Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Turn Off the Seeding Machine for Five or Ten Meters

Here's an idea:

In England, farmers are being paid to create and maintain nesting plots for the Eurasian Skylark within their acreage by turning off their seeding machines for stretches of five to ten meters. This simple but innovative agricultural practice is as regulated as it is experimental. 

The above excerpt is from the book, Unpremeditated Art, by Washington University, St. Louis landscape architecture professor Rod Barnett.

Thanks to The Dirt blog for sharing this habitat idea in an age of bandaid remedies for loss of songbirds, bees, and monarch butterflies throughout the intensively farmed U.S. Midwest.

To learn more about the survival problems of the Eurasian Skylark as related to agricultural practices in England, see this Wikipedia article.