Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I get a lot of leading questions where it's like, surely you must be so angry at the older generations for leaving it like this. And it's like it's not a generational war. There wasn't someone who's now in their eighties, kind of plotting to destroy the planet just as they get into their old age.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: I'm Annabelle Heseltine. I'm a journalist and broadcaster and you're very welcome to the third episode of Hope Springs, a new podcast from The Resurgence Trust. Resurgence is a movement, a magazine and a manifesto for hope. And in this series, I'll be speaking with people working on the front lines of the environmental crisis who have found reasons to be hopeful.
Think of it as a guide to recovery, about discovering a sense of optimism and purpose even in the midst of grave challenges.
Today, I am bridging the generational gap with ornithologist, diversity activist and author Dr. Maya Rose Craig. The 22 year old British Bangladeshi activist is better known as 'Bird Girl'. After the blog she started writing when only eleven years old, the name stuck. But Maya Rose was on a roll. By the age of 17, she had written the manifesto for diversity in Nature Conservation for naturalist Chris Packham, and in 2020 became the youngest British person to be awarded an honorary doctorate from Bristol University for her work campaigning for diversity in the environmental sector.
We talk about how her travels around the world to over 40 countries led to her founding black to nature, and how Bird watching kept her family together when her mother was struggling with an undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Maya Rose, in 2022, you wrote your amazingly inspiring book about birds. It was called Bird Girl. And you wrote in it, bird watching is not a hobby, it is not a pastime, it's a thread running through the pattern of my life, so tightly woven that there's no way of pulling it free and leaving the rest of my life intact. At the beginning of each of your chapters, you started with a different bird. Will you tell me a bit about what birds mean to you?
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah. I wrote bird girl because I love bird watching. I've spent my whole life with, especially as a teenage girl, people going, but "why birds?" Why bird watching of all the hobbies? How dull. And I wanted to write something where people could read it and understand how someone could fall so totally in love with birds. And for me, they've always been such a major part of my life. I come from a family that loves birds and bird watching. I write in the book about how I was nine days old the first time they took me bird watching and so for me, they're almost like part of my family, I suppose. And they're like one of the things I turn to. And I just, you know, whenever I think about special moments throughout my life, there's very, very often a bird kind of tied to that to help me understand when that or where that was, I suppose.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: But this was a little bit more than many people do when they go watching you write eloquently about how aged six I think it was, you went on your little big year. Will you tell me a bit more about what a big year involves?
[00:03:51] Speaker A: So I think something that comes up in the book over and over again is that birdwatches are really obsessive and often quite competitive. And a big year is an example of that, because it's essentially when birdwatch, over the course of a year, try and see as many birds as possible, very often in their local county or for us, it was within the UK as a whole. And at first it was just my dad who said he wanted to do it. He thought that me being six years old, it would be too much to ask of me to ask me to do it. And six year old me was outraged that he hadn't asked me. And I kind of forced my way into the adventure as well. And it kind of just started this amazing series of adventures. And, you know, it started off very, very fast paced as well. You spend the whole first day of a big year basically running around as quickly as possible, trying to see all of the kind of common close by species. But yeah, within the first few days of that big year, we ended up going to see a bird called a Snowy Owl, which they're a type of owl. You get up kind of in the very snowy northern parts of northern Europe and they are this beautiful white bird, like, pure snow white bird with kind of little black spots on them, kind of like Hedwig from Harry Potter. And it was so beautiful and it kind of really tonally predicted what the year was going to be like. So it was just so exciting.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: But that was at the southern tip of Cornwall. And the next day you went to Teesside.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Sorry, I forgot to mention because that's so normal for us. Yeah, we spent the whole year kind of driving around the country in loops to the point that to this day, I feel like I know every single petrol station along the motorway anywhere in the country, basically because we spent so much time traveling.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: And age six, what were you doing in the car when you were traveling?
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I was a nightmare for a really long time in the car, actually. And this big year was what essentially pavlov me into passing out whenever I'm in a moving vehicle, which happens to this day. So I spent a lot of time just sleeping, but I spent a lot of time actually, I was obsessed with reading and books when I was young. I really wanted to be an author, actually, when I was around that age. And so I spent a lot of time reading and to be honest, a lot of time just sitting and kind of looking out the window, which I think, looking back, I think that that's really good for your brain to just kind of have to sit with your thoughts sometimes. But I loved the travelling. I really enjoyed it, weirdly.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah. They always say, isn't it that it's much more creative to be bored sometimes and not to have your thoughts being filled? And I think there's lots of things that come out in your book. But first of all, can I just ask you a question? What is the difference between twitching and bird watching? Is there one?
[00:06:56] Speaker A: There is, yeah. So bird watching is essentially going and looking at birds. So that can be as simple as going on a walk near your house and seeing what birds you can see and looking at them. Although obviously it can get a bit more adventurous than that. But essentially it's seeing what's around you versus twitching is when you get news that there is one specific, often rare bird that's in a place and you go specifically almost on a quest to go and see that one bird. So this big year was a year of twitching where we'd get news that, you know, for example, a Snowy Owl had turned up in Cornwall and immediately we'd just jump in the car and drive like 4 hours down to the tip of Cornwall to go and see it. So a series of quests, I suppose.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: And the last one of the year, which was filmed, I think, by BBC Four, is that correct? Do you want to tell me a little bit? Because it sounded like there were so many people there.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: I think this was, at this point in my life, probably the biggest event like this I'd been to. And it was essentially about 10:00pm the night before. I think my dad got a page saying that an Eastern Crowned Warbler had turned up on the East Coast and, you know, no hesitation or anything. About 3:00am that morning, I think we all kind of bundled ourselves in the car and immediately headed off. And it was the first time a bird of these species had ever been seen in the UK. And so obviously all the bird watchers went crazy and we showed up at dawn and there were already hundreds of other people in this kind of quarry that was set up a bit like an amphitheater. Basically. Everyone's telescopes just pointed at this one bush, waiting for this very small yellow and brown bird to emerge. And eventually it did. And I've never seen a crowd of people look so excited over again, a very small, relatively plain bird. That was fantastic. And I think, again, considering most of these people had about a four hour warning and before they headed off, I think it just shows how passionate bird watchers can be.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Yes. But then after that first excitement, I spent a lot of time in Africa, and for me it was about birds, but it was also about the animals. And you would find the animal and you get that first bit of excitement. And then the second and third time, I used to feel that was when it became more familiar. Do you find that with birds, that's when you start to see the bird and actually learn about the bird?
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I really find joy in both, actually, in that, I think, when I was kind of a child, because people always ask how my parents kept me entertained by, what's a relatively slow paced, sometimes objectively quite boring hobby when you've been stood in the field for hours waiting for a bird? And I think they did that by kind of making it exciting, making it an adventure, going, twitching and things like that.
And to be honest, I used to find bird watching, especially kind of local bird watching, far more boring versus. The older I get, like you said, the more I appreciate things becoming very familiar and I knowing them and knowing where they'll be and what they'll look like and what their behavior is. And these days I've become a bit of an advocate for maybe the slightly more overlooked birds, what birdwatchers sometimes refer to as LBJ's or little brown jobs.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: I remember them.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Fantastic. Yeah. Wrens and Sparrows and Dunnocks and things like that. They're brown and everyone overlooks them. But when you have the time to look at them, you know, over and over again, you start to realize that they're really beautiful. And I think that's kind of the joy of nature is no matter how small and brown something is, it's still going to be beautiful in some way.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: There's quite a lesson in that. In fact, reading through your book, I felt there were so many stories that were behind the stories. So you were talking about the birds, but in connection with war. So you talked about Sudan, you talked about the story of the King penguins that was on a beach which nobody could go to because there was unexploded bombs. And this was in the Falkland Islands, I think.
But you were also telling the conservation stories and what is happening with climate change. This is where it all began, wasn't it?
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
I think one of the reasons I kind of kept back to sprinkling human contexts into talking about these birds is because the more bird watching or spending time in nature I do, the more I realize that there kind of is no separation. Even if you're in, like, you know, Antarctica or the depths of the Amazon jungle, our stories are still kind of linked together. And you're right, the king penguin is an example of that in terms of people sometimes don't realize how difficult it is for nature to adapt. Like, it's very hardy, but it gets to a point where it snaps rather than bends. And an example of that is kind of seabirds who, you know, do have this very often ginormous range where they're able to kind of swim or fly as far as they want to look for food. But it gets to a point where there is a range within that.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Just to explain what the penguin eats is basically going further and further south, closer to the Antarctic, because it's seeking colder waters. But the Penguin has to be in a breeding ground, which it can't move. What is the food that they eat? It's a little fish, is it?
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a very small fish, and.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: They have to go a further sort of 170 km. These fish go further and further south towards the Antarctic to get colder.
Is that correct?
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's especially an issue with seabirds, actually, because they are very often roaming very long distances for their foods anyway. That's the nature of what they do. And so obviously, it does get to a point where it just doesn't work in terms of their life cycle and where they're supposed to be at different points in the year and, you know, I think in a different way. But it's the same for a lot of migratory birds, which essentially their journeys are getting longer and longer each year because they're having to go further north to kind of stay in the cold and go further south to stay in the warm and things like that. And it's basically all the different parts of the world are getting a bit too far apart for nature to really thrive.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: I think that it's important to realise that it isn't just the climate change, it's the impact of man in so many different ways.
Can we talk a little bit about your background? Your mother is Bangladeshi, your parents met in a nightclub in Bristol and then they got married. But it wasn't quite plain sailing, was it?
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Not at all. The funny thing, actually is they had mutual friends and so when my mum first met my dad, one of their mutual friends went up to her and they were like, be careful, he's a twitcher. And she didn't know what that meant. And she kind of jokes that if she had, she probably would have run in the opposite direction because she was absolutely a city girl through and through.
And when they did start dating and she found out that he was a birdwatcher, it was one of those things where she was just like, you can do that in your own time, in your own space, but I am not coming with you. And, you know, that was absolutely fine. But my little sister also loved birds watching, it turned out, and so he started taking her away to go and see all of these birds on the weekend. And eventually my mum got a bit jealous. She wanted to come and see what all the fuss was about. And so she went on them with a twitch to see a duck and it was quite brown and she wasn't very impressed and she still didn't understand. But on the way back, just as it was getting dark, they stopped in the woods to try and see a bird called a golden pheasant, which is this beautiful, like, phoenix looking bird. And so they came with him and, you know, there are all these crunchy leaves and my sister, who was maybe five, was making a racket. And so eventually he got really stroppy, basically, and went, stay here, I'm gonna go and look for it by myself. And within minutes of him being gone, this beautiful red and golden pheasant just, like, silently tiptoed into the clearing in front of them and kind of fanned out all of its feathers and it was just incredibly beautiful and it was kind of this gorgeous, gorgeous bird. Combined with the fact that she had managed to see it and my dad hadn't, that made my mum just fall in love with bird watching. And, yeah, it's been that way ever since.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Helena is her name. She sounds a rather remarkable woman. I believe she trained as a solicitor and worked in spite of the fact that she was later diagnosed with bipolar, which was then upgraded to severe bipolar clearly took a huge toll on your family, but so how did birding help with your mother's mental health?
[00:16:02] Speaker A: I think to an extent, anyone that spends a lot of time out in nature knows that it's good for them and seeks it out actively in their life. And so, as a family, we'd always known that on a basic level, birdwatching was good for us. But it was after there was a really difficult period when I was about nine that essentially my mum ended up being sectioned for a couple of months and she was still very unwell. She was very depressed when she came out through that winter.
But about a year before, my parents had gotten really excited and had booked a bird watching trip to Ecuador for a couple of weeks.
And, you know, they paid their deposit and it was coming up and she was still really quite unwell. But they made the decision that we were going to go anyway and go to Ecuador for a couple of weeks and spend the whole time looking for birds. And it was one of those things. When we first arrived, everyone was quite cranky, including my mum, but she was also really tired. She couldn't concentrate. She was getting really frustrated because she was struggling to actually, like, physically get on, like, see the birds. But kind of over the course of those weeks, I saw my mum kind of come alive in a way that I hadn't seen her for at least a year or two by that point. And it was incredible. And she could talk a few days into it, which was major. She was seeing the birds, she could walk. She was kind of much more present and grounded. And it was just this incredible transformation. And I think the lesson that we took away from it was just how important birdwatching was for our family, whether that was abroad or at home. But I think also spending time out in nature is separate from kind of your everyday life. Up with the sun, kind of dawn till dusk, only having time, really to think about birds because you're running around so much.
It's so refreshing. It's like a reboot for your brain, I suppose.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Something I wanted to ask you about. I don't know if you come across the term Post Traumatic Growth, which I started to look into because I realised that actually most of the people I had interviewed have gone on to do amazing things, as you have, have gone through some form of quite severe trauma.
And I'm sure it must have been traumatic for you as a little girl to watch your mother sometimes unable to get out of bed and not to be there for you. But out of it seems to come something else, which is an extraordinary strength and resilience. Have you noticed that in your family?
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I talk in the book. I've got multiple family members, actually, who are just incredibly passionate and driven people. And I think for me, one of the biggest ways it influenced me is I have a charity that's all about getting young kids engaged with nature in the outdoors that I started when I was very young, about 13, I think. And, you know, there were various reasons I gave to why I started it at the time. That's really important, kind of, for people to have a relationship with outdoors. I liked going outside, so I wanted other people to be able to go outside. But I think one of the biggest things looking back is that in my own life, I had been taught so explicitly about how important nature was, and so subconsciously I felt that it was essential for everyone else's lives as well.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: So at age 13, you set up Camp Avalon, and the idea, I believe, was to bring inner city kids out into nature through that. It sparked something more when you realized that of all the people working in nature, only 0.6% of them were people of a different colour.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: It feels very weird, looking back, that I essentially started a charity when I was 14 years old. That feels like at every junction. It was something that I fell into slightly, in a lovely way, in that the original camp that you mentioned, Camp Avalon, wasn't supposed to be a campaigning thing. It was that 13 year old me loved nature, and I had friends online who loved nature in the outdoors, but I wanted to do stuff in person, so I decided to organize a weekend camp and I basically put in all of the activities that I wanted to do and then invited other kids. And I'd always been aware of kind of a real lack of diversity within kind of natural spaces because I'd kind of spent a lot of my childhood growing up with a lot of people, including my bangladeshi family, basically saying that liking nature was a white people thing. And I knew that it was a very common held kind of attitude within a lot of communities. And, you know, I'd known that for a long time, but it was only when the event that I had set up and had organized was apart from me, made everyone who had signed up were white, middle class boys, that I kind of decided that this wasn't what I wanted for myself. And so I ended up going into Bristol, my local city, and kind of getting kids of families we knew and who were basically black in asian, and bringing them on this camp. And the weird thing was because at the time I already had like an online platform and there were so many people at the time talking about how there are just know certain people that you can't engage with nature and I just knew that wasn't true for my own experience.
But anyway, that first camp was an absolute success. Over the course of, like, two, three days, I saw a bunch of kids who had never been to the countryside just completely fallen in love with nature, basically, and it was beautiful. So I ended up writing to a bunch of the nature organizations, you know, the RSPBs and wildlife trusts of the UK, going, well, what are you doing about it? Because I did this. And, you know, they all mailed back to me going, this is incredible. Tell us how you did it. So I ended up organizing a conference. And out of that came two things, or three things, I suppose. First, the kind of the childlike naivety and lack of knowledge in terms of bureaucracy that I had hoped that, you know, things would just be fixed after that, and they weren't. And it felt like I kind of handed them this blueprint to solve it, which is why it was really frustrating when nothing happened, which is why I ended up setting up my charity, black to nature, because it kind of had two purposes, and one was to campaign and work within nature based sectors to try and create the change I wanted to see. But the other half was to carry on doing these camps with kids. And, you know, at this point, it's maybe seven years later, and we've worked with hundreds and hundreds of kids and done all of these fantastic events. And it's just, you know, that feeling doesn't wear off of seeing a kid.
Just realize that they love the outdoors and they love birds and they love nature and everything it has to give. It's really. It's really lovely.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Can we go back to Ghana? Because I think something happened in Ghana that was very powerful.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: One of the things I'm really grateful on looking back is that, you know, we traveled to all of these wonderful places. But it wasn't just about the birds. My parents always made an effort to kind of educate me and teach me on the history of the places that we were going. And when we went to Ghana, I was eight years old. So it was one of the earlier places. And we went to somewhere called Elmina Castle on the coast. And essentially, it was an old castle linked to the slave trade that held enslaved people before they were put on ships and sent across the Atlantic. And these days, you walk through the castle and you see the rooms in which people were kept. Very little has been changed. And it's something as simple as you go from the rooms where people were kept down the stairs to the landing that they would have been on before they were put on the ships, the final bit of Africa that they could stand on.
And it was just filled with flowers and wreaths from people whose. This was the door generations on who had returned. Yeah. And so, you know, like you said, it was the door of no return. And then generations later, their family has returned and kind of paid memorial to them. And it was just. It was incredibly upsetting. And I think it's really shaped my attitude of wherever you go, kind of seeking out the history, no matter how unpleasant it is, because that is what has shaped it, I suppose.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: You travelled a great deal. I think you've been to 40 countries now, which is phenomenal. And perhaps you talked about that, and then also to talk about how you bring up the topic of flying, flying against the importance of going to places.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: I think it's this very weird thing in my life, especially because a lot of the flying I did, I did it before I was really involved in climate change activism. And so it's something I kind of think about through various different lenses, because I think on a really basic level, everyone knows that flying is bad for the climate. But on the flip side, as someone who's a gotten very involved in kind of very intersectional climate change activism, including looking at a lot of equity and things like that, I've also become kind of increasingly aware that we can't just stop going places. Something I talk a lot about in the book is ecotourism and giving back to the local community. And, you know, on a basic level, us always choosing to work with companies that are based in the country that we're working in to make sure the money stays in that country, but also the tens, at least of birds that we've seen that would be extinct if it wasn't for ecotourism. The thousands and thousands of miles of forest that would be cut down if it wasn't for ecotourism, and even indigenous communities that wouldn't be able to live where they were, essentially, because it's a way of generating revenue without having to, you know, exploit natural resources. And one of the stories I talk about in the book is a bird called the Firto's parrot, which is in Colombia. And they thought it was extinct for about 90 years before it was rediscovered in what is really a very small patch of woodland on the top of a mountain in the Andes. And essentially a birdwatching company bought up that piece of land immediately and immediately put it under protection. And there's so many examples of that. And so, yeah, it's the thing that I'm grappling with a lot. And obviously, I am always working to decrease my carbon output. But I also think, as well as just telling people in the west to stop doing things, we need to figure out how in other countries we can create other ways to protect these places and to help people, which I think.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Leads us into Bangladesh, which is where your mother's family come from.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries in the. It's incredibly flat. It's one of. And to be honest, it's a very poor country, and so it's incredibly vulnerable to climate change. I know about four years ago, there were already four and a half million climate change refugees that had fled to the capital city, which I think is very telling, in that we often think of climate change as an issue of the future, and that was probably five years ago. And I think also exemplifies how dealing with climate change isn't just cutting off our bad habits, it's kind of about restructuring our world, I suppose, and the way that we think about things like consumerism, even on a basic level, everyone knows that the fast fashion industry is incredibly exploitative of its workers, of the people making these clothes, but obviously, there is a reason that people are going into these jobs, and it's because they need the money. And so the solution isn't to remove these jobs as a whole, it's to figure out how to make them better for the people working in them. And I think on a really basic level, I was talking about turning fast fashion factories into something building, like solar panels or something like that. But I also think it's an example of a country that hasn't really been given the ability to advocate for itself in terms of the wider climate change conversation, like many countries in the global south, especially those who have less kind of economic clout. And I actually went to one of the UN climate change conferences, the one in Glasgow a couple years ago. And as it always is, the thing that was very obvious is the way that it was about ten countries that were deciding the future of the planet. And so it was Bangladesh that actually made me so passionate about climate change, due to the way that my family, my family's villagers have been so affected by flooding and drought and things like that.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: It's also struck me through the book, there's a dilemma for you, because you kept your two lives very separate.
One was at school, being a normal kid and a teenager, and the other one was blogging. You became ambassador for survival International, you were organizing these camps, you were doing things which were extraordinary for a 13, 1415 year old. But you also speak about how for you as a person, you were seen by the asian community as being white and by the white community as being asian. And it seems to me that in Bangladesh you found your home because there you were just seen as bilati. How did you reconcile this? How have you reconciled it now?
[00:30:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think that's an experience that a lot of mixed people go through is kind of because there is no singular identity you can turn to, especially because all our experience is very unique. And I think I never found either one completely suited to me. To clarify, the word bilati essentially refers to someone who is Bangladeshi but as maybe part white or is from the west or anything like that, basically. And it's so lovely going and visiting family because they're just delighted to see me and they don't really care about, you know, discourse or any of that sort of thing. And I think it's the same for a lot of the diaspora. Sort of going back to the country of origin does still feel like going home. And it's really lovely.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: And yeah, I've got two books with me now. One is flight and the other one is we have a dream. We have a dream. It was about 30 people from across the world writing about what they are doing. And what strikes me is your books seem to be sort of directed towards children, and they're also about very young adults, people in their late teens, early twenties, like you are. And I just wonder where this is coming from, this extraordinary rise up of the youth. What would you say to us older people? And where do you think this youth movement is going?
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the youth movement that's cropped up surrounding environmental issues is really fantastic. And I remember when it first emerged, I was maybe 15 or 16, it was really exciting. And I think, you know, kind of students, university age people have always been seen as the people who really care about these things. But it's not that. It's like secondary school kids. And I think a lot of that is to do with social media and the Internet, both in terms of getting knowledge and being able to express yourself as kind of a combination. And I think actually it's creating a generation in which a lot of people care really deeply about a lot of things. And I think each generation has their kind of issue. And I do think for us it is climate change, to get down to it, like people are terrified.
I do think on the flip side, I get a lot of leading questions where it's like, surely you must be so angry at the older generations for leaving it like this. And it's like it's not a generational war. There wasn't someone who's now in their eighties kind of plotting to destroy the planet just as they get into their old age. It's just the way in which we've been forced to live our lives for a really long time, which is rooted in consumerism. It's in the fact that all of our transportation is terrible for the planet. It's in the fact that, you know, for example, where I live, there's not enough housing, so they're now building housing on floodplains like, you know. And so I think this is absolutely cross generational. And more than anything, I meet people in my parents and grandparents, generations who are deeply apologetic to me and say, I'm so sorry for leaving you with this, and who also care really deeply. And so I also think this is all part of a wave where in the last few years, or, you know, the last 20 years, but the last few years in particular, people are just really sad and really upset and really anxious about the state of the planet and what the future holds.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: So your life has taken off after the pandemic, which is when you wrote this beautiful and very inspiring and moving book. I cried in it in two occasions and I just was so moved by the emotion and your honesty. Where are you going now? What's your future?
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Oh, I think I'm gonna be really honest. I'm not 100% sure.
There are some things that I feel are very certain in that I know I'm still gonna be bird watching forever.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: You've seen 5000 birds now, haven't you?
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Yes. And it's time to go and see the other five birds.
No, there's lots of birds still to see and I think, unfortunately, I'd love that. It isn't the case, but I think I'm going to be doing climate change campaigning for a long, long time still. But I think apart from that, I'd love to go into media in some shape or form. I live in Bristol where the natural history unit is. I have really enjoyed. My most recent book is called flight. It's kind of an illustrated kids book and it was such a fun time to write. I'd love to do another one of those.
If I can do any job in any way that's related to nature or birds, I'll just feel incredibly lucky.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: What's your hope for the future?
[00:35:02] Speaker A: I think my hope for the future is maybe really boring, but just that things do get better. And I think this is slightly an age of Internet thing, but I think so many people feel so stressed and miserable because there are so many things going on, which is true, but I do think is exacerbated. And so I hope that we will make positive steps in terms of climate change, and I hope that we will see, you know, some bird species, for example, bouncing back. But I'm also really looking forward to seeing, you know, we're talking about this generation, seeing like a whole new generation of young people grow into adults and kind of take over. And I really want to see what happens because hopefully it'll be really exciting.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: Dr Maya-Rose Craig, thank you so much for your time. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: If you enjoyed today's conversation, please leave us a review wherever you're listening and recommend this series to anyone who you think might enjoy it, too.
I'll be back in a fortnight talking to Satish Kumar, the peace pilgrim and former Jain Monk, who in 1962 walked 8,000 miles from Gandhi's grave in Delhi to Washington protesting against nuclear weapons and has been inspiring global change for over 50 years. He is also the leader of The Resurgence Trust, which brings you this podcast.
[00:36:37] Speaker C: We are always thinking of separation. Separation, me first. And that is causing trauma. And therefore the only way out of this trauma is to see that we are all connected.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Resurgence is a movement, a magazine, and a manifesto for hope. To find out more about their work, click the link in the show notes of this episode, which was produced by Pete Norton.
I'm Annabelle Heseltine, and thank you for listening to Hope Springs.
