Sheepwrecked - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 162

presence of small areas of reeds. In Bulgaria, the existence of a single
stem of dog rose has rendered land ineligible. In Scotland farmers
have been told that yellow flag irises, which for centuries have gilded
the fields of the west coast, could be classed as 'encroaching vegeta-
tion', invalidating their subsidy claims. The government of Northern
Ireland has been fined £64 million for (among other such offences)
giving subsidy money to farms whose traditional hedgerows are too
wide. 32 The effect of these rules has been to promote the frenzied
clearance of habitats. The system could scarcely have been better
designed to ensure that farmers seek out the remaining corners of
land where wildlife still resides, and destroy them.
A farmer can graze his land to the roots, run his sheep in the woods,
grub up the last lone trees, poison the rivers and still get his money.
Some of the farms close to where I live do all of those things and never
have their grants stopped. But one thing he is not allowed to do is
what these rules call 'land abandonment', and what I call rewilding.
The European Commission, without producing any evidence, insists
that 'land abandonment in less advantageous areas would have nega-
tive environmental consequences'. 33
To abandon is to forsake or desert. Abandonment is one of those
terms - such as improvement, stewardship, neglect and undergrazing -
which create the impression that the ecosystem cannot survive without
us. But we do not improve the ecosystem by managing it; we merely
change it. Across Europe, these rules have turned complex, diverse
and fecund ecosystems into simple and largely empty ones. They have
helped precipitate an ecological catastrophe.
There is a second tranche of subsidies that pays farmers to undo
some of the damage inflicted by this system. It is a crazy use of public
funds. First farmers are forced to destroy almost everything; then they
can apply for a smaller amount of money to put some of it back.
But only a little. The 'green' subsidies (known as Pillar 2 payments)
reward farmers for making marginal changes, and only in certain
places. National governments disburse this money, using the European
rules as their guidelines. The Welsh government assures farmers that
these payments 'will require at most minor modifications to farming
systems'. 34 In fact it expressly forbids them to restore more than a few
tiny corners of their land. For example, the payment for allowing land