Iolo Williams makes an impassioned speech (1 Viewer)

Recently Iolo made this speech after the publication of the RSPB State-of-Nature report was published. This is a true speech from the heart and hopefully some of the people who have influence over wildlife protection and legislation get to hear it.
Let's also hope it gets played to our school children who are our future wildlife guardians. This not only applies to Wales but the World.
As Iolo says - "we only have one earth - it isn't too late, we need to act now."

Iolo starts in Welsh for a minute then he switches to English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnJQjtvngqA

Thanks for posting this Mal.. Truely inspirational

peter.jones said:

Thanks for posting this Mal.. Truely inspirational

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I agree.

Powerful stuff:t:. Can anybody translate the Welsh he spoke at the start?

He's saying that he's a Welshman, and proud of it but tonight he will be giving his speech in English.

Mal92 said:

He's saying that he's a Welshman, and proud of it but tonight he will be giving his speech in English.

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:t:
Welsh is a beautiful sounding language, pity I can't understand a word of it.

That's a fantastic speech!

One thing I thought about the State of Nature report, important as it is, is that it was a sad indictment of a lot of the conservation bodies who produced the report. I say that as a supporter of many of them, and I acknowledge that other factors have been at play: government, developers, industry, but it seems that whatever strategies that the conservation bodies have been following during the period covered by the report hasn't worked for all those species that are in continuing decline.

If their strategies are working on a local level, i.e. species in decline nationwide but doing well on reserves, then we need to look at landscape scale conservation and even wider. We need to convince government that our country, our world, will be a much poorer place without all these species.

Imagine walking through a wood and there being no chaffinches or greenfinches or siskins or robins or song thrushes. Imagine the silence when there are no birds calling in spring. Imagine no summer visitors to these islands because they're being killed in places like Malta. One day those idiots in Malta are going to look up from their guns and wonder where all the birds are - well look in the mirror!

Do we want to live in a world like that? Is this acceptable? No it isn't! And it's not just up to the conservation bodies to do all the work, everyone who loves nature needs to get involved - write to their local politicians, write to Ministers, write to newspapers to alert them to continuing destruction of local nature rich sites. Don't let government get away with rotten decisions that leads to the decimation of our wildlife. Highlight to them when their decisions are taken for ideological reasons rather than based on evidence - like with the badgers. Use social media to spread your passion for nature, and link up with those who are like-minded. The more of us who work together, the more we can achieve. The RSPB has over 1 million members - that's a lot of voices, but we need to get people more active and taking part.

Get young people interested in nature so that they will continue the battle when we're gone. We can't be complacent!

Another good speech. Well said.

Mayo Corncrake said:

Powerful stuff:t:. Can anybody translate the Welsh he spoke at the start?

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"I am a Welsh speaking Welshman through and through and am very proud to be so, but tonight I am going to address you in English, and that is so that there will be no misunderstandings, just in case"

Kelvin Jones

Well said Lolo, a truly inspirational speech which details exactly what is happening in England as well. I've been waiting for years for one of our nationally recognized nature enthusiasts to make such a speech half expecting Bill Oddie or Simon King to sound out verbally about the state of our countryside and wildlife, but it never seems to have happen. Once again very well said.

Finally a naturalist, known to the public, has come out and openly said what we've all suspected / known for a long time. It didn't hurt that he spoke with such passion and feeling either. Diolch Iolo.

Chris

Great speech but unfortunately for Iolo and the wildlife in Wales we now have Natural resources Wales in charge of things.
If recent events are anything to go by then their main aim seems to be ******* up the unspoilt areas and wildlife as fast as is possible.
Had that dickhead climate freak Ed davey here the other day, the reason, promoting the largest onshore windfarm in UK. Pretty soon we can kiss goodbye to the Perrys , Goshawk, Merlin and Honey buzzards that breed there.
For this we can blame various people but lets be honest the doomsayers who said our planet will warm up are to blame for the countrywide vandalism to cure a none problem.
The various idiots working for NRW who know nothing about wildlife and as Iolo said are just scamming penpushers creaming off all they can whilst doing nothing for the wildlife they pretend to protect