Poems by Ruth Bradshaw

Natural Capital

by Ruth Bradshaw

From Canary Fall 2020

Ruth grew up within sight of the River Mersey and now lives on the hill above Deptford Creek close to remnants of the Great North Wood.

The grey heron stands hunched and motionless on the riverbank barely 30 feet away. It is so still that I almost mistake it for one of the replicas people use to deter real herons from taking fish from garden ponds. The autumn sunshine illuminates the mosaic of fallen leaves beneath my feet and makes patterns on the slow-moving water as the wind gently sways the surrounding willow and elder trees. Pausing a while to observe the soft colours and unhurried movements of this scene, I am so intent on watching the heron that I nearly miss its flashier neighbour. The first appearance is more sensed than seen, as though the sudden bright streak of movement has created a change in the atmosphere. Alert for it now, I keep my eyes on the river and the overhanging branches a few feet above the water and a minute later I catch the return flight – a flash of turquoise and a whirr of wings as the kingfisher heads back up river – “like a streamer from your own eye’s iris” as Alice Oswald describes it in Dart.

Kingfishers are not easy to spot but what makes this sighting even more surprising is that I am not out in the countryside or even somewhere in the edgelands but just 15 minutes’ walk from my home in south-east London, about five miles from the city centre. Shortly before the River Ravensbourne completes its 11 mile journey to the Thames in the tidal reaches of Deptford Creek it runs along the edge of tiny Brookmill Park with river and park squeezed between an A road and the Docklands Light Railway. This area appears on Google maps as a narrow slither of green and blue surrounded by the grey and white of the rail lines and residential streets that dominate online mapping of this part of Inner London.

That evening I look up information about urban kingfishers online and find photos of them perched on pieces of scrap metal and flying past the dumped shopping trolleys that are a feature of so many urban waterways. Pollution control and a reduction in industrial activity means many city rivers are now significantly cleaner than they were a generation or two ago but kingfishers’ adaption to city life is also being given a helping hand by local authorities who drill holes in concrete walls to create nesting spaces for them.

The kingfisher by the Ravensbourne comes to mind again a couple of months later when I’m reading the Government’s 25 Year Plan for the Environment. One concept that features strongly in the plan is natural capital - the idea of thinking of natural resources, such as air, land, water, species and minerals, in terms of the value they provide to humans either directly or indirectly. In theory, if we can place a value on these “natural assets” then they can be incorporated into the assessment of a project in the same way as the other associated costs and benefits, a process known as natural capital accounting. Thus, if it was proposed that an area of woodland should be destroyed to make way for a new road, the loss of the benefits provided by the woodland such as carbon storage and recreational opportunities could be balanced against the potential benefits of the new road, such as reduced journey times.

I have worked in environmental policy for many years so I understand why natural capital is an attractive idea for many environmentalists. It provides new opportunities to make the case for conserving certain aspects of nature but it is not without its problems. What about those natural resources, such as inspiring landscapes and rare species, which it may be difficult, or even impossible, to value but which are nevertheless hugely important to us? How do we ensure we don’t undervalue those natural resources whose role we do not yet fully understand? Is it even appropriate to think of the value of individual natural resources separately in this way? Seeing the kingfisher in Brookmill Park lifted my spirits that Sunday afternoon but such an intangible benefit could never be reflected in a value on a balance sheet.

I am still contemplating the merits of natural capital when I go on a fungi walk a few days later. David, who is leading the walk, has spent years learning about fungi and clearly has huge enthusiasm for the subject but when someone asks him who he works for it turns out he makes his living in financial services and only uses his expertise on a voluntary basis. He’s not a professional mycologist as there are so few paid roles for fungi experts. Would this change if there was a greater emphasis on natural capital? Fungi have huge importance in ecology due to their symbiotic relationship with trees and their role in recycling other organisms but that role seems to be very under-valued, perhaps because it is often associated with death and decay rather than regeneration.

“Is it edible?” Someone asks of a large bracket fungus in Peckham Rye Park. The same question has been asked of every other specimen we encounter and this time David picks up a stick and pokes the surface of the fungus. “Would you want to eat this?” he says. The outer layer looks tasty but underneath, the fungus is mushy and riddled with maggots and looks distinctly unappetising. Like most things related to fungi, it is more complex than it first appears. David advises that you need to be very wary of eating even the varieties of fungus easily recognisable as edible if you find them in cities due to the levels of toxins they absorb from the pollution in the air and the soil. This is sad for anyone hoping to eat London’s fungi but it suggests another important role for them. I do a little research when I get home and find examples online of fungi being used to reduce pollution levels. It appears these organisms have far more to offer us than a few free meals.

David talks of the huge numbers of different species of fungi - around 15,000 in the UK alone - only a couple of thousand of which are potentially visible to the human eye. For centuries people were mystified by the sudden appearances of lines or circles of mushrooms and could think of no other explanation than the existence of fairies or some form of witchcraft. We now know there are more practical and less fantastical reasons behind such events. Fungi often grow along the line of a particular feature, such as a tree root that they are drawing nutrients from, and a ring is formed by fungi moving out from a central point as they use up all the nutrients around them. What would our ancestors have made of the recent discovery that trees and plants communicate via the mycelium, the network of thin threads formed from the underground parts of fungi, in a phenomenon that has been dubbed the “world wood web”? Clearly we still have much to learn about the value of fungi, particularly if we are going to include an accurate assessment of these resources in natural capital accounting.

We found lots of different fungi on our walk – honey fungus, dome caps, sulphur tufts, ink caps and more. We even found one hidden among the litter and fallen leaves next to a street tree. Their common names are a wealth of visual and sensory indicators but David warns us how hard it is to identify fungi from guidebooks as factors such as their age and the weather have so much impact on their appearance. I have been to all the places we visited many times before but I am seeing them in a new way today, suddenly aware of a vast range of species that I had not previously taken much notice of.

Here again is evidence that there are important opportunities for wildlife even in the most densely built up parts of London. Like the kingfisher in the Ravensbourne, the fungi in Peckham Rye Park are within walking distance of my home. Even closer are the fox who is a regular visitor to our street, the jay who buries acorns in the communal garden in front of our house and the woodpecker we regularly hear and occasionally glimpse high in the trees on the railway embankment. I have also seen a sparrowhawk in our local cemetery and cormorants fishing in the Thames. I cannot think how you would even begin to put a value on most of this but I do know that the wildlife in this vast and varied city is a huge part of what I value about living here. This is my natural capital.