As the rain falls outside my window, it is hard to credit that much of Britain faces a shortage of water. Lying off the west coast of mainland Europe in the path of prevailing south-westerly winds heavy with rain, geography has done everything it can to ensure a plentiful supply of the wet stuff. It is what we do with it that counts; not least the efficiency with which our management of the uplands in particular has removed all obstacles to rapid drainage, including natural vegetation. Financial incentives have encouraged farmers to get the rain to leave the land as quickly as it came. The unintended ecological effects of European agricultural policy have truly bitten us from behind.

 

The disappearance of great swathes of the upland sponge which is typified by heathers and bog mosses not only threatens houses built in flood plains. A sudden spate of acid water can wipe out fish stocks in rivers. These episodes can undo all the good work than is being done to bring wonderful rivers like the Wye and Usk to health. Two articles examine Wales’ vulnerability to acid deposition, and what is being done to tackle the problems.

 

When moorland and other open habitats decline, we encounter their associated wildlife less often. This includes members of one of the most charismatic groups of moths, the Tiger Moths, which are profiled here. This may also be true of that most attractive of mammals, the water vole, which is also featured. Who would have thought that the watery uplands may have provided a stronghold in the past from which water voles were able to colonise newly created lowland habitat?

 

Thankfully, water is still an abundant resource in Wales, providing both pleasure and prosperity. There are enough good stories about freshwater habitats to fill the magazine several times over. There is also the sensitive issue of who does water belong to, with the ghost of Treweryn, flooded to supply Liverpool with water, in the background.

 

If any issue has helped to focus minds on the way in which resources lie at the heart of the power contest that is politics, it is the conflict in Iraq. Few people can be innocent enough to think that oil, and America’s insatiable appetite for the black gold, has nothing to do with it.

 

All nations want to acquire resources for the benefit of their citizens. But we need to look beyond competition between nations for the consumption of resources. Our fragile biosphere is already trembling under the strain of growth at any cost policies. As Morgan Parry points out in this issue, it is not much good claiming a clean bill of health for our environmental performance here in Wales, if we are exploiting natural resources and communities beyond our shores.

 

James Robertson