#207: Meadows

This is a concerning statistic.

The Plantlife website has a meadows page which goes into detail on the value of this type of habitat, which has been a victim of intensive farming. Plantlife is trying to protect meadows.

The headline is stark. Since the 1930s, over 97% of wildflower meadows have been lost. Where once thirty species of plants would bloom under your outstretched arms, in most of our fields there are now just six.

But, in the last few years, we have come to appreciate what we’ve lost. The tide is turning and the appetite for creating and restoring meadows - from the smallest garden to the largest fields - is greater than ever.

From storing carbon, to supporting biodiversity, to just enjoying their astonishing beauty, many of us want become meadow makers.

Whether you want to learn more about creating and planting meadows, help on how to keep meadows looking fabulous, or want some advice on starting a local meadows group by adopting a few basic principles, you are in the right place to find out how you can create flower-rich meadows on any scale - from a few square metres in your garden to fields of many hectares.

#184: Work to do here...

One of the aspects of the GCSE Natural History is that it must ensure that the people who are referenced in the specification are suitably diverse.

This Guardian piece shows the efforts that still need to be made to ensure representation. 

We have a number of young naturalists who should certainly be on a suggested list of people to ensure appropriate diversity.

The Historic England blog makes an interesting read as well.

The British Ecological Society has also provided a useful blog and podcast.

British Ecological Society Journals · Black History Month 2023: Yoseph Araya on Nature, Role Models and Academia

#115: Unequal access to the countryside

My local news magazine programme featured this report last week, which was also in the Guardian newspaper in a piece written by Patrick Barkham (who will feature a number of times on this blog)

It reports on work by The Ramblers to explore the variations in access to the countryside.

It seems that there is substantial variation in access to the countryside which varies in areas with greater ethnicity or lower income levels.

The path network adds over 3,000 healthy years of life to the nation, worth an estimated £2 billion – more than £33 for every person in England and Wales. That’s the cost of 8.5 million ambulance call outs or 10 million outpatient procedures.

But our access to paths is not equal. There is significant imbalance between the number of paths available to the most and least deprived communities. And the health and wellbeing impact of this inequality is stark.

Our path network has the potential to help transform Britain’s declining health and wellbeing, but right now the benefits are primarily being felt by the old, the wealthy, the healthy and the white.

Residents of the wealthiest areas in England and Wales have 80% more paths in their local area than the residents of the most deprived areas.

The most white-dominated areas have 144% more local paths than the most ethnically diverse.

Where health is the worst, the number of paths is the lowest.

Doubling the average length of paths in a neighbourhood would result in an additional annual 78.5 million walks in nature across England and Wales. And help harness the potential of our path network to transform Britain’s health.

This is also a reminder that all the resources that are going to be used to teach the GCSE Natural History also need to reflect the diversity of the UK: its landscape, communities, people and cultures.