bemused response to his catchy enthusiasm, but this project has now become mine. Principally, it’s the middle layer of vegetation that is missing from my garden, so when I buy plants, I focus on this. I enjoy seeing my garden take shape with a view to the future of local bird populations, and the idea that it could provide a protective haven. It’s not there yet, there are still many large aggressive birds and exotics, but in time this demographic will shift.
I ask this question because I know of a very staunch, very vocal, long-term environmentalist who catches blackbirds in a trap in her back garden, drowns them in a bucket then chucks their limp little bodies into the green bin.
‘There are two things I am not religious about’ Ed answers and goes on to explain how his theory is to address the plants they eat and spread, not the birds themselves. How blackbirds are brilliant vectors, spreading seed everywhere and, if we can get them spreading a greater number of indigenous seeds, then they are basically doing our job for us by propagating the landscape. He adds that native finches eat exotic grasses, that blackbirds are also a food source for other, carnivorous birds and that we have a habitat problem, not an exotic bird problem. At this point I forgot to ask what the second thing was that Ed was not religious about.
The small-town Ed and I live in is linked to no-where. It’s a neat pocket of urbanisation contained by farmland and ocean. The roads out of town are lined with a row of stringy melaleucas, growing under the powerlines, being sprayed by the dust of passing cars. When you look at google earth you can see a narrow strip of native vegetation along the coast, a few scrawny green strips along creek edges. Coastal urban development is a major issue. The desire to maximise plot yield, to cram as many properties as is possible on a bit of land is putting enormous strain on the local flora and fauna. Subdivisions are not leaving enough room for plants to live alongside the people. We are expanding ever outwards, and in doing this we have appalling situations where opportunities to maximise the utility of small remnants of land, for the future of native flora and fauna, are lost.
Ed reckons we just need to better manage what we already have, and he knows what he is talking about. His work in riparian zones, the challenge of river management, required a multi-faceted approach that considered the obvious need for pest plant management alongside cooperation of adjoining land holders and management of stock. Ed is used to careful analysis, of looking upstream and downstream, of prioritising and strategising on a grand level. He is used to assessing multiple sites over multiple days, then collating masses of information into a coherent, measurable, vegetation management plan. When he was reviewing the rivers in Victoria’s wild places, his approach was adaptive, long-term management over extended periods, and he brings this incredible knowledge, these years of experience, to the little creek and reserve that run alongside his house.
His method is to be consistent and persistent. He builds on his previous years planting, working on weed-impacted areas to increase the presence of indigenous plants. He plants for the tree creepers, birds that we have already lost. He plants for the migratory birds, the Silver Eyes (who pop in on their way to Tasmania) and the Golden Whistlers. He plants for the Rufous Whistler (one of Australia’s finest songbirds) and the little finches. Ed’s not into large-scale planting, he prefers a simplified approach, creating protective thickets and island oases for displaced birds.
As Ed says, ‘When you have a crap-house environmental strategy and a narrow creek, you are at the mercy of whoever butts onto it.’
When taken individually, it can be easy to dismiss the small acts of vegetation removal.
Maybe we ignore the weekend gardener who whipper snips a little to far into the reserve, we ignore those few bits of bush on the foreshore that were cut down for an individual to gain a sea view, we ignore the neighbour who cuts down all the vegetation (as they own the block so they own the vegetation) , but incrementally these small acts are taking a large toll. We are further isolating our sections of remnant bushland. Not only is each remnant that is left under threat, it is a poor facsimile of the original complexity of plants and birds. Ed explains that we may never get back the pre-settlement population of birds, but it is imperative that we look after the legacy populations, the ones we are left with, we must try to not lose any more of these.
I tell Ed about the quadrat samples I did at university. I placed a series of squares, one metre by one metre, on the banks of the scabby river that ran along the back of the university grounds and recorded every species I could find within them. It was passive sampling. All the recorded species were left on-site, and the results were collated back at University. This section of the river was low and dirty, bordered on both sides by a thin section of vegetation and surrounded by muddy paddocks. What surprised me was the abundance of species, the amount of life, found within this small section of land, near this scuzzy river, strewn with cow shit and tamped down by bovine hooves.
The area in which Ed and I live has less than 10 % of native vegetation remaining. It’s a figure that makes me wide-eyed and short of breath. It’s a figure that (I think) demands some sort of fanfare, shouty capitals and front-page headlines, outrage on local radio and affirmative action on the streets. In the blink of an eye decade that I have lived here, the change has been huge.
The paddocks are being carved into suburban blocks. There are more paved areas and sealed surfaces. More exotic predators roam the streets. Neat, landscaped gardens with their raked pebbles and carefully planted palms have resulted in a sort of green homogenisation that has left the distinct biology of local ecosystems impoverished. The houses are larger, and the blocks are smaller. It is becoming common to see a site cleared of all vegetation, including topsoil, prior to development. There is a disconnect between what we read, see and hear about environmental strategies and climatic proclamations, and the large-scale removal of native vegetation from our coastal towns.
I feel like we are doing the adult equivalent of putting our hands over our eyes and thinking if we make ourselves small enough, stay nice and quiet, maybe it will all go away.
It won’t.
Ed’s solution to vegetation loss is simple. Guerrilla planting. He heads out along the creek border and plants ground covers and tufted perennials, little shrubs and small trees. He befriends the people whose houses back onto the creek. He helps them rip out clambering ivy and slips in a few well-chosen plants along their fence line. Recently, in his local wanders, he found a remnant patch of Tufted Blue Lilies on the vacant block up the road and is now translocating them to the reserve. Ed is a big believer in looking after the remnants, and although this comment makes me shake my head and querulously state ‘What remnants? They are all being replaced by townhouses’, (a comment that is neither helpful, nor accurate) Ed assures me that the more you look, the more you find.
I like the idea of heading out and sneak planting. Of slipping in a few well-chosen plants on the decimated nature strips, on the edges of well-manicured gardens.
‘Just get out there and clump plant’, says Ed, ‘It’s amazing, really, there’s an accumulative effect in planting sneaky pockets of dense vegetation.’
‘What if they just pull them out, ’I ask, imagining Ed out there at the creek, patiently planting alongside other peoples fences and nature strips. What if a quietly disgruntled neighbour, walking along the creek with his aging dog, decides to pull them out? Or squash them? Or step on the budding leaves?
‘Then you plant more,’ he replies. And he is so matter of fact, so ploddingly optimistic, it’s the opposite of my incredulous frustration at what is happening.
‘I rode past the Dr’s block today.’ I say, changing tack. ‘There’s a house going up that looks like Tara from Gone with the Wind, it has these sort of grand columns and a snow-white exterior.’
The house looked like the sort of place where you could wear satin mules and linen, greet your husband with a gin and tonic as he loosened his tie at the end of a hard day. It seemed so out of place in this town of Ugg boots and board shorts, where smart-casual meant jeans without holes.
The Dr’s block was next door to my old house. It was an inter-generational investment brought to its end by in-family bickering and the death of the Dr, the original purchaser and one of the key proponents in keeping the block. It was 2000 square metres near the centre of town. A row of mature pine trees had lined the west, shading a good quarter of the block from the fierce afternoon sun. There were solid pockets of coastal tea-tree, coastal wattle and native rosemary, clumps of poa and sedge grass, low reaching she-oaks and rough old banksias. There were a couple of large, spreading gum trees. The ground was a hodgepodge of leaf litter, shrubs and fallen logs. The bird life was fantastic! The little foragers could find safe nesting burrows and insects.
The trees would host Magpies, Cockatoos, Eastern and Crimson Rosellas, Wattle birds, Galas and Spotted Doves. There was an incredible cacophony of screeches and chitters, trills and coos that would rise and fall depending on the weather and time of day.
It took five men several days to wipe out most of the vegetation, leaving only two trees. A cherry picker lopped the trees down. A stumper ground away at the tree stumps and cleared up any remaining roots. A bulldozer shovelled the giant limbs of the pines and gums, pushed great tumbleweeds of scrub vegetation into a massive pile of discarded wreckage before it was removed, and the block scraped flat by an excavator. The land was divided into seven small lots. When they had finished and the machines were taken away, what I noticed most of all was the silence.
That summer the bare earth baked. The afternoon easterlies would skim off the top layer of dust, shovel in under doors and layer it on windows. One morning I walked past and noticed that someone had scrawled on the real estate sign, in lime green graffiti, ‘You cut down all the trees, you guys are cocks,’ and though I cringed at the wording, I applauded the sentiment. Months after, when most of the lots had been sold, the developers chopped down the remaining, protected, two trees and wore the paltry fine that was slapped on them.
The town that Ed and I live in has lots of back lanes that connect different parts of town to the beach, the main street and the wetlands. They work as wildlife corridors, strips of habitat that allow fauna to move safely through an urban area in search of food, nesting sites or a mate. These patches of vegetation are along creeks and between rows of houses.
They reconnect fragments of land broken up by urbanisation and allow passage to the larger patches of bushland. Any small change can have a larger incremental effect on bird populations (a change in roadside management, a more aggressive weed control strategy, a more consistent approach to lawn mowing) and sure, when it comes to roads it is safety first but, in this area, sometime these corridors harbour the last residue of indigenous land. It is well recognised that these vegetation links, these wildlife corridors, provide a significant contribution to biodiversity protection and quality improvement yet there is nothing in place to provide meaningful protection to the remnants that sit within the town.
One frequently used laneway is a shady, leaf strewn path that winds between rows of houses down to the beach. A few years back, one of the larger blocks that bordered this laneway was sold. The old weatherboard house was bulldozed, and every tree and shrub removed and mulched. A large concrete slab was poured. A swimming pool was craned in. The surrounding trees and shrubs started to blow over due to increased wind exposure. This development did galvanise a small section of the community to call the mayor and the local councillor, but the vegetation removal was legitimate, supported by the 10/30 bushfire legislation. This legislation, with its state-wide, one size fits all approach overrides all local planning restrictions, which were developed with knowledge of the unique characteristics of this town, the bushy backyards and established trees, the several escape routes out of residential areas and the fact that we are bordered on three sides by highly grazed farmland.
‘There is, however, concern that, in an effort to achieve simplicity, (it) might permit the destruction of vegetation to the overall detriment of the community and the environment because it overrides any environmental and landscape overlay that has been applied in a planning scheme…’
A friend and I walked along this ruined laneway, late afternoon at the end of summer, and denounced the people who had bought the block.
“Why didn’t they buy in a paddock,’ my friend said.
‘Or a housing estate?’ I replied.
‘Why put in a swimming pool when you are ten metres from the beach?’ my friend wondered.
‘Because they are stupid, rich fools,’ was my considered response, before a middle-aged woman came out from the edge of the block and stood, hands on hips, and glared at us.
‘Oh no, that’s embarrassing,’ I muttered, ‘Let’s go.’
‘Nah’, said my friend eyeing off the woman, ‘They deserve to know what the community thinks of them.’
I tell Ed this story with a mixture of victory and shame.
‘And I get it.’ I go on, ‘She wants someone to pay, I want someone to pay.’
I tell Ed I want people to be outraged, to demand more, to create a fuss about the gentrification of the town, the vegetation loss, the creep of the housing estates. I want someone to be held accountable.
Ed tells me that the older demographic is dying off and the current crop of sea-changers want new houses and butlers’ pantries. They don’t want straggly native gardens; they want order and precision. They want prestige – a word plastered across the real estate signs that loiter on the edges of small blocks, near the crumbling weatherboard shacks, the brown brick units overlooking the eroding beach dunes, a word linked to the size of the dwelling or the view of the inlet.
I feel like it’s the emperor’s new clothes. Encouraging buyers to come and enjoy the tree change, while the trees are being razed and the wetlands bulldozed. I feel like I want someone, someone sensible, to stop this money orgy of progress and to ask in a quiet, considered manner ‘Is this what we really want?’ The word prestige, in this context, is a liar’s paradox, uttered by real estate agents and supported by developers.
‘Prestige’, Ed shakes his head, pushes his chair back from the table.
‘Maybe they need to re-define the good life,’ I say, quoting Lester Milbrath.
I had read Milbrath when I was seeking respite from environmental lethargy. I felt confronted. I was panicked on behalf of the entire human race. I worried that time was running out. We were interfering in the food webs, messing with ecosystems. We were wiping out top predators and fish populations, fragmenting habitats and polluting waterways. We were fouling our own nests.
Lester Milbrath was a professor of political science and an environmentalist. He suggested that quality of life is subject to emotional well-being, quality in life, as opposed to quality of life such as economic status, marital status, and place/country of residence.
It’s a subjective concept. The latter can be measured objectively, the former cannot as it is hard to empirically measure an experience that is influenced by a person’ singular reality and attitude. One person may feel rich with a roof over their head and meat on the table, another may feel cheated that the house isn’t large enough and the meat isn’t scotch fillet.
Mibrath’s theory encouraged me to question my ethics, it narrowed my focus to everyday things, what I buy, how I live, what I do, what I think. It enabled me to draw the connection between small actions and large consequences. This was empowering, rather than the (often) overwhelming amount of dire environmental information that had me stupefied.
I am laboriously explaining my green ethics when Ed interrupts, hoisting himself up, he gathers the cups and asks, ‘Seen the Heron this year?’
With Ed, it always comes back to the birds.
‘No,’ I reply, ‘not so far.’
He is talking about the White-faced Heron that nested above my lemon tree, in a peppermint gum, last summer. It shat everywhere. The lemons, leaves and branches were covered in a chalky slime that stank of fish. The Heron would disappear during the day and return in late afternoon to its nest, this mad bundle of twigs perched in a crook of the larger branches of the tree. Once I watched it glide across from the neighbor’s yard. Its pale grey feet and yellow legs pointed in flight- it dipped and soared catching the breeze.
When the afternoon light caught the dark underside of a wing my busy mind was settled, for just a moment, by the Heron’s gentle beauty.
‘I couldn’t believe that thing was nesting in your tree,’ says Ed.
‘I can’t believe you know so much about birds,’ I reply.
‘Well, when I was a teenager, the only tits I was interested in were on a bird chart,’ is Ed’s response.
And while a small part of me thinks, crikey, tits is an old fashioned word, mostly I just picture Ed as an earnest youth, plotting birds on a shaky, hand-drawn chart, a thoughtful mark placed next to each new species, every mark memorised, every call remembered.
That year, the year of the Heron, had seen another new bird species in town. The Eastern Koel had extended its range and been spotted (and heard) about town. Ed had one that took up residence in a gumtree and scared away the Wattle birds that tried to eat his peaches.
Ed tells me how the range of birds has changed. He explains how the rapacious clearing and consequent decline of birds in the fifties and sixties had been counteracted by the push to plant natives in the seventies. He speaks about the return of the Rainbow Lorikeets and the Long-billed Corellas, but it’s a complex world and who really knows what was there first?
‘Birds are terrific environmental indicators,’ Ed states.
And they are. Birds are highly mobile and easy to spot; they are distinctive in call and plumage. The community dynamics of native bird species are a clear indication of the health of an ecosystem. Look at how the drab little Galapagos Finches inspired Charles Darwin to extrapolate how species are affected by their environment and how entire regions can be defined by the species that live within them. The climate is changing. This is a fact. And this change brings altered circumstances for birds. Some will adapt and survive, some will not. Survival will depend on this Darwinian notion of adaptability, and successful adaptability will rely on access to decent habitat. It’s the sort of circular dependence that makes my head fizz.
Recently, the shire councillors have not only acknowledged that climate change is a thing but have resolved that it is ‘a serious threat and should be treated as an emergency’. In an ideal world, the management plans actioned by this declaration will have a beneficial effect on both local vegetation and bird populations.
I tell Ed that this move gives me hope. It really does. He tells me he is reading the most fantastic book he has ever read. A book called ‘Aesthetic Treatment of Concrete Line Channels’ written in 1975 by the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, a public utility board set up in 1891 to provide sewerage treatment functions and options for the city. A book that has beautifully executed line drawings of trapezoid channels, a book written at the high point of urban waterway channelization, when channels were lined with concrete input with wavy lines. And I admit, at this point I find myself completely lost, not sure where he is going or indeed how we arrived here. There was no obvious precursor that I can pinpoint, and I think to myself, ‘I never want to read this book’. Then he brings the topic back home, explaining that to a degree, local government is still working from a watered-down version of this waterway management plan. That even though concrete is too expensive these days, the idea of pipes and channelling the water out of the system is still the focus, we still divert excess water into our gutters, drains and the ocean. Ed tells me that in other countries (China, for example) they have shifted focus to a sponge model.
The idea being that a catchment is treated like a sponge and instead of the use of an impervious substance (concrete), they dig ditches and fill them with plants. Instead of measuring success by speed flow and drainage, they measure success by the amount of water they keep within the catchment and the health and wellbeing of the surrounding ecosystem.
Finally, in true Ed style, he links it all together, suggesting adapting and changing our approach to water drainage and management should be our priority, and by looking after this the water stays in the system and the catchment becomes a resource for water, birds and vegetation. He points out that it’s a top to bottom approach and what happens in the catchment has a direct effect on water quality, wetlands and estuaries.
It takes me a few moments to catch up and organise this information in my head and, as usual, it seems like Ed has an easily embraced, common sense solution. Then again, sometimes I think to myself we are floating on a giant ball in the middle of space, amid a mass global extinction, so maybe I am not the best person to comment on this.
Ed’s on a role, but I am on a time limit and I am well used to these chats taking twice as long. I take my leave from Ed’s house with a list of plants, a magazine on shore birds and a recommendation for a book that Ed insists will prove Australia is the epicentre of songbirds and parrots. As I ride home, I think about Ed and his love of birds. I think about how different demographics will have divergent opinions on what should be preserved and how. A duck hunter will have a different opinion on how and why to preserve a lake, than Ed, an ambler who enjoys birdwatching. But surely, even though the motivation is different, the end result (a healthy lake) will benefit both demographics. Ultimately though, both views are anthropocentric and as always, the value and worth of the environment are measured by its ability to serve the human, but really, does this matter if the lake is saved?
Back home, I slot my bike into the rack and walk onto the verandah. The magpies have been stealing the dog food and crapping everywhere. The deck is smeared with gloopy eggs of white and black and it reminds me of Ed’s parting words.
‘We think we know it all, but really we know shit.’