tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3956934377476397153.post7447746110314796797..comments2024-03-12T08:04:52.849+00:00Comments on Tony Whitbread: The Natural Environment White Paper 2Tony Whitbreadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04220935206402537781noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3956934377476397153.post-75427829400344362902010-08-30T20:12:17.245+01:002010-08-30T20:12:17.245+01:00As I read of yet another “nature conservation” pro...As I read of yet another “nature conservation” project where grazing has been re-imposed, often after the landscape has been corseted by barbed wire fencing, I ponder the British value system for nature, and who gets to set that value. Tony, you have mentioned Permaculture in my presence. If Permaculture is the integration of natural ecology with our cultivated ecology, then we have to consider some sort of relationship between our level of resource extraction and the ecological state of Britain, the value that I hope you are talking about. On that basis we are screwed, since over the last 4,000 years we have comprehensively screwed our natural ecology. I like to take people to an area in the Yorkshire Dales where livestock grazing has been excluded for 35 years. A remarkable transformation has occurred in that there are now many species growing there that can feed humans such as fruits, roots, nuts, leaves, fungi etc (and I am sure other wild animals feed there), whereas the grass only of the land outside of this ungrazed area feeds only sheep. It is a vivid and contemporary illustration of how agriculture – of any sort, even the conservation grazing of wildlife trusts – removes the capacity of the land to feed all our native species, rather than just the livestock of our farming. We should ask ourselves just how much right the human species has to limit the capacity of land in this way and remove its ecological value.<br /><br />Let’s just have a think about what is the capacity for land in a situation where it was able to support all species. A biophysical wilderness existed in Britain in the period after the last glaciation, when the ice that covered most of northern Britain receded, allowing the land to re-vegetate before it could support any returning mammalian life. Hunter-gatherer cultures would have required that an ecologically-rich wilderness composite to have returned before those lands could be occupied by them again. <br /><br />Jacobi (1978) considered a likely population of Mesolithic lowland Britain based on the food resource available to them. He worked through the density of deer available (one per 40ha), the potential success of hunting (1 in 6) and the nutritional value arising from deer kills; the density of coastal shellfish beds; and the distribution, harvest potential (30%) and calorific value of hazel nuts. His estimate for one southern lowland area of 6,500 square miles was that the landscape would have supported some 396 five-member family groups, a total of 1,980 individuals. Others have estimated the population of Britain around 9000 BC to be 1,100-1,200 people, rising to 2,500-5,000 by 7,000 BC. In 3,200 BC, the early period after farming reached Britain, the estimate of population is between 30,000 – 50,000, and was probably boosted by inward migration as new settlers sought to exploit the resource extraction that agriculture had brought. <br /><br />It is likely that in the absence of farming, a sustainable population for Britain could be somewhere up to 50,000. Clearly, this is the baseline, the natural ecology where humans were part of that natural value. Add in elements of a cultivated ecology, and then the population will be higher, but as we have seen at the ever increasing expense of wild nature. So here’s my point Tony – you talk about a divergence from intensive agriculture to an inefficient farming presumably as a way of getting natural value – but I note that you still couch it in the socio-economic terms of the anthropocentric rather than in the terms of the needs of wild nature. So why is it on land from which the shackles of agriculture were lifted over the 20th century, that the conservation industry is re-imposing agriculture? Let’s have a real think about what natural value is. I for one don’t want to live in a world where every square inch is used for agriculture, and the natural ecology for our children’s children is watching farm animals.Mark Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13762866433795868318noreply@blogger.com