Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts by Hannah Bourne-Taylor
I will admit that when I first saw Hannah Bourne-Taylor’s photos on social media, boldly walking through London naked to promote her campaign to save the UK’s swift population, I was initially confused, yet I soon learned that this was indeed a very effective campaign, one that gained the public’s attention and support, along with the incredibily difficult management of not diverting from the actual message the campaign was trying to convey.
In Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts, Hannah Bourne-Taylor takes us through what inspired her to take such drastic measures in order to help save a species of bird so many of us overlook, or completely ignore, creating a narrative that not only combines the fact that we are destroying our natural environments, but also her unmistakable passion not just for Swifts, but for nature in general, the reader is taken from the fields and roads of a local village and through the ‘corridors of power’ themselves at the Houses of Parliament.
It is here that Nature Needs You becomes its most revealing, as it helps expose the ‘behind the scenes’ operations of UK Government machinations, complete with all its machinations and corruptions, yet it is also here that I was left with more questions than answers, for example, why is there so little mention of opposition parties in relation to the campaign? Were they just not interested? I would have found it personally interesting to hear more of this rather than some of the other narrative that didn’t really push things along. I was also somewhat confused as to a number of comments made about brexit and single-sex toilets in relation to Housing Regulations, which were left with either no explanation or presented with a very one-sided viewpoint. However, these are just quibbles in relation to the larger narrative, and doesn’t take from the message being presented to the reader.
Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts is Hannah Bourne-Taylor’s call-to-arms for us to not just act to help nature, but to educate ourselves to live alongside nature. So often we build houses and roads with no concern for the natural environments which live in those areas, we shut it out and drown out the noise with Netflix, only to be concerned when someone, such as Hannah Bourne-Taylor, stands up for us to take notice. Yet it is successful campaigns, such as this that succeed in getting the right attention, there was no destruction, no shouting, no vandalism, just a walk (albeit naked) a petition and a lot of meetings, highlighting this is the way good campaigns work, aside from the numerous problems revealed in the pages.
I found Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts by Hannah Bourne-Taylor one of the most relevant books published at the moment not just to highlight the disastrous effects of humankind upon our natural world and the myriad species we share this planet with, but also a valuable insight into not just running a successful campaign, and all its frustrations, but how one person can make a world of difference.
Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts by Hannah Bourne-Taylor is out now, published by Elliott & Thompson (£16.99). To order a copy, go to eandtbooks.com
