>On a bright fall day in England, near the town of Peterborough, I make my way to a postage stamp of forest on the edge of a regional highway. All around are plowed fields, some with corn still standing.
>But I, with the A47 highway’s traffic humming some 300 feet off, am standing next to a 500-acre patch of ancient woodland. In England, this is [a designation for places](https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/habitats/ancient-woodland/) that have been wooded continuously since at least 1600, when records begin to be available. This doesn’t mean that the trees themselves—the oak, the ash, the hazel—are old. They may be fairly young, because woodlands have a long tradition of human use: The trees in the Bedford Purlieus Wood have been cut and regrown many times in the course of its existence. What remains intact, however, is the diversity of species. In the undergrowth and the soil, a phenomenally rich stew of plant and other life lives. And I am here today because the bleeding edge of biodiversity conservation has just arrived in a little white hatchback.
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>On a bright fall day in England, near the town of Peterborough, I make my way to a postage stamp of forest on the edge of a regional highway. All around are plowed fields, some with corn still standing.
>But I, with the A47 highway’s traffic humming some 300 feet off, am standing next to a 500-acre patch of ancient woodland. In England, this is [a designation for places](https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/habitats/ancient-woodland/) that have been wooded continuously since at least 1600, when records begin to be available. This doesn’t mean that the trees themselves—the oak, the ash, the hazel—are old. They may be fairly young, because woodlands have a long tradition of human use: The trees in the Bedford Purlieus Wood have been cut and regrown many times in the course of its existence. What remains intact, however, is the diversity of species. In the undergrowth and the soil, a phenomenally rich stew of plant and other life lives. And I am here today because the bleeding edge of biodiversity conservation has just arrived in a little white hatchback.
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