Comment: Priced out of paradise- land prices and wildlife
Peter Smith
Pages 321-328
Imagine you work for a wildlife trust. You have spent three years negotiating to buy a 20ha marsh in the Midlands, a place with good populations of Water Vole Arvicola amphibius, a breeding pair of Marsh Harriers Circus aeruginosus, and the kind of reedbed that most counties have been trying to recreate from scratch for decades. The farmer who owns it is sympathetic.
Following the publication of the Land Use Framework for England in March 2026, Peter Smith argues that the UK Government’s approach could actually worsen the perverse incentives to misuse land by ignoring the underlying financial drivers.
Comment: Priced out of paradise- land prices and wildlife
Imagine you work for a wildlife trust. You have spent three years negotiating to buy a 20ha marsh in the Midlands, a place with good populations of Water Vole Arvicola amphibius, a breeding pair of Marsh Harriers Circus aeruginosus, and the kind of reedbed that most counties have been trying to recreate from scratch for decades. The farmer who owns it is sympathetic.
Following the publication of the Land Use Framework for England in March 2026, Peter Smith argues that the UK Government’s approach could actually worsen the perverse incentives to misuse land by ignoring the underlying financial drivers.