In June 2011, I took a long drive up the A1, the Great North Road. At Scotch Corner I turned for Barnard Castle. The villages were well kept, the countryside was green and the fields were dotted with sheep. Everything was normal, or so I thought.
Beyond Barnard Castle I took a narrow lane into part of Upper Teesdale and suddenly colors exploded along the roadside. I stopped the car and jumped out. There was a bed of orchids, hundreds of them, and behind that, billowing banks of violet, scarlet, white, yellow and cornflower blue. I had seen Alpine meadows, but this took my breath away.
Further into the dale I found a footpath that led me down beside a shady brook. There were more orchids of a different species and a grass snake hunting frogs in a pool. Out in the open again, there was the haunting cry of curlews overhead, then redshanks, plovers and snipe.
Illustration: Constance Chou
I spent two days up there, talking to environmentalists and farmers involved in the upland hay meadow project for the North Pennines area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB). The landowners were being paid to restrict the use of fertilizer, not employ herbicides, and stop grazing after the middle of May. Together with some seeding programs and careful monitoring, the meadows had become magnificent.
When I drove back home, I came down to a countryside where the only flowers were dandelions, watched over by crows. The monotonous green of the rye grass was unbroken. Compared with what I had just experienced, it felt like a desert. I felt cheated. My entire adult life had been spent admiring a shoddy and simplified reproduction, a poor impersonation of a much-loved friend.
That evening I sat up late reading. I had recently discovered the American farmer and poet Wendell Berry, who wrote: “The face of the country is everywhere marked by the agony of our enterprise of self-destruction.”
I found myself staring at the lamp. All evening, despite the windows and doors being wide open, there had been nothing flying around the light. In my city, in midsummer, and close to a large riverside park, there were no moths at all.
Seven years on, the statistics for the British countryside are heartbreaking. Over a quarter of all British birds are under threat, eight species are almost extinct. Three-quarters of all flying insects have disappeared since 1945, including a staggering 60 different moths.
Orchid ranges have shrunk by half. Two species are gone. The State of Nature 2016 report described Britain as being “among the most nature-depleted countries in the world.”
Back in June last year, journalists waiting for news of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Cabinet reshuffle were surprised to see Michael Gove enter No. 10. His failed leadership bid and public falling out with British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Boris Johnson appeared to have hamstrung his political career. By 7pm he was back, replacing Andrea Leadsom as British secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs.
The news was greeted with alarm by environmentalists. After all, this was a politician who had voted against action on climate change, against incentives for low-carbon electricity generation and against requirements for environmental permits to frack, but had favored selling state forests, culling badgers and introducing high-speed railways. It seemed that at least one British fox was alive, and now in charge of the hen house.
Within months, Gove was taking decisive action, but not in ways anyone had predicted. In rapid succession came measures to ban the controversial neonicotinoid insecticides, introduce CCTV in abattoirs, strengthen animal-cruelty laws, stop ivory sales and control the use of plastic microbeads.
Even Guardian columnist George Monbiot was astonished: “One by one, Michael Gove is saying the things I’ve waited years for an environment secretary to say.”
Then in January came A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment with bold targets on air and water quality and protection for threatened plants and wildlife.
The sheer scale and ambition is breathtaking: all sales of new conventional petrol and diesel engines to be stopped by 2040; an area the size of Norfolk to be made into a wildlife-rich habitat (500,000 hectares over and above existing protected sites); and 180,000 hectares of forest to be planted.
Gove has also now ordered a review of national parks, with a view to expanding on the 10 existing areas. This is revolutionary and, perhaps, too good to be true? So, I head back to Upper Teesdale, praying that the hay meadows are as I remember them.
I meet the AONB’s biodiversity lead officer Rebecca Barrett in the new visitor center at Bowlees. All around us the woods are humming with life: Wild garlic and bluebells are starting to bloom, despite the late arrival of spring. A woodpecker drums industriously near the car park, which has a good number of cars and campervans present — plus seven species of orchid near the picnic tables.
“This area attracts botanists from all over the world,” Barrett says. “We’ve got an incredibly rare mixture of arctic and alpine species: things like spring gentians, Teesdale violets and yellow marsh saxifrage. There are still a lot of flowers, but the sad fact is that they are declining.”
A Natural England report from 2014 pointed the finger at the use of artificial fertilizers. Farmers like them as they can increase silage production, but the downside is that wildflowers cannot cope. So why not ban them?
“We can’t fall out with the farmers,” Barrett says carefully. “They must be part of the solution.”
Other voices are less circumspect.
The State of Nature 2016 report says: “The intensification of agriculture has had the biggest impact on wildlife, and this has been overwhelmingly negative? Farming has changed dramatically, with new technologies boosting yields often at the expense of nature.”
Those new technologies include a formidable armory of artificial fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and insecticides, all poured liberally over the British countryside since World War II. On top of that are all the other industrial chemicals that find their way into the food chain.
PROMISES OF CHANGE
The Green Future plan promises significant change on this. There are commitments to eliminate by 2025 the use of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs — used in sealants, coolants and paints), and five years later to achieve negligible emissions of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) — harmful chemicals that resist environmental degradation. Both types have been linked to serious environmental damage.
For example, the POP lindane was first recognized as a lethal insecticide during World War II. Subsequently, an estimated 600,000 tonnes were sprayed on crops worldwide before an EU ban in 2009. By then it had been connected with everything from human cancers to a drop in the otter population.
In 2003, blood samples from 14 EU ministers were analyzed, including one from then-minister of state for rural affairs and local environmental quality Alun Michael. All 14 were found to be contaminated with POPs, PCBs and flame retardants. No doubt the rest of us are also contaminated.
Understandably, the negative effects on humans have always been a priority for research into agricultural chemicals. Troublesome environmental consequences are usually a bit slower to emerge. After all, these are substances designed to kill things — it seems a little churlish to complain when they do precisely that.
The most popular poison of all is Monsanto’s Roundup, a glyphosate herbicide that has been applied in staggering quantities: 8.6 million tonnes since its debut in 1974. Usage has only increased since Monsanto released glyphosate-tolerant crops in 1996. As of 2014, about one-third of the world’s arable land had been sprayed with it.
In rural Wales, I ask a hill farmer (who prefers to remain anonymous) about his use of chemicals.
“I use Roundup every two or three years,” he says. “It kills everything in a field, and then we can start again and reseed.”
It is not only farmers. Roundup is found in the cupboards of most lawn-owners, allotment holders and anyone with a patio problem. Councils use it — so do schools.
As such, you might imagine it is safe, but studies have shown that it interferes with earthworms’ reproductive success, harms bee navigation, hits butterfly populations and severely affects amphibians.
In a study at the University of Pittsburgh, Roundup was sprayed over tanks filled with tadpoles. Within 24 hours most were dead. In three weeks, they all were.
The WHO has classified glyphosates as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” although several international agencies, including the European Food Safety Authority, subsequently came to opposite conclusions. Monsanto insists glyphosate is safe.
In November last year, an EU vote to relicense glyphosates was narrowly passed. Britain voted in favor. In 2022, the next vote will probably go against, as Italy and France are lobbying hard for a ban. Britain’s commitment to a green future will then be truly tested. Our countryside has been drenched in legal poisons for over half a century, and not by the Russians.
Out near Malton in Yorkshire, I meet Hugo Hildyard, who farms 300 acres on heavy clay soils. He is doubtful that reliance on products such as Roundup can be broken.
“Without chemicals, it probably isn’t possible to grow crops on land like mine,” he says. “Done naturally, the land might support a few cows and sheep, but that wouldn’t be economic. It’s the improvement of land for production that harms wildlife.”
He has been farming for 40 years and thinks the countryside is in relatively good shape.
“The chemicals we used years ago were worse, so the land has benefited from the EU bans,” he says.
GROUNDS FOR HOPE
Data back that up. British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs records show that pesticide poisoning of UK wildlife almost halved in the last 20 years of the 20th century.
Are there grounds for hope? Hildyard has mixed feelings. He remains skeptical that Gove’s 25-year goals can be achieved, or even that the government has the heart to deliver.
Likewise, he is scornful of British agriculture competing against giants like Brazil, Argentina and the US, where farms are bigger, with less rigorous controls on chemicals.
The Welsh hill farmer goes further, saying: “The EU has been good for British farmers, not our own government.”
There are plenty of factors outside agriculture that are significant in the decline of the countryside. On the cliffs near Whitby, I find ornithologist Richard Baines from Yorkshire Coast Nature, spotting birds faster than I can see them, often by the calls alone.
“There’s a short-eared owl — it will have flown in from Scandinavia,” he says.
Baines is working with a turtle dove conservation program.
“They are facing extinction in the UK and a big part of the reason is illegal hunting on the flyway, the migratory route,” he says.
Turtle doves winter in Mali and their 11,000km round trip passes through southern Europe, where hunting is illegal, but common.
“We think that 2.1 million birds are lost every year,” he says.
Not all migrants are welcome. Walking the South Downs Way near Petworth, consultant entomologist Richard Baker spotted unhealthy ash trees.
“It was ash dieback,” he tells me. “A fungus, probably blown in on the wind, or brought in with imported trees.”
Our wild and cultivated plants are threatened by numerous pests and pathogens from overseas.
“There’s an Asian beetle called an emerald ash borer that is devastating Russia and the US,” Baker says.
“Unless we’re vigilant, that could get in,” he adds.
It is worth remembering that invasive species like Japanese knotweed, black grass and bracken can often only be fought with chemical assistance.
All this gives an idea of the immense challenges, both biological and political.
Countryside Alliance head of policy Sarah Lee supports Gove’s 25-year plan, but says: “It is vital that delivery involves working with rural communities, not imposing solutions on them.”
Despite all the bold talk, budget cuts to the organization that has to deliver on many of these challenges, Natural England, have been severe: 27 percent by 2020. In the four years up to 2014, it shed one-fifth of its staff. Already there are signs that its ability to fight on behalf of wildlife has been compromised.
In March, a House of Lords select committee reported that Natural England “struggled to perform all its key functions.”
Do they believe in the Green Futures plan? Many I speak to think that it is radically ambitious, even improbable, but that it was already galvanizing people into action.
Back in Upper Teesdale, I go with Barrett to meet a farmer at the sharp end: Karen Scott at Low Way Farm near High Force, one of England’s highest waterfalls.
“The rule is that we must remove our sheep from the pastures by May 14,” she says. “Then the wildflowers can grow. We’ve done it for 30 years.”
An oystercatcher speeds overhead while Scott shows me her bunkhouse and cafe near the river.
“We diversified to stay in business,” she says.
She is anxious about changes that are coming for environmental schemes.
“Payments are delayed, inspections rare, the paperwork gets longer. I had three sleepless nights doing the forms last time,” she adds.
Barrett wants it all to switch to a results-based system where farmers are rewarded for environmental excellence. Scott agrees.
“Definitely, but it should be locally tailored. Every farm is different,” Scott says.
Like the Welsh farmer, there is a sense of impatience with bureaucracy and time not spent out on the land. However, Barrett is hopeful.
“We’ve just started a project right across the northern Pennines to encourage low-intensity farming and wildlife,” she says. “It could transform the way a lot of farmers work.”
The idea is popular in government too. There is a recognition that a topography of small, well-protected oases of wildlife within a desert of intensive farming has failed to stem the general decline. Now, cooperation and wider participation are the watchwords.
There are plans within Natural England for the 224 underused national nature reserves to develop connections deep into surrounding land, spreading biodiversity. The idea is supported by the Countryside Landowners Association whose 2016 report talks about developing “natural capital” and claims that 52 percent of landowners have already invested in improvements like wildflower meadows, wetlands and woodlands.
There is certainly a lot of goodwill and hard work going into the countryside by many people who care deeply about it. Are there reasons to be optimistic? Baines thinks so.
“Cooperation between organizations and groups has never been better — right across deep divisions,” he says. “I’ve seen Israeli and Palestinian ornithologists working together to solve the illegal shooting problem.”
Hildyard is more cautious, saying: “I’d join a wildlife-enriched scheme, but it has to be financially supported, and not too bureaucratic.”
Baker points to successes and says: “A colony of the Asian longhorn beetle was found in Kent in 2012, but we identified and eradicated it. That’s impressive.”
In the State of Nature 2016 report, David Attenborough says: “Landscapes are being restored, special places defended, and struggling species are being saved and brought back.”
One day this spring, I had my own cause for optimism. The corncrake, a bird that was once widespread and common, now teeters on the brink of British extinction. However, on a cold and blustery day on the Hebridean island of Iona, I sat beside a small patch of long grass just behind the island’s small fire station and heard its distinctive rasping snore of a call. The sound was confident, even assertive. For the moment, like the British countryside, the corncrake is hanging in there.
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