Nature Conservation

English Nature nurtured more constructive relations with its paymasters. In 1992 it was given an extra million pounds for restoring peatlands and to speed up the designation of EU Special Protection Areas for birds. The National Audit Office in 1994, and the Commons Public Accounts Committee in 1995, made critical comments about some aspects of its business, but on the whole supported EN’s strategic approach to its tasks and wholehearted use of business language. EN endured a lean year in 1996, but fought off a further cut the year after. The incoming Labour Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review increased EN’s grant-in-aid by 16 per cent to £44.6 million, followed by another generous increase in 1998, coinciding with the appointment of Barbara Young as chairman.

Scottish Natural Heritage has had to tread carefully. The generous settlement it received in 1992 was tempered by an awareness that its every move was being shadowed by the Scottish Office, which expected SNH to be a ‘people-friendly’ body and avoid the controversies of the recent past. That it was as vulnerable as CCW to hostile trimming measures became clear in 1995, when the Scottish Secretary Ian Lang decided to carry out the dreaded ‘high level review’. He was purportedly concerned about SNH’s involvement in wider issues like agriculture and transport, and looked down his nose at the £800,000 it had spent fighting the proposed super-quarry at Lingerbay on Harris. His successor, Michael Forsyth, was similarly put out when he learned that SNH had spent £1.8 million buying out the peat-cutting rights at Flanders Moss, which, to make matters worse, lay in his own constituency (in his view, that sort of public money should be spent on schools and hospitals). Like Redwood, Lang wanted SNH to concentrate on its core activities and to trim what he saw as peripheral matters, such as public access to the countryside. But even if it had, the savings would have been insignificant. At the end of 1996, in which its budget had been cut by 10 per cent, SNH published its answer in Natural Priorities. This was a fairly defiant restatement of SNH’s responsibilities over a broad range of heritage issues, and even hinted that it could do with a bit more co-operation from the all-powerful Scottish Office’s environment, agriculture and fisheries departments. But the net was tightening. In 1998, chief executive Roger Crofts estimated that SNH’s spending power had fallen by nearly a third since its establishment in 1992.

The publication of the Scottish Executive’s 2001 policy statement, The Nature of Scotland, made it clear that Government intends to involve itself directly in the detail as well as the broad thrust of nature conservation north of the border. Increasingly, SNH and its sisters in England and Wales are becoming processing instruments, responsible for implementing legislation and as a conduit for government grants, but of diminishing importance as policy makers. By 2001, the dynamic of nature conservation was definitely moving from the state to the voluntary sector. In all the major recent events in nature conservation – biodiversity, the ‘CROW’ bill, SAC designation, devolution – the agencies have been either bystanders or supine instruments of government policy. This, some would say, is what comes of replacing scientists with bureaucrats. All the same, I think the agencies could win back some of the respect and influence that their predecessor, the NCC, enjoyed, if they showed more leadership, concentrated on outcomes rather than outputs, and spoke up fearlessly for the natural world. Or maybe I am just misreading the runes, and that it is the fate of the nature conservation world to complete the circle, back to the charities and pressure groups that nurtured it.

3 The Voluntary Army

This chapter is about the private sector of nature conservation, the voluntary nature conservation bodies – who they are and what they do. Perhaps few countries in the world have as many charities, trusts and associations active in the same broad field as Britain. Wildlife and Countryside Link, the forum where many of them meet and share ideas, serves 34 national bodies and many more local ones, varying from special-interest trusts (butterflies, reptiles, sharks) to international pressure groups (Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth) and world-famous charities (WWF, RSPB, National Trust). Every county in England and Wales has its own wildlife trust (Scotland and some of the smaller counties have federated trusts). Learned societies with small but enthusiastic memberships exist for practically every animal, plant or mineral that occurs in Britain: for example, water-beetles (the Balfour-Brown Club), microscopy (Quekett Microscopical Club), seaweeds (British Phycological Society) and molluscs (Conchological Society of Britain and Ireland). Hedgehogs, sharks and bats have their own societies. There is even a group busily recording the distribution of nematode worms. Some special-interest bodies have recently become active in nature conservation; for example, the venerable British Mycological Society (fungi) now has a part-time conservation officer, responsible for biodiversity projects and compiling a red data list.

In their glorious diversity, ranging from the National Trust to small groups that meet once a year to dine and reminisce, finding an adequate name to cover everyone is problematical. Government refers to them with statist disdain as non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Some prefer the term voluntary bodies, but this too, seems somewhat vague and reductionist (what is the alternative to a voluntary body – a compulsory body?). Besides, a voluntary body such as the RSPB has a membership larger than any political party and, if it is voluntary, it is every bit as professional as its official counterparts. Voluntary bodies now campaign successfully for new legislation and assist the Government in its statutory responsibilities, such as maintaining biodiversity. Perhaps the fact that they defy easy labelling says much about nature conservation in practice. Conservation is not, though it is sometimes portrayed as such, a homogeneous mass movement, working to a common programme. Although the ‘vol. bods’ do often pool their resources, as in the campaign to preserve peatlands, they have separate aims, and different sorts of members, ranging from committed activists to folk who simply enjoy wandering in pleasant countryside. They are united by a common interest in nature conservation, but that does not make them the same.

The influence of the voluntary bodies in the 1990s owed nearly everything to their mass memberships – no modern political party can afford to ignore a body with a million members. Their social base has obviously broadened. Nature conservation used to be caricatured as a concern of the urban middle classes, and there is still some truth in that. However, a membership survey of the RSPB in 1982 suggested that a large proportion were in technical and clerical occupations, while 14 per cent were unskilled manual workers (Smout 2000). Today, perhaps one in ten people are members of an environmental pressure group of some sort. Many, of course, are members of more than one. Young people tend to gravitate towards environmental campaigning bodies, such as Greenpeace, where there are opportunities to join in the action. They think they can change the world. County trusts are traditionally the home base of older, reasonably well-off people, interested in wildlife and worried about the effect of developments on the local countryside. They think we are doing well if we manage to save just the best bits of our backyard.

The phenomenal growth of the voluntary bodies is very recent. In 1960, the RSPB had only 10,000 members, not many more than it had in 1945. Membership increased in the 1960s and 1970s, but really took off in the 1980s, when events propelled nature conservation from the hobby of a few to a mainstream issue. With power has come controversy. The assertiveness of some pressure groups has exhumed the old accusation of urban-based sentimentalists imposing their will on genuine countrymen; it is the raison d’être of the Countryside Alliance. There are also contrasts between places where conservation bodies are strong and others where they are weak. Donald MacKay (1995) observed that ‘the more south-east England become agitated over conservation issues in Scotland, the stronger became the Scottish anti-conservation lobby, and the harder it became to recruit to the Scottish conservation cause’. It was not that the Scots man or woman was less keen on nature, but that they were Scots first, and wanted to do things in their own way. They now have their chance. Paradoxically, all this growth has not led to more field study or better-informed naturalists. Although birdwatching is more popular than ever, the expert amateur naturalist, and especially the all-rounder, is becoming an endangered species. Specialists in less popular groups belong to a small and ageing population. Love of wildlife is expressed differently in 2000 than it was in 1900. It has become less ‘hands-on’ (naturalists used to collect their subject), less based on knowledge-seeking, more of a personal lifestyle choice, more of a fashionable cause and less of a hobby.

For ease of reference, in what follows, I treat the main voluntary bodies one by one. For reasons of space I omit bodies whose interests are not primarily in the conservation of wildlife, such as the Ramblers Association and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE), natural allies though they often are. Similarly, I have to exclude learned societies and clubs, such as the Ray Society, whose main interest lies in promoting field study and the advancement of science. Even so the number of players, each with a different focus or stance, is considerable, and perhaps baffling to some. Possibly if one started again with a clean slate, there would be far fewer ‘vol. bods’. But today’s ‘conservationists’ have a large range to choose from and can pick and mix. In this account of their background and activities, I emphasise the role of the county wildlife trusts, the one body that every naturalist should join, since they cater for what should matter most to most of us – the flora and fauna on our doorsteps.

The Big Three

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)

Britain’s (and Europe’s) largest wildlife and conservation society was formed in 1891 and acquired its Royal Charter in 1904. However, the RSPB’s mass popularity and power are relatively recent. It broke the 100,000 tape only in 1972, but in the 1980s its growth was meteoric, reaching half a million members in 1989 and one million by 1997. The RSPB ‘works for a healthy environment rich in birds and wildlife’. It has good things to offer to its million members: free access to most of its 140 nature reserves and an excellent quarterly magazine, Birds. The RSPB has a grand UK office at Sandy Lodge, Beds, and separate headquarters in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as nine regional offices. It employs around 1,000 full, part-time and contract staff; its network of nature reserves throughout the UK covers some 111,500 hectares and receives over a million visitors a year. With in-house science expertise, RSPB investigates the impact of human activity on birds, as well as the needs of threatened species both at home and overseas. It has acquired matchless skill in presenting the conservation case, and in detecting and admonishing failures of policy. It has also successfully mounted legal challenges over conservation designations, and deals with an average of 350 planning cases per year. With birdwatching a popular hobby on both the Government and Opposition front benches, British birds receive far more sympathetic attention than any other forms of wildlife. The RSPB has been criticised in some quarters as exercising too much power; for example, in buying up a lot of land in Orkney or the Hebrides, where it is seen by some as an inappropriate outside influence. Gamekeepers have also fallen out with RSPB over raptors.

From the start, RSPB has been active in education, with special clubs for children (the Young Ornithologists’ Club, recently renamed ‘Wildlife Explorers’, magazine Bird Life) and teenagers (‘RSPB Phoenix’, magazine Wingboat). It claims to have helped make the national curriculum more wildlife-conscious (though it would help to have more teachers who know their natural history). Internationally, RSPB represents the UK on Birdlife International, and contributes to bird protection overseas (for example, the publication Important Bird Areas in Europe was largely RSPB-funded). The RSPB is now rich: income in 2000 was £38 million, mainly from membership subscriptions and legacies, supplemented by grants, fund raising appeals and sales of goods. Today it often works in partnership with other conservation charities, and also with farmers and land owners. Increasingly RSPB champions wildlife more generally, as well as their habitats. Its slogan: ‘for birds for people for ever’. You can read a sympathetic account of the RSPB’s eventful history in For the Love of Birds, written to celebrate its centenary (Samstag 1989). For hostility, try Isles of the West by Ian Mitchell (1999).

UK Headquarters: The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire SG19 2DL.

Chief Executive: Graham Wynne.

The county wildlife trusts

Membership of the wildlife trust of one’s home county is the logical first step for anyone interested in natural history. Nearly every county in England and Wales has a wildlife trust, many of them based on older natural history societies. Most of them were formed in the 1950s and 60s. Some, such as the trusts of North Wales or ‘Bucks, Berks and Oxon’, are federated, and Scotland has a federal system with different regions under a unified Scottish Wildlife Trust. The purpose of the trusts is to acquire land as nature reserves and encourage interest in wildlife. The founders of the Kent Naturalists Trust (now the Kent Wildlife Trust) spoke for many others who ‘saw the speed of change of farming practice and urbanisation as a severe threat to our lovely county’.

The first county to receive its own wildlife trust (as opposed to a natural history society or field club) was Norfolk. The Norfolk Naturalists Trust was established by Dr Sidney Long in 1926 as a ‘special non-profit paying company to hold and manage nature reserves’. Behind its formation lay a dissatisfaction with the National Trust, which came to the boil when the latter refused to take on Cley Marshes on the grounds that it was only of interest to naturalists. Norfolk had acquired several nature reserves by the 1950s, but although F.W. Oliver’s prediction that one day every English county would have its own county trust proved right, it took a long time. It was not until 1946 that the Yorkshire Naturalists Trust was founded, on the Norfolk model, and again with the immediate purpose of looking after a nature reserve, Askham Bog. The Lincolnshire Naturalists Trust followed two years later, largely through the efforts of A.E. Smith, later Secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR). With the support of the Nature Conservancy, many more county trusts sprang up across England in the 1950s – Leicester and Cambridgeshire in 1956, the West Midlands and Kent in 1958, Surrey and Bucks, Berks and Oxon (‘BBONT’) in 1959, Essex and Hampshire in 1960, Cornwall and Wiltshire in 1962. The first Welsh trust, the West Wales Naturalists Trust, was formed in 1956, and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, covering the whole of Scotland, followed in 1964. Many of them emerged from the embers of an earlier natural history society, often through the efforts of a few dedicated local naturalists. For example, the Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation was formed in 1964 by members of the venerable Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, led by Ernest Neal and Peter Tolson. The Cornwall Naturalists Trust took over and much extended the activities of the Cornwall Bird Watching and Preservation Society. Many county trusts have changed their names (and acronyms) two or three times since. Originally they were naturalists trusts. Later some became trusts for nature conservation. Now they are nearly all wildlife trusts – and one rather dreads their possible future reincarnation as sustainability or biodiversity trusts.

Most trusts acquired a full-time conservation officer as soon as they were up and running, with the help of ‘pump-priming’ grants from the NCC and other bodies. During the 1980s, NCC grants helped the trusts to become more professional and to acquire a small corps of promotional, educational and marketing staff, as well as computer systems. In the 1990s, some trust nature reserves profited from English Nature’s Reserve Enhancement Scheme, and still more by the Heritage Lottery Fund which, by 2000, had awarded a total of £50 million to buy land as nature reserves or fund capital improvements. A further £6 million worth of projects came from the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme. At the same time, increased public interest in nature conservation resulted in big increases in membership. For example, the medium-sized Somerset Trust, with 9,000 members, now has an annual income just over £1 million and assets of £3 million, together with about 30 full-time staff housed in beautiful surroundings at Fyne Court. Between them the county wildlife trusts now manage some 2,300 nature reserves, ranging in size from under a hectare to several square kilometres, and extending over nearly 70,000 hectares.

The activities of the county trusts have much in common, but they always reflect the nature of their constituencies. The Welsh Trusts have become adept at running seabird islands and restoring reed beds; the Scottish Wildlife Trust specialises in restoring peat bogs. Among their core activities are acquiring and managing nature reserves and campaigning against harmful developments. More recently, their work has become more inclusive, embracing ideas of sustainability enshrined in Agenda 21 and interpreting them on a local scale (see p. 78), or helping farmers to sell environment-friendly products, as in the Devon Wildlife Trust’s ‘Green Gateway’ scheme. The nature of the membership is also changing. Twenty years ago, most trust members were keen naturalists. Today, many join out of a broader concern for the environment (that is, for our own quality of life), and often include whole families. Trust activities reflect such changes, with a greater emphasis these days on communities, education, and participatory activities.

The Wildlife Trusts partnership, formerly the Royal Society for Nature Conservation (RSNC), acts as a spokesman and administrative centre for the disparate county wildlife trusts. It had its distant origins in the SPNR, which was set up in 1912 for the purposes of ‘securing’ nature reserves and ‘to encourage the love of Nature’. This Society struggled on for years on a shoestring budget without achieving very much (though its surveys are a valuable retrospective source for the state of wildlife in the first half of the twentieth century, see Rothschild & Marren 1997). It did, however, contribute organisation and expertise for the Nature Reserves Investigation Committee in 1942, which produced the original ‘shopping list’ for the subsequent selection of National Nature Reserves and other important sites. In the 1950s the SPNR assisted some of the fledgling county trusts with modest grants to set up their first nature reserves, along with advice on how to look after them. In 1957 the county trusts proposed that the SPNR should act as a co-ordinating body for their activities, in effect as their ‘federal centre’. In the early 1970s a proposal to combine forces with the RSPB was briefly considered, but rejected, largely because the pair were mismatched: the RSPB was already too big. In 1976, the SPNR was granted a royal charter, becoming the RSPNR for a short period, before changing its name yet again to the Royal Society for Nature Conservation (RSNC) in 1981. In 1991, the RSNC joined with the 46 county trusts and 50 urban wildlife groups to form the Wildlife Trusts partnership, which now has a combined membership of nearly 300,000. All receive the wildlife trusts’ quarterly magazine, Natural World, along with a copy of their local trust’s magazine. There is also a junior arm, Wildlife Watch, founded in 1977 with young naturalists in mind.

The Wildlife Trusts partnership provides the local trusts with a common identity, promotes their common interests and campaigns on their behalf. On occasion it has gone too far down the centralising path, for example, when it tried to impose a common ‘badger’ logo (known as the raccoon by disparagers) on all the trusts. But in general the division of responsibility seems to work well enough, with each partner concentrating on its constituency strengths, leaving the umbrella body to organise training weekends, launch national appeals (for example ‘Tomorrow Is Too Late) and making its voice heard in the corridors of power. It has long had its head office somewhere in Lincolnshire for reasons lost in the mists of time, but the Trusts’ director’s office is in London. Its logo: the ubiquitous badger. Vision: ‘the achievement of a United Kingdom that is richer in wildlife and managed on sustainable principles’.

I cover the activities of a particular wildlife trust on pp. 75-9.

Head Office: The Kiln, Waterside, Mather Road, Newark NG24 1WT.

Wildlife Trusts partnership Director general: Simon Lyster.

The National Trust

At the turn of the millennium, the National Trust’s membership was just short of a stupendous three million. The public loves a bargain, and for the modest membership fee the whole of the Trust’s vast estate is open to them. Moreover, to many, the Trust embodies all that is best in the countryside: beautiful scenery, benevolent stewardship and a good day out. However, until recently the National Trust was only on the margins of the nature conservation world. It is not a campaigning body, and much of its work is centred on maintaining stately homes and gardens. Its importance lies in the nature conservation work carried out on its own properties. The Trust is emerging as an important player mainly because, in common with other heritage bodies, it takes a greater interest in wildlife than in the past.

There are two separate National Trusts, one for England and Wales, the other for Scotland. The former, older Trust had its origins in the concern over the enclosure of commons in the nineteenth century. The desire of a few Victorian philanthropists to preserve ‘all that still remained open, for the health and recreation of the people’ led to the formation of the Commons Preservation Society, the first successful conservation pressure group in history. In 1885, the Society’s solicitor, Robert (later Sir Robert) Hunter, proposed a ‘Land Company’ to buy and accept gifts of heritage land and buildings for the benefit of the nation. In 1893, joined by Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley’s Lake District Defence Society, this became known as the ‘National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty’, or National Trust for short. Its constitution was based on that of a similar American body founded two years previously. In 1906, Hunter drafted a private Bill that made the Trust a statutory body, and gave it the right to make bylaws and to declare its properties inalienable. This meant they could not be sold or taken away without the Trust’s consent: a National Trust property is the Trust’s for keeps. A separate National Trust for Scotland (see below) was established in 1931, and given similar powers to its sister body. A full account of the National Trust was published in 1995 (Newby 1995).

Although the National Trust acquired many places ‘of special interest to the naturalist’ in its early days, such as Wicken Fen, Cheddar Gorge and Box Hill, its management of them was for many years scarcely different to any other rural estate; modern farming and forestry methods that damaged wildlife often went through on the nod. Management of the Trust’s de facto nature reserves, such as Wicken Fen or the tiny Ruskin Reserve near Oxford, was generally overseen by a keen but amateurish outside body. They tended to turn into thickets. The Trust’s outlook began to change in the 1960s after it launched Enterprise Neptune to save the coastline from development, having found that a full third of our coast had been ‘irretrievably spoiled’. By 1995, some 885 kilometres of attractive coast, much of it in south-west England, had been saved in this way.