Time to reward people who protect habitats

Last week, I wrote about the increasing destruction of habitats in marginal areas, where, in the cause of creating more grassland for more cattle to make more beef and now more milk — bedrock is smashed and removed and the land scraped of all the wild and hardy vegetation that has evolved there since the last Ice Age.

This week, I would like to celebrate the creation of new habitat, and to ask how the landowners who do this might be financially supplemented in their efforts to provide refuges for native flora and fauna threatened by land reclamation and pollution.

An obvious example of new and useful habitat would be the creation of ponds and lakes, not garden ponds but functioning ecological retreats where wildlife can move in and flourish.