Mountain concerns

Tags

birds, conservation, environment, Farming, George Monbiot, nature, uplands

Last week I spent some time in the central belt of Scotland, walking the hills around Pitlochry, including the Munros of Ben Lawers and Schiehallion. The weather was great, the views endless, there was coffee in the flask and my enthusiastic Border Collie was doing five miles for every one of mine. Everything was great, well, nearly. Trouble is, I’ve read Feral. (1)

Miles and miles of short-cropped grass stretched in every direction, creating a typical English, Welsh and here Scottish upland view. The Lake District, Snowdonia and much of Scotland are full of them. It’s what the general public expect to see on a day out to such places. Unfortunately George Monbiot’s book, Feral, has changed my view of the views that were on offer on these Scottish mountains. I’ve always been aware of the lack of diversity in our uplands. They tend to be either heavily-nibbled grass or great swathes of heather. In both cases biodiversity is low, and often very low. As I wrote in a previous blog, ‘ In April I spent a day in Snowdonia – one of our national park ‘jewels’. After 8 hours of walking my birdlist was……… five. Five species – in a national park for God’s sake. If it hadn’t been for half a dozen Herring Gulls scavenging sandwiches at the summit of Snowdon the total of individual birds seen wouldn’t have been much more than five.’Here I was again, at altitude on a beautiful day, but, despite the glorious weather, the whole experience was slightly depressing. I couldn’t put my finger on it for a while but then the penny dropped. There obviously wasn’t a bird or animal for miles. Six hours produced Meadow Pipits, a few Ravens and precious little else.  It’s now that bits of Feral hit home. Monbiot’s description of these landscapes as ‘sheepwrecked’ says it all (2). Often a term as clever as this doesn’t quite hit things on the head. There has to be a bit of tweaking to make it fit. But not here. Sheepwrecked is what these hills are, as far as the eye can see. Sheepwrecked is the perfect description of this green monotone – with the help, in this area, of quite a few deer – and it’s taking the edge off my day. I can’t help but think what else these hills could be, what life they could support and how much more interesting that would make them to the millions of us who walk in them. Hill farming is hard and it’s uneconomic. Most of these enterprises don’t turn a profit and simply couldn’t exist without subsidies. In fact, the average subsidy for a Welsh hill farm is £53 000 against a net income of £33 000. In other words we – you and me – pay £20 000 a year on average to each farmer to enable him or her to create a landscape that is virtually devoid of life. Let’s just say that again – we pay through the nose to create and maintain lifeless green deserts in most of our hills and mountains. It’s madness and we’re all affected by this bizarre use of the uplands, both in the pocket and in the experiences we’re denied when we’re out in these landscapes – the chance encounter with a fox, a hunting stoat, a hare or a raptor. As Mark Avery says in ‘Inglorious’, ‘Upland landowners need to recognise that everyone has an interest in how the uplands look and what goes on in them because everyone is paying for those activities’ (3). But it’s not just the landowners or hard-bitten tenant hill farmers who need to do the recognising, it’s the government. They make this madness possible. They subsidise uneconomic activity which creates environmental harm over huge areas. There has to be a better way.

On the way down Ben Lawers, sun still shining, coffee consumed, dog finally showing her 13 years, we come across a glimpse of an alternative future. A tall fence encompasses a small area of land that has been able to regenerate without the limiting presence of sheep and deer. Wow. What a difference  (You need to click on the picture to really appreciate the difference). There are trees and shrubs, with birch, willow, juniper and rowan. The ground vegetation is tall and much more diverse. There are bees and crane flies everywhere. And….. there’s a bird. A Stonechat flits across onto a nearby rock and eyes us warily. I realise it’s the first bird we’ve seen in nearly an hour.

Is this a glimpse of how our uplands will look in the future? Is it possible that huge areas could look like this, with such a dazzling array of life? It could be, but first we need to decide on the nature of the benefits.

What kind of ‘benefits’ will be deemed more important? Will they continue to be  benefits paid to upland farmers – in the form of subsidies perpetuating such an uneconomic and environmentally damaging way of life? Or will they be in the form of benefits to society as a whole of regenerated, diverse and exciting upland landscapes with all the opportunities they could offer? We pay for what goes on in the uplands. It’s up to us to press for the uplands we want.

(1)  George Monbiot – Feral (Allen Lane, 2013) p.153

(2) ibid p.158

(3) Mark Avery – Inglorious. Conflict in the Uplands (Bloomsbury 2015) p. 187

You might also be interested in: rewildingbritain.org.uk and carrifran.org.uk

 

The neatness obsession

Tags

birds, conservation, environment, Farming, hedge, nature, neatness, photography, Verges

I hear it a lot – ‘It’ll just be kicked into the long grass’ – but whether it’s the government who’s doing the kicking or some other decision-making body, an awful lot of things end up in the long grass. Well, what I want to know is this – where is all this long grass? Because there’s precious little of it around my way. I live surrounded by fields, yes, lucky I know, but there isn’t a square metre of long grass in any of them. Not as far as the eye can see. Even when the field is grass it definitely isn’t long. There isn’t a strip of long grass anywhere, not edging an arable field or running alongside a hedge. There are no rough field margins at all. The fields around me are farmed to within an inch of their lives. Maybe I’m unlucky here, perhaps that’s not typical everywhere, but it certainly is in my area of North Yorkshire. As a result there’s no hunting habitat for owls or kestrels and hardly any farmland birds in the hedgerows.

And then there are the hedges themselves. Tall, bushy, vibrant with life? Not exactly. Most of them are sacrificed on the altar of neatness. Is it a question of simply having nothing to do that brings legions of farmers out in their tractors flaying and slashing? Around me so many hedges – potential blossom and berry-producing nesting sites – are brought to their knees each year. It’s not a question of cutting to thicken the hedge or anything like that, it’s simply vandalism. Usually vandalism moves things from the tidy to the untidy but here this form of ‘natural vandalism’ goes the other way, where the untidy becomes tidy. It’s wanton, ignorant vandalism for the sake of neatness. Look at these examples – these sad hawthorns are reduced to this every single year. Squared off, neat and absolutely pointless. They don’t produce berries anymore or even function as a hedge, but they still have to be controlled, still have to be slashed lest they run amok in a berry-producing frenzy.

I’ve spoken to the farmer. I’ve asked why they can’t be allowed to grow, ‘Wouldn’t look neat’ was the simple response, as I gazed across his yard at the remains of various bits of rusting farm machinery in a heap in the corner, next to the pile of tyres. And, for God’s sake, farmers can get money for not cutting their hedges. For not cutting them. So what is this obsession with neatness? And why is it only applied to living things? Why doesn’t a pile of old junk qualify but a hedge of blossom, berries and nesting sites does?

Last year I wrote to my local council asking whether they might ease back on the frequency of cutting on some of the town’s grass verges. I suggested that the council could do its bit for bees and butterflies and save money in doing so. More wildlife at less cost. I mean, councils are not exactly awash with cash these days. Two big boxes ticked and a bit more money to be spent elsewhere. What’s not to like? But – and I think you know what’s coming – I had, of course, completely underestimated the power of the neatness obsession.  I was told that a significant number of residents preferred the ‘manicured look’ and the council therefore had no plans to save money and do anything at all for nature. Okay, they didn’t put it exactly like that but that’s what they meant. [1]

Are we, as humans, predisposed towards a desire for neatness? There’s no doubt a picture can be enhanced by being framed and a show lawn can look neater when it’s cleanly edged. Are these anti-nature activities by some farmers simply an extension of this? Do they see their fields as works of art to be encircled by a neat frame? Is this why my local farmer won’t consider a skylark plot amongst his wheat, because the neatness mantra was invoked here, too. Rough margins and skylark plots can be funded by agri-environment schemes but is the neatness obsession one of the reasons why the take-up of the Environmental Stewardship scheme hasn’t been higher? I’m sure the form-filling can be a pain, but, however easy it was made to be, would it founder on the altar of neatness? From my conversations with farmers and the council it certainly seems so round these parts.

Failing the neatness test?

Now it may be that anyone who has read this far is nodding in agreement while looking out at a tidy, manicured garden. Hmmm. We know, in the face of the assault on the countryside, that gardens are increasingly important to our wildlife but how many of us disapprove of the farmers’ neatness obsession whilst succumbing to it ourselves?

I must plead guilty to having had a Damascene moment of my own some years ago, when I suddenly realised how this subconscious pull towards neatness was meaning that my garden was, when I stood and really looked at it, largely ornamental. Neat lawns and flowerbeds. Pretty and nice to look at, all trim and ordered – and time-consuming. But of vanishingly little value to anything at all. So, buoyed by a sudden sense of wild abandon, I stopped mowing part of the lawn and left the hedge alone. I didn’t get any money for doing this but what the hell. I chucked some wildflower seeds in and built a bughouse. Result? Less effort for me and an influx of life. So many birds use the hedge, the long grass is full of moths in the summer as well as birds foraging for insects and grubs for their chicks. Bees and butterflies feast on the wildflowers and a wren has staked a claim to the logpile. If you’ve got a garden – big or small – just do it. It all adds up to making such a difference – and what’s more it frees up time, so everyone’s a winner. So let’s lighten up on the tidiness and embrace some messiness – and see whether you can get a farmer and your council to do the same because the difference each one of us – and them – can make by embracing just a little entropy is enormous.

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