Define a Natural Landscape

All this walking research has made me think about the environmentalists and their continued calls to preserve our landscape and the habitats of species under threat. Question is what landscape do they want preserved?

The South Downs are man-made, woodland felled for agriculture would soon return were it not for grazing and the plough. The wilds of Dartmoor was also once covered by woodland, the odd original isolated patch is still found but will never return to the remaining areas. Do the environmentalists want the modern idea of the South Downs and/or Dartmoor retained - or should we get rid of the heathlands, grassy slopes and the wild flowers in favour of deciduous woodland?

What about the animals? The hog is increasing in numbers in many parts of the country, beaver are being introduced into small controlled areas of Scotland. Yet while some laud the return of these mammals there are as many voices against. Birds such as the osprey, kite and peregrine falcon have famously been protected and numbers are increasing. The greater mouse-eared bat was declared extinct in 1990, I cannot see any dissenting voices to the reintroduction of these flying mammals. Rare species of ant have been monitored for seventeen years on the sandy heathlands of Scotland - can't see a mass outcry if year eighteen sees none to count. But what about the bear, exterminated by man in the eleventh century, or the wolf officially gone by 1740. Want to see those reintroduced to Britain? And how can reintroducing animals to 'specially selected areas only' be considered natural? Surely this is simply an open plan zoo?

So I hear how every species should have its own little niche where the species is protected. But isn't that one of the major complaints of environmentalists, that habitat is increasingly fragmented and small islands for this beetle, that bird, or the other flower don't allow them to spread sufficiently to widen the gene pool and thus isolating populations?

And where do we stop? Even if we limit the timescale to species which suffered through human influence we must go back to the end of the last Ice Age when humans returned in numbers to settle permanently in Britain. The idea of returning mammoth, Irish elk and other large herbivores is difficult enough. However to bring back the habitat of these grazers would involve filling in much of the North Sea to rejoin the land bridge with continental Europe.

Perhaps these campaigners should take the lead and offer themselves up as habitats for the human flea which has suffered from a lack of habitat in our comparatively clinically clean modern homes.

I ask again, just what is 'natural'?

Walking the National Forest in Leicestershire

Monday saw me wandering more pathways. The morning mist added to the beauty of the drive to Oakthorpe in Leicestershire, although by the time of my arrival the spring sunshine was already burning this off.

These pathways, now a part of the National Forest, was a part of the Leicestershire Coal fields. Indeed these were some of the deepest shafts sunk in the county. Records of coal being extracted and brought to Leicester Abbey by packhorse can be traced back to the thirteenth century and some would undoubtedly have come from here for although the first surviving record dates from 1412 there is much evidence to suggest this was well-established by then. Over the next three hundred years landowners and yeomen farmers hereabouts earned a living from mining and agriculture. In 1606 it is shown that some 3,000 tons of coal were removed by 20 employees, without the aid of machinery. We also know the woodland had been cut down for timbers to support the mines were brought in from neighbouring Derbyshire. Mining continued until 1885, most of the coal being shipped out via the Ashby Canal (this stretch now filled-in) for by the time the railway arrived large scale mining had ended.

Today the mines are capped, only the stone markers reveal where the mine shafts were situated. Now landscaped, this area is a mixture of grassland, pathways, wild flowers, managed woodland, with still some of the original hedgerows and copses. The opencast workings towards Willesley Wood and the golf course have flooded, providing a haven for wildlife.

I took a circular walk which took in part of Donisthorpe, however there are much shorter routes. Considering the noise, grime and spoil heaps which would have dominated this area throughout centuries of mining, the idyllic modern greenery is little short of miraculous.