Jane Smith (2025) Community: People and Wildlife on the West Coast of Scotland.

‘No-one will protect what they don’t care about, and no-one will care about what they’ve never experienced.’

Attenborough’s quote had me thinking about how the rich—who’ve never experienced poverty—demonise the poor. Jane Smith is an artist, zoologist and poet. The combination gives her an authorial voice. Her artwork illustrates her journey. Harris, St Kilda, North Uist, Eigg, Loch Archaig, Argyll Hotspot, Knapdale, Islay, Dumfries, and even Glasgow which host peregrine falcons—the fasting flying bird, 200 mph—in Glasgow University’s bell tower.

Her journey begins at home in her own Garden with Caledonian Pine, sugary sap, aphids and ants. Her goal was to find out more about the wildlife communities in the West of Scotland. She looks, for example, at the reintroduction of beavers to Knapdale in 2009. An experiment that has been extended. And she visited St Kilda, the largest sea colony in Europe.  

‘Seabirds can look after themselves, as long as we don’t mess up their environment,’ a seabird scientist commented, on the rise and fall in Puffin numbers.

Jane Smith tells us she’s happy to call herself a bird watcher. As her illustrations show, she’s much more than that. Hers is a simple message. The opposite of individualism—she questions why a handful of the same people have owned so much land in the Highlands for example. Community is recognition everything is connected. We are connected to places. Interdependent.  And coming together makes us stronger.   Read on.