Nature is essential to our lives – from the food on our plates to the clothes we wear, from medicines to mental health benefits.

Are you getting enough nature?

It’s easy to think nature will always be with us. But even in my lifetime, birds like starlings and house sparrows have declined so much they’re now listed as endangered.

In fact, nature is faring worse in the UK than in most other countries. The latest State of Nature report shows that over half our wild species – plants, insects, birds, mammals – are in decline.

Nature’s importance to our health:

Nature performs major miracles for us every day – from giving us great views and helping to prevent floods to regulating the weather and keeping us supplied with clean water, fresh air and plentiful food.

When running the tap or doing the shopping it’s easy to forget that without healthy soils and diverse plant and animal species doing their thing our lives would be tougher and poorer.

Trees in towns cool us in summer and trap air pollution. Bees pollinate our crops, putting food on our table and in our stomachs. Even much-maligned wasps have uses such as controlling aphids.

However smart we’ve become as a species, without diverse nature and a healthy functioning natural environment we’ll be as lost as a tourist without a map app