The English Countryside (and its true champions)
The countryside isn’t just a postcard of rolling hills and quaint villages. It’s a vibrant community with real people and real issues. Yet rural areas tend to only be supported in politics and the media by pro-hunting MPs and unions.
The Lie of the Land is a fascinating book by one of England’s best writers, who focuses mostly on why most of our land is in the hands of just a few people. Just 1% of the population owns half of England, and often present themselves as the rightful custodians of the countryside.
And even have been paid billions of pounds of public money to be good stewards. But what happens when they just don’t care?
Not all landowners are destroying the environment. In the same way that not all men are sexist, and not all white people are racist.
The problem is that some are, and they are propped up by a system of entrenched power. We have to make the self-appointed guardians of the countryside answerable to the rest of us.
This book gives a history of grey squirrels being introduced as an ‘invasive species’ that is harming habitats of red squirrels.
But we can help both red and grey squirrels (red squirrels are mostly endangered due to pine trees being felled for money).
Other solutions are moving red squirrels to islands, a red squirrel vaccine and rewilding pine martens (natural predators, to keep nature in balance).
In this book, we learn how a small number of landowners have laid waste to some of our most treasured landscapes, to leave forests bare, rivers polluted, moorlands burned (often to burn peat in order to earn money from grouse shoots – this in turn causes flooding) and fenlands drained.
The author journeys across Britain to expose the damage done to our land, and then meets communities that are fighting back: river guardians and small farmers, along with trespassing activists, who are helping to restore our lost wildlife.
A smart, peaceful and practical plan for how we can turn this land, into our land. Patrick Barkham
Guy Shrubsole is an environmental campaigner and writer, whose previous book won the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation.
He has campaigned for 10 years on the climate and nature crises, and worked for Friends of the Earth and the Right to Roam campaigns. He lives in Devon.
Grassroots (not big campaigns)
National organisations have a wider reach, influencing policies on a broader scale. The problem is that many organisations shape national debates on rural issues, but with bias. For instance, solutions are there already to prevent cattle TB, but farming unions continue to call of cruel and ineffective badger culls. Other groups pressure government to repeal hunting bans.
The good news is that there are ‘countryside charities’ that focus on helping animals, rather than killing them:
Wildlife and Countryside Link brings together over 80 nationwide charities, who see ‘protecting the countryside’ as also protecting the creatures that live within it.
Claims of bias (countryside and political policies)
Often there is anger on all sides, due to politics often being skewed by lobbying. For instance, the badger TB cull was influenced in huge parts by the Farming Union (when the scientific evidence was always that bovine TB is a cattle-to-cattle transmission issue, now finally acknowledged after hundreds of thousands of badgers have been killed).
Many people in the House of Lords support hunting. So even though hunting is now banned, some areas remain in place (there is no ‘closed season’ for hunting hares). And the ban on trophy hunting (importing parts of from lions etc abroad where people ‘shoot for fun’) has been delayed, due to some Lords dragging out the debates, in order to delay legislation).
Little action has been taken against banning pheasant hunting (which causes floods due to flattening land for peat bogs) and also some believe that hen harriers are illegally killed on estates). But because so many people in top government go hunting themselves, little action is taken.
The Countryside Alliance (which supports hunts) has huge influence on government. This is not correct (it works both ways, neither should League Against Cruel Sports). But when one body has more influence, it creates conflict and biased interests.
The BBC is a good example of when things go wrong. Even some conservationists say that grey squirrels need to be culled. When all the evidence is that it’s due to logging pine forests that is removing immunity for endangered red squirrels that is the main course (red squirrels are doing well in Northumberland and in the Scottish Highlands).
