Category: Uncategorized

INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE. "Modern agriculture tends to simplify the landscape, with larger machinery and more specialised farming systems taking over from traditional mixed farming methods. These changes have increased agricultural yields substantially, but they have also had unintended consequences for the environment." https://lnkd.in/egeTAuK View in LinkedIn

INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE. "Although there are still some farming systems that are of high value for nature, most of the changes listed below can be attributed to a drive to maximise yields." https://lnkd.in/egeTAuK View in LinkedIn

UK HABITAT LOSS. "An estimated 80% of all the UK’s lowland heathland has been lost since 1800. 94% of Britain’s lowland raised mires...were destroyed between 1800 and 1978. Most of those remaining have been damaged. 44% of Scotland’s internationally important blanket peat bog was lost to afforestation and drainage from the 1940s to the 1980s." https://lnkd.in/egeTAuK View in LinkedIn

UK HABITAT LOSS. "The area of lowland meadow in England and Wales declined by 97% between the 1930s and 1984 – a total loss of 64,000 sq km. The area of coppiced woodland fell by at least 90% from 1900 to 1970." Exceptional report. https://lnkd.in/egeTAuK View in LinkedIn

UK HABITAT LOSS. "Farmland makes up around 75% of the UK’s landscape. Much of Britain was once covered by woodland, but now it covers just 12% of the land." https://lnkd.in/egeTAuK View in LinkedIn

CULTIVATED HABITAT. "The engine of this destruction took British society by surprise: it was farming. One of the key characteristics, especially in the lowlands of England, is often overlooked because it is so obvious: it exists on farmland. It has nowhere else to go." https://lnkd.in/esig3Kt View in LinkedIn

UNIMAGINABLE CHANGE. "But the figures are there, in the most comprehensive datasets in the world for the changing status of at least three major groups of species: birds, wild flowers, and butterflies. Their British populations have all been devastated." https://lnkd.in/esig3Kt View in LinkedIn

UNIMAGINABLE CHANGE. "That a country should lose half its wildlife in little more than half a century seems unimaginable, scarcely to be believed." https://lnkd.in/esig3Kt View in LinkedIn

RICHNESS LOST. "There was a profusion of life forms all about us, from house flies to house sparrows, even in the suburbs: there was a richness of weeds, there was a richness of pests, there was a richness of organisms that were glorious...abundance...has been destroyed." https://lnkd.in/esig3Kt View in LinkedIn

RICHNESS LOST. "The country I was born into possessed something wonderful it absolutely possesses no longer: natural abundance." https://lnkd.in/esig3Kt View in LinkedIn