In June 2011 I took a long drive up the A1, the Great North Road. At Scotch Corner I turned for Barnard Castle. The villages were well kept, the countryside was green, the fields dotted with sheep. Everything was normal. Or so I thought.

Beyond Barnard Castle I took a narrow lane into part of Upper Teesdale and suddenly colours exploded along the roadside. I stopped the car and jumped out. There was a bed of orchids, hundreds of them, and behind that, billowing banks of violet, scarlet, white, yellow and cornflower blue. I had seen alpine meadows, but this took my breath away. Further into the dale I found a footpath that led me down beside a shady brook. There were more orchids of a different species and a grass snake hunting frogs in a pool. Out in the open again, there was the haunting cry of curlews overhead, then redshanks, plovers and snipe.

I spent two days up there, talking to environmentalists and farmers involved in the upland hay meadow project for the North Pennines area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB). The landowners were being paid to restrict the use of fertiliser, not employ herbicides, and stop grazing after mid-May. Together with some seeding programmes and careful monitoring, the meadows had become magnificent.

When I drove back home, I came down to a countryside where the only flowers were dandelions, watched over by crows. The monotonous green of the rye grass was unbroken. Compared to what I had just experienced, it felt like a desert. I felt cheated. My entire adult life had been spent admiring a shoddy and simplified reproduction, a poor impersonation of a much-loved friend.

Disappearing ... water voles are no longer found in 94% of the places they once inhabited. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

That evening I sat up late reading. I had recently discovered the American farmer and poet Wendell Berry. “The face of the country is everywhere marked by the agony of our enterprise of self-destruction.” I found myself staring at the lamp. All evening, despite the windows and doors being wide open, there had been nothing flying around the light. In my city, in midsummer, and close to a large riverside park, there were no moths at all.

Seven years on, the statistics for the British countryside are heartbreaking. Over a quarter of all British birds are under threat, eight species are almost extinct. Three-quarters of all flying insects have disappeared since 1945, including a staggering 60 different moths. Orchid ranges have shrunk by half; two species are gone. The State of Nature 2016 report described Britain as being “among the most nature-depleted countries in the world”.

A combined effort by more than 50 nature conservation and research organisations, the report went on to reveal that 40% of all species are in moderate or steep decline. Over a quarter of the hedgehog population has disappeared in a decade. Toads are down 68% in 30 years, water voles are no longer found in 94% of the places where they once lived. Likewise mountain hares are in steep decline, as are rabbits. Even that great survivor, the fox, has lost over 40% of its population. There are a few positive notes: the loss of hedgerows has largely stopped (about nine kilometres were being grubbed up every day until the mid-1990s) and the red kite is back, but the news is overwhelmingly bleak. Our countryside, the report concluded, needs radical action. And now, with Brexit looming, there is a sense that things must, and will, change. The question is: for better or worse?

Back in June 2017 journalists waiting for news of Theresa May’s cabinet reshuffle were surprised to see Michael Gove enter No 10. His failed leadership bid and public falling out with Boris Johnson appeared to have hamstrung his political career. By 7pm he was back, replacing Andrea Leadsom as environment secretary. The news was greeted with alarm by environmentalists. After all, this was a politician who had voted against action on climate change, against incentives for low carbon electricity generation, and against requirements for environmental permits to frack, but had favoured selling state forests, culling badgers and introducing high-speed rail. It seemed at least one British fox was alive, and now in charge of the hen house.

Hares have been particularly vulnerable to herbicides. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Within months Gove was taking decisive action, but not in ways anyone had predicted. In rapid succession came measures to ban the controversial neonicotinoid insecticides, introduce CCTV in abattoirs, strengthen animal cruelty laws, stop ivory sales and control the use of plastic microbeads. Even George Monbiot was astonished. “One by one, Michael Gove is saying the things I’ve waited years for an environment secretary to say.”

Then in January 2018 came A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment with bold targets on air and water quality, and protection for threatened plants and wildlife. The sheer scale and ambition is breathtaking: all sales of new conventional petrol and diesel engines to be stopped by 2040; an area the size of Norfolk to be made wildlife-rich habitat (500,000 hectares over and above existing protected sites); and 180,000 hectares of new forest. Gove has also now ordered a review of national parks, with a view to expanding on the 10 existing areas. This is revolutionary and, perhaps, too good to be true?

So I head back to Upper Teesdale, praying the hay meadows are as I remember them. I meet the AONB’s biodiversity lead officer Rebecca Barrett in the new visitor centre at Bowlees. All around us the woods are humming with life: wild garlic and bluebells are starting to bloom, despite the late arrival of spring. A woodpecker drums industriously near the car park, which has a good number of cars and campervans present – plus seven species of orchid near the picnic tables. “This area attracts botanists from all over the world,” says Barrett. “We’ve got an incredibly rare mixture of arctic and alpine species: things like spring gentians, teesdale violets and yellow marsh saxifrage.” As for birds, “We have loads of good bird walks to see waders, raptors and so on.” Any losses or extinctions? “Some historic ones, like the corncrake. They were very common here, but mechanised grass-cutting drove them out before anyone even thought about conservation. Now we’re really concerned about curlews: the UK population has halved in the last 16 years.”

Thistles in the North Pennines area of outstanding natural beauty. Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

The phone rings. A visitor wants to know if the spring gentians are out. “Try up at Cow Green reservoir,” she says. “You should find them.”

Are the meadows in good health? She pulls a face. “There are still a lot of flowers, but the sad fact is that they are declining. The potential is still there to reverse that trend, but they are definitely declining.”

A Natural England report from 2014 pointed the finger at the use of artifical fertilisers. Farmers like them as they can increase silage production, but the downside is that wildflowers cannot cope. So why not ban them? “We can’t fall out with the farmers,” Barrett says carefully. “They must be part of the solution.”

Other voices are less circumspect. The State of Nature 2016 report declares: “The intensification of agriculture has had the biggest impact on wildlife, and this has been overwhelmingly negative … farming has changed dramatically, with new technologies boosting yields often at the expense of nature.” Those new technologies include a formidable armoury of artificial fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and insecticides, all poured liberally over the British countryside since the second world war. On top of that are all the other industrial chemicals that find their way into the food chain.

The Green Future plan promises significant change on this. There are commitments to eliminate by 2025 the use of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs – used in sealants, coolants and paints), and five years later to achieve negligible emissions of persistent organic pollutants (Pops) – harmful chemicals that resist environmental degradation. Both types have been linked to serious environmental damage. The Pop lindane, for example, was first recognised as a lethal insecticide during the second world war. Subsequently, an estimated 600,000 tonnes were sprayed on crops worldwide before an EU ban in 2009. By then it had been connected with everything from human cancers to a drop in the otter population. Pops are thought to be responsible for the infertility of a killer whale that died by entanglement in fishing lines off Tiree in 2016, an infertility that has doomed to extinction the UK’s only resident orca pod.

‘The meadows are definitely declining’ ... AONB diversity officer Rebecca Barrett in Weardale. Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

In 2003 blood samples from 14 EU ministers were analysed, including one from Alun Michael MP, then minister of state for rural affairs and local environmental quality. All 14 were found to be contaminated with Pops, PCBs and flame retardants. No doubt the rest of us are also contaminated.

Another old favourite that refuses to go away is the herbicide paraquat, banned in Europe in 2007. The US Environmental Protection Agency describes it as “extremely biologically active and toxic to plants and animals”. Hares and small mammals are particularly sensitive. Spraying of potato fields in the UK often caused mass deaths of hares before the ban came in. Despite this, around 41,000 tonnes of paraquat are still manufactured annually by Syngenta in Huddersfield, all for export.

Understandably, the negative effects on humans have always been a priority for research into agricultural chemicals. Troublesome environmental consequences are usually a bit slower to emerge. After all, these are substances designed to kill things; it seems a little churlish to complain when they do precisely that. Currently, the most popular poison of all is Monsanto’s Roundup, a glyphosate herbicide that has been applied in staggering quantities: 8.6m tonnes, since its debut in 1974. Usage has only increased since Monsanto released glyphosate-tolerant crops in 1996. As of 2014, around a third of the world’s arable land had been sprayed with it.

In rural mid-Wales I ask a hill farmer (who prefers to remain anonymous) about his use of chemicals. “I use Roundup every two or three years,” he says. “It kills everything in a field, then we can start again and re-seed.”

‘Without chemicals it probably isn’t possible to grow crops on land like mine’ ... North Yorkshire farmer Hugo Hildyard Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

It is not only farmers. Roundup is found in the cupboards of most lawn-owners, allotment holders and anyone with a patio problem. Councils use it; so do schools. As such, you might imagine it is safe. But studies have shown it reduces the ecologically vital activity of earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris); while interfering with their reproductive success, it harms bee navigation, hits butterfly populations and severely affects amphibians. In a study at the University of Pittsburgh, Roundup was sprayed over tanks filled with tadpoles. Within 24 hours most were dead. In three weeks they all were. When adult frogs and toads were tested, they suffered catastrophic mortality rates. The concentrations of the herbicide used were those recommended by the manufacturer, Monsanto, which responded by saying the tests were not realistic. The World Health Organization has classified glyphosates as “probably carcinogenic to humans” although several international agencies, including the European Food Safety Authority, subsequently came to opposite conclusions. Monsanto insists glyphosate is safe.

In November 2017, an EU vote to re-licence glyphosates was narrowly passed. Britain voted in favour. In 2022, the next vote will probably go against, since Italy and France are lobbying hard for a ban. Britain’s commitment to a green future will then be truly tested. Our countryside has been drenched in legal poisons for over half a century, and not by the Russians.

Out near Malton in Yorkshire, I meet Hugo Hildyard, who farms 300 acres on heavy clay soils. He is doubtful that reliance on products such as Roundup can be broken. “Without chemicals it probably isn’t possible to grow crops on land like mine. Done naturally, the land might support a few cows and sheep, but that wouldn’t be economic. What wildlife likes is no interference. I’ve got a marshy patch where curlews nest. If I ploughed it up and drained it, I could plant crops there and get agricultural payments. It’s the improvement of land for production that harms wildlife.” He has been farming for 40 years and thinks the countryside is in relatively good shape. “The chemicals we used years ago were worse, so the land has benefited from the EU bans.” Data backs that up. Defra records show pesticide poisoning of UK wildlife almost halved in the last 20 years of the 20th century.

Grounds for hope? Hildyard has mixed feelings. He remains sceptical that Gove’s 25-year goals can be achieved, or even that the government has the heart to deliver. “Around me landowners are being bullied into allowing fracking, which is largely to produce gas that makes plastics – not for cooking or heating homes. It’s hard to see how that is consistent with a green future.” Likewise he is scornful of British agriculture competing against giants like Brazil, Argentina and the US, where farms are bigger, with less rigorous controls on chemicals.

‘Turtle doves are facing extinction in the UK’ ... ornithologist Richard Baines on the cliffs near Whitby. Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

The Welsh hill farmer goes further: “The EU has been good for British farmers, not our own government.” He leans on the bonnet of his 20-year-old Land Rover. He hasn’t had a holiday since 1987. This year the cold spring has delayed grass growth, causing major headaches. “It’s like this,” he says. “If British farming was a fighter in a boxing ring, the government would blindfold him and pull down his shorts, celebrities and experts would kick him in the nuts and pressure groups would beat him with sticks. Meanwhile the public would be in the best seats – they didn’t pay much for them – complaining that their fighter isn’t any good.” He chuckles. “That’s me on a bad day. On a good day I still enjoy farming.”

There are plenty of factors outside agriculture that are significant in the decline of the countryside. On the cliffs near Whitby, I find ornithologist Richard Baines from Yorkshire Coast Nature, spotting birds faster than I can see them, often by the calls alone. “There’s a short-eared owl – it will have flown in from Scandinavia.” Baines is working with a turtle dove conservation programme. “They are facing extinction in the UK and a big part of the reason is illegal hunting on the flyway, the migratory route.” Turtle doves winter in Mali and their 11,000km round trip passes through southern Europe where hunting is illegal, but common. “ We think 2.1m birds are lost every year.”

Not all migrants are welcome. Walking the South Downs Way near Petworth recently, consultant entomologist Richard Baker spotted many unhealthy looking ash trees. “It was ash dieback,” he tells me, “A fungus, probably blown in on the wind, or brought in with imported trees.” Our wild and cultivated plants are threatened by numerous pests and pathogens from overseas. “There’s an Asian beetle called an emerald ash borer that is devastating Russia and the US,” Baker says. “Unless we’re vigilant, that could get in.” It is worth remembering that invasive species like Japanese knotweed, black grass and bracken can often only be fought with chemical assistance.

‘We diversified to stay in business’ ... Karen Scott and lamb on her Low Way farm in Teesdale Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

All this gives an idea of the immense challenges, both biological and political. Sarah Lee, head of policy at the Countryside Alliance, supports Gove’s 25-year plan, but warns: “It is vital that delivery involves working with rural communities, not imposing solutions on them.”

Despite all the bold talk, budget cuts to the organisation that has to deliver on many of these challenges, Natural England, have been severe: 27% by 2020. In the fours years up to 2014 it shed one-fifth of its staff. Already there are signs that its ability to fight the corner for wildlife has been compromised. In March 2018 a Lords select committee reported that Natural England “struggled to perform all its key functions”.

Do they believe in the Green Futures plan? Many I speak to think it radically ambitious, even improbable, but it was already galvanising people into action. Back in Upper Teesdale, I go with Barrett to meet a farmer at the sharp end: Karen Scott at Low Way farm near one of England’s highest waterfalls, High Force. “The rule is that we must remove our sheep from the pastures by 14 May,” she says. “Then the wildflowers can grow. We’ve done it for 30 years.”

An oystercatcher speeds overhead while Scott shows me her bunkhouse and cafe near the river. “We diversified to stay in business.” She is anxious about changes that are coming for environmental schemes. “Payments are delayed, inspections rare, the paperwork gets longer. I had three sleepless nights doing the forms last time.”

A little hope ... the corncrake. Photograph: Andy Hay/RSPB/PA

Barrett wants it all to switch to a results-based system where farmers are rewarded for environmental excellence. Scott agrees. “Definitely, but locally-tailored. Every farm is different.” Like the Welsh farmer, there is a sense of impatience with bureaucracy and time not spent out on the land. Barrett is hopeful, however. “We’ve just started a project right across the northern Pennines to encourage low intensity farming and wildlife. It could transform the way a lot of farmers work.”

The idea is popular in government too. There’s a recognition that a topography of small, well-protected oases of wildlife within a desert of intensive farming has failed to stem the general decline. Now cooperation and wider participation are the watchwords. There are plans within Natural England for the 224 underused national nature reserves to develop connections deep into surrounding land, spreading biodiversity. The idea is supported by the Countryside Landowners Association whose 2016 report talks about developing “natural capital” and claims that 52% of landowners have already invested in improvements like wildflower meadows, wetlands and woodlands.

There is certainly a lot of goodwill and hard work going into the countryside by many people who care deeply about it. Are there reasons to be optimistic? Baines thinks so. “Co-operation between organisations and groups has never been better – right across deep divisions. I’ve seen Israeli and Palestinian ornithologists working together to solve the illegal shooting problem.”

Hildyard is more cautious. “I’d join a wildlife-enriched scheme, but it has to be financially supported, and not too bureaucratic.” Baker points to successes. “A colony of the Asian longhorn beetle was found in Kent in 2012, but we identified and eradicated it. That’s impressive.” In the State of Nature 2016 report, David Attenborough declared that, “Landscapes are being restored, special places defended, and struggling species are being saved and brought back.”

One day this spring, I had my own cause for optimism. The corncrake, a bird that was once widespread and common, now teeters on the brink of British extinction. But on a cold and blustery day on the Hebridean island of Iona, I sat beside a small patch of long grass just behind the island’s small fire station and heard its distinctive rasping snore of a call. The sound was confident, even assertive. For the moment, like the British countryside, the corncrake is hanging in there.