Start by cleaning up our own backyards

So many global conservation issues bombard us these days. Television, the internet and printed media give us horrifying examples of pollution, depleted resources, human starvation and conflict, species extinction.

It is tempting to say "there's nothing I can do to change this" and switch off.

True, one can donate money, sign petitions or make written submissions on issues like global warming, the energy crisis, biodiversity loss or human over-population (issues which are all interlinked, of course).

But anything that we can do is unlikely to get at the root causes of such problems because their solutions need international action and changes in the thinking or actions of huge numbers of people.

In the 1960s there was a rise in public awareness of ecology that became part of school and university teaching. Science courses included ecological principles, such as the inter-relatedness of living things, population dynamics and limits, nutrient cycling and energy conservation. Terms like "ecosystem", "ecology", "energy flow", "food web", "trophic levels" and "biodiversity" became familiar, even outside the classroom.

So why, being enlightened people of the 21st Century, do we find local issues like rubbish dumping in the headlines? There is a mantra that "conservation begins at home". If the world's environmental problems seem overwhelming, then surely our community can get it right? That hope was punctured by last week's Chronicle article on February 25, regarding rubbish dumped at Castlecliff. It was followed by a supportive editorial and sympathetic correspondence. Although it was pleasing to see widespread concern about this illegal dumping, the attitude of "someone else will clean it up" pervades sections of our community.

Throughout Wanganui, it is common to find the streets and footpaths littered with broken glass from discarded bottles, aluminium cans, cigarette butts, dog faeces and processed food wrappers. A scan of our river at low tide reveals not only bottles and cans but also tyres, supermarket trolleys, footwear and other items. The disposers of such materials seem to have no understanding of those principles of recycling or limited natural resources, let alone social awareness of health and safety, public and private property.

Last week, I reported to our council on "green waste" dumped in Kowhai Park, outside the river stopbank. What seems to have been a council contractors' dump for prunings and mulch from trees in the park has suddenly become a home gardeners' waste dump. Garden waste, almost by definition, is something one doesn't want in one's own garden. So why put it in a public "garden"?

Do they think they are recycling (at the same time as avoiding waste transfer station fees)? At Gordon Park, 3km beyond the urban fringe of Wanganui, again we find garden waste (and worse). Only the vigilance of Friends of Gordon Park and DOC officers prevents new weeds escaping into our district's most significant forest reserve.

We can all make a difference to the local environment ... and spread the word to those who never understood their ecology at school, or have forgotten it.