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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/coppicing-boosting-british-biodiversity/>
"Every year, around the middle of summer, Alex Lack finds himself surprised by
the buzz in Bradfield Woods, the forest he manages in Suffolk, a county in
eastern England. Standing in a glade on a warm summer day, insects flit busily
between shrubs and wildflowers. Hundreds of red admiral, peacock and brimstone
butterflies float through the air.
“There’s a constant hum of things flying around,” says Lack, who works with
Suffolk Wildlife Trust. “It’s extraordinary.”
Today, woodlands cover only 13 percent of the U.K.’s land area. But for
centuries, much of Britain would have looked like Bradfield Woods — and hosted
a similar melange of invertebrates, small mammals and plants of all sizes.
“Half the countryside must have been like this at some point,” Lack says.
The U.K. is facing a precipitous decline in biodiversity, with one in six
species at risk of disappearing. But Bradfield Woods is teeming with life,
including endangered dormice, threatened nightingales, 370 flowering plant
species and more than 400 types of fungi.
This forest is a refuge in part because every 25 years, many of the trees are
cut down to the ground and then allowed to sprout and regrow, an ancient
practice called coppicing. Bradford Woods has been managed this way for more
than seven centuries — and now, the practice is being reinvigorated across
Britain, from urban marshes to northern forests."
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
