Guy Shrubsole > Quotes

“This was the very heart of Wales' rainforest zone, where the oceanic climate conspires to make conditions perfect for the rich profusion of plant life that we'd spent the past week exploring. Yet here, humanity had found a rainforest and turned it into a desert. It had started long ago, no doubt: Wales' Green Desert is the product of agricultural malpractice dating back to the twelfth-century monks of Strata Florida. But what began as a profitable enterprise in medieval times today supports a mere twenty-eight farms over an area covering 46,000 acres. The farming unions claim that rewilding will lead to rural depopulation, but centuries of overgrazing have already drained the land of both people and wildlife.

And in doing so, Wales is losing part of its heritage, its culture. Because the Wales of this great country's myths and legends was a rainforest nation, whose peoples lived and coexisted with the Atlantic oakwoods that once carpeted their land, celebrating them in song. They knew these rainforests and knew them deeply, weaving them into their stories, vesting their greatest heroes with a magic derived from that profound knowledge of place and ecology.

There is a way back from this, but it is unlikely to come through a culture war between sheep farmers and rewilders. The truth is that there is more than enough space in Wales, as there is in the rest of Britain, both for farming to continue and for more rainforest to flourish.”
― Guy Shrubsole, The Lost Rainforests of Britain

“One... misconception is the idea that England is now mostly concreted over. Coupled to this is the idea that the onward march of bricks and mortar is the main cause of declining species and habitats. Neither assertion is true. Just 8.8 per cent of England is built on; 73 per cent is farmland, and 10 per cent is forestry. The biggest drivers of biodiversity loss in this country are modern agriculture, forestry and shooting. ...the greatest threat to the countryside comes from within it.”
― Guy Shrubsole, The Lie of the Land: Who Really Cares for the Countryside?

“Grouse moors exist or one purpose only: to maximise the numbers of a particular bird, the red grouse, for weathy men and women to shoot. Theirs is an entirely artificial, intensively managed environment. Moorland heather is extensively burned to encourage the fresh shoots eaten by young grouse. Many grouse moors were drained historically, because it was thought this would improve the otherwise damp conditions for both sheep and game birds. Gamekeepers lace the moors with traps to kill animals that predate on grouse: stoats, weasels, foxes and birds of prey. It's illegal to kill birds of prey, but that doesn't stop it happening: the unlawful persecution of raptors is endemic on Britain's grouse moors. And if you want to own a grouse moor, you have to be rich: even the Spectator says that owning one is 'screamingly' elitist and 'the ultimate trophy asset'.”
― Guy Shrubsole, The Lie of the Land: Who Really Cares for the Countryside?

“Landed interets also successfully staged a fightback around this time by reviving the language of stewardship, and by claiming to be the voice of rural Britain. Older organisations like the NFU and CLA were joined by new lobby groups such as the Moorland Association and Countryside Alliance. These lobbyists still claim to speak for the countryside, despite most of them representing only tiny numbers of people with huge power and wealth: the 27,000 members of the CLA who own around a third of the land of England and Wales; the 150 or so grouse moor estates that that own at least half a million acres of the English uplands Even the 45,000 members of the NFU and the 100,000 who belong to the Countryside Alliance comprise but a small fraction of the rural population. By shouting loudly, they have occluded the fact that farming, forestry and fishing make up just 7 percent of employment even in rural areas of England. Across the UK as a whole, agriculture generates just 0.5 per cent of GDP and employs only 1.5 per cent of the workforce, yet takes up 71 per cent of the land. Land use decisions remain disproportionately dominated, therefore, by a small number of people.”
― Guy Shrubsole, The Lie of the Land: Who Really Cares for the Countryside?

“Between 1992 and 2022, the public paid a staggering £9.2 billion to landowners and farmers through environmental stewardship schemes, when measured in cash terms, or £12.5 billion when adjusted for inflation.”
― Guy Shrubsole, The Lie of the Land: Who Really Cares for the Countryside?