Features / Nature
BirdGirl celebrates ten years of Black2Nature
She started birdwatching as a toddler and environmental campaigning at age eight, ran her first nature camp at 13 and organised a Race Equality in Nature conference shortly afterwards.
At 17 she became the youngest person to have seen half the birds in the world, in 2019 she was listed in Bristol’s BME Top 100 Powerlist and the Guardian’s Top 15 World’s Biodiversity Activists, and in 2020 she became the youngest person to be awarded an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Bristol.
She’s published three books, helped raise thousands for environmental causes and spoken out on climate change issues to crowds tens of thousands strong.
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Now, at the tender age of 23, Mya-Rose Craig – aka BirdGirl – is celebrating the tenth anniversary of her charity Black2Nature.
Trying her best to take time out to relax after completing her degree, Mya-Rose reflects on the last decade and contemplates the next.
Craig has been a tireless campaigner from a young age for increased equality of access to the natural environment, as well as lending support to global indigenous voices and calling for a halt to environmental destruction around the world – photo: Mya-Rose Craig
“I was increasingly aware the older I got that there wasn’t anyone who looked like me or my family in the environmental space, at all,” Mya-Rose, who is half Bangladeshi, says of the origins of a life already packed with a jaw-dropping number of accomplishments at an age when most are still finding their feet.
“My Asian side of the family would say, ‘Why do you like birds? That’s a white people thing!’ It made me sad, as a young kid, that there was something so important and intrinsic to my life that other kids weren’t experiencing.”
Mya-Rose is watching birds out the window of her Bristol-based parents’ home where she is readjusting to post-university life and thinking about next steps.
Although she has recently returned from a birding trip to India she is, she says, still equally excited by nature back in Britain.
“I love birds in the UK, I think they’re really underrated,” she says emphatically. “It’s almost built into how we consider our nature that we think: small, brown, boring.
“But if you actually stop and look – a blue tit or goldfinch or robin is really beautiful. UK wildlife is a lot more special than we give it credit for.”
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This love for nature and sense of inequality combined to compel her first efforts to introduce other young people like her to its wonders.
Of the first residential nature camp she organised – the roots of what would become Black2Nature – all the children that signed up were “white, middle class teenage boys” so, determined to reach a more diverse crowd, she went directly to Bristol communities to speak to people from different backgrounds.
“I had people literally telling me, ‘there are certain people who do not go outside and do not connect with nature’,” reflects Mya-Rose.
In the end, five Black and Asian boys from St Paul’s and Easton attended and, to her relief, all left with a newfound enthusiasm for the natural world.
Taken on her first birdwatching expedition by her parents at just nine days old, Mya-Rose quickly caught the twitching bug and was keen to share it with others – photo: Oliver Edwards
Buoyed up by the experience, she contacted UK nature organisations to share her story. She found their responses bizarre.
“They all went ‘You’ve managed to do that? That’s crazy, we’ve been trying to do that for 20 years! Come talk to us!’,” she remembers.
“I was 13 years old and they were asking me for what we now call EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) advice – I thought it was ridiculous.”
Meetings with CEOs led to Mya-Rose’s first conference in Bristol a year later, which connected these organisations with race charities and community centres.
“So much of my advice was, just go and talk to them! Ask communities why they’re not coming!” she laughs, clearly still amazed that something so simple to her had been such a mystery for the sector for so long.
While an enthusiastic campaigner and sought-after spokesperson for environmental causes, Mya-Rose says her biggest passion lies in introducing children, who otherwise wouldn’t have the chance, to activities in nature – photo: Oliver Edwards
Fast forward a decade and Mya-Rose’s charity Black2Nature has run camps for hundreds of visible ethnic minority young people from Bristol and beyond, recently expanding their work into Wales, Dartmoor and Exeter.
For many, it’s their first time out of the city, let alone taking part in activities like bird ringing, nature photography, hiking, climbing and campfire cooking.
Pitching tents “in the middle of nowhere” without internet is “always fun” says Mya-Rose, gleefully: “A lot of the kids come from households where their parents aren’t able to take them out, or from schools that don’t have the resources. So, we try to treat it as a completely new, unique experience for them.
“Even on the level of, they’re on the minibus getting really excited as they’re seeing sheep and cows over the hedges.
“It’s really important for expanding horizons and going ‘this is what else is out there’. The point isn’t that they leave thinking, ‘I’m going to be an environmentalist now’. It might just be that they look up when they’re waiting for the bus. Or they go sit under a tree when they’re struggling.
“Creating a space for nature in their lives is the goal.”
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The natural world is so beneficial, Mya-Rose says, and the knock-on effect of experiencing it is people learn to value and, in turn, protect it:
“It’s so important to give kids the tools and resources to manage their own health and wellbeing. You’re always setting someone up for success if you’re forging that relationship with nature.
“It’s so important we have a younger generation who understand environmental issues and why they should care about them.
“Nature is so important for us in so many ways and we are losing it – the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. It’s an absolute desert so we have to cherish and protect what we have left.”
Mya-Rose has seen the landscape shift since her first flutters as a fledgling on a mission to change up the green sector.
“Things have definitely changed massively,” she affirms. “I look back to when I started – people unwilling to even acknowledge the concept of race when talking about engaging more people in nature.
“We’ve worked past that. People acknowledge it’s an issue now. I think Covid changed a lot in terms of everyone’s understanding of nature’s role.
“Black2Nature was the first of its kind. It’s nice to look around now and see lots of other people talking about it.
“There’s a long way to go, absolutely, there are still massive issues with access to nature which tie into much bigger issues of race and class. The biggest thing for me is continuing to figure out how to make environmentalism more of a universal concern.”
Mya-Rose appeared at Glastonbury festival this year, sitting on a panel for the Optimism + Outrage climate change podcast alongside musician Madame Ghandi, Greg Jackson of Octopus Energy, Sarah Mukherjee MBE, Hannah Martin, Steve knightley and Adam Met of Planet Reimagined – photo: Mya-Rose Craig
She’ll continue her mission but, in truth, Mya-Rose would prefer to be on the ground.
“Working with people, kids and teenagers is really important to me. It’s crazy but very cool that Black2Nature is still going!
“It’s so special to have new kids involved and teenagers who have been coming for years really connecting with nature and the outdoors, having conversations about climate change, environmentalism, why we should care about biodiversity loss… It’s really exciting!”
And the next ten years? “The nicest thing would be if Black2Nature continues as a grassroots project, working with people and feeling less need to do campaigning within environmental spaces,” she says.
“It would be lovely if we could just concentrate on taking kids out. And personally, I’m currently figuring out what I’m doing.
“I have a feeling I’ll stumble across a new cause at some point soon, inevitably! But at the moment I’m in between, so it’s just getting back to nature and carrying on looking at birds.”
For more information on Black2Nature, visit black2nature.org
Main image: Oliver Edwards
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