The Essex I grew up in was a very different place from the county we know today. In the mid Fifties there were fewer houses, a lot more green fields, much less traffic and vastly more wildlife. Even in the 1960s I remember the dawn chorus being so loud and prolonged that it could even wake me early in the morning as a comatose teenager after a night on the tiles. There were so many birds it was pretty well impossible to identify the individual singers.
Why we're leaving a legacy for wildlife
Jenny and Greg Curtis-Beard have lived in Essex for decades and have witnessed first-hand the decline in local wildlife. Motivated by their shared love of nature and a desire to help restore what has been lost, they’ve chosen to leave a gift in their Will to Essex Wildlife Trust.
Now, over fifty years later, I no longer indulge in late nights, nor do I get awakened by a deafening avian choir in the wee small hours. A few weeks ago, I listened attentively to the dawn chorus and realised that there were less than a dozen individual participants: one wren, two blackbirds, one robin and a couple of great tits, plus the usual collared doves and wood pigeons.
My husband, Greg, grew up in New Zealand where, he says, bird numbers have been decimated by rats and other predators. Most indigenous bird species there cannot fly, largely because there were originally no indigenous predatory mammals to make flight necessary. That situation has sadly changed.
Greg and I both agree that we want to help wildlife of all kinds to regain the foothold to which it is entitled, and to restore the long-lost balance between humans and the natural world. And the best place to start is on our own doorstep.
Since our wishes tally wholeheartedly with the aims of the Essex Wildlife Trust, and since I have lived in Essex since childhood and Greg for over 35 years, we thought we could do no better than to leave a small legacy to the Trust in the hope that, in some way, this may be used to help towards redressing the losses the natural world has experienced during the course of the last 60 years.
Ours may not be a big legacy, but if everyone who feels as we do were to leave a small amount, the tide of wildlife deterioration might be able to be turned.
Jenny and Greg Curtis-Beard
Thorpe-le-Soken, Essex
For more details on leaving a gift in your Will, call our Legacy team on 01621 862987 or click here.
