
By David Henwood
Cowley News is conducting a survey to lobby Oxfordshire County Council and Oxford City Council to ‘go wild’ by reducing the number of times grass is cut on roadside verges, playing fields and cemeteries.
During the pandemic, verges were left uncut for several weeks. This resulted in a burst of wild flowers leaving many to question current maintenance practice. Would you like to see this practiced continued? Local councils across the country are saving thousands and seeing a significant increase in biodiversity as verges are left to become rewilding hotspots.
Road verges provide wildlife corridors across Britain, linking habitats and allowing wildlife to recolonise landscapes fragmented by modern agriculture. In this way, they help create ‘permeability’ in the landscape, facilitating the migration of species and increasing their resilience to climate change. And, of course, cars and other vehicles are hugely important as vectors of dispersal, with plant, seeds and smaller invertebrates getting carried across Britain in their slipstreams.
If successful Cowley News will fund educational boards at verges and designated wild-life hot spots, to help explain and encourage the benefits of biodiversity.
Your submission to this survey is entirely anonymous. However, your public IP Address is checked to eliminate duplication.
Be the first to comment