Whilst soil quality is a neglected aspect of environmental health and water quality is clearly very important, this would make a good undergraduate essay topic.
Why has the history of nature conservation been so wrong in concentrating on site designation and protection, species protection, a proper planning system, reducing overexploitation, preventing the introduction of invasive non-native species, species recovery projects and more latterly reducing greenhouse gases when it could just have dealt with soils and water?
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“Why has the history of nature conservation been so wrong …”
Dunno. Ignorance?
“… if … then much… naturally follows” is true. Pleased for Juniper that he now mixes with positive-minded people. I was afraid Gove had handed him a poisoned chalice
I think you may be over interpreting and out of context, Mark. He did say “much of”, not “everything” or even “most of”, and twas in response to a post about soil. It wasn’t a comprehensive policy statement, just a comment on someone else’s posting.
I’m very disappointed in Tony Juniper as head of NE but this isn’t a statement I’d hold against him. He’s guilty of far more explicit derelictions of duty elsewhere imho. Let’s focus our criticism where it matters!
Jbc – except he didn’t say some of, or a little bit of, either.
At the risk of being a pedant (OK, I’m guilty…)
Soil quality – so that’s a much greater emphasis on organics, on mixed farming and certainly much less intensive arable, no Ivermectins or other persistent soil pesticides, significantly lower NPK artificial fertilizer.
Water – no more muir burn, no more diffuse pollution, no more point source pollution from agriculture or industry, rewilding of rivers with meanders and beavers and flood plains allowed to flood, sustainable water management in towns done properly.
Both – tackling soil erosion from arable – reversion to grassland, bigger riverside headlands, wooded and wetland corridors along the banks.
That’s just off the top of my head – looks like a pretty good list to me, esp since doing all these things brings many other benefits incl an end to driven grouse shooting and a shedload more wildlife, and a shedload less flooding, in lowlands and upland alike.
which of these isn’t worth the bother then?
( less flooding meaning less flooding of houses of course… more flooding of wetlands 🙂 )
If you want to protect the soil then we need to start fining farmers for having unprotected river margins which allows arable run off, and animals to breakdown the banks and churn up river and stream beds. On a rainy day you can see huge wakes of silt, mud, and effluent flowing off fields and farm yards and down our rivers. Trees, and beavers to coppice those trees, particularly thorny ones to discourage livestock and anglers, are what are needed along every watercourse in Britain. Of course they’ve near all been ripped out to neaten things up a bit by the self appointed guardians of the countryside; ruining it again.