Our Future British Isles: A Natural History

This is Ilkley Moor, my childhood playground,

and down there, the town where I was born and brought up.

You know, when I was a nipper, I used to stand on these rocks here

and look down over Wharfedale, and wonder how the dickens it came to be so beautiful.

I'd no idea then that the answer was beneath me feet...

that the landscape held clues which revealed an astonishing three-billion-year story.

I could never have guessed that the place I was born

was once submerged in a warm, tropical sea...

..or that a hot and humid swamp had covered the whole of the Dales.

And who would have thought that our rich, green countryside

had been a baking desert...

..before flipping to the other extreme - solid ice?

Our country's history has been one of ever-changing climate,

so extraordinary that it was beyond the wildest imaginings of my eight-year-old self.

I'd no idea then about the fact that the British Isles had seen ice ages,

tropical rainforests, coral seas and deserts.

That was all long, long ago.

But what of the future?

Will it hold fire and tempest, or a big freeze, or global warming?

Well, the simple answer is we just don't know.

But one thing that is pretty certain is that Britain's future will be as surprising as its past.

Predicting exactly what tomorrow will bring is a bit of a dark art.

With no crystal ball or time machine,

how can you look into the future?

Well, I've discovered how the countryside holds clues to the past.

But can it also hold clues to what's going to happen?

Time to head to the Lake District.

This is Ullswater, one of my favourite lakes,

and like all of them, it's surrounded by powerful scenery.

The scenery is evidence of the last dramatic climate change,

the last ice age,

when these fells were exposed and the lakes scoured out,

when Britain was more like the Arctic.

But the lakes also have clues to more recent climate changes,

changes that are still happening today.

And the evidence for them is just over there.

These bashful flowers have a secret to tell.

And they're no ordinary daffodils.

For a start,

they are our wild native daffodil, also known as the lent lily -

a wonderful delicate flower,

much more elegant than those big fat garden hybrids.

And these particular daffs

are also the most famous in the world -

the inspiration for one of our greatest poets.

"I wandered lonely as a cloud,

"That floats on high o'er vales and hills

"When all at once I saw a crowd,

"A host, of golden daffodils."

It was these daffodils beside this very lake that were fluttering

and dancing in the breeze when Wordsworth stumbled upon them.

But for me, what's really important is WHEN Wordsworth found these flowers

and I know that, to the day, thanks to his sister's diary.

On April 15th 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote,

"When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park..." Over there.

"..we saw a few daffodils close to the water side.

"We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore."

While the Wordsworths were here in the middle of April,

200 years on, I'm here in the middle of March.

These daffs are flowering one month earlier

and they're not alone.

Many of our spring flowers are springing up early

and it's a hint of what the future might hold.

You can see it happening in your own back yard.

Everything just seems to flower sooner than it did when I first started gardening.

Even our woodland bluebells are ringing the changes.

When I was a kid, they flowered for my birthday, in early May,

but these days it's mid-to-late April

when this azure carpet rolls out over the forest floor.

In fact, 200 species of wildflower

are blooming two weeks EARLIER than they were in the 1950s.

but this trend isn't restricted to flowers.

Other spring events are happening earlier too.

As the season shifts forward,

trees are also bursting into life ahead of schedule.

And it's not just spring that's on the move.

At the other end, Keats' season of mists and mellow fruitfulness -

autumn - seems to be arriving later.

When I was growing up, I spent many an autumn day

raking up leaves to stuff my home-made Guy Fawkes

in preparation for November 5th.

But these days kids use newspaper...

..because, even on Bonfire Night, most leaves are still on the trees.

It all points to one inescapable conclusion -

Britain is getting hotter.

And what will this mean for our wildlife?

The timing of nature's events is a very fragile and delicate thing

and even the slightest changes can have major knock-on effects,

so with this gubbins in me wheelbarrow, here,

I'm going to conduct an experiment.

Does it really matter when spring arrives?

Well, with a little help from some feathered friends, that's what I'm going to find out.

I have here the most sophisticated nest box known to man...

or bird.

In here, the birds, I hope, and back there,

a camera. I've even got lights.

They'll have to be theatrical birds to nest in here.

If I pan this camera to the left, you should see ME I hope, hoving into view.

But I'll be watching the birds as they come in and out of the hole in the nest box.

So all I need to do now is to put all this together again,

get me hammer and nails and start to craft my Big Brother for birds.

To let, one penthouse apartment, with cable TV.

It's not long before the housemates move in - a pair of blue tits.

And their task? To raise a family.

Family planning for blue tits is a real challenge.

Parents gamble on the best time to lay their eggs.

It's vital that when they hatch, there's plenty of caterpillars to feed the chicks.

And that means guessing when the fresh spring growth that feeds the caterpillars will first appear.

The trouble is that as the onset of spring changes, many different birds are getting confused,

getting their timings mixed up.

Many chicks have starved and so there aren't as many of these beautiful birds around.

This is just one example of a food chain being disrupted.

Changes to nature's timing affect plants,

the animals that eat them, and the animals that eat those animals.

In a woodland like this, there are hundreds of links in those chains.

It's a real house of cards.

Here, fewer blue tits would mean less food for their predators,

so they too would struggle to eat enough.

But, thankfully, our housemates at least got their timings spot-on.

They've successfully raised a family of eight healthy chicks

and they're all now heading out into the big wide world.

Even if some of them need a bit of extra encouragement.

Attaboy.

As temperatures rise, and the seasons shift,

the landscape we know and love will definitely begin to change.

But before we start to panic,

it's worth pointing out that it's all happened before.

Only a few centuries back, things were so much warmer.

There were vineyards right across Britain...

Not long after the Norman Conquest,

our ancestors were getting merry on home-grown vino!

The so-called medieval warm period

was a time of long, hot summers and short winters.

Conditions were so favourable that the population tripled in 200 years

because of the bumper harvests.

In fact, Britain's climate has warmed and cooled several times

since the end of the last ice age.

These are natural variations driven by a whole host of things,

from changes in ocean currents to sunspots.

So, if we've established that the climate is always changing,

why do we assume it will change for the worse?

It got much warmer in medieval times,

and it didn't seem to do much harm.

We can look forward to a time of growing fine home-made wine.

We should celebrate.

Cheers!

But there's one big difference.

Today, it's not just natural processes changing our climate.

Across the globe, pollution is on the increase

and that could lead to the thermometer rising higher than ever before.

Power stations, factories, and endless millions of cars,

pump out an ever-increasing amount of dangerous gases.

It's the same for fridges and air conditioners too.

And all these gases end up in the upper atmosphere,

where they trap the Earth's heat, acting just like the glass in a greenhouse.

This is global warming.

So where better to discover what that could mean for our landscape,

than in one of the biggest greenhouses in the world - Cornwall's Eden Project?

Each biome holds plants

which are perfectly adapted to suit climates

that are different from ours.

Might plants like these

soon be growing in our countryside?

This is the dry zone.

There's no rain in here,

except when the powers that be decide to turn on the sprinklers.

But all these plants are capable of resisting drought.

Their entire lives revolve around saving water.

They have various ways of doing it.

Succulents, like this aloe, have fleshy leaves that act

as water storage organs and they live off that in dry periods.

Other plants reduce the size of their leaves to save water

and coat them with silvery, silky hairs

that act like windbreaks and stop them drying out more. Quite nifty!

You don't have to be small to survive without water.

But if you're as tall as this date palm,

you have to work out a way of extracting every last drop of moisture from the soil.

And it does that by sending its roots down for tens of metres.

Now if, as predicted, by global warming our summers become hotter and drier,

our trees are not nearly so well-equipped as the date to survive.

There's one particular type of forest that is especially sensitive to the effects of this heat wave.

And, perhaps not surprisingly,

it's only found in our coldest corners -

up in the Highlands of Scotland.

This is the Caledonian pine forest -

the most ancient woodland in Britain

and a strange and almost primeval environment.

It's one of the last refuges for two of our rarest animals.

The wild cat - much stockier than your average tabby.

And there's the most famous grouse of them all, the capercaillie.

It's been here since the end of the last ice age,

a living remnant of much chillier times.

This really is a unique community of plants and animals.

It's a community that depends on three key species -

the birch, the gnarled and the knotty Scots pine

and the rugged shrubby juniper.

All of them capable of coping with intense cold.

The birch does it by shedding its leaves

and shutting down for the winter.

And the pine and the juniper by adapting their leaves,

into these fine needles that lose much less moisture

than a big floppy leaf.

And their sap contains the plant equivalent of anti-freeze,

so they don't go solid in winter.

These specialist powers have enabled the trees and shrubs

of the Caledonian forest to survive here for thousands of years,

where less resilient plants have failed.

But these powers could now be their undoing.

They're so suited to the cold,

that as Britain warms up, the Caledonian pine forest may not be able to cope.

If global warming does turn up the heat, then its days may be numbered.

And by the end of the century, it could look like this.

But as the new heat wave marks the end of an era for some,

it opens up new possibilities for others.

A future Britain could be home to all sorts of new plants and animals.

And some might well arrive with a little help from us.

A single port, like this one at Felixstowe,

deals with almost three million containers a year.

That's over 300 every single hour, day and night,

arriving from every part of the globe.

And this is just one of the many gateways into Britain.

Goods arrive on planes, trains and automobiles

as well as 1,000-foot-long container ships.

But these giant metal boxes can also bring all sorts of unwanted visitors.

These guys have one of the most important jobs in Britain.

They're looking for one of the most dangerous animals in the world

and there could be one in this very container.

Their target is a serial killer

and it can kill in vast numbers.

It's not fussy about its choice of prey

and it's so dangerous that if it's found alive,

it's destroyed immediately.

And this is what they are looking for.

Not a pretty sight, but it hardly looks like a killer, does it?

Yet this is the larvae of this -

the Asian longhorn beetle,

and between them,

they could change our landscape beyond recognition. How?

They kill trees. By the million.

Each female beetle will chew through the bark of any tree to lay up to 60 eggs.

It's the grubs that hatch which do the real damage,

feasting on the heartwood.

They're not much more than a sausage with teeth,

but an infestation will weaken and eventually kill the host tree.

A full-scale invasion by these nasty creatures could go a long way

to destroying our forests and Britain would look a sorry sight indeed.

So far, the Asian longhorn beetle has failed to get past security,

but it'll be only a matter of time before it does

because this place is so vast

that it's just like looking...

FOR A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK!

As Britain warms up, more and more foreign pests will be able to survive here.

There are places where the invaders are already out of control

and transforming our countryside.

Normally, I'd only expect to find vegetation this dense

in the heart of the jungle.

It's so thick, I have to fight my way through it.

But the truth of the matter is I'm thousands of miles away from the nearest rainforest.

I'm in the graveyard...

of a Baptist chapel in Swansea.

I'm surrounded by one particular plant -

a recent invader of our shores and a particularly nasty one.

This is Japanese knotweed.

The Victorians brought this Asian invader to Britain

as an ornamental garden plant. But they rather underestimated

just how vigorous it was.

Today, this plant holds the title

of the most notorious plant in Britain!

Why? Because it grows so fast.

Just four months ago, you could see nothing here except gravestones.

The knotweed dies back each winter, but not for very long.

Come the spring, it can grow by as much as an inch a day.

By the summer, it's ten feet tall and simply smothers the place...

literally suffocating anything that tries to grow underneath it.

It's so unstoppable that soon it'll be beyond the confines of the cemetery.

To try and keep this rampant weed under control,

Swansea has appointed Britain's first knotweed control team.

The battle is fought with machetes and powerful weedkillers.

But in the war between man and plant, it's we who are on the defensive.

Because knotweed actually grows through these.

Underground runners.

And from a little piece...

like that...

a new plant can grow.

A piece weighing not much more than a matchstick

can produce a whole new colony of knotweed

and that's made it public enemy number one all over Britain.

Nothing stands in the way of this super-weed.

It's been estimated that to eradicate knotweed entirely

would cost well over £1 billion.

But it does have one Achilles heel -

our strain can't produce viable seeds

and that limits how fast it spreads.

But if a mutation or hybrid created fertile plants

that were as effective invaders as this one,

then future Britain would be smothered in it.

A sexually-active Japanese knotweed would unleash a knotweed epidemic across the country,

that could sound the death knell for much of our native flora.

In the future, could the knotweed control officer

become as common as the postman?

And the knotweed as abundant as the dandelion?

We might learn to love new alien invaders.

After all, it wouldn't be the first time.

This is your quintessential English country village -

Broadway in Worcestershire -

with its wonderful Cotswold stone walls and roofs,

roses round the door, hollyhocks springing up in the front garden.

You know, if it weren't for the roads and the odd telegraph pole,

you could think you were in medieval Britain.

But not everything here is quite as British as it seems.

There's an alien lurking close by.

Any ideas? No? Well, it was this...

..the horse chestnut tree.

It might seem as English as Yorkshire pud,

but it actually hails from the Balkans.

When I was a schoolboy, I had a 49er.

But if I'd been born 500 years earlier,

I'd have used a hazelnut instead of a conker.

I'd have been lucky if that had become a 9er!

The conker wasn't introduced until the late-16th century.

So not all invading species are as unwanted as the knotweed,

or as evil as the weevil.

Whatever new arrivals are brought as global warming kicks in,

there's at least one fringe benefit we can all enjoy.

MUSIC: "The Sun Has Got His Hat On"

With Mediterranean weather right on our doorstep,

the great British seaside holiday will boom!

So, it's going to be one long hot summer then, eh?

Well, not necessarily.

Look at this!

Good afternoon. How things change!

Not so long ago, early September, it was like this - clear blue skies, unbroken sunshine,

temperatures had soared,

we had five days with temperatures over 100F, a record 43C,

that's 110 Fahrenheit there at Faversham.

And what's more, there'd been eight weeks without rain. Now look at it! It's hardly stopped.

This is the 33rd day we've had torrential rain across the country.

So it's hardly surprising that many rivers are on very high flood risk.

In fact, many rivers have burst their banks. We do have severe flooding in many parts.

Motorists are advised to stay at home or to check before you make an essential journey.

And if that wasn't enough, things will get worse.

In the next few days, it'll get windier.

Gales, storm force winds even,

together with that heavy rain and there might by the odd tornado thrown in for good measure.

And that's the weather for now.

As well as hot, drought-ridden summers,

global warming will bring wet and stormy winters.

Winter rainfall could increase by 30% with the downpours becoming much more intense.

With so much rain falling in such a short space of time,

Britain's countryside could be heading for a flooded future.

In the last few years,

many of our rivers have reached the highest levels ever recorded

and it's probably going to get worse.

Really major floods, the sort that in the past happened only once or twice in a century,

might now sweep across our islands as often as every ten years.

It's a trend that already seems to be happening.

But they say it's nice weather for ducks.

Though I'm not quite sure

that the ducks would agree.

It's not just rain that these frequent storms could bring.

Gale-force winds may become five times more common

and they will force everyone to hunker down.

If high winds and even tornadoes bully their way across the British Isles,

the sea will be whipped up to ever greater heights.

Throughout the winter,

our shores will be pounded and pummelled

by this relentless surf.

For one corner of Britain, these future frequent storms could be the last straw.

The village of Happisburgh in Norfolk

has been getting smaller in recent years,

as the winter waves steadily eat away at the soft earth.

The sea has already devoured huge chunks of the cliff,

taking a road, and at least six houses to a watery grave.

In an attempt to fend off the forces of nature,

4,000 tonnes of boulders have been brought in

and lined up along the beach front.

Unfortunately, yet more cliff was eroded away in the process.

These stony sentinels should help absorb the worst of the sea's fury,

for a while at least.

But it's not just the rage of the storms

that threatens this coastline.

Global warming could bring another, far more insidious, danger.

Three quarters of the world's fresh water

is locked up in ice.

That's seven million cubic miles of H20.

But the ice is melting...

fast.

As the greenhouse effect takes hold,

more than 90% of the world's glaciers

from the Alps to the Andes are shrinking.

And yet all these glaciers account for only 6% of the Earth's ice.

Much more is found in the frozen landscapes of Greenland

and Antarctica.

Already, vast chunks of polar ice -

sometimes up to half the size of Yorkshire -

are breaking off and melting.

There's no doubt about it, the water in the world's oceans

is increasing and that means the sea level

is on the rise.

And this could have a big impact

on some of our most famous coastal landscapes -

places like Morecambe Bay.

I'm with Cedric Robinson, the Queen's Guide to the Sands of the Bay.

For all Morecambe Bay looks beautiful, it's one of the most dangerous spots in Britain.

The tides rise so fast and the quick sand so treacherous,

that hundreds of people have lost their lives in the bay.

My life, and the Queen's if she were here,

will be in Cedric's hands. I'd better keep up.

This beautiful bay

is made up of over 120 square miles of mud flats...

Each and every day they're shifted and shaped by the tide,

which is why it takes an expert like Cedric to navigate a safe passage.

But Cedric might be out of job soon,

along with all those who depend on the bay for their livelihood.

These fertile sediments

have provided a living for countless generations of people and birds alike.

But with sea levels possibly rising by two feet,

the tides could permanently cover up these rich sands.

By the end of this century,

the ebb and flow which has provided a rhythm to the life of the bay's inhabitants for thousands of years

might eventually overwhelm them.

Then, Morecambe Bay's 250,000 birds

would have to find somewhere else to feed.

All over the British Isles, the sea is encroaching ever further inland,

threatening the livelihoods of four million people.

And nowhere more so

than the low-lying lands of Southeast England.

For more than two decades,

the Thames Barrier has been the front line of defence

against waters that threaten to drown the capital.

Its steel gates, weighing 1,500 tonnes each,

are drawn up whenever a dangerously high tide is on the way -

something that seems to be happening more and more often each year.

But in the very worst-case scenario,

even the Thames Barrier would be overwhelmed.

If the ice of Antarctica really goes into meltdown,

the outline of Britain could be transformed by a sea-level rise of more than 20 feet.

Nelson would return to the sea,

as London became our very own Atlantis.

Nothing could avoid this inundation of water -

even the nation's favourite square would be threatened.

So what could we do about this mega-flood?

Well, the trouble is that predicting exactly what the future holds

isn't much more reliable than a flutter on the horses.

A fiver on the nose of Global Sunrise, please.

-Is that a good bet?

-That's the winner!

-Do you reckon? We'll see.

A 20-foot sea-level rise is a real outsider at 1,000 to one.

But a two-foot rise is a much safer bet at only four to one.

Wetter winters come in at two to one, while warmer summers -

well, no bookie would offer anything other than evens!

Pipped at the post again!

I like a flutter as much as the next man, you know.

But if you asked me how warm Britain would get,

or how much land would be flooded,

well, I'd keep my money in my wallet.

Only time will tell

exactly how Britain's countryside will be changed by global warming.

The only certainty is that the Earth is getting hotter.

But there is just an outside chance that as the world becomes warmer,

Britain could become colder.

If you like backing a long shot, it could be worth a gamble.

Some people think that we could be racing towards not a Mediterranean summer but a big freeze.

How very different a day at the races would be then!

Global warming leading to an icy Britain! Just our luck!

It's all to do with the Gulf Stream.

This current of warm water from the tropics keeps us ten degrees warmer

than our northerly position deserves.

But if enough cold water is released by the melting Arctic,

then the Gulf Stream could slow or even stop.

And that could cause the beginning of a very big chill.

It's hard to fathom how we'd cope with such relentless cold.

Even a few inches of snow seem to paralyse some of our roads today.

Imagine trying to get to work if it snowed every day for six months of the year!

Leaves on the line would be the least of our rail worries

and cross-Channel ferries would be replaced with ice breakers.

Even the Thames would freeze over in winter

as our northerly position took effect.

And how would our wildlife cope with weather like this?

Well, for some, it might be a welcome arrival.

Ptarmigan have clung on in Britain since the last ice age and are well adapted to cold conditions,

which these days they find only on the highest mountains in Scotland.

They'd find a colder Britain much more to their liking

and a welcome relief from our recent mild winters.

Mountain hares, with their thick fur coats,

would also stay warm in temperatures below freezing.

But not everyone would cope so well.

For most of our plants and animals, this endless winter would be a disaster.

But the real concern is that this big chill

could actually lead us into a new ice age.

As winter snowfalls get heavier,

a vicious circle could set in.

Colder winters mean more snow, which in turn makes colder winters,

and so on.

Britain might become iced over.

A frozen Britain would look just as it did only 15,000 years ago.

It's bitterly cold

and absolutely...silent.

A featureless landscape,

a panorama of ice and snow.

Of course, it would take years before Britain was covered by this much ice.

But, eventually, our green and rolling landscape would disappear

under a vast frozen wasteland.

The Cairngorms, the Pennines, Snowdonia -

there'd be glaciers like this on all of them.

The British landscape we know today,

sculpted by the last ice age,

would once again be scraped, scarred and re-shaped

by the tremendous power of the ice.

But any future glaciers would be gouging their way down valleys

that millions of us have occupied for generations.

Just imagine what kind of debris would be turning up.

Any future ice age

would sweep away the trappings of our modern lives

with ruthless efficiency.

And who knows what kind of landscape would be revealed

when that ice finally melts?

The chances are that the next ice age is a long way off.

But whether it's 500, 5,000, or 50,000 years into the future,

the ice will return one day.

Whether it's global warming or the big freeze,

whatever the future brings for the British Isles,

it will be yet another chapter in a long and epic history.

In this series, we've travelled through three billion years of that history

to witness ancient events that rocked Britain,

events which ultimately created the land we call home.

For me, it's been an extraordinary journey of discovery.

I'd never dreamt that Britain had seen so much change.

As I've followed the story of Britain's creation,

from one end of the country to the other,

it's also been a reminder of what a spectacular place

the British Isles really are...

..and what a wealth of wildlife lives within this pattern of islands.

Ever since humans first made the British Isles their home,

our relationship with the countryside has become ever more important,

as we ourselves have grown in numbers

from a handful of hunter-gatherers

to a population of millions.

We've stamped our mark on the countryside

in so many ways.

Far in the future, great natural events

will again rock the foundations of the British Isles.

But for the time being, it's us - you and me -

who are shaping the immediate future of the country.

This is where we make our homes, raise our families

and meet with our friends.

The British Isles are a special place.

I mean, just look.

We live in the most beautiful group of islands,

with a matchless variety of plants and animals and scenery.

And whether your bit of landscape is down in the town

or out in the open countryside,

don't just look at it on telly.

Come out here.

Smell it. Touch it. Feel it.

Get up close to it and among it

and you'll learn to love it and to care for it.

And that's the only way

that the future beauty of the British Isles can be assured.

As this is the last programme,

I want to finish by showing you the things

people are doing up and down the country,

looking after the landscape and simply getting out and enjoying it.

There are thousands of different conservation projects across Britain

that you can get involved in and they ALL make a difference.

Here in the Somerset Levels,

the historic wetland is wonderful just to explore.

But it's not a wilderness.

It's a man-made landscape.

For 2,000 years, the priority has been agriculture -

draining the land to make it more productive.

Now, priorities are changing

and water is being reintroduced to expand wetland areas

as wildlife conservation has become more important.

And that's where volunteers come in.

They're not experts, they're just ordinary local folk.

These are the Avalon Marshes, near Glastonbury.

And for about the last 15 years,

the locals have been working hard,

turning them back into what they looked like about 2,000 years ago.

As the water level rises in reserves like this one,

a major task is to remove the birch trees.

The mosses and grasses that grow better in the wet

bring in more insects, which birds and other wildlife feed on.

I remember coming out here about ten years ago

and the warden showing us

a little tiny bit of heather,

which had come back. It had come out of the seed bank.

And now you're treading on it everywhere.

It's my chance to get out and about, really.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, you've made a real difference.

And you can say, you know, "I've done that and done my bit."

There's satisfaction in that.

As the Avalon Marshes are returned to wetlands,

they've also become a perfect place to learn about this fragile environment.

Have you been to a wetland before?

-ALL: No.

-So why is this special? What do you like about it?

-It's got insects.

-It's got new things.

-Lots of different flowers.

Can you remember them all? People always say they can't.

-Moss.

-Moss.

-Heather.

-Moss and heather. What have we got here?

Cotton grass.

Cotton grass.

Since this particular piece of conservation work began,

the marsh here has come alive with plants and insects.

That means, in turn, it encourages more animals and birds.

Right now, around 150,000 starlings are coming here to roost

and by the end of the winter, that will be millions.

So, if you want to get out and get your hands dirty

on the conservation side of things,

there's a lot going on and not just in Somerset.

This is the RSPB's nature reserve at Rainham Marshes in Essex.

It's a brand-new reserve which should open to within a year or so.

The marshes here are already teeming with life.

So, the work of the volunteers here

is to make it accessible and visitor-friendly.

It was an army base. This was where they did target practice.

Since I've been here, we've found the odd bullet and that's it!

I'm a keen birdwatcher.

I grew up nearby, so it's chance to put something into the community.

Even if you live in a big town,

there's something you can get involved in.

In Brighton, volunteers are making a wildlife garden from scratch

in a sheltered-housing complex.

People that can't get out here can look out of their windows

and see it or they can sit down

and enjoy the birds.

You know, to me, it's going to be so amazing.

Conservation work can range in scale from planting in your own back yard

to trying to turn back the tide and protecting the coastline.

Here on the coast by the Somerset Levels,

like any man-made landscape, there's a bigger picture.

Climate change could have a drastic effect

if rainfall gets any more intense in winter

or if the sea levels continue to rise.

Sometimes, there's just too much water.

The Levels flood because the huge amounts of rainwater can't escape into the sea fast enough.

But if the sea level itself were to rise, out in the Bristol Channel,

then these defences would be breached.

Now, that hasn't happened in 300 years because of land management -

spotting potential problems and taking avoidance tactics.

And that's what conservation is all about.

But there are lots of other things that you can do

if you simply want to appreciate the natural history of the British Isles.

With just an ordinary pair of walking boots,

you can get in touch not just with the history in your area, but also with natural history.

Here in Glastonbury, there's a two-and-a-half-mile walk that'll only take you a couple of hours

and you don't have to climb the Tor if you don't want to. Oh, come on!

Cor! It's blowy! But there's a good view.

And what you see here with all these vistas is just what we can do when we set our minds to it.

Now, 2,000 years ago, all this was soggy wetland

and now it's cultivated farmland.

But in large areas, being turned back into wetland for wildlife and to suit our needs.

The Somerset Levels point up the fragility of the British countryside.

In the long term, it may be at the mercy of nature.

But in the short term,

the landscape is entirely in our hands.

One thing's for certain -

after three billion years in the making,

the British Isles will never stand still.