A message from our Chairman
Changes
April was the month of the National Census, 200 years since the first one. They take place every ten years, so this year was the 20th. Huge changes have been made since 1801. In that year some enumerators did not know whether they had to count people or houses. By comparison, in 2001 a vast amount of detailed information was collected on each individual, and for the first time it was possible to state that you were Cornish.
Had there been a Cornwall Wildlife Trust to conduct a census 200 years ago there is no doubt we too would have seen a lot of changes. Our ancestors would have been familiar with the large blue butterfly (the old Trust emblem) and the Cornish chough, both now extinct here. They would have been accustomed to large numbers of porpoises coming up our rivers and no doubt many more skylarks, song thrushes and house sparrows than even we were used to seeing just a few years ago. To see a hare today is indeed a rare sight and what about our old friend "Ratty", the water vole? Both were so common in the 19th century.
The greatest changes, however, would have been seen in the landscape. Despite being classified in the 1991 census as "the most rural single area" in the whole country, there are few parts of Cornwall which visually resemble the landscape of 200 yearss ago. The loss of hedgerows, marshes, heathland and flower-rich unimproved grassland has dealt a devastating blow to the wildlife species that turned these places into their own personal habitats, and much of that has taken place in just the last 50 years. The corresponding ceaseless spread of Homo sapiens via tarmac and concrete to estates both residential and industrial has ensured that the Cornwall Wildlife Trust in the 21st century has to fight all the way, every day, to save what there is still to save. Thank you for your support.
Howard Curnow
Cheesewring
Corpulent crystal flesh.
Jagged skin stretched, wind-worn,
conducting higher energies
which light spirit-bulbs in shy cells -
fold of lotus-Buddha fat
settled around a lean inner rock.
We lie on Carn Brea grasses
mattressed between outcrops;
we are one - light reflects
from fools' gold; sun needles
prick and tease - the dour
goose-pimpled carcase springs
and the body merges in the crushed
cold lava-slurry, quartz presses
and our hearts gape open to drink
the wisdoms of clouds, the clarity of gorse.
Bert Biscoe
Executive Member for the Environment, Cornwall County Council
In coming issues we will be asking various people to give us their thoughts on favourite parts of wild Cornwall. To start things off, Bert Biscoe pays a poetic tribute and Howard Curnow reflects on what we have lost or risk losing.
