WHY NATURAL HISTORY AND THE ENVIRONMENT?
This is a personal perspective with added information and comment from other sources.
Towards the end of this website which focuses primarily on the man-made environment and its history, you will find a great deal on the natural environment too - from plants to bugs.
West Dunbartonshire has an extraordinary natural heritage. It looks across the mighty Clyde to the south and has the fast flowing Leven linking that with Loch Lomond. The higher ground is covered with muirland, while interspersed across this are wonderful woodlands.
We may not have the enormous, sometimes terrifying, mammals or reptiles as other parts of the world. Even our local deer are smaller than fruther north, but we do have an amazing array of flora and fauna.
Just be observant and look closer.
The Oxford-Cambridge-RSA website defines Natural History as follows:
..... "Natural History focuses on understanding the rich and diverse natural world. Through observational study (generating systematic records of direct and indirect observations, often made over long periods of time) and investigation, natural history seeks to understand the diversity, complexities, and interconnectedness, of life on earth in contrasting habitats. Natural history explores how our natural world has been shaped, and how it continues to change, both by natural processes and through human intervention"
As this section gets edited, we look across our landscape all battered by the extreme winds of Storm Eowyn, 2025. The very nature of much of the damage is due to the nature of the nature. Trees fail in certain ways according to their species. Some simply upend as their root system loose binding with the soil. Others hold tight but then snap or split, sometimes violently. Understanding all this can minimise the dangers.
Don't forget that natural history includes the very land that we have formed our townscapes from - the geography and geology beneath our feet. The Kilpatrick Hills and Langcraigs for instance. There are two large quarries near Dumbarton, From these we get the rock that we build with and create our roads with. There were numerous small quarries too. That geology is what we have transformed into our buildings; the red sandstone in particular defining many of our buildings.
Thomas L Fleischner, PhD, Executive Director, Natural History Institute, puts it this way: The world needs natural history now more than ever, because natural history makes us better, more complete human beings. It encourages our conscious, respectful relationship with the rest of the world and affirms our sense of beauty and wonder. When we engage in this practice of attentiveness, we reaffirm our commitment to nurturing hope. The process of attentiveness to the larger than human world allows us to build better human societies, ones that are less destructive and dysfunctional. Natural history helps us see the world, and thus ourselves, more accurately. It encourages and inspires better stewardship of the Earth.
It is the rivers and landscape that has defined West Dunbartonshire. The most outstanding feature of all, Dumbarton Rock, gives its name to where we live, and our common identity. The GeoGuide website as per the link below, gives a great deal of information on it. See DUMBARTON CASTLE AND ROCK
And then there is the cliff edge facing the raised beach south west of Dumbarton in the direction of Cardross. The fissures within it have become the stuff of legends - Havoc Hole being the prime example. See HAVOC HOLE, HAVOC ROAD, DUMBARTON
But you will also find the rocks, both as structures and as mysteriously carved surfaces wtihin this website.
GEOGUIDE website: https://geoguide.scottishgeologytrust.org/p/gcr/gcr27/gcr27_dumbartonrock
NATURAL HISTORY INSTITUTE : https://naturalhistoryinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Fleischner-Natural-History-Here-and-Now.pdf
OXFORD-CAMBRIDGE-RSA (OCR) : https://teach.ocr.org.uk/what-is-natural-history
WIKI COMMONS : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Geology_of_West_Dunbartonshire