Country Life 12-Jan-2022

WHICH sandwich filling causes the most climate change: chicken, cheese or peanut butter and jam? This riddle was put to the Oxford Farming Conference last week by Prof Sarah Bridle during the Frank Parkinson lecture. The answer was cheese, an illustration of the hard choices to be made (who wants a peanut-butter-and-jam orientated diet?) if we’re to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases caused by food. A steak is 20 times more damaging to the atmosphere than a jacket potato with baked beans (if the potato is microwaved and not cooked for two hours in an oven to produce a delicious crispy skin). It is not only in Veganuary, according to this analysis, that we should review our diet. Ruminant animals emit methane and could be an obstacle to the Prime…

THE final two Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes were announced at last week’s digital Oxford Farming Conference, following the launch of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) just before Christmas (Town & Country, December 8, 2021). The goal is to halt the decline in species by 2030, bring 60% of England’s agricultural soil under sustainable management by 2030 and restore 300,000 hectares (741,316 acres) of habitat by 2042. Although Government has a responsibility to ensure that farmers feel incentivised to make this happen, stressed Defra Secretary George Eustice, the choice lies with farmers as to what extent they may participate. A Local Nature Recovery (LNR) scheme will reward those who create space for Nature—applications open in 2023, with funding for 15 projects (covering 10,000 hectares) initially, focusing on threatened native species and…

IN 1961, Pamela Chandler was sent to photograph the notoriously camera-shy J. R. R. Tolkien. A Society photographer, daughter of a famous conjurer and ventriloquist and the first woman commissioned to photograph a Prime Minister (Harold Macmillan), she became fast friends with the Tolkiens, writing in her journal that they were the ‘most adorable people you could care to meet and I can never think of one without the other’. The resulting images provide a rare glimpse of the writer in his study, looking at books and sitting beside his hand-drawn map of Middle Earth. Five years later, Tolkien and his wife, Edith, invited Chandler back to Oxfordshire to take more photographs of them in their garden. These extraordinary images, as well as six letters, went under the hammer with Reeman…

Tracing family history The 1921 census has been released -quite a major event, as there won't be another until 2052; the 1931 census burnt in a fire and there was no 1941 census during wartime Birdwatching Thousands have travelled to the Brockholes nature reserve in Lancashire to see an incredibly rare American shaggy-crested belted kingfisher, which usually winters in Mexico or the Caribbean. It is thought to have been blown this way by an Atlantic storm Honest thieves A set of first-edition ‘Lord of the Rings' books that was stolen before Christmas from St Richard's Hospice charity shop in Worcester has been anonymously returned Having a whale of a time Sightings of humpback Wales in UK waters were up in 2021, as were those of orcas and dolphins, reports The Wildlife Trusts; however, noise from wind farms…

THE first addition to Kew’s vital plant species list for 2022 is Uvariopsis dicaprio, a ylang-ylang tree of the Ebo Forest, one of the largest intact rainforests in Cameroon and, yes, it is named for the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, in honour of his environmental efforts for the area. With its bunches of glossy yellow-green flowers, the tree is already critically endangered because its habitat is unprotected, a reminder of the importance of Kew’s mission to name and, where possible, protect species all around the world before they become extinct. ‘It’s easy to assume that we know all of the plant and fungi species on our planet,’ explains Dr Martin Cheek, senior researcher in RBG Kew’s Africa team. ‘But, in most parts of the tropics, identification of plants is still a big…

LEPIDOPTERISTS and lovers of Nature can now enjoy access to William Jones’s seminal Icones— a catalogue of 1,600 finely detailed paintings of some 760 butterfly and moth species created between 1780 and 1800, which, despite its intricacy and scientific importance, was never published. The sole manuscript has been preserved at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and is now reproduced for the first time. As well as 1,600 illustrations, the beautifully produced Iconotypes: A Compendium of Butterflies and Moths includes expert essays, modern maps and contextual commentary from entomologist, taxonomist and author Richard I. Vane-Wright (£65, Thames & Hudson).…