In the midst of relentless news about the serious decline of Britain’s farmland bird species and bee populations, it’s encouraging to hear about a supermarket that is actively working to provide wildlife habitat on its own farms. The supermarket is, of course, The Co-operative – the UK’s largest mutual business, owned not by shareholders but by its 6 million members – and since most of us use supermarkets on a regular basis, it’s good to know that at least one is working with Nature, not against it.
The Co-op’s new ‘Habitat Heroes’ venture has been established on six of its farms (the Co-op is also the UK’s biggest farming organisation, with 50,000 acres), providing owl nesting boxes, an artificial otter holt, bee corridors, wild-flower meadows, bat boxes and water-vole protection (whereby the farm manager staggers ditch clearance to allow the voles time to reproduce).
Sourcing groceries from a company that conserves Nature in this way can surely assuage a little of our ‘supermarket guilt’?
