From 'Our Heritage of Wild Nature' part of CHAPTER
3
What is there left to Preserve?
THOUGH the face of Great Britain has been greatly changed
by man's work
through the centuries, so that most of England and considerable parts
of Wales and Scotland are farmland, yet there do remain tracts of wild
and semi-wild vegetation, even in the south, though they are naturally
much more extensive in the wetter climates of the west and the bleaker
conditions of the north, where the soils too are on the whole less
fertile, so that both climate and soil are less suitable for farming.
Apart from the towns and villages and isolated buildings,
the railways,
roads, aerodromes, factory sites, mines and quarries, most of the
British lowlands are occupied by farmlands under arable crops or fields
of 'permanent ' grass, much of which has been ploughed up during the
war. Scattered among these, however, there are woods, and here and
there commons covered with heath and wild grasses, mostly on land which
did not repay cultivation, at least in earlier times, and was used by
the ' commoners ' for pasture and, where trees and shrubs were present,
for the collection of dead wood. As the result of these uses and of the
not infrequent fires the commons are often considerably altered from
their original condition, though they still bear ' wild ' vegetation,
including stretches of bracken fern, scrub of gorse and other shrubs,
and sometimes isolated trees. At one time most of this common land,
like that which has long been farmland, was covered with forest, except
on the poorest soils where only heath can flourish.
On the uplands the picture is different. Cultivation
may extend to a
height of moo ft. or more, but above this level, and to a considerable
extent below it also, most of the land is occupied by natural or semi-
natural plant communities. Except at the highest altitudes and in the
most remote places the great bulk of the upland country has been used
for pasture. Much of it, like many of the lowland commons, is covered
with a vegetation of wild grasses and is known as 'hill ' or `rough'
grazings, mainly used for sheep rearing to serve the great wool and '
,th industries of past centuries. Here are included the downs of the
south
.rich scarcely reach I000 ft.), much of the uplands
of the south-
western peninsula, and the hills and mountains of Wales, the north of
England, the Scottish Southern Uplands, and the Highlands. Most of the
grassland of these hill grazings owes its present condition largely to
the continual nibbling of the sheep. Great tracts of land in the north
and west, however, are not covered by pure grass vegetation but by
heather, bilberry and similar plants, often mixed with grasses; and
these moorlands are frequently preserved as grouse moors which are
periodically fired to promote new growth of the heather, and in the
Highlands as deer forest. Many of the moorlands are also more or less
grazed. Great tracts of this high-lying country, too, are occupied by
bog or boggy moor-
WHAT IS THERE LEFT TO PRESERVE?
land covered with cotton-grass, deersedge and similar
plants,
especially in the very wet climate of the north- west. Above 2000 ft.,
and especially above 300o ft., the so- called `alpine' vegetation of
the higher mountains begins to appear. This consists largely of lichens
and mosses but includes a number of flowering plants peculiar to this
region, and is little, if at all, altered by human activity.
Thus the uplands of Great Britain are very largely
covered by
vegetation which is wild ' in the sense that the plants composing it
are native to the country and have come there by themselves, but much
of which nevertheless owes its particular character to human agency,
mainly the grazing of sheep and cattle. Sir George Stapledon has shown
that the hill grasslands can often be made much more productive as
sheep pasture by ploughing, manuring, and sowing with pedigree strains
of grasses and clovers. So far as this is done, and it has not yet been
done on any large scale, the vegetation will cease to be `wild', though
the general aspect of the country will not be greatly altered.
Much the greater part of the land below 2000 ft. was
originally covered
with forest or scrub, and this woody vegetation was gradually removed
by felling and clearing, mainly in the Middle Ages and the beginning of
the Modern Period, to provide fuel and timber for human use, to make
room for sheep and cattle grazing, and in the lowlands for agriculture.
Though the lowlands and the lower slopes of the hills were once
occupied by forest, the existing remains of native woodland are now
very scanty. In 192o not much more than 5 per cent of the land area of
Great Britain was woodland of any sort, and this included modern
plantations. Of the old native, deciduous (or `broad-leaved') forest,
consisting mainly of oak, beech, birch, ash and alder, that which had
not been cleared was maintained for the supply of timber, small wood,
and oak bark for tanning, though the native timber supply became so
scanty several centuries ago that much of the demand had to be
increasingly met by importation. Some of this originally native
woodland which does remain is still in a more or less natural
condition, and woods dominated by all five of the trees mentioned are
represented. Many, though not all, of these woods have been planted
up', mostly on the sites of old felled woodland and often with the
original kind of tree proper to the site, so that they have now come to
assume most of the characters of natural woodland. This does not,
however, apply to modern conifer plantations, which introduce quite
different conditions. The beechwoods of the southern chalk, the
oakwoods of the clays and loams of the southern and midland plains and
of the northern and western valleysides, the ashwoods of the Derbyshire
dales, the alderwoods of undrained marsh and fenland, the birchwoods of
sandy soils and of northern hillsides, and also the few remaining
native pinewoods of the Scottish Highlands, are all genuine
representatives of native woodland.
The few areas of marsh and fenland which remain undrained
bear their
owr characteristic vegetation of reeds, rushes, sedges, thickets of
alder, birch anc willow, and many other plants which grow only in
waterlogged soil. This vegetation is essentially natural, though its
detailed distribution is often determine by human activity. Thus
regular cutting of the reeds and sedges for thatching and litter
prevents the trees and bushes colonising the marsh or fen by destroying
their seedlings and saplings, while the reeds and sedges spring again
from their underground parts.
A very few 'raised bogs '1 of the kind quite numerous
in the central
Irish plain still survive in the west and north of Britain, and they
possess an extremely distinct and interesting plant population. Most of
them have long since been destroyed by draining and peat cutting.
The aquatic vegetation inhabiting rivers, lakes, pools,
canals and
ponds is again quite distinct and essentially natural, though many of
its individual habitats, such as canals and ponds, have actually been
provided by man.
Finally there is the vegetation of the sea coast, of
the salt marshes,
sand dunes, shingle beaches and sea cliffs. They bear quite special,
characteristic vegetation, determined by the different kinds of
maritime habitat, wherever it has not been destroyed and replaced by
artificial constructions such as sea walls.
These remaining tracts of wild and half-wild country
of the different
kinds described together make up practically the whole of the natural
beauty of Britain, and they are full of scientific interest and
educational value, while thorough understanding of them can make
considerable contributions to economic interests. The only way to
safeguard and maintain such of them as can and should be preserved is
to set aside suitable areas as 'nature reserves', 'national parks' or
`scheduled areas' (see Chapters 9-12) and manage them intelligently,
each according to its nature. Some need only the prohibition of
destructive ' development ', but many require active measures to ensure
the continuance of the conditions under which they have come into
existence. The necessary means of establishing and maintaining such
areas are considered in later chapters.
We must not forget that many man-made features of the
countryside, for
example hedgerows and the grass verges of country roads, embankments,
old quarries and old walls, also make an important contribution to
rural beauty and diversity, and that they are all the living places of
multitudes of plants and animals, often of great interest to the
naturalist. For obvious reasons it is not so easy to plan a coherent
scheme for the preservation of such rural features as for the
conservation of wild country. But consideration should be given to
avoidance of their unnecessary destruction.
Each different kind of plant community is the home
of characteristic
animals of the most various kinds, from mammals and birds to the lowly
invertebrates, though the larger animals, of course, may range through
many types of vegetation.
