Denise is quite right: we all need some magic - totemic - glue
to bind people to where they are and the life that is there.
Today (Saturday) in Melbourne's (whoops also Adelaide's) The Age
the lovely Michael Leunig had a cartoon which said we all try to
be too big to enjoy nature, if we could make ourselves smaller
we might understand. There was also a ghastly gardening article
admiring spectacular weeds and disparaging "greenies".
One of the best glues ever is frog spawn. And I'm sorely
tempted to do a bit of illegal frog transplantation and
nurturing so that kids can again get a bit of spawn and watch
life from egg to tadpoles and frogs (with all the questions of
what do you feed them, what feeds on them, what habitat do they
need....). Birds are not a great glue - they don't stay in
place unless there is a nest (usually in urban Melbourne a feral
species). Our main rival is domestic pets.
Making the change will need a bit of organisation. I'm thinking
of calling it "Frogs Anonymous". And there should be a linked
organisation like "Kids for nature".
Indeed I don't believe any conservation organisation can call
itself that unless it has a kids programme. As Jill Denning
said in her recent posting, a lot of adults are half-full
buckets. Kids are FULL!
Michael Norris
Hampton, Vic.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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