Sheepwrecked - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 159

hills are heavily grazed - wherever in the world this takes place, - the
other people of the nation pay a remarkably high ecological cost for
this industry.
Those who defend heavy grazing - whether in Wales or Wyoming -
sometimes argue that if sheep or other animals were removed from
the hills, the ecological quality of the land would decline as trees and
scrub replaced the grass. The National Farmers' Union of Scotland
warns that 'fewer sheep . . . means undergrazing of traditional pas-
tures, a loss of biodiversity, a return to bracken and brash and the
potential for irreparable damage to Scotland's beautiful landscape'. 13
The president of the Farmers' Union of Wales claims that reducing the
number of sheep 'has a severe detrimental impact on upland biodiver-
sity'. 14 This is incorrect. As I will show later, they appear to have
confused a functioning ecosystem with a tidy one.
A more powerful argument is that upland grazing is essential for
food production. This sounds likely, but is it really true? If Wales is a
useful case study, perhaps not. Just over three-quarters of the area of
Wales is devoted to livestock farming,* largely to produce meat. † But,
by value, Wales imports seven times as much meat as it exports. 18 This
remarkable fact suggests an astonishing failure of productivity.
That is not quite the end of the issue. Deep vegetation on the hills
absorbs rain when it falls, and releases it gradually, delivering a steady
supply of water to the lowlands. When trees and shrubs are removed,
the rain flashes off the hills, causing floods downstream. Sheep also
compact the topsoil, reducing its permeability, which ensures that still
less water is absorbed. Drainage systems dug in the pastures acceler-
ate these effects. When the floods abate, water levels fall rapidly.
Upland grazing contributes to a cycle of flood and drought.
The results can be seen in the record of floods in the River Wye across
the seventy years beginning in 1936. 19 The Wye rises on Pumlumon in the
Cambrian Mountains. In this period the number of floods each year has
* The National Ecosystem Assessment states that 'agricultural land occupied some
1.64 million ha or 79% of Wales in 2008' and that 'crops now account for only 3%
of the agricultural land area'. 15
† Most of the animals farmed are sheep, whose major product is meat. There are also
over 1 million cattle. 16 These are split almost evenly between dairy and beef, 17 but the
male calves from both industries are reared for beef.