LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE

To many people these days, nature is more or less a green blur: pleasant, desirable but largely anonymous. Take trees – four-fifths of Britons cannot identify an ash from its leaves, according to a Woodland Trust survey in 2013. Meanwhile, ash dieback disease is fast wreaking havoc, wiping out one of the most abundant and wildlife-rich trees in the country. The trouble is, how can conservationists expect the public to care, if they don’t even notice?

Study after study has shown a widespread ignorance of iconic natural things that form the fabric of our world, from acorns to adders, buttercups to bramble, catkins to conkers. In a nutshell, as it were, we no longer know our A, B, C of nature. Growing concern about this ecological illiteracy, and what it means for our future, has been driving the campaign to introduce a new GCSE in natural history in the UK, one of the most nature-depleted nations on the planet.

Author, radio producer and environmental activist Mary Colwell – best known for her Radio 4 series and , and her book – first had the idea a decade ago: “It came to me like a