Preston Montford hosted the
Young Darwin Scholarship, an FSC initiative to encourage and support
young people who have a real interest in the natural world - to develop
the next generation of ‘Charles Darwins’. Here is a response from Zak,
one of our “Young Darwins” on what the week’s experiences meant to him.
I didn't know much about the Young Darwin Scholarship before I applied
for one; name-dropping arguably the most important naturalist who ever lived,
it certainly sounded like something special, but in the week-long residential that
followed my receipt of the scholarship, all my expectations were exceeded.
Set up by the
Field Studies Council (FSC) in 2012, and having accepted 15 new applicants
every year since, the Young Darwin Scholarship is an initiative with the goal
of encouraging and supporting the next generation of 'Darwins' - young people
aged from 16 to 17 with an interest in the natural world, and a desire to
pursue this interest further. Beyond the advice and support afforded by an
ever-expanding network of fellow scholars, I had the chance to go on a weeklong
residential course at the FSC-owned Preston Montford Estate in Shrewsbury - the
very same town that Darwin himself was born and grew up in.
With the fourteen
other scholars, I took part in activities ranging from moth and mammal trapping
to canoeing along the River Severn in search of wildlife. We explored a disused
lead mine in Snailbeach Rocks (oddly enough, a place which was neither a beach
nor particularly renowned for its snails), which proved to be both fascinating
from a geological point of view and darkly atmospheric in its own right. Some
days we would spend hours simply walking through Shrewsbury's most impressive
landscapes, including the vast, craggy Stiperstones (a stretch of rocky heath
moorland whose name unsurprisingly means, in the local dialect, the sharp
stones), in search of rare species like red grouse or kites - the rain, of
course, was unrelenting, but the heavy banks of mist only added to the land's
remote beauty. The last day was given over entirely to a BioBlitz - an intense
series of sessions focused on identifying as many species on the estate as
possible, with assistance from a range of environmental experts. Excitingly,
the results we recorded were then uploaded by us onto an international
database, meaning we had contributed to vital biodiversity statistics.
I've taken away a
lot from that week: I've learnt that I'm terrible at identifying bird calls, but
not too bad at bats; I've realised that moths are far more diverse than I
previously imagined, and (at least to me) have an unusual beauty that far outshines
the ever-popular butterflies; that otters never show up when you want them to,
and a few twigs cracking is all it takes to scare away a family of badgers
after waiting an hour to see a single shining eye; I've learnt that every
species is fascinating in its own way, from the worms we surveyed on the first
day to the barn owl that flew within a few metres of my face on the last night.
The Young Darwin Scholarship taught me all this and more, and I can't wait to
see what it teaches me next.
