Want to benefit wildlife? Let land go untended. May 20, 2013
06:02 AM - Roger Greenway, ENN Which environment would wildlife
prefer, actively farmed and managed land, or untended natural
land that to us might appear unkempt? Turns out that parts of
the farm landscape that look overgrown and 'scruffy' are more
important in supporting wildlife than they first appear,
according to new research published today in Ecology Letters.
The findings stem from an intensive study of an organic farm in
Somerset by a team of scientists focussing on the complex ways
in which animals and plants interact. First, the team of
researchers from the University of Hull, the University of
Bristol and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, created one of
the world's largest terrestrial food-webs — a what-eats-what
guide to the food-chain, and then developed a method of
predicting what would happen to the whole food-web when habitats
were lost.