Page 13 - BBOWT Annual Review 2015-16
P. 13
You might ask why nature needs to recover In essence it would be a return to the quantity
in the first place. The answer is that our three and variety of wildlife everyone took for granted
counties have suffered 70 years of habitat 100 years ago. You’d see more wild flowers,
destruction. New houses and roads have hedgerows, meadows and ponds in towns and
gobbled up land, with 100,000 more new homes the countryside, and notice more birds, bees and
to come in this area. Unsustainable farming has butterflies visiting your garden.
depleted soils, wiped out a lot of our wildlife and
made flooding worse. There might be wildlife-rich areas set aside
for rivers to flood into, and wildlife-friendly
We can’t put all this damage right, but there planting at your place of work. Your children
are many places left where small changes in might even know more names of flowers and
management would allow large areas of land to butterflies than you. The science predicts a
function more naturally. And that would benefit whole range of more subtle effects too: less
not just wildlife, but all of us as well. obesity, illness and depression.
Large-scale scientific studies show that nearby Please contact us for a copy of our Strategic
nature makes us happier, healthier, and more Plan 2016-2021 and turn over to see its five key
relaxed. So what would it be like, living near a themes.
nature restoration area?
Villages, towns
and cities
Illustration: Rachel Hudson Transport networks
