There's no Glastonbury festival next year and this is why

Glastonbury festival has come to a close after almost a week of music, food and arts. This year, thousands made their annual musical pilgramage to Worthy Farm for the event, which has become one of the world's most popular music festivals. 

But the effect the sell out festival has on the land surrounding it is phenomenal. Teams of volunteers will be working hard over the next few days to clean the site of all litter, left over tents and discarded sleeping bags. In a tweet, festival organiser Emily Eavis has pleaded with festival goers to make sure they take all their possessions home with them. 

It takes a huge team of volunteers to clean up the site after the festival has finished. Structures like the Pyramid stage need to be taken down too, it's a huge task! 

So why no Glasto in 2018? 

It's all to do with allowing the land to rest, to recuperate and to not become totally destroyed by being over "worked". As hundreds of thousands of feet descend on the campsites and stage areas, they leave more than footprint. The practice is known as holding a "fallow year", which allows the land, and the wildlife living on it to succeed and thrive without human interference. You may have seen this in countryside near you, where farmers leave fields empty of crops so that they don't become totally wiped out of nutrients. 

What else benefits from a fallow year?

Wildlife is a big winner from fallow years. Set in beautiful Somerset countryside, Worthy Farm is reportedly home to squirrels, bats, jays, woodpeckers, blackbirds, woodmice, dormice, rabbits, foxes, millipedes, centipedes, butterflies, beetles, wasps, ants and owls, according to the official Glastonbury website. Allowing the festival site to have a "fallow year" means that these species can breed and thrive in an atmosphere that isn't affected by human beings. For now, the view from Glastonbury Tor will remain just as natural as it ever is.