WHEN it comes to wildlife many people are careless and uncaring. They lock away the nation's art treasures in galleries and museums, visit zoos and take their dogs for walks, but only a minority have a regard for the natural world and its residents. So cars continue to roar along country roads where songbird fledglings flutter between hedges. Other vulnerable young creatures wander about, maybe for the first time beyond the nursery territory. And many become the victims of human blinkered vision. The prodigal's mentality is summed up by his reaction to the rural scene, especially in urban-fringe countryside. Having turned their backs on nature, society has gone into a kind of self-oriented vacuum. Despite the lip-service of government, bureaucracy and big business, conservation is way down the list of priorities. If you doubt this have a look at the track record of our species. The list of endangered plants and animals worldwide is harrowing. To get this in perspective, let me remind you of the 1960s when intensive farming altered the face of the British countryside, and organo-chloride pesticides brought the otter close to extinction. Confronted by the crisis, how did the otter-hunting enthusiasts react? Well, between 1958 and 1963 the 11 otter hunts of England and Wales killed 1,065 otters between them. As late as the mid-1970s the master of a pack of hounds wrote: 'Help me kill a few otters this season and I think next year we will shake pessimists by showing them how many there are about'. Walking along the lane in the Churston countryside, I heard buzzards calling as they circled above the woodland. A family of five were on the wing and I wondered if it was possible that one day there might not be any buzzards in Britain. Yes it is. Once upon a time there were millions [actually it was billions*, AK] of passenger pigeons in the US. They were shot for food and fun. The last one died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1915. The last one, the last of its kind. It's impossible to think of this or any other kind of extinction without a mixture of heartache, anger and disgust. The airborne buzzards were silent. Watching them vanish behind the trees I was aware that no creature or plant is safe from the fate that overtook the passenger pigeon and dodo. But we can help change things if we really want to. Love of nature and harmony with the living world is the only safe way forward for the human race. So let us tread that trail together, aware that conservation is the breath of life.* 'One sighting in 1866 in southern Ontario was described as being 1 mile wide, 300 miles long, and taking 14 hours to pass a single point with number estimates in excess of 3.5 billion birds in the flock.' [Wikipedia]