An excellent piece in today's Guardian explores the importance of gardens and parks to Britain's wildlife.
The piece explores the "shifting baseline" and the quiet disappearance of animals we used to take for granted, such as hedgehogs. I also remember a fox family that used to live in the grounds of the derelict church opposite the GA headquarters in Solly Street, Sheffield. They are now a huge block of student accommodation, and the foxes are nowhere to be seen.
We cry habitat loss, but it’s theft, really – no one is so careless as to lose their home. We call it progress, but how dare we? How many people, throughout the planning process, will have thought of or cared about hedgehogs? Or considered any of the other residents, both human and wild? The management company would have conducted an ecology survey, no doubt. But, as is often the case, it was probably done in winter, when the hedgehogs were hibernating. Did any residents other than Choel and me know there were hedgehogs on that estate? Did anyone care? The council paved over the gardens to save money on maintenance. The trees and park were lost because the car parks that replaced them can be a source of income. The residents placed there by the council would not necessarily have known or thought about those habitats, making them so much easier to destroy.
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