What price Nature?

[Paul mabbott]

.... and why put a price on it unless you intend to sell it?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ear...on-nature.html

[nightshade]

It is rather worrying, when government of whatever persuasion appears to take an interest in nature and puts a price/value on it. They do tax the view already I believe.

[Dorts]

Is this the sort of thing you mean?
Garden Snail=0.00000000004 pence
Rook=0.005 pence.
Cow Parsley= 0.00001 pence per plant.
Red Squirrel= 53 pence
Wild Salmon= £7 per kilo.
Mountain Stream= £4,386 per mile.

Dorts

[fairplay]

We did a similar thing at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro back in 1992 and
Caroline Spelman is just talking hype in readiness for the Earth Summit this year which again is in Rio de Janeiro.

I believe she is talking the impossible because we can tell Brazil how important the Rainforest is, but the people destroying it will say it is everywhere, lets cut it down and increase the biodiversity.
Then equally Brazil can tell us to save our Heathlands whilst those that live there will say it is everywhere, let the trees grow instead.

It won't be easy getting through to people.

Neil.

[DorsetDunk]

you right about heathland especially as it was deforestation and grazing that created the habitat in the first place how can we tell the Brazilians not do the same after we have completely altered our own landscape for our survival

[fairplay]

Originally Posted by DorsetDunk

you right about heathland especially as it was deforestation and grazing that created the habitat in the first place how can we tell the Brazilians not do the same after we have completely altered our own landscape for our survival

I don't know the history of how the Dorset Heaths were created, but I suspect most lowland heath in Britain was created more or less the same way.
In Suffolk we are told when early man arrived he found the narrow coastal sandy strip easy to cultivate. This basically stretched from Ipswich to beyond Lowestoft, and it was done using the slash and burn method, but because most of the nutrients were restricted to the top few inches they were quickly depleted and the people or tribe moved to a new patch to clear whilst the old one would start to have trees coming back.

Eventually they would find their way back to the original plot and in this way the Sandlings were created with swathes of heather as far as the eye could see.

Whether these people moved further inland or whether those that created the Dorset Heaths came by sea I just don't know, but in the Nederlands they have a National Park they call De Hoge Veluwe with the town of Apeldoorn in the centre, but the heaths here were created by turf stripping which they used as roofing slates. I presume these are the same people that eventually moved to Britain - well the Suffolk Coast anyway !

But keeping to topic - recently Suffolk County Council, in a bid to save money, decided to sell off Knettishall Heath in the Brecks, another sandy area and extremely important for rare Breckland flora.
Luckily they offered it to the Suffolk Wildlife Trust for £100,000 and the SWT raised this money very quickly through generous donations and this is now the SWT's largest landholding in it's 50 year history.

How the figure of £100,000 was agreed I will never know - is it too much or too little ? I guess their solicitors worked out how much the farming community would have paid for it, but then again, because of the rare flora (and fauna) no farmer would be able to plough it up anyway, which to a farmer would make the land worthless.

Neil.