the times | Saturday December 18 2021 25
News
It’s a grey Saturday morning at the
Arundel Wetland Centre in West
Sussex, but Chris Packham is
exhilarated as he discusses pochards,
shovelers and scoters, and extols the
wonders of eels and water voles in the
reeds. The environmentalist looks like
an exotic migrating bird dressed in a
yellow puffer jacket and matching
fleece, his binoculars swinging from his
neck as he swoops down on a creek.
“My earliest memory, over 55 years
ago, is very near here,” Packham says.
“It’s how I became hooked on nature.
My father was massively into military
history, so we came to Arundel castle
when I was four. It was the first time I
remember encountering wildfowl. We
went down the hill to the vast lake after-
wards.
“My mother had some stale bread,
and we were feeding the mandarin
ducks at the end of the afternoon. They
were spectacularly colourful. As a child
I was completely blown away when
they took food from my hand. That
physical encounter, feeling a duck
pecking your palm, was electrifying.”
The 60-acre reserve created by the
Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in the
valley around Arundel lake didn’t open
until 1976. Packham, who was brought
up in Southampton, would pack a
picnic and spend hours in the hides
watching the birds circling overhead. “I
have a huge fondness for this place,”
says the presenter and author. “Wet-
lands don’t sound as romantic as beach-
es or moors, but they are important on
so many levels to save the planet. The
interface of land and water is extremely
rich in biodiversity and allows a greater
variety of species that can exploit both.
These fringe freshwater environments,
as opposed to large rivers, lakes and the
sea, are vital. But tragically we have lost
90 per cent of them.”
Britain used to be dotted with pools,
fens and marshes and the Wildfowl and
Wetlands Trust is determined to resur-
rect them as they have in Arundel.
Increasingly, areas such as the Som-
erset Levels are also flooding, leaving
communities stranded. Packham be-
lieves it’s our fault. “We need much
more wetland upstream to act as big
sponges.” Wetlands absorb more
carbon dioxide globally than all the
world’s forests combined, he explains.
Packham doesn’t want to wage war
against gardeners, or farmers. They are
all needed for the great re-watering.
“You could make a case for stopping
British sheep farming as it can’t cur-
rently be profitable... not surprising
when we are bonkers enough to import
lamb halfway round the world from
New Zealand. It would be better to ask
upland farmers slowly to transition
away from sheep towards more bogs
and wetland. What these communities
desperately need is investment to help
them diversify.”
He has sympathy for the struggling
small-scale farms. “It’s got to work for
the farmer too, they have to be able to
make a profit. They are massively in
debt. They are producing food for us
and we need to be more grateful.” It’s
the industrial farming he wants to
scrap. “They chuck nitrogen and pesti-
cides all over the place. One of the rea-
sons we have problems with our tradi-
tional wetland birds is factory farming.”
Consumers, he says, can also play
their part. Although a vegan, he doesn’t
want to ban meat overnight. “We just
need to eat higher quality local food
which will cost more. The problem is
that good farmers’ meat goes into a
food chain where it is not identifiable as
good quality meat. So we go to Lidl orTesco and can’t see where our beef has
come from.”
The British, he says, need “to train
ourselves back” into supporting farm-
ers. “Then we can have the temerity to
ask them to produce food in a way that
is compatible with animal welfare
standards and wildlife management. At
the moment if I was a suicidal farmer in
debt and I had a conservationist knock-
ing at my door saying put a pond in, I
would have other things to worry
about. So we need to create partner-
ships and guide them. We need to repair
and build bridges with these communi-
ties. Good farmers can create a para-
dise with biodiversity going through
the roof.”
As The Times and Sunday Times
Christmas Appeal is about all the
WWT wetlands, we also need to talk
about urban wetlands and city centre
wetlands. “They are just as vital. Pondsand lakes can keep cities cool. Then
there is the mental health aspect;
people come to sit by water, we know
living by a river or lake produces a
calming effect,” Packham says.
Packham is appalled by the con-
tinued use of lead shot by both rough
shooters and on the big commercial es-
tates. “We collected a load of game in a
supermarket recently and it’s so toxic
you wouldn’t give it to your kids, or
you’d lose a percentage of their IQ. We
are one of the last sane places in the
world using lead shot,” he says. “This
really affects wetland birds. There is
meant to be a voluntary ban for shoot-
ing lead over wetlands, but 100,000
wildfowl a year die through lead shot
ingestion and swans too.”
Dog walkers are berated too. “Dogs
off the lead can be a disaster,” Packham
says. “Everything out there is on a knife
edge. If birds are disturbed 15 times aTo donate
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circumstances. Ts&Cs applyAfghanistan’s mine-clearers thank Times readers for support
Keep dogs on leads, pleads Packham
Just a few weeks ago, Mohammed
Tahir, a father of two from Helmand
province, was struggling to support his
family with the income from working in
a small village shop.
Now the 28-year-old Afghan is a
trained de-miner, earning £230 a
month to clear swathes of territory of
explosives left behind during decades
of war in Afghanistan.
He was given a job by the Halo Trust,
a British charity that is the subject of an
appeal by The Times and The Sunday
Times to which readers have given
£350,000 so far.
Speaking from the Nahri Saraj
district, he said: “Our life was very hard
before. My income was not good from
my shop but now I have joined the Halo
Trust it is much better and I can help
with my parents and my brothers when
they are in need. I would like to thank
the British people for their humanitar-
ian support for the Afghan people.”
The Halo Trust became well known
in 1997 when Princess Diana walkedthrough one of its minefields in Angola.
It employs more than 2,500 Afghans of
all ethnicities.
In June, masked gunmen from
Islamic State shot dead ten mine-clear-
ers working for the trust in Afghan-
istan’s northern province of Baghlan
and wounded more than a dozen.
Callum Peebles, who oversees the
charity’s work in central Asia, said that
since the withdrawal of coalition forces
from Afghanistan in August, hundreds
of Afghans have applied to it for jobs.
Halo employees are finding homemadeexplosives near homes and “laced”
around schools. People welcome them
into villages to clear the devices so that
they can “get on with their daily lives”,
Peebles said.
Mahmood, 23, another Halo employ-
ee from Nad Ali district, was a farmer.
The father of three, who lives with his
parents and cousins, said two of his
cousins died in mine explosions.
He added: “I hope to continue with
my job and put my children into school.
I would like to thank the British people
for their support.”Larisa Brown Defence Editor
day in their optimal feeding patch that’s
going to hurt. It’s all about their
capacity to optimise their energy
expenditure. They can’t be scared off
too often. I think dogs can do more
damage than shooting if they are
constantly rushing at birds.”
Packham lives in the New Forest
with his long-time partner, Charlotte
Corney, and two black poodles, Sid and
Nancy. “You see it where I live. People
take their spaniels off the lead and the
whole lot are up in the air all day long.
It must be shattering.” We need to
change the way we live, he insists. “We
must keep our dogs on leads and there
should be places where there are no
dogs. I love my dogs but not on a nature
reserve. We don’t want to offend
people, so we still see swans being killed
by dogs. It’s not acceptable.”
It’s not just dogs’ instinct to chase
after ducks and wildfowl. “In the New
Forest there are 10,000 dog walking
hours a day, shitting and pissing every-
where. That is an enormous pressure
on the landscape. We put up signs say-
ing, ‘Please don’t walk your dogs here,
curlews nesting, teal, snipe and lap-
wing’ but they ignore them.”
The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust
has, over 75 years, restored and main-
tained thousands of hectares of wet-
land, helping to soak up floodwaters,
absorb carbon dioxide, trap pollutants
and provide habitat for birds. With
support from Times readers it aims to
restore 100,000 more hectares.
All donations to the WWT will be
doubled up to £115,000 via £25,000 from
Moto in the Community and £90,000
from an anonymous donor. More than
£1.34 million has been donated so far.
Readers have given £247,000 to the
Refugee Council, £133,000 to Outward
Bound and £111,000 to the Wildfowl &
Wetlands Trust. Including cash from
donors and philanthropists, the totals
are £529,000 for the Refugee Council,
£586,000 for Outward Bound and
£226,000 for the WWT.
Toxins in pheasant meat, page 31
Peat ban comes ‘too late’, page 51christmas
appeal
Alice Thomson
Chris Packham at Arundel Wetland Centre. He thinks dogs can do more damage than shooting if they are chasing birdsTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILLMohammed Tahir is a de-miner who
earns £230 a month to clear territory