The 30-metre ridge runs across the moor near Yar Tor on Dartmoor, one of several faint lines that crisscross the land like aeroplane contrails. Although the open moorland looks wild, we are standing on some of the UK’s oldest farmland. These ridges, called reaves, are the ghosts of farming’s most wildlife-rich legacy: hedges.
“These reaves sadly have no function today other than to delight us. Or some of us,” says ecologist Rob Wolton. But Dartmoor’s reaves are the skeletons upon which more recent hedges were built: hundreds of thousands of miles of them. After Ireland, the UK is believed to be the most hedge-dense country in the world, and Wolton says the majority of them are more than 280 years old. Recent laser scanning shows England has enough hedges to wrap around the world almost 10 times. They are, by far, the country’s biggest nature reserve, which is why community groups, farmers and charities are rallying together to plant hedges of the future that will offer the same support to wildlife as the ancient hedges of the past.
