Letters: Why must French farmers chop, poison and destroy nature?
Connexion reader says that he has seen biodiversity plummet in the past decade
Reader says that the ignorance of local farmers is to blame for the disappearance of French wildlife
Ekaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock
To the Editor,
Nine years ago I purchased a property in the heart of the Normandy countryside, consisting of 8 hectares of large paddocks, ponds and woodland, surrounded by over 200 trees. The property is surrounded on all sides by farmland.
When I moved here it was a wildlife paradise: deers, squirrels, pheasants, owls, hares, rabbits, hundreds of swallows returning every year, bats, no end of bees of different varieties and the fields of hay were full of butterflies.
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Since then, I have seen the gradual demise of all of the above to the point that this year there are no deer, no squirrels, no pheasants, a couple of owls, no hares, no rabbits, half a dozen swallows, no bats, a handful of bumble bees and very few worker bees and as for butterflies probably fewer than a dozen.
The ponds used to have dragonflies in reasonable numbers, I have only seen one this year. As for mosquitoes, I have only seen a couple in the house, which is unusual, and no mayflies.
I do not believe this has anything to do with global warming, but down to the ignorance of the local farmers.
They have chopped no end of trees down in the annual cull, continually sprayed their fields with pesticides and biocides and basically are systematically destroying their own environment and poisoning the earth.
They do it because they have always done it that way, and are not prepared to change their ways.
They are so short sighted and blinkered and cannot see what damage they are doing to the environment on their own doorsteps.
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This is down to ignorance and greed on their behalf. It will come to a point when their crops will fail.
If they continue down this route, they will have nothing left to hand down to the next generation.
As for the lack of deer, pheasants, rabbits and hares, I put this down to the so-called "hunts" that just shoot anything in sight that moves including themselves. I have even found a shot dead deer in my garden.
I am sure that the gradual eradication of nature in my area is not a solitary one. I have read recent articles of high contents of pesticides and biocides found in some French wines, therefore I ask the question, does the problem exist in some French wine producing areas as well, and not just agricultural areas?
Paul Sullivan, by email
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