This is the untold story of the hidden deserts of Europe. Scattered across the lowlands of this green subcontinent, these sandy and infertile wildernesses are ‘cold deserts’. In existence for millennia and formerly much more extensive, they present arid landscapes profoundly different from their surroundings and offer refuge for scarce flora and fauna with nowhere else to go. Fascinating and often magical, such places provide a rare glimpse of our planet in the raw, where extreme environmental conditions are the norm.
Few recognise or value Europe’s deserts as the precious and threatened relict ecosystems that they are. Unknown, uninhabited and seldom regarded as places of beauty, our knowledge of their origins and the roles that these ‘wastelands’ once played in economies and societies is remarkably scant. Frequently poverty-stricken regions, many had reputations as undesirable and even dangerous places. Despite this, they have held a particular place in the human imagination, inspiring artists, writers and poets, including Shakespeare. Nonetheless, vast expanses of these unique habitats have been ‘reclaimed’ for farming, forestry and urban development.
Chapters explore remote tracts in Spain, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Romania, Germany, Poland and Iceland. Such heathlands and badlands are islands of biodiversity on a highly developed subcontinent, where specialised wildlife including the Great Bustard and Stone-curlew, the Adder and Large Blue butterfly, Juniper and Grey Hair-grass all flourish. Accessible, provocative and richly illustrated, this groundbreaking book will transform ideas about these landscapes. An essential volume for anyone interested in nature recovery and rewilding.
2. Then another section on this page. Add a new title maybe half way down - ‘From the book European Deserts’. Book excerpts texts are below:
‘KOOTWIJKERZAND, THE NETHERLANDS (chapter 3) - Nothing had prepared me for my first sight of Kootwijkerzand. As I burst out from the trees into the mid-afternoon sunlight, an intensely bright vista of sand drifts opened up before me. Sweeping expanses of pure sand ran to the far horizon. Bare, bare sand, interrupted only occasionally by isolated dunes, the odd gnarled, superannuated Scots Pine, a few scraggy bushes, patches of purple heather and dribs and drabs of desiccated grasses seemingly huddled together for survival. Now this was a desert, at 700 ha western Europe’s largest active inland drift sand landscape. It really felt like the naked planet. Something like the Sahara…’
‘PUSTYNIA BŁĘDOWSKA: THE POLISH SAHARA (chapter 5) - Dry dry dry. There was absolutely no water, or water features. How do the few higher plant species able to survive here manage to obtain water reliably on these bitingly arid and low-nutrient sands? Sand is more normally associated with low altitudes but here a huge pile of the stuff rises to an uncharacteristic Dutch altitude of 110 m, the highest point in the central Netherlands. With such a dominance of sand, Kootwijkerzand felt more like a coastal than a terrestrial inland environment. But of course this was a misperception, for the tract lies inland, 100 km from the nearest sea coast!’
‘From the book European Deserts’. Book excerpts texts are below:
‘KOOTWIJKERZAND, THE NETHERLANDS (chapter 3) - Nothing had prepared me for my first sight of Kootwijkerzand. As I burst out from the trees into the mid-afternoon sunlight, an intensely bright vista of sand drifts opened up before me. Sweeping expanses of pure sand ran to the far horizon. Bare, bare sand, interrupted only occasionally by isolated dunes, the odd gnarled, superannuated Scots Pine, a few scraggy bushes, patches of purple heather and dribs and drabs of desiccated grasses seemingly huddled together for survival. Now this was a desert, at 700 ha western Europe’s largest active inland drift sand landscape. It really felt like the naked planet. Something like the Sahara…’
‘PUSTYNIA BŁĘDOWSKA: THE POLISH SAHARA (chapter 5) - Dry dry dry. There was absolutely no water, or water features. How do the few higher plant species able to survive here manage to obtain water reliably on these bitingly arid and low-nutrient sands? Sand is more normally associated with low altitudes but here a huge pile of the stuff rises to an uncharacteristic Dutch altitude of 110 m, the highest point in the central Netherlands. With such a dominance of sand, Kootwijkerzand felt more like a coastal than a terrestrial inland environment. But of course this was a misperception, for the tract lies inland, 100 km from the nearest sea coast!’
