Guy Shrubsole

The Military Orchid is only found at 3 sites in England, and today I was lucky enough to see them at one… Location undisclosed; thanks to conservationist Miles King for showing me. This extraordinary flower of chalk grassland eluded the naturalist Jocelyn Brooke, who wrote a whole book about it; I brought a copy along, wanting to ‘reunite’ the author and his quarry…

We’re thrilled to welcome environmental campaigner and author @guy.shrubsole to Moor Understanding at the @riversandmoorland . At 6pm on Friday 5 June in Ivybridge’s Watermark, Guy will explore the lost temperate rainforests that once covered much of the South West - what’s been lost, what can still be restored, and the growing movement to bring back Dartmoor’s rainforests. Following the talk, Guy will be joined by Helen Aldis from @moortrees and Jess Tatton-Brown from @woodlandtrust for a discussion and audience Q&A exploring how woodland regeneration can help reduce flooding, improve water quality, support biodiversity, and reconnect communities with the living systems that sustain us. Moor Understanding is a day of talks, workshops and conversations produced by Sustainable South Hams’ Rally for Nature project in collaboration with Dartmoor’s Dynamic Landscapes. 🎟 A Friday festival ticket is required and gives access to the full Friday programme. 👉 Book tickets via the link in our bio! 📷 Nicholas JR White

Why are we still waiting for England’s biggest landowners to publish their plans for restoring nature? The National Estate for Nature group - whose members own a tenth of England - promised to publish their plans in April this year. Well, April’s come and gone… and whilst some of these landowners have published their plans (yay!), many haven’t (boo!). It’s not good enough. Time is ticking and nature can’t wait. Ask your MP to badger the government: where are the plans? #nature #land #wildlife

England is running out of land, and running out of time. Our land faces unprecedented pressure from climate change, nature loss and poor development. And yet it's also our greatest tool for solving these crises, while helping to provide the homes, energy and food we need. Join us at CPRE's Land Use Conference this summer, hosted at @ucl , for a day that confronts the land crisis head-on. We're bringing together decision-makers, experts, farmers, practitioners and student changemakers to encourage collaborative thinking — and explore what it really means to use land wisely, fairly and well. Speakers include: 🎙 @maryannochota (CPRE President, writer, broadcaster) 🎙 @tomheapmedia (writer and broadcaster) 🎙 @guy.shrubsole (author) 🎙 Emma Pinchbeck (CEO, Climate Change Committee) 🎙 @fionacreynolds (CPRE Vice President) 🎙 Natalie Prosser (CEO, Office for Environmental Protection) 🎙 Helen Browning (CEO, @soilassociation ) 🎙 Rachel Fisher (CEO, @rtpiplanners ) 🎙 Sue Pritchard (CEO, @ffc_commission ) 🎙 Ellie Brodie (Director, Grounded Insight) ...and more TBA. 🔗 Registration details in our bio. #LandUse #LandCrisis #NatureRecovery #PlanningReform #Countryside #CPRE

Red campion. Stitchwort. Bluebells. Wild garlic. The rustling of mice as they scamper through the undergrowth…

This reminds us of an old anecdote... "How did you come to own this land?" "I got it from my father" "And where did he get it from?" "He got it from his father" "And how did he get it?" "He fought for it" "Very well, I'll fight you for it" You can watch the full Channel 4 news piece reported and narrated by @nzerem by using the link in our bio. Francis Fulford doesn't hide the fact his vast estate has been in his family for generations, dating all the way to the Norman Conquest. Yet he argues that people shouldn't be on land they haven't paid for. Which makes us raise the question...what did he pay? Much of this land was once shared or commonly used, before being enclosed and turned into private property. Access hasn't always been restricted. It was restricted over time. As a result, less than 1% of the population now own half of England! If you want to hear more from both sides of the debate, you can watch the full documentary @our_land_documentary directed by @orbanwallace in cinemas on the 8th. Join us and support the campaign: 📰 Sign up to our free newsletter to stay in the loop with upcoming events and latest news. 🫶🏻 Become a paid subscriber by donating a small amount to the campaign every month. One off donations are also welcomed. ❤️ Keep talking about right to roam! Share our posts far and wide so we can keep building this community. #righttoroam #ourland

A real honour to be asked to write a chapter for FUTURE RURAL, a new anthology book published this week by @littletollerbooks to mark @cpre ’s centenary - with chapters by so many amazing authors & poets, from @nicolawriting & @amyjanebeer to Richard Mabey & David Matless. My chapter, ‘In defence of scrub’, is about the most maligned habitat in Britain. Ministers attack it as a supposed block on growth; newspaper columnists write vituperative articles deriding it. But none of them seem to actually know what it is - a gorgeous habitat of blossoming blackthorn, brambles and briars, a home for cuckoos and nightingales and rare fungi. Scrub, I argue, is a thorn in the side of capitalism - and so has been cast as a bogeyman by developers & politicians. It has been an inconvenience to foresters, and viewed as a sign of neglect by some farmers, who seek to tidy it away. When CPRE was founded a century ago, it was preoccupied with making the countryside a more ordered place: a land of neatly-trimmed hedgerows, freed from urban sprawl. I argue that rural England in the 21st century needs to become a much messier place - and that we should allow scrub to encroach on our imaginations again. #nature #cpre #rural #writing

Yesterday we brought together author and co-founder of the @right.2roam @guy.shrubsole and landowner Francis Fulford for a walk and talk about the right to roam with @channel4news @nzerem on Francis’s Devon Estate. The main goal of @our_land_documentary was to start a conversation between worlds which dont usually collide and discuss our sense of belonging to the land. With Our Land coming out in cinemas across the country on the 8th May after a Q&A lap with director @orbanwallace , Channel 4 News were looking to see if any common ground could be found between the two opposing views of our relationship and access to nature, let’s just say they decided to settle it with a dual 🤺… Coming soon to @channel4news and cinemas around the country with @metfilmdistribution and @margaret_london on PR

Incredibly excited to finally see adders today. It’s only taken me 40 years… these gorgeous creatures have seen rapid declines in recent years, driven by loss of heathland habitat and possibly due to increased predation by pheasants, released by shooting estates in their tens of millions: /environment/2020/oct/01/adder-extinct-across-britain-snake-threat-game-birds-release These beauties were sighted on heathland near Bovey Tracy in Devon.

💥 Attenborough takes on PHEASANTS in tonight’s #SecretGarden Fantastic to see him highlighting how the shooting industry has become totally out-of-control - releasing tens of millions of non-native pheasants into the British countryside every year. The Government has recently proposed regulating gamebird releases through a licensing regime. The shooting industry hate the idea - but David Attenborough clearly thinks pheasant numbers need reining in. Please contact your MP and tell them to support regulation of pheasant shoots! #nature #attenborough #pheasants

Had a truly amazing time with @singingwithnightingales on Friday night: not only did we hear the ‘out-sobbing song’ of multiple nightingales, we also heard cuckoos & owls, & drank in the glorious azure haze of this very special bluebell wood. In the dappled shade of coppiced hornbeams, Speckled Wood butterflies glided over a carpet of wood anemones. Campfire music and good chat with wonderful fresh food. A phenomenal experience - go if you can!! Thank you to @samleesong and all the organisers x

Today has been an adventure to see thousands of very rare Pasque flowers! Now found on only a handful of chalk & limestone grasslands in England, legend had it that Pasque flowers sprang from the blood of slain Vikings. In fact, they grow on old tumuli because they’ve not been disturbed by ploughing. They are associated with death and resurrection in another way, too: ‘Pasque’ derives from Paschal, the Passion of Christ, as they usually flower around Easter. These beauties are growing at Therfield Heath, Royston, Hertfordshire. For more information on Pasque flowers & to support restoration work, see Plantlife’s website: .uk/plants-and-fungi/pasqueflower/