Taking Care

Another strange day. There was a presentation today I was invited to. The city awards an environmental and nature award every year, and this year it was to be presented to four organisations that have worked hard to create an inventory of the animals and plants present in the city. One organisation does birds, another one specifically swifts, another plants, and another one works in a more general way. To my mind four organisations which deserve a little credit. I know some of the people involved, all volunteers, and they are all committed to the work they do.

So I was surprised by the ceremony. The alderman who was supposed to hand out the award wasn’t there, a colleague took over. I don’t think he has all that much sympathy for these organisations because he is responsible for the city’s building programme. Animals sometimes get in the way of development. So he took about three minutes to hand out checks, read a couple of lines on each organisation, and that was it. It was pretty cynical really. I felt embarrassed to be part of this organisation.

Events like this always make me wonder if I am in the right business at all. I was also surprised by a couple of colleagues, men who work for the same company I work for, and who only thought of new legislation to protect animals and plants as a problem, and who would probably ignore it if they thought they could get away with it. One of the reasons why I like the project I work on is that we do take the environment serious, and we try to be as careful as we can. I work hard to make it possible for birds to nest on our sites wherever there is a little space.

It can be so easy sometimes to spare the environment while you are at work, it can be as easy as starting at one end of a site rather than the other, or as asking an ecologist to move animals or plants out of the way. What is wrong with working carefully and saving a few lives as you work, even if they are “just” animal lives. What is wrong with people these days.