Page 10 - Natural World Spring 2018

love wildlife

Join the linear
Where there are people, there are lines: fences, walls, lawns, hedges. To wildlife, these lines can

We love lines, yet we have Our gardens potential and roads along which
come to let them govern can fit into wildlife flourished. For example, in
us. Think about our a living Lincolnshire, a volunteer search for
landscapes and you cannot escape landscape wildflowers led to the designation
the impact of the lines we have built. of 159 new Local Wildlife Sites on
Hedges, ditches, dykes, walls, canals, would be simple. There would be an verges along 155 miles of road.
railways, roads and power lines all easy segregation of lines into good
mark out the space we share with and bad. But very quickly it became To fix our fragmented land
wildlife. Some of the lines are wildlife apparent that there were hedges requires a massive change at the
corridors and habitats of the highest that were living up to none of their highest levels; we need to address
order. Others destroy and fragment. environmental, agricultural and
transport policy to connect our
When I started researching my landscapes for wildlife. Taking an
latest book, Linescapes, I was sure it active, landscape-scale approach

paul harris/202vision Hugh Warwick is Birds
an ecologist, use trees as
author and
hedgehog lover. stepping
His latest book is stones
Linescapes.

Hedgehogs
Use gaps in

fences to
forage

bees
Move from
flower to

flower

How many lines could your
garden have connecting it
to other green places?

10 NATURAL WORLD spring 2018