Birdfair Axed- the death blow of the global birding society or the new dawn?

So as the UK drifts further into a backwater of the planet, it seems to have taken birding with it. Yesterday the Leicester and Rutland Wildlife Trust announced they will no longer be hosting the International Bird Fair. Full statement HERE. Seems that in addition to financial challenges and other risks, the Bird Fair has become victim to the carbon narrative, a narrative that proclaims that instead of reforming global trade systems and global nature conservation, nature conservationists should burrow in locally, protect their own and promote sedentary low energy lifestyles. While that is indeed part of the solution to the ecological crisis, the extreme overcompensation of completely axing the Bird Fair probably highlights the undercurrent in the Wildlife Trusts, a reliant on over-local type people for funding and corporate greenwash money, which effectively has pulled them into the whole culture of slow managed decline that does not challenge corruption and retreats into the roots of society (that was certainly our experience in the Beddington Farmlands Campaign too, where the London Wildlife Trust rep actually voted me off a stakeholder committee in order to appease corporate and council interests). I guess the Wildlife Trusts had their day in the 1970s- they made some incredible leaps and successes but indeed were part of the GDP paradigm (it was all tied up in corporate greenwash and local authority eventual demise to the power of lobbying generated by that greenwash) and looks like will drift into history with it.  

The Bird Fair did need reform of course. A global birding culture focused on expensive high carbon birding trips for wealthy boomers was always a flawed model.  Global birding society needs young people, innovators and local/indigenous society at it's nucleus. Bird Fair was unfortunately an arm of the unsustainable society, a neo-colonial trade fair dominated by expensive optics companies and all-the gear-no-idea boomers (who presumably had made their money supporting global capitalism and destroying the planet). Basically old birding boomers could buy their way into an elite society and swan around the world collecting bird ticks armed with tens of thousands of pounds of equipment and then return to their mini-bourgeois hyper inflated  middle class homes/ index linked pensions and stocks and shares isas and corporate working families after the trip. Field craft, contributions to science, deep understanding and zen connections, soul building, ground breaking exploration and empowerment of local people/society was not on the radar of most company owners. For the most part Bird Fair was an exploitative capitalist orgy. 

However, that was just for the most part. Deeply embedded within Bird Fair was also something else, a nucleus of a global birding society, young birder groups, innovative non-profit birding developments (e.g. the Sound Approach), friendships, partnerships between the global north and south, decently skilled and appropriately equipped boomer birders, the support of local/indigenous lodges and businesses, the transfer of wealth from the global north to south and the contribution of data to Ebird and citizen science contributions. There was also the £5 million donated to Birdlife International (a rather pathetic small amount of money over 30 years for the entire cause of global conservation- the capitalists themselves have just created a $100 trillion fund for a green revolution!) and only God knows whatever happens to that money (there are many stories). However as we all know, key to nature conservation and local community empowerment is low cost, high impact strategies, which nature conservation is perfectly evolved for so £5 million spent wisely could indeed change the world. 

The focus of Bird Fair should have been on young people in the UK and local/indigenous people who are the guardians of the planet's major areas of biodiversity. The focus on young people should have been empowering them to connect with nature deeply and understand in detail the global ecological crisis, for boomers money to go into taking youngsters round the world for educational reasons. For Boomers it is too late, they have already fucked everything up- it should be them sitting at home on their local patches, not young people who need to connect and understand the global society and globalisation. It's completely paradoxical that young people cant afford to travel to support global nature conservation and old burnt out useless boomers can- a travel experience and knowledge that will never be used for anything useful!  For Young people they need to follow a completely new path, detached from the GDP paradigm, not just working all their lives creating hyper-inflation in housing and hoarding wealth to become burnt out and useless (ironically a lot of these capitalist collaborators often loose that wealth in long terminal health declines in expensive nursing homes so in many cases the whole thing was completely pointless) , they need to be working with local/indigenous groups, creating ground up reform and empowerment and reforming globalisation. Young people themselves need to be creating parallel structure businesses and tour companies that do get young people out there, perhaps where one boomer pays for one young person, turn the boomers into something useful? At the moment some of the only good boomers are the ones who are willing to glue themselves to the Beddington Farmlands incinerator (what does it matter if they get a criminal record now) so surely considering martyrdom is always a hard sale best to sell a boomer experience tied in with young people and local society empowerment. That is not neo-colonialism, that is a global community working together.  Anyway I'm kicking off now so will shut up. There is loads more to this.

So Bird Fair should not have been axed, it should have been reformed. So in a way its quite sad the unsustainable model of Bird Fair (or rather a global birding society nucleus) has come to and end but in another way there is an immense vacuum here that has formed, the opportunity for a new nucleus to form. It may well form organically within the global computer system, in fact it probably will, something around Ebird/ Cornell and new innovative birding IT, digital market places and new metrics, serving a more de-centralised localised network. It's likely to involve the $100 trillion green transition fund, the rise of ethical investment and the evolution of birding from a pioneer community to a cutting- in-community of a main stream of the future sustainable global society involving very large sums of money (that multiply from carefully cultivated seed money) and huge amounts of political capital. Will be interesting to see how all the pieces re-align now , within this vacuum in the birding cosmos. One thing for certain by looks of it, is that a new nucleus will not be coming from the Wildlife Trusts and the traditional UK nature conservation society if Leicester and Rutlands behaviour is anything to go by.  Its good to be small minded but there is good small mindedness and bad small mindedness. Think Global but act Local. Not think Local and fuck Global. 

Definite undercurrent to this story -@LeicsWildlife pointedly says @BirdLife_News received all money raised while it got none, massive downplaying of @TheBirdfair's achievements & little credit for huge role played by @Rutlandbirds in putting event, reserve & Trust on map! https://t.co/DLpP50tFFv

— Dominic Mitchell (@birdingetc) November 23, 2021