Don’t get me wrong – no great religious leader had moved the mountains. They were still standing proud and tall at over 3,000 metres. But there wasn’t much sign of a natural landscape. Up high in the mountains there was a wide-open vista which was dramatic to look at but which had been stripped of tree cover a long time ago. As a result it was totally devoid of the kinds of vegetation that are capable of supporting a rich and vibrant fauna. Instead there were signs of leached out soils and the devastation that comes after human beings have exposed hillsides to the full force of the weather. Only the strongest of plants had clung on against fierce sunlight, strong winds and rain washing away nutrients. Open views over miles of countryside revealed a remarkable absence of birds of prey circling high in the warm mountain air. We saw one pair in a week.
Those of us who live in the Yorkshire Dales are used to a similar problem. The landscape provides wonderful views over open countryside. Unfortunately those views aren’t natural. We are looking at the equivalent of the Brazillian rain forest after the trees have been cut down. I love walking in the countryside near my home because of the fantastic long-distance views. Yet if I want to see a wide range of plants, interesting insects and signs of rich and varied wildlife I have to search hard and long. In a few precious areas of the Dales you can still find tree cover that isn’t row after row of boring pine forest and when you explore that it doesn’t take long to realise the extent of what we have lost.
Human beings don’t have a great track record with the environment and we have been particularly bad when it comes to tree cover. The arrival of the first people in Australia resulted in the destruction of much of the natural forest that covered the land and the extinction of a wide range of species. What we now see as natural desert was once covered with trees and the land only dried out when our species destroyed them. Then the Europeans got there and did even worse.
Much of what happened there was simply a repeat of other disasters. When humans first arrived in the Americas it resulted in the extinction of a wide range of species. These creatures had survived many cycles of natural climate change. They didn’t survive competition from humans. The much later arrival of large numbers of Europeans made things even worse. They killed off billions of bison and created a dustbowl in the Midwest
Look at any site where early human city civilisations began and you will find a high incidence of one important feature. The land around where they lived is now very dry indeed. This is true of the Indus valley civilisation in Pakistan and it is also true of Babylonia. The deserts of Egypt were once green and fertile. There are pictures of early humans swimming in the lakes and rivers in the middle of the Sahara. You can’t swim in many places there now. Just as with climate change there are those who claim that we had nothing to do with the drying out of these landscapes and it was all simply just the result of a natural cycle of change. It is, of course, true that there have been many changes to the environment of the Sahara. It is also true that human beings cutting down trees and planting wheat dries out a landscape and makes one hell of a difference.
Back in the past we were able to ruin localities which were once ideal places to live and survive as a species because there was always somewhere else to go to. All that has now changed. We have covered the whole planet and in the vast majority of places we are changing its environment for the worse. Flying back from Spain the pilot told us that if we looked out of the window we could see smoke rising from forest fires in Portugal. Last year they had an exceptionally dry season and the fires made the headline news. This year there are having another exceptionally dry season and the fires are so routine that the British news isn’t bothering to cover them.
All of which leads to some really important questions. If exceptionally dry summers are now routine what will happen when we cut down even more trees? If stripping away trees has done so much harm why aren’t we doing something about it?
I am now feeling increasingly optimistic that the world is going to switch away from the heavy use of fossil fuels rapidly. The economics on that have now tipped dramatically in favour of huge change. I wish it was possible to have the same optimism about ending the removal of tree cover and starting to restore it.
Worldwide there are serious efforts to do something in some locations. China is planting enormous numbers of trees on the edge of the Gobi desert and there is a major project underway to create one long multi-national wall of tree cover on the southern end of the Sahara.
These efforts are dwarfed by the destruction of rain forest across huge areas of land in places like Indonesia and Brazil. If we are serious about expecting people in other countries to try and tackle this problem we need to face up to our own challenges in the UK.
Tree cover in Britain is well below natural levels because of clearances undertaken at many times in our history for the sole reason that it generated a little more income from the landowner at the time - regardless of the impact on either tenants or the wider environment. This badly needs to be reversed.
If we do have to get out of the EU then we urgently need to target agricultural subsidies towards responsible land management. At the moment we are paying very rich people subsidies to maintain barren grouse moors or hedge free gigantic fields. We need to cap the amount that any one landowner or company can collect and help smaller and more environmentally sensitive farmers to start bringing more tree cover back to our own landscape.
I wish I was convinced that leaving the EU would result in us doing that. I very much fear that what it will actually do is to put even more power in the hands of big landowners who will move heaven and earth to preserve their shooting privileges but do nothing to restore a more vibrant landscape in our wild places or our farms.
Despite those fears I think we need to engage with the process of determining future UK rural policy with real urgency and determination. We cannot leave the far right Brexit enthusiasts the freedom to write UK legislation that suits them but not the environment.