School students and parents carry placards as they gather in order to hand over a 100,000-signature petition urging the Royal Family to rewild their land, outside Buckingham Palace in central London on October 9, 2021, ahead of the Cop26 climate talks. ?
LONDON, Oct 9 — A children’s march to Buckingham Palace in central London today called for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to back a new environmental approach on her estates and promote biodiversity across the country.
Scores of children and their parents joined the march across nearby Green Park to the queen’s official residence to deliver a petition with more than 100,000 signatures asking royals to “rewild” their land.
The throngs of children and adults, many of them wearing flowers in their hair, carried colourful banners and placards that urged the royal family to “rewild crown land”.
The petition asks the family to return hundreds of thousands of hectares of land it owns to its natural state, encouraging the return of native species before the UN’s COP26 climate summit hosted by Britain in October.
Campaigners calculate the royals own land equivalent to 1.4 per cent of the UK, much of which they say could be used to encourage nature.
TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham, who led the march, said the demonstrators wanted to see the royals make the change on the “800,000 acres of land that they have in the UK,” calling the march “the most harmonious, beautiful and peaceful demonstration”. — AFP