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Our meadows have been part of our natural heritage for centuries and cared for by people for generations – but they are now more at risk than ever before.
We’re in the height of summer, with sun and ice cream on the mind, which must mean one thing – National Meadows Day is here! What better time to shine a light on these incredible habitats and take action to protect them.
Did you know that meadows have been part of our natural heritage for centuries? They have been cared for by people for generations and we cannot let them disappear.
How would you feel if someone knocked down an historical building like the Houses of Parliament, just to build it somewhere else? Or reduced Conwy or Edinburgh Castles to rubble and created lacklustre replicas. It wouldn’t be the same, right?
The same applies to meadows, which are now more at risk than ever.
Without proper protections, the destruction of meadows is continuing across Britain. That’s why we’re calling for irreplaceable meadows to be added to the Irreplaceable Habitats list.
Meadows support a whole array of valuable wildlife. The unique interplay of geology, weather, and grazing animals have favoured particular communities of plants, which form relationships with mycorrhizal fungi in the soil.
Layers and layers of soil have built over time in meadows, and are home to wiggling earthworms, busy insects, and a whole planet-worth of microbes.
The complex relationships between wildlife in meadows are finely balanced. For example, the Adonis Blue butterfly only feeds on Horseshoe Vetch. If this plant disappeared in a local area, so too would the butterfly.
This would then impact ants which have a reciprocal relationship with the butterfly, thus reducing food sources for birds – and so on.
These meadows are magnificent crucibles of life and cannot be recreated within a meaningful timeframe.
National Meadows Day, the first Saturday in July is the perfect time to celebrate the sweet-smelling, colourful cacophony of meadows. From the white froth of Meadowsweet, to purple pom-pom heads of Devil’s-bit Scabious straining to be seen.
While National Meadows Day is a celebration of the meadows that we have, it’s also a time to highlight all the meadows that have been lost.
The past century has seen them ploughed, over-fertilised, bulldozed for buildings, and destroyed by misplaced tree planting.
An estimated 97% of all of our meadows have been lost, many of these meadows are historic, irreplaceable meadows. Meadows that have been in our society and communities for centuries, unique habitats that has well-established ecosystems that we and nature relies on.
The remaining meadows that have clung on through the decades or centuries are the last bastions of our farming and cultural heritage. These meadows are truly irreplaceable and we want to protect them for the future.
To protect meadows, we’re calling for irreplaceable meadows to be added to the Irreplaceable Habitats List. But, what does this mean?
The UK Government has classed some habitats, like ancient woodlands and blanket bogs, as irreplaceable habitats. This means that they should have more protection in planning policy, where they can’t be harmed by development unless in exceptional circumstances.
In England, the UK Government is proposing sweeping changes to planning policy with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill which puts our most beloved habitats and wildlife at risk of inappropriate development.
That’s why it’s more important than ever for these meadows to be recognised as irreplaceable habitats and get the protections they both deserve and need.
Governments must take action now. We’re calling for the UK Government to add irreplaceable meadows and grasslands to the list of irreplaceable habitats,
We also want to see the Scottish Government take this important step. While the Welsh Government has explicitly listed species-rich grasslands as a type of irreplaceable habitat, there’s still work to get Government to understand their value.
Help us make sure that irreplaceable meadows are not just a memory. Take action by:
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