Chalk Downs

Eric L. Jones ()
Additional contact information
Eric L. Jones: University of Buckingham

Chapter Chapter 5 in Landscape History and Rural Society in Southern England, 2021, pp 47-58 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The character of the landscape is extremely contingent; agricultural use fluctuates in the long-run according to price regime. Observations of apparently ancient chalk grassland, such as Danebury Down in Hampshire, illustrate the point. This habitat was dynamic, not fixed and ‘original’ in the way conservationists supposed. Chalk downs still unploughed in the 1950s were the residue of the decline of nineteenth-century sheep husbandry (this is described), coupled with the shock of the myxomatosis epidemic which almost eliminated rabbit grazing. The choice of landscape facets to conserve depends not on science but on value judgements about preferences for the wildlife of either grassland or arable environments

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-030-68616-1_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783030686161

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-68616-1_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Economic History from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().