Lizzie, I really don't think that you've read a word that I've written. Apart from that, though, I find your comment: "Let's all stay the way we are. Let's not connect with anything" a bit offensive because I believe that it's very important to think about HOW we connect - rather than just rush out and DO things (like plant trees).

I've decided that the best thing that I can do for my local environment is to record it (specifically the plant life) in as much detail as possible. That means spending hours and hours studying the flowers, grasses, sedges, rushes, ferns, trees etc. and learning how to tell one from another. Then it means walking for hours along river banks and poking about in neglected nooks and crannies noting everything down. Finally, my evenings are now spent getting all of this data onto a database so that it can be shared with all of the various groups out there who can make use of it.

Now, Lizzie, I can just picture you getting ready to bounce and flounce up and down and embark on one of your anti-intellectual rants! But before you do, just consider this: In the 1960s a plant atlas of the British Isles was published (similar ones were published for birds, butterflies etc.). The data for this atlas came from people like me, doing just what I've described above. Thirty or forty years after the first atlas another was issued and by comparing the two it was realised that we were losing significant numbers of plant species (and birds and butterflies etc.). This robust, quantitative data allowed scientists and sympathetic politicians to make a strong case for conservation (a battle which is still being fought).

And there's another reason too. My experience is that people have a tendency to underestimate their local patch - they think it's just a load of weeds and bugs (exterminate them!) and that 'real' conservation is about the Amazon, or Borneo, or the Serengeti (which it is, of course - but in those places people think it's just a load of weeds and bugs etc.). By demonstrating that my local environment is really rather rich and varied I might be able to persuade the local powers that be to take more care of it (and I may actually be succeeding - last year I fought a major battle with a rather powerful organisation and persuaded them to change their management practices with quite dramatic results - but that's another story).

Finally, one of my favourite patches is currently under threat. The developers would love to get in a tame expert to testify that it is valueless - but I've got the data to prove that it isn't - so they've had to call me in as the local 'expert'. This is going to be the most fraught and difficult battle of my life - but I'm going to do my very best to win.

So what was that you were saying about not connecting with anything, Lizzie? You don't actually need to be a facetious git on the telly to make a difference.