Wolves Dogs and Sheep

Where’s the wolf Fido?

By User:Squigman (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I used to be quite good at statistics, but that was a very long time ago. Now I marvel at my colleagues at Footprint Ecology, who painlessly manipulate huge datasets, often with complex spatial elements to them.

But here are some simple statistics that I can get my head around, from the June Agricultural Census . There are 32 million sheep and lambs in the UK. This is a staggering figure – but what is even more amazing (to me anyway) is that the UK has the largest number of sheep in the EU – by quite a long way. Next biggest sheep producer is Spain then the rest are way behind (2o1o figures).

Nearly 100,000ha of “sole right rough grazing”, that is mostly upland grazings of heathland and acid grassland, has disappeared from the statistics in…