A TALE OF TWO WORLD ORDERS- One where members of the Ruling Order preserved Nature and the Current Situation where the Ruling Order is Killing all Life) Rude magnificence’ restored: following in the footsteps of pioneering naturalist Gilbert White. More than 230 years ago the country parson celebrated the small but vital elements that gave the English landscape its ‘wild majesty’. Today, Hampshire’s farmers and volunteers are honouring his legacy by Phoebe Weston Photographs by Jill Meadt It was more than 230 years ago that the Rev Gilbert White became the first person to identify the chiffchaff, willow warbler and wood warbler as three distinct species. The Hampshire county parson was also the first to describe the harvest mouse and the noctule bat, and to tell of swifts mating in flight, something not recorded again until the 1930s. He was fascinated by his pet tortoise, Timothy, and why he needed so much sleep. White’s careful, vivid and seemingly trivial descriptions of the wildlife he encountered around the village of Selborne as he walked between parishes made him a pioneering naturalist. His Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, first published in 1789, has never been out of print. Many generations later, a group of farmers and volunteers has spent five years walking the same land and discovered 88 of the 120 bird species spotted by White as well as a number of new species, taking the total to 114. This has resulted in Farming in Partnership With Nature – a New Natural History of Selborne, the most comprehensive survey of the landscape since White carried out his own work. Its authors say it shows the value of wildlife-friendly farming and White’s approach to “watching narrowly”, by observing local wildlife in detail – however trivial it might seem. Fifteen years ago, Blackmoor estate, a few miles from Gilbert White’s house, was arable land, but the estate’s managing director, William Selborne (whose great-great-great-grandfather took the name Selborne in the 19th century) decided he wanted to return it to chalk grassland and link up two nature reserves – Noar Hill and Selborne Common. In the years that followed, and with the help of a government grant, wildlife poured out of the reserves and into the farmland. Today, the fields are alive with movement and sound – skylarks trill, quaking-grass shakes in the breeze, oxeye daisies and patches of pyramidal and spotted orchid flourish. There are so many wildflowers that a pastel-pink hue hangs above the field. Beyond are scruffy field margins made for hunting barn owls. There are four owlets being raised in the oak tree in the valley. But from the beginning, Selborne realised that “however good your farm is, you’re only as good as your neighbours. The experience made me realise that the whole could be more than the sum of its parts.”
He got in touch with one of his neighbours, Kate Faulkner, a partner in her family’s business at Norton farm, where her father-in-law, Derick Faulkner, had been an early adopter of this way of farming. Kate and Selborne started thinking about how other farmers could give over patches of land for wildlife and set about forming a “farming cluster” – one of more than 100 across England – according to the survey. Since then, they have been leading a farming network called the Selborne Landscape Partnership (SLP), which covers 5,600 hectares (14,000 acres), much of which is within the South Downs national park. It is a well-watered landscape, looking green and youthful as summer starts.LP started nearly 10 years ago and includes 30 farmers and land managers and a band of volunteers. They meet regularly to share information and ideas on a range of subjects from grassland and woodland management to articles for the parish magazine. They have been looking at old maps, finding ghost hedges and ghost ponds and putting them back in the landscape. Selborne says: “We don’t want to have a narrative of loss. You can look down the telescope a different way. You can have positive change in a landscape.” They have also been working on restoring some of the 100 ponds in the area, as well as 15 miles of hedgerows and 74 hectares (180 acr Ies) of flower-rich habitats. Some of this has been funded by government grants, including theFarming in Protected Landscapes program....
George MonbiotCan you see it yet? The Earth systems horizon – the point at which our planetary systems tip into a new equilibrium, hostile to most life forms? I think we can. The sudden acceleration of environmental crises we have seen this year, coupled with the strategic uselessness of powerful governments, rushes us towards the point of no return. We’re told we are living through the sixth mass extinction. But even this is a euphemism. We call such events mass extinctions because the most visible sign of the five previous catastrophes of the Phanerozoic era (since animals with hard body parts evolved) is the disappearance of fossils from the rocks. But their vanishing was a result of something even bigger. Mass extinction is a symptom of Earth systems collapse. In the most extreme case, the Permo-Triassic event, 252m years ago – when 90% of species were snuffed out – planetary temperatures spiked, the circulation of water around the globe more or less stopped, the soil was stripped from the land, deserts spread across much of the planet’s surface and the oceans drastically deoxygenated and acidified. In other words, Earth systems tipped into a new state that was uninhabitable for most of the species they had sustained. What we are living through today, unless sudden and drastic action is taken by us and our governments, is the sixth great Earth systems collapse. One possible outcome of the rising carbon dioxide concentrations this century is the sudden loss of stratocumulus cloud decks, causing about 8°C of extra surface heating. As in previous great Earth systems collapses, we see these impacts reflected in the loss of species. A recent paper reveals that 48% of the world’s species are declining in population size, while only 3% are rising. Far more wildlife could be heading towards extinction than previously estimated. If species loss is a symptom of systemic collapse, we might already be living on borrowed time. None of this is certain, unless we make it so. But far from stepping up to confront the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, our governments accelerate towards the horizon. https://www.theguardian.com/