21st August 2023
Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether a beautiful rural landscape is the ‘natural’ one as being in its primordial state, or whether it is a ‘natural’ one this is the fusion of human activity in harmony with nature. The two may look very different eg moorlands covered with forests versus moorlands covered with grass and sheep; or low-lying land that is marshy or low-lying land that has been drained and cultivated for arable crops.
The following comments come from the Natural History Museum.
“’What we repeatedly see in our models is that agriculture is one of the main drivers of strong biodiversity declines,’ says Katia. ‘Even when we consider different human pressures, such as human population density and road development, we always find that the most shocking biodiversity declines are across agricultural sites.
‘That is the key point, the fact is that we need to find a way to slow down agricultural expansion.’
The continued spread and intensification of farming and development in the UK over the last 200 years has meant that most landscapes have not escaped some form of human influence.
The fact that this started such a long time ago means that in some cases we think of these altered landscapes as being their natural state, when in reality they were already heavily depleted of their wildlife’”. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/september/uk-has-led-the-world-in-destroying-the-natural-environment.html
The Green Tau 