Thursday June 25

It was the least wild day in June, it was the wildest day of the year. I spent most of it sitting in a barn in Suffolk, talking, listening, doodling, watching videos and PowerPoint presentations. I saw little non-human life.

But it was a glorious and triumphant day for wildness and for wilderness, for this was the AGM of the World Land Trust. I am a council member and this is the one day in the year in which we can sit back for a moment and bask in the amazing things that the organisation has achieved in the past 12 months.

Country after country, acre after acre: land saved from bulldozers and chainsaws: land now to be maintained and managed for wildlife. We buy land, but we don’t keep it: it’s all owned by top quality, cash-strapped NGOs in the developing world.

Elephant corridors in India. Corridors for orang-utans in Borneo. Space for the Caucasian leopard in Armenia. Expansion of the Atlantic rainforest in Brazil. Other projects in Paraguay, Belize, Guatemala, Argentina, Ecuador… and on and on.

Small parcels of land, often vital little chunks that join together two vaster areas of forest: all of which push back the forces of destruction. This is a great organisation and it’s my privilege to be a part of it. Here’s more about them http://www.worldlandtrust.org/

And outside a swallow sang as if the world had no troubles whatsoever and a biennial journey between here and Cape Town was the biggest problem a wild creature ever had to face.