Mount Cook Case Study video transcript

So Mount Cook is an adventure centre. Since we opened about nine years ago, we've had 75,000 people there. We realised that once they've left, they may not necessarily connect with nature easily. We thought, well, we'll try and do something that enables that. And when we had the opportunity of buying this piece of land, it's only half a dozen or so acres, it's about three miles from Mount Cook and we've got all this historic trees and some grassland and some trees that we've planted and this is where we could do the next steps on in terms of young people and integrating with nature and understanding nature.

Beyond that, and this is an example of why we were so interested in getting some trees planted with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, is that we're talking now about biodiversity net gain, carbon offsetting, carbon exchange. And those are things that, you know, I think are going to become important in everyone's lives, in everyone's commercial lives. People need to be aware of how the resilience of this planet depends on everyone taking their own measured view, that's appropriate, without beating everyone up and without, you know, telling everyone they're wrong or right or whatever. But just if everyone has an understanding of how the role nature plays in modern life. Humans as a species will do rather better than just grabbing all they can and burning all they can and not taking any respect of what the future may hold.

My priority is to get young people into the outdoors. That's our mission statement. In doing so, we can achieve other things as well. And that's where I hope what we're doing here, can be a sort of bit of a beacon, bit of a poster boy for other industries to say, "Yeah, actually, we could do something like that. We could get involved."

There's a few things that we are capable of doing nationally and locally, to protect against nature's decline. The first is being aware that that issue exists, and just being aware of that straight away gives you the opportunity of thinking positively or negatively. And then once we've got that, and it'll take a couple of years to do that, once we've got that, we can talk about whether we're going to go more or less or whether there's value to it or not. But it's the language and the dialogue and the techniques that will introduce the capability of change.

If I had any advice to my peers or the local policymakers, it would be to allow nature to be part of your future planning. Again, some people's toes curl up if you use the language that makes it sound like you're threatening or putting in a planning condition that's going to increase costs or something, and that's the wrong way to regard interaction with nature. It should be more of how can I do something, rather than I must do something? And I think that sort of language in local conversations with your family, with your employer, with the people that are around you or people that you know, any policymakers that you might come across, that's the sort of language that will add traction. And just to have allow it to become part of your vocabulary.

Mount Cook Case Study video

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