Sheepwrecked - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 158

up and burnt, for no agricultural reason that I can discern, except a
desire for neatness and completion. From my kayak in Cardigan Bay
I see a sight that Neolithic fishermen would have witnessed: towers of
smoke rising from the hills as the farmers burn tracts of gorse and
trees.
The UK's National Ecosystem Assessment shows that the cata-
strophic decline in farmland birds in Wales has accelerated, despite
the reduction in the number of sheep: in the six years after 2003 their
abundance fell by 15 per cent. 7 Curlews declined by 81 per cent in just
thirteen years (from 1993) and lapwings by 77 per cent in only eleven
years (from 1987). Golden plover, which have been the focus of intense
conservation efforts, are now almost extinct: reduced to just thirty-six
breeding pairs. 8 Even in the most strictly protected places, only 7 per
cent of the animal and plant species living in rivers are thriving. 9
Overwhelmingly the reason is farming: grazing which prevents woods
from regenerating and destroys the places where animals and plants
might live, the grubbing up of trees, cutting and burning, pesticides and
fertilizers which kill wildlife and pollute the watercourses. Almost all
the rivers in Wales are in poor ecological condition, which is unsurpris-
ing when you discover that the nitrates and phosphates entering the
water have risen sharply. 10 Sheep dip residues have been found in almost
90 per cent of the places scientists have surveyed. 11 Sheep dip is espe-
cially damaging, as it contains a powerful pesticide - cypermethrin - which
can kill much of the invertebrate life in a river. Farming is cited as a rea-
son for the decline of wildlife in Wales in 92 per cent of cases. 12
A similar story can be told in almost all the uplands of Britain: Dart-
moor, Exmoor, the Black Mountains, the Brecon Beacons, Snowdonia,
the Shropshire Hills, the Peak District, the Pennines, the Forest of Bow-
land, the Dales, the North York Moors, the Lake District, the Cheviots,
the Southern Uplands. In fact the only wide tracts of upland Britain not
grazed to the roots by sheep are those grazed to the roots by overstocked
deer, in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Sheep farming in this
country is a slow-burning ecological disaster, which has done more
damage to the living systems of this country than either climate change
or industrial pollution. Yet scarcely anyone seems to have noticed.
It grieves me to discover this. Hill farmers are trying only to survive,
and theirs is a tough, thankless and precarious occupation. But when