Floodplain Meadows: combining beauty with utility & Handbook for guidance

Ann Skinner, 8 July 2016 — Community, Flood, Other areas of our work

Environment Agency Blog: The value of floodplain meadows was well understood in mediaeval times, when the Domesday Book recorded them as 10 times more valuable than arable land because without them people could not keep their animals alive through the long hard winters. It seems appropriate, just after the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s’ death, to refer to a quote from Henry V describing what happens when men go to war leaving the fields neglected and unmown, showing the link between well-managed meadows and a prosperous nation:

I have become increasingly fascinated by flood-plain meadows – an under-rated habitat which provides us with a wealth of benefits yet is one of our most threatened. One of my first jobs in nature conservation was to carry out a survey of unimproved meadows in Wiltshire, most of which lay in river floodplains. This showed me how rare they are: an astonishing 97% of our species-rich grasslands has been lost since the 1930s, mostly due to agricultural intensification. Now only around 1,200 ha of species-rich floodplain meadows remain in the whole of the UK. To read more click here

The Floodplain Meadows handbook can be downloaded from the website or you can buy a hard copy from Nature Bureau for just £12.50