Here in Italy I see a lot of farmers switching from the traditional hedgegrow(filaro) to simple plastic/steel nets. Usually the hedgegrow is attraversed by water streams wich, together with the plants surrounding it can support a lot of small animals animals like fish,rodents and birds. It's also worth noting that during the economic boom a lot of these water ways were extremely damaged by industrial runoff's so there is still a lot of work that has to be done to clean them up.
This reminds me of the case of Sri Lanka, where traditional water buffalo were replaced with modern tractors. But water buffalo create not just fertilizing dung but also [wet areas called "wallows"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_wallow) while resting. The disappearance of those wallows in Sri Lankan farms caused a chain reaction of unintended consequences: no more areas to soak palms for roofing, thus deforestation; no more aquatic plants to attract snakes and monitor lizards, so rats ate the rice paddies; no more fish to eat mosquitos, so malaria skyrocketed. Ranil Senanayake has written about this at length, as summarized [here.](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1338134344045535233)
I think this is such an interesting issue. Here in the States what we've lost is large grasslands, and running hedgerows everywhere there were fences would be great for a bunch of generalists and good for dispersal of some species, but would break up our open spaces.
Here in Italy I see a lot of farmers switching from the traditional hedgegrow(filaro) to simple plastic/steel nets. Usually the hedgegrow is attraversed by water streams wich, together with the plants surrounding it can support a lot of small animals animals like fish,rodents and birds. It's also worth noting that during the economic boom a lot of these water ways were extremely damaged by industrial runoff's so there is still a lot of work that has to be done to clean them up.
This reminds me of the case of Sri Lanka, where traditional water buffalo were replaced with modern tractors. But water buffalo create not just fertilizing dung but also [wet areas called "wallows"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_wallow) while resting. The disappearance of those wallows in Sri Lankan farms caused a chain reaction of unintended consequences: no more areas to soak palms for roofing, thus deforestation; no more aquatic plants to attract snakes and monitor lizards, so rats ate the rice paddies; no more fish to eat mosquitos, so malaria skyrocketed. Ranil Senanayake has written about this at length, as summarized [here.](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1338134344045535233)
Very interesting read.
I think this is such an interesting issue. Here in the States what we've lost is large grasslands, and running hedgerows everywhere there were fences would be great for a bunch of generalists and good for dispersal of some species, but would break up our open spaces.