Once this prospect would have been regarded as hideous. Desolate. A desert, that is to say, deserted by humankind. An affront to civilisation: a grim reminder of all the terrible things that nature can do. This was a sinister place, full of dark meanings, all of them threatening to human vanity. If I had been writing for The Daily Universal Register, the newspaper that changed its name to The Times, in 1785, I would no doubt have hated this place and all that was in it.

But in 2007, I go there out of love. I paid a trip to Hickling Broad in Norfolk, and it is, indeed, as desolate a place as you can find in lowland Britain. It is kept that way by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, and it is one of the nation’s great treasures. It is beautifully, expertly managed for its desolation.

Dark, open water; reedbeds in which reedcutters still pursue their ancient craft; grazing marshes on which tough-minded ponies make their wild living. And sky: plenty of that, generous and alarming quantities of that. Here a raised bank counts as a considerable eminence, one that commands views for miles; and not a building in sight. It is a fierce and comfortless vista.

I stood on this bank for a couple of hours and savoured every nuance of what an 18th-century writer would have shuddered at. And every large bird I saw was a marsh harrier — triumphant, nonchalant aeronaut, once reduced in this country to a single nesting pair: a bird, and a thought, I never tire of. At Hickling, they can be seen in prodigious numbers: an ancient sight remade. At dusk, they come in to roost, cruising in, wings in a high dihedral, an easy, airy glide, an effortless stall-turn as they stop and spin around on one wing-tip before gliding on.

These birds, once reviled and persecuted, are now cherished. This landscape, once hated, is now loved. What was once shunned or shot is now sought after. We no longer fear the wild as much as our 18th-century ancestors; rather, in the 21st century, it is more appropriate to fear for the wild. The wild places: we need them more than ever, not just for the sake of the harriers, but for our own wild selves. Our perspective has changed: the more we destroy, the more we value what is left. Where would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Bunnies are one of the perennial problems of country life; and that is certainly true for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust. Yesterday, it was setting about constructing long lines of rabbit fencing — to keep the damn things in. This is another place of glorious desolation: but at Weeting Heath, on the opposite side of the county, they specialise in dry and wildness, rather than wet.

The cruel open spaces of the Brecks were created by deforesting Stone Age farmers and are maintained by the constant nibbling of the rabbits that were introduced to this country a mere millennium back. And it is home for stone curlews, one of the more freakish birds you will find in this country: a goggle-eyed plover with a taste for blasted heaths.

Humans created the open spaces these birds crave: and the rabbits keep it open. But like us all, the rabbits have a yen for an easier life if they can find it, and they are leaving Weeting Heath wherever they can find a way. It would be disaster for the stone curlews if they arrived in the high spring to find their open space high and fecund with vegetation. And so we have a sweet paradox of conservation: rabbit fences to keep the rabbits in. Without the pests, the rare and funky migrant would be no more. Meanwhile, the cleaning up goes on after the oil spill from the Napoli, with 28 sites of special scientific interest under threat from pollution. Who pays? You and me. You think the polluter pays? Fat chance: that would be bad for business.

Who cares about the environment anyway? The Environment Liability Directive, which comes into force across the EU this April, was conceived for exactly this sort of thing. Its initial intentions were to force polluters, such as the owners of the Napoli, to cough up. But in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the legislation has gone through so many bits of discussion and consultation — each one of which has weakened and watered down the original intentions — that most polluters will still escape any requirement to pay when they bugger up the environment.

I have a special interest here, because I happen to live in the environment. Part of the persecuted majority.

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