I have just read a book called “Raising Hare”, a true story about a young woman with a high-powered job in London, who retreats to her converted barn in the country during Covid. She finds an abandoned newborn hare that she successfully raises to adulthood, feeding and caring for it while ensuring it did not become a pet so it could return to the wild.
This experience awakens her to the wonders of nature, which she had not really thought about much, and also makes her realise how destructive humans are, shooting hares for sport and destroying their habitat. It was a good read, but I felt concerned that it took an experience like raising a hare to make this intelligent, educated woman open her eyes to the natural world. It’s probably a consequence of living in cities and towns divorced from nature. If we don’t know about the natural world, we probably don’t feel much for it either, which is just a step away from not caring what happens to it. And we have to care about it because nature is humanity’s life support system. Without it we would die. So, how to educate urban people? Focus on the young, I think. Parents, teachers and anyone in contact with youngsters, take every opportunity to get children into the natural world, even a city park. Show them anything – birds, snails, plants – and tell them how they live and why they are important in the bigger picture. Read up yourselves and then pass it on to the kids. I grew up in the suburbs, but luckily had parents who instilled in us both a love of and an interest in the natural world. For instance, when we found a young seagull at Noetzie that had swallowed a fishing hook and line, my father didn’t say: “Ag, leave it.” He cut off the long bunched line, but would not pull out the hook as it would damage the bird’s innards. He made a “broth” of water and mussels from the rocks that he fed to the seagull with a syringe. We were fascinated. As it grew stronger he sent us out with our fishing nets to catch tiny fish in the river mouth. “It must eat the whole fish to get the nutrients it needs,” he said. When school holidays ended we brought it back to Cape Town where it continued to be fed and looked after. One day we came home from school and it was gone. It had flown out of the window left open for that reason. We learned that one could sometimes heal what humans had damaged, and that the purpose of healing was to return the animal to the wild. Not everyone would have this sort of experience to teach children, but there are many simpler ways: showing a kid a spider web and explaining how it works; finding a dead butterfly and explaining pollination; picking up plastic and explaining how it kills sea turtles. Fire their imaginations. Foster their curiosity and sense of wonder. Take urban youngsters and help create tomorrow’s environmentally conscious decision-makers.
