Chris Packham arrives in Suffolk to give speech at green county awards

Anita Honeyball, an artist who works with recycled glass, has created the trophies for this year's Greenest County Awards.

John Grant met him for an exclusive interview ahead of the ceremony and found the eloquent TV star in fine form on the county’s importance for wildlife, it’s ‘green gongs’ and the need to protect its many and varied natural riches

The broadcaster can barely wait to get back to the county he calls his “home from home”.

In his typical eloquent, straight-talking fashion, he makes no bones about it. He absolutely loves Suffolk, and has done for many years. In fact, it was love at first sight - since the day he discovered the delights of RSPB Minsmere after persuading his father to drive him all the way from their Hampshire home to the famous nature reserve to see marsh harriers.

In those bygone 1970s days marsh harriers were an extremely rare raptor in the UK, having suffered a disastrous decline as a result of persecution.

They have bounced back now thanks to greater enlightenment and conservation measures and represent one of nature conservation’s greatest success stories. But the thrill of seeing one of Britain’s tiny handful of pairs back in his formative days - as well as all the other new wildlife wonders that Suffolk offered a young lad from the South coast - left an indelible impression on the young Packham. For him, Suffolk was, and very much remains, very close to his heart.

“It is a real magnet for me,” he said. “Since that first visit in the mid-1970s when I pestered my dad to drive me up it has become like a home from home for me. I have been up and down the A12 for what seems like all of my life because there is so much to see and enjoy there.

Greenest County Awards (Image: Archant)

“Suffolk is incredibly rich - it has a fabulous network of great nature reserves, it is close to the Continent so it receives a lot of species from there and there is this tremendous diversity of habitats.”

Amid all Suffolk’s natural attractions, Minsmere is clearly a great favourite for Packham, and not simply because it is playing host to the BBC’s Springwatch natural history programmes of which he is a presenter.

“It’s absolutely fabulous,” he said with near-childlike enthusiasm. “Minsmere has got everything. It’s got wonderful wildlife, a tremendous array of species, but it’s also got something for everyone with new hides and a really great visitor centre. It’s like a Disneyland of nature and it really is very special indeed.”

Packham fondly recalled the days in his famous punk-rocker years when - complete with bleached blond hair in a rather fetching punk style - he visited Suffolk under his own steam. Poignantly, he also recalled one of the key figures in his early years - Derek Moore, who remained a great friend and mentor until his death last year at the age of 71.

“I remember the day I met Derek very well,” said Packham. “I was volunteering, guarding the UK’s last red-backed shrike’s nest as it was then, in the Suffolk Brecks. Derek came along and he obviously thought I looked a bit suspect and asked what I was doing. He was marvellous after that - he even guarded the nest for me while I had a quick snooze - and he helped me a great deal in those early days.”

Mr Moore went on to become a leading figure in British nature conservation, heading first the Suffolk Trust for Nature Conservation, as it was then called, and then transforming it to the impressive Suffolk Wildlife Trust it is today, with greatly increased membership, many more nature reserves and open access to all of them. He also took a key role in The Wildlife Trusts umbrella organisation that unites the UK’s 47 county trusts, two of which he combined and headed in a shake-up of Welsh nature conservation.

Packham also paid tribute to veteran Brecks naturalist Rob Hoblyn, who still carries out conservation work for the area’s many rare bird species.

“Derek and Ron were an amazing help to me and they have left, and are leaving, an amazing legacy of knowledge and good, practical, nature conservation that is an absolute inspiration,” he said.

When Packham takes to the stage in the internationally acclaimed auditorium of Snape Maltings on Wednesday to deliver the main address at this year’s Suffolk Creating the Greenest County environmental awards, he will be standing in a county that he so obviously admires and cherishes. But it is a fair bet he will send out a message that is far more than simply a tourism puff or a pat on the back for the work that is carried out on nature’s behalf.

Packham has become ever-more forthright in his defence of the natural world, from his campaigning against bird of prey persecution in Britain to his now famous and highly acclaimed self-funded video diaries in which he catalogued the slaughter of migrant birds through Malta last year. In fact, Malta was due to hold a referendum on the issue today - the spring shooting and trapping of migrant birds could end as a result - and Packham’s efforts certainly helped to step up the pressure on the Maltese government to put the issue to an island vote.

He mounted a spirited call for Suffolk’s natural environment to be safeguarded and appreciated for the immense services it delivers to society when he launched the ambitious Suffolk’s Nature Strategy at Minsmere last spring. This time around, he is likely to be just as robust and thought-provoking.

As a prelude to his awards ceremony speech, Packham told eaenvironment: “The Suffolk Nature Strategy document is really important and it should be engaged with at all levels. Suffolk’s natural environment is really special - it has wonderful Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty for example - and it’s environment is so important for the local economy, the people who are lucky enough to live there and the many, many visitors it attracts. Suffolk also has its problems. We need to change farming practices, for example. We have to support farmers but we need to see changes in the way we treat our landscapes. We need a sustainable economic future for the farming fraternity and encourage good management for wildlife. It can be done and we have to be ambitious,” he said.

Suffolk’s environmental awards were “very important,” said Packham.

“There are a lot of people who work very hard in the wildlife and environment sector, often for very little and many for nothing at all - the many, many volunteers. The awards give these people the recognition they deserve and they highlight their work beyond our own sector.

“That is important as I think the awards are all about spreading the message that, in modern times, Suffolk’s local politicians and businesses, as well as its environmental organisations and many individuals, have stepped up to the plate because they know how important the natural environment is.

“That is a message we need to get across to absolutely everybody,” he said, before breaking off to think - and then adding: “Although we can be celebratory and complimentary we must never allow that to develop into complacency.”

Working towards a greener county.

For more on the Greenest County Awards, see here