Basic HTML Version
Ev eryon e
needs a home
SinceWorldWar II, Britain has lost 3 million
hectares of wild flowers.The remaining 100,000
hectares continue to diminish
Birds and other pollinators are suffering the same decline in
population as the bees, due to the loss of habitat and food sources.
This is mostly due to the expansion of large agricultural farms,
where hedgerows have been removed from the edges of fields to
make room for mass machinery. In addition, the fashion in gardens
of ornamental flowers and perfect lawns has had a large impact.
This is a symbiotic relationship – habitat and
pollinators rely on each other to survive, the loss
of one means the loss of the other
Acres of crop-filled fields in the countryside don’t equal good
foraging. Many of these crops provide bees with little or no food.
This, compounded with the lack of hedgerows and wild flowers,
means bees and pollinators are starving to death in what is
effectively an arable desert.
We desperately need to re-plant our wild flowers, utilising our
gardens, public spaces and farmland as potential bee sanctuaries.
See page 22 for bee-friendly planting suggestions.
14
Corn flower