In reply to UKC/UKH Articles:
You want these places to thrive? To become more sustainable? To somehow escape the environmental decline? Might sound odd but you will have to pay people to change their ways. Money and opportunity is tight and people feel strained and tired. Giving a f**k about some Ring Ouzels is way down on the list of priorities. Pay children to go walking, pay people to go outside and do litter picking, pay people to protect wilds spaces. Then you'd see change. The environment simply needs human respect.
Imagine if there was a Government grant that was available, worth £1k per person, to help really clean and conserve our wild spaces.
Unfortunately, walking is also promoted as an activity requiring all the latest 'technical' clothing and gadgets, worn by affluent white models in groups of people all seeming to be having a merry time. If you have a crap social life (the poor), no money for expensive jackets (the poor) and no means of getting even to Kinder Scout (the poor), I wonder who it is, who the majority of the population are, who actually suffer? Can't for the life of me work it out.
What you really need are individuals with some serious spine in these meetings to begin pushing things forwards. People with nothing to lose who are mountaineers and outdoors people who want to see some serious change done quickly. It can be done, but boats have to be rocked, habits altered and politics purged. Until that happens you'll get endless turgid meetings of nothing done while Ring Ouzels die on the doorstep.