When I was 8, I was asked to contribute my story to a book being produced by the team at Primative Planet - an American Film Production company that focuses on content designed to encourage active participation in the outdoors.
Here's my contribution - and the book is available at Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-WILD-adventure-guide-living/dp/B09RP7JCP3
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Hi – I’m Henry and just like Alec and team, I love making videos about nature, wildlife and the environment. I’ve always spent most of my time outdoors, and am lucky to have a garden that attracts a lot of wildlife. When I was little I loved searching for bugs and minibeasts, and making bug houses and insect hotels. It’s amazing what you can see when you turn over a rock or log!
When lockdown started I was 6 years old, and we had lots more time to explore the garden and make it even more wildlife friendly. We added a hedgehog house, a big new Insect Hotel and put up a lot of bird and bat boxes, all of this was supported by leaving nearly half of the garden to grow wilder, with long grass and meadow flowers and lots of bushes around our pond. I love exploring by the pond in the evening, we have loads of newts in the pond and they come up to the shallow bits at night and you can see them clearly. We also have bats that feed over the pond, I like to lie down on the grass looking up at the sky and see them flying over. I started making little films in our garden to send to my grandparents and great-grandmother who weren’t able to visit us because of Covid.
As lockdown started to relax, we spent loads of time walking in the countryside near where we live and in our local nature reserves, and I asked my parents if I could make my own nature films. Wanted to do this to inspire other people about nature and to give them tips about how they can help. Being able to get outside and explore, investigate and study nature is what I love about being wild. People are always calling me a Wild Child, and I really like that! I love climbing trees and exploring woods, and this year we went Wild Swimming for the first time, I loved it! We were in a ancient forest and the water was really fast, and cold, but we were in a deep pool with a waterfall. Upstream were a family of Beavers that had been reintroduced, so that was really cool!
When I started sharing my videos, I had loads of great feedback from people, and then my local Wildlife Trust saw my videos about their nature reserves and asked me to be their Junior Wildlife Ambassador, this made me feel very happy!
One of the first things I did was help them with an event called Earth Optimism Cambridge, I made a video all about their Nature Recovery Network mission and how our gardens can help. Also, at this event I was able to ask David Attenborough a question (virtually) about how we make sure people try and save all animals and not just the popular or cute ones. He told me it was all about telling interesting stories with lots of characters, and this is what I’d like do more of. I’d like to be an explorer, visiting Africa, the Himalayas, the Amazon Rainforest, Australia and Antarctica. There are lots of animals I’d like to see there, and I’d like to keep making videos about these places to tell people what is out there and to tell them we need to protect all these places.
My real passion is learning about and protecting endangered animals. I enjoy visiting Wildlife Parks who are helping with the conservation efforts, but it’s also really important to take action ourselves. I make sure we recycle and reuse as much as we can at home, and also go litter picking in my local area. I’ve also spoken to the Headmaster at my school, we have a big playing field, but it is all cut really short, so I’ve asked him to leave the edges to grow wild and improve the biodiversity of the area. I think this will be great for the children too, as we’ll see more wildlife during the day. We are also going to fundraise for some bird boxes.
With endangered animals, the Red Panda is my favourite, they’re really cute with amazing fluffy tails! There are only about 2500 left in the wild, and to protect the Red Panda, we need to stop cutting down trees in their habitat. I’ve helped raise money for the Red Panda Network who have a project to connect up the different parts of the forest to allow the Red Pandas to safely move around to eat and find mates. I’d love to go and see them in the wild one day.
I’m also fascinated by Australian animals like the Koala, Echidna and Platypus. I’d love to see them one day, but the Platypus is really elusive, but very unique. They lay eggs, and the male even has a poisonous spur on its back right leg!
I’m really passionate about saving wildlife, and all these things I’ve done make me feel like I’m making a difference, even though I’m still only 8. It’s important to encourage people to enjoy and look after wildlife, because it makes people feel better, but mostly so we don’t have any more species become endangered or extinct.
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