4 May 1968 An adjunct of the New World settled in almost modem times, man’s relationship with the land is still in its infancy

In Europe landscapes are usually the joint works of Nature and mankind. Even the massive Alps are Nature’s frame for man’s fir-forested slopes, chalet-hung green valleys, and white painted churches. A typical example of this partnership is in Gloucestershire, where the wooded scarp slopes of the Cotswolds divide the upland landscape of sheep, arable, and stone country, breezy golden-walled acres crowned by trees, from the fertile vales of Evesham and Berkeley.

Visiting the Falkland Islands 25 years after the war Read more

In the Falklands, an adjunct of the New World settled in almost modem times, man’s relationship with the land is still in its infancy. The first settlement at Port Louis, was as recent as 1784. As a result of this short history, Falkland landscapes rarely show the evidence of man in harmony with Nature. Some of the first stone-built buildings like Scottish cottages do fit well into the open moorland surroundings or would do but for the modern defiant bulk of wooden and metal sheeted houses built around them. Gorse hedges and smaller paddocks around most settlements give an illusion of control, emphasised by the unusual greenness of the grass.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rusting buildings clad in corrugated iron, Goose Green, east Falklands. Photograph: Martin Argles/The Guardian

Away from the settlements the “camp” is yellow grass or brown sedge, broken by darker patches of heather-like “diddle-dee” and splashed with sky-reflecting lakes and ponds. Six-strand Patagonian sheepfence marches tautly for miles enclosing “camps” as large as parishes in sharp-cornered units. As sheep grazing is the almost universal land-use, land on either side of any fence is indistinguishable unless there is some variation in the intensity of stocking. Other significant landscape features caused by man (as an overstaker of grazing land) are erosion patches of bare clay on hill sides or shores, which can spread to turn acres of land into a miniature desert. In the Falklands, man is still largely an intruder.