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Dead – Exhausted: an Agro-desert

Originally, neighboring meadows and woodlands did not exist as they are taken for granted today. When the Ice Age drew to an end 12,000 years ago and the permafrost of the cold steppes melted, new vegetation sprouted. Ecologists suspect that “it may very well have taken a couple of thousand years until all of Central Europe was covered with forestland. The forests did show differences in composition depending on their location, but basically, the main kinds of trees found were oak, hornbeam and beech.” This is what it looked like 2000 years ago.

Only after the time of the great migrations of people, did extensive clearing begin, creating space for the cultivated landscape of the next 1000 years, linking fields and forests and human settlements. One third remained forested. On the rest of the land emerged pastures, meadows and fields, groves, waters and orchards, a weaving of different habitats in which manifold plants and animals made themselves at home. The melding of cultivation and nature in a varied landscape of meadows and forests and village settlements has been conveyed to us in splendid colors by landscape painters and poets. This idyllic portrait was admittedly darkened continuously through the butcher knife of humans and their hunting.

At the end of the 18th century, the forests were so overworked and clear-cut, that an environmental disaster threatened. If the land were to be kept from turning into steppes, then a rapid growth of new forests was absolutely necessary. This led to modern forestry practices, which have given us our understanding of forests today. Fast-growing tree types, above all spruce, should cover our needs for wood and offer the soil and water systems protection. It was possible to again cover one third of the land in Central Europe with forests. But the wild growing forests of earlier times, now became today’s monocultures with their monotone appearance in comparison.
For several decades, standing trees have lived in rank and file with the mosaic landscape of fields and farmland that had formed over the course of the centuries. But since the middle of the last century, these,  too, have disappeared. Meadow flowers and field herbs fell victim to the spraying calendar of the farmers. From the small spaces of a structured, cultivated landscape, developed the monocultures of modern agricultural industry which, using artificial fertilizers and ever more perfected machinery, squeezed the last drop from the soil, exhausting it more and more. The reallocation of land and straightening of streams and brooks, the asphalting and leveling of land created a machinery oriented landscape where available habitats for animals became ever more limited.

Even though the development of rural cultivated landscapes in Europe had first gathered an unbe- lievable fullness of plant and animal species over a thou- sand years, these were now losing their homes more and more. The different connected and neighboring bio- topes were dissolved through drawing board structures, where field hares and mice, partridges and quail and many others no longer found refuge. Herb plants on the fields became “weeds.” Only what was useful had room. Pigs and cattle, chickens and geese, which rejoiced in their life out in the open, for the most part landed in dreary factory barns, which produced whole floods of liquid manure with which modern agriculture poisoned the fields. The application of caustic fertilizers and pesticides killed off the rich variety of species. Many animals lost their food plants. The red list of threatened plant species grew longer and longer – a consequence of industrial farming.

“Wherever farming reigns and forestry practices have standardized forest composition, most species suffer badly. More than two thirds of all species in Germany whose populations are presently declining or are strongly threatened by extinction are affected by developments in agriculture… But not only colorful flowers and flickering moths, the songs of larks, the partridges and hares have become victims of farming. It should have been long since classified as the greatest environmental polluter, for the consequences of farming practices threaten our drinking water via the groundwater, and the standardization of production spaces has taken much away from the rural appeal and beauty of a cultivated landscape. This directly hits the world of humans – our environment.”
Thus far, the conclusions of an ecologist who sees that it is necessary to fight for more consideration of the animals for the sake of human beings. The Gabriele Foundation acts directly for the sake of the animals, creating a habitat for them that humans had taken from them.