Nature Conservation. Peter Marren

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СКАЧАТЬ 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’.

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