Writing responsibly about wild places

Writing about a wild place is an act of sharing, and sharing has consequences. A post that brings one careful reader to a quiet valley is a gift. A post that brings a steady stream of visitors to a nesting cliff, a fragile meadow or a patch of rare orchids can do real damage, even if every visitor means well.

None of this means you should stop writing about the places you love. It means thinking about each post the way a good guide thinks about a group: what will they see, what will they trample, and what should stay unsaid.

Ask what a reader could do with the post

Before publishing, read the post as a stranger would, and ask one plain question: if someone wanted to go and stand exactly where I stood, could they, using only this post and its photos?

For a popular park or a well-marked trail, the answer can be yes without much harm. For anything sensitive, it should be no. Sensitive usually includes:

• Nests, dens, roosts and breeding sites of any kind.
• Rare or protected plants, fungi and lichens, and places where people are known to collect them.
• Small, fragile habitats: a single bog, a cave, a dune slack, a spring.
• Private land, even where you had permission to be there.
• Places where wildlife is being disturbed already and more visitors would make it worse.

In many places, disturbing nesting birds or picking certain plants is against the law, and a post that sends people there can make that more likely. The rules differ from country to country; when in doubt, assume the stricter reading.

Be vague on purpose

You can write vividly about a place without giving its address. Describe the habitat, the weather, the light and what you saw, and keep the location at the level of the county, the valley or simply “a wood I know”. Readers who enjoy nature writing rarely mind. What they want is to be taken there in the writing, not handed a set of directions.

Some practical habits help:

• Check your photographs. Many cameras and phones store the location inside the image file. Remove it before uploading, or turn off location tagging for your camera altogether. Look at the background too: a distinctive skyline, a sign, a building or a trail marker can give away a place as precisely as coordinates.
• Do not name small places. The name of a tiny wood or pool can be all someone needs.
• Leave out routes. Where you parked, which gate you used and which path you took are often the details that matter most to someone looking.
• Be careful in series. A weekly walk written up over months can reveal more in total than any single post. We say more about that in Writing the same walk every week.

Wait before you post

Time is one of the best protections you have. A sighting published the same evening can draw people the next morning. The same sighting published weeks later, when the bird has moved on or the flowers have set seed, harms nothing and loses very little as writing.

A good rule of thumb is to delay any post about breeding wildlife until the season is over, and any post about a rare or unusual visitor until it has gone. Your readers will not know the difference. The place will.

Write the behaviour you want to see

Readers copy what writers do. If your post describes creeping to the edge of a nest for a closer photograph, some readers will do the same. If it describes watching from a distance, keeping to the path, leaving dogs on a lead near ground-nesting birds and turning back when an animal showed signs of alarm, that becomes the model.

You do not need to lecture. A sentence or two about what you did, and why, is enough: “I watched from the gate rather than crossing the field; the lapwings were already calling.” Readers notice that kind of restraint and often adopt it.

Access, honestly

Rules about where you can walk vary a great deal between countries and even between neighbouring areas. Some places have broad rights of access; others have very few. If you write about how you reached a place, be accurate about whether it is open to the public, and do not encourage trespass, even with a wink.

The same honesty applies to difficulty and risk. If a walk involves tides, cliffs, river crossings, long distances without water or ground that becomes dangerous in poor weather, say so plainly. A reader who follows a post into trouble is a bad outcome for them and for the place, which may end up fenced or closed.

People live here too

Wild places are rarely empty of people. Farmers, foresters, rangers, residents and communities with long ties to the land all shape what you see. Write about them with the same care you give to the wildlife: do not share private details about anyone you met, ask before publishing a recognisable photograph of someone, and avoid turning a working landscape into a backdrop for your own experience. Our guidelines ask the same of every writer here, particularly around other people’s private information.

A short checklist before publishing

1. Could a stranger find the exact spot from this post or its photos? Should they be able to?
2. Have I removed location data from the images and checked their backgrounds?
3. Is any breeding season or rare visitor involved, and should I wait?
4. Does the post model the behaviour I would want from readers?
5. Am I accurate about access and about risk?
6. Have I treated the people in the story with care?

Most posts will pass in a minute. The ones that do not are exactly the ones worth slowing down for.

When a reader asks “where?”

Sooner or later, someone in the comments will ask exactly where you were. It is usually an innocent question. You can answer kindly without answering precisely: “I’d rather keep this one vague, as it’s a breeding site, but there are similar habitats across the region.” Most readers understand immediately. If a comment shares a sensitive location on your behalf, you can ask the moderators to remove it through the contact page, choosing the topic for reporting a post or comment.

Writing about wild places well means wanting readers to love them as much as you do, and trusting that love to survive a little mystery.