(^184) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
increased rapidly in numbers; combine harvesters were introduced from
America. Both worked most effectively in large fields: hedge removal thus
proceeded apace, especially in arable districts.^3 ‘Ninety-odd acres of wheat
in a block – a fine sight’.^4 Between 1946 and 1970 around 4,500 miles of
hedge were destroyed each year in England and Wales, with the greatest losses
occurring in the eastern counties,^5 and especially in areas of long-enclosed
‘ancient countryside’ where small, irregularly-shaped fields posed particular
problems for machinery.^6 Countless farmland trees were felled, something
compounded from the late 1960s by the impact of Dutch elm disease.
Fields were more effectively drained, many remaining areas of heathland
were reclaimed, ponds filled in, coastal marshlands ploughed, streams and
rivers canalized, and numerous areas of ancient woodland grubbed out and
converted to arable.^7 Pesticides and herbicides became widely available and
the use of chemical fertilisers massively increased, while sowing gradually
became concentrated in the autumn months, leading to a decline in the area
of winter stubbles.^8
To remain competitive in this new world, farms continued to grow
in size and were increasingly obliged to specialize either in arable or in
livestock production. The focus of arable farmers on growing crops, moreover,
could now be absolute. The adoption of tractors and the availability of
cheap fertilisers ensured that they no longer needed to maintain livestock
for manure or for traction: across eastern England especially the numbers of
sheep and cattle fell drastically, leading to the ploughing of ancient pastures
and meadows, and giving further encouragement to the rationalization of
field patterns. Numerous other aspects of the new farming adversely affected
wildlife: large scale re-seeding and improvement of pastures; the decline of
tillage crops in pastoral areas; and subsidy-fuelled increases in stocking
densities in the uplands, which led to further declines in the extent and
condition of heather moor and an expansion of acidic grassland, and often
bracken.^9 Other manifestations of the post-War love of modernity took their
toll. Many of the ancient woods which had survived the drive to create
more agricultural land were replanted, with the encouragement of subsidies
from the Forestry Commission, with conifers. In 1953, myxomatosis was
introduced to control the huge population of rabbits, and with considerable
success, although with problematic knock-on effects in surviving areas
of common land, heath and down, where the strenuous efforts of these
introduced aliens had to some extent retarded, as we have seen, regeneration
to woodland.
It is easy to criticize the intensive farming, and other new forms of land use,
which emerged in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. But we should also remember (for
many ecologists do not) the deprivations of the wartime years, the continued
threat of hunger during the peace, and the political attitudes which these
engendered right across Europe. And while the role of the state in all this,
particularly in the form of government subsidies for land drainage, hedge
removal and other forms of ‘modernization’, is easily criticized, it is also
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(Elle)
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