Nature Guardians

Giving Nature a Local Voice

A Nature Guardian is someone who watches over a particular place, habitat or part of the living landscape and helps ensure that its interests are recognised.

Within the Cwmaman Rights of Nature Charter, Nature Guardians provide a practical way of turning the principles of Rights of Nature into community action.

A guardian does not own or control nature.

Their role is to observe, record, care, report and advocate.

They become, in a very practical sense, a voice for nature.

What Does a Nature Guardian Do?

Nature Guardians can adopt or regularly observe a particular place such as a river, stream, woodland, meadow, hedgerow, park, pond or wildlife corridor.

Their role might include:

observing the general condition of the habitat;
recording plants and wildlife;
photographing significant environmental changes;
identifying habitat loss or damage;
noting pollution, dumping or disturbance;
monitoring invasive species;
recording changes to rivers and streams;
identifying opportunities for habitat restoration;
participating in citizen science; and
reporting significant concerns to the appropriate organisation.

No specialist ecological qualification is necessary.

One of the most valuable qualities a guardian can possess is simply knowing a place well.

Someone who regularly walks beside the same river or through the same woodland may notice changes that would be invisible during an occasional ecological survey.

Guardianship Rather Than Ownership

Rights of Nature encourages us to think differently about our relationship with the places around us.

Instead of asking:

"What can we do with this place?"

a Nature Guardian asks:

"What does this place need?"

This is the difference between ownership and guardianship.

Guardianship recognises that we inherit landscapes temporarily and have responsibilities towards the people and other species that will inhabit them after us.

The Eyes and Ears of the Charter

A Rights of Nature Charter can express important principles, but those principles become meaningful when people observe what is actually happening on the ground.

Nature Guardians can become the eyes and ears of the Cwmaman Rights of Nature Charter.

A guardian might notice that a hedgerow has been removed, trees have been damaged, a stream has become discoloured, a meadow has been cut at an ecologically damaging time, or a wildlife corridor has been obstructed.

Equally importantly, guardians can record positive changes.

The return of a species, successful tree regeneration, cleaner water, a restored riverbank or an increase in wildflowers are all worth documenting.

Guardianship is therefore not simply about reporting damage.

It is also about recording recovery.

Citizen Science

Modern technology provides Nature Guardians with tools that previous generations of custodians could never have imagined.

A smartphone can record a photograph, date and precise location within seconds.

Citizen-science applications can allow observations to become part of a continuing environmental record.

Over time, individual observations can reveal patterns.

Where is habitat being lost?

Where are particular species returning?

Which streams repeatedly experience pollution?

Where are wildlife corridors being interrupted?

Which restoration projects are succeeding?

Community observations can therefore contribute to a much deeper understanding of the local landscape.

Reporting Habitat Loss

When environmental damage is observed, good evidence is important.

A useful record may include:

Where?
The location of the incident.

When?
The date and approximate time.

What happened?
For example, tree felling, hedge removal, pollution, dumping, drainage or destruction of grassland.

What habitat was affected?
Woodland, river, wetland, hedgerow, meadow or another habitat.

How serious was it?
An indication of the extent and severity of the damage.

What evidence is available?
Photographs and observations can provide an important record.

The purpose is not confrontation.

It is to create an accurate record so that significant environmental concerns can be directed to the appropriate authority or organisation.

Guardians of Rivers and Habitats

Nature Guardians need not attempt to monitor everything.

A guardian might develop a particular relationship with one place.

Someone might become a guardian of a stretch of the River Amman.

Another might watch over a woodland.

Others might monitor a meadow, pond, hedgerow, bridleway or wildlife corridor.

This creates a network of people, each developing knowledge of a small part of the wider landscape.

Together, their observations can provide a picture of the ecological health of Cwmaman.

Children as Young Nature Guardians

Children can also participate in guardianship.

The emphasis should be upon discovery rather than enforcement.

Finding an owl pellet, recording a butterfly, discovering hedgehog tracks or watching an otter can become an introduction to a much larger idea:

the other beings with which we share our communities matter too.

Citizen science can turn these encounters into meaningful records while encouraging children to develop curiosity about their local environment.

Today's Young Nature Guardians may become tomorrow's custodians of the Amman Valley.

Guardianship and Spiritual Governance

The idea of guardianship is not new.

Across many cultures, particular people have traditionally held responsibilities towards sacred forests, mountains, rivers, springs and other places.

Their authority may derive from customary law, spiritual responsibility or relationships established between communities and the more-than-human world.

Modern Nature Guardians operate in a very different context, but there is an important continuity.

Both recognise that caring for a place involves more than possessing it.

It involves relationship and responsibility.

Becoming a Nature Guardian

Almost anyone can become involved.

You do not need to be an ecologist.

You might already know a particular stream, woodland, meadow or footpath intimately because you walk there regularly.

Start by observing.

Learn what normally lives there.

Take photographs.

Notice seasonal changes.

Record what you see.

And when something significant changes, make a record of it.

The first responsibility of a Nature Guardian is wonderfully simple:

Pay attention.

A Community Watching Over Nature

One person cannot watch an entire landscape.

A community can.

Imagine people throughout Cwmaman each watching over a river, woodland, meadow, pond, hedgerow or other familiar place.

Individually their observations may seem small.

Together they can create something powerful: a community-generated record of the changing health of the local environment.

That is where the idea of Nature Guardians becomes more than environmental monitoring.