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9
Sheepwrecked
By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill
On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and chill
And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its will
To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a prey
John Clare
Remembrances
Most human endeavours, unless checked by public dissent, evolve
into monocultures. Money seeks out a region's comparative advantage -
the field in which it competes most successfully - and promotes it to
the exclusion of all else. Every landscape or seascape, if this process is
loosed, performs just one function.
This greatly taxes the natural world. An aquifer might contain
enough water to allow some farmers to grow alfalfa, but perhaps not
all of them. A loch or bay or fjord might have room for wild salmon
and a few salmon farms, but if too many cages are built, the parasites
which infest them will overwhelm the wild fish. Many farmland birds
can survive in a mixed landscape of pasture and arable crops, hedge-
rows and woodlands, but not in a boundless field of wheat or soya.
Some enthusiasts for rewilding see reserves of self-willed land as an
exchange for featureless monocultures elsewhere. I believe that pock-
ets of wild land - small in some places, large in others - should be
accessible to everyone: no one should have to travel far to seek refuge
from the ordered world. While I would argue against a mass rewild-
ing of high-grade farmland, because of the threat this could present to
global food supplies, we lose little by allowing nature to persist in
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