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GreyShuck

‘We’ve got baby owls again’: how farming policy is helping English wildlife (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 months ago by GreyShuck to c/nature

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Abby Allen has no problem with her neighbours peering over her luxuriant hedges to see what she is up to on her farm.

For years she has been carrying out ad hoc experiments with wildlife and farming techniques; in her lush Devon fields native cattle graze alongside 400-year-old hedgerows, with birds and butterflies enjoying the species-rich pasture.

Under the environmental land management scheme (ELMS), introduced by the government in 2021, those experiments were finally being funded. “We have a neighbour who has always been more of an intensive farmer,” she says, but he is now considering leaving fields unploughed to help the soil. “It genuinely is having such a huge impact in changing people’s mindsets who traditionally would never have thought about farming in this way.”

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[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Had to scroll too far for the owls! 😅

It is nice to see them doing what they can to leave beneficial things for the wildlife where possible. What often looks bad or inconsequential to humans is vital for many different types of life.

On the positive side, the way that owls hunt and also due to what creatures they eat, the owls benefit from living close to humans too.

We like to store food in one place, which the rodents enjoy, and we clear out nice paths for them to swoop through by putting in fields and orchards. Leaving some brush, hedges, leaves, and stick piles keeps nice cover for the mice, rabbits, and other small mammals the owls like to eat. That raises their numbers, and if dead trees are left be, the owls come back because they have food and shelter again.

[–] Baggins 2 points 3 months ago

In the dark. With an owl!