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'Oh
to be in
England, now that April’s there,’ wrote a homesick Robert Browning from
Italy, and at this time of year, even an expatriate Scot like me can see
what he meant. For some weeks now, we have become used to hearing the birds
sing as they mark their territory, and the new nesting boxes in the glebe
field, kindly supplied by the John Innes Society, were occupied within hours
of being put up.
For
many of us, Spring is a particularly special time of year as the days
lengthen and new life appears all around us. It is now that we realise how
lucky we are to live in a place like Merton Park, the original garden
suburb, an oasis of greenery in one of the biggest urban areas in the
world.
From
the grey heron, moorhen and coot along the Wandle trail, through the wide
variety of garden birds seen in the splendidly refurbished John Innes park
and in the gardens of the area, to the colony of ring necked parakeets and
much else in our own glebe field, the natural world is all around us. Yet
in much of our countryside, we are creating what is now called a ‘green
desert.’
For
example, where I grew up in rural Aberdeenshire, the hedges, copses and dry
stone walls, for centuries the crucial habitat of an astonishing variety of
birds and mammals, have long since been uprooted in favour of the efficiency
of wire fencing bounding neat, well manicured farmland. But what does all
of this mean for our wildlife?
I
cannot claim to have conducted anything like a comprehensive survey, but
comparing Aberdeenshire to Merton Park, I can say, without fear of
contradiction, that the quantity and variety of wildlife is greater in this
area than at home. As an example, few of us welcome the red fox to our
garden, but I have seen many, many more foxes here that I ever saw in a
childhood spent in rural north east Scotland.
But
farmers have a living to earn, and it ill-behoves us, urban people, to pass
judgment on how they do so. A great deal of current media coverage focuses
on the apparent inadequacy of farmers. They are portrayed as money
grabbing, greedy individuals who know nothing of the environment and who
care even less. I don’t doubt that there are some who reflect the
stereotype, but there are many more who do not. We should, none of us,
forget that the glorious English countryside, as we know it, was created by
farmers.
The
landscape we now so value was borne out of the hard work of the farmers,
labourers, stone-breakers….all of whom are our own ancestors.
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