Thirty years of garden wildlife. Inspired by Jennifer Owen

摘要

The long-held and indeed, traditional view that the British population earned its money in the towns and went to the countryside for its recreation and wildlife was a casualty of the Second World War when the Ministry of Agriculture, which had spent the 1920s and 30s proselytising intensive farming with almost no success (Bowers, 1998) got the ability to subsidise farmers. The range of grants for 'farm improvements' introduced by the 1947 Agriculture Act rapidly transformed the landscape (Bowers, 1985). It also devastated British wildlife. Concerns were already being expressed in the 1960s (Cheshire & Bowers, 1969). In 1977 in a definitive study of the destruction of farmland habitats, the NCC (Nature Conservancy Council, 1977) contrasted the typical unimproved farm with 20 species of mammals, 37 species of birds and 17 species of butterflies with the typical improved farm with, respectively, 5 mammals, 6 bird species and no butterflies. Losses of farm wildlife continue to the present day and can now be tracked through published official statistics (DEFRA, 2015).