Nature Conservation. Peter Marren

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      ‘Phenogram’ of the red admiral butterfly from The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies, plotting latitude at 100-kilometre intervals against months, forms a ghostly outline of Britain. (From Butterflies for the New Millennium survey organised by Butterfly Conservation and Biological Records Centre)

      Yet ‘quarrel’ is a remarkably rare word in conservation literature. I think the first time this particular spade was called a spade was in Professor Smout’s book, Nature Contested, published in 2000. More often, like politicians, the parties prefer to sweep disagreements under the carpet, using euphemisms like ‘discussion’, ‘debate’ or even – a popular choice in the 1990s – ‘partnership’. Nature conservation is a quasi-political matter in which the arguing is done as far as possible behind closed doors, and the outcome reported to a supine press with a bland statement. Many conservation bodies have become so used to the self-censorship of uncomfortable facts that they seem to operate on a different plane of reality from the farmhouse or the estate office. Their publications reflect the power of image and presentation in the modern world. It is necessary for conservation bodies to appear slick, dynamic, successful and, above all, relevant. Where the facts of disappearing wildlife appear to contradict this image they can be distorted by the same black arts (‘let’s focus on the positive’) or used to justify an appeal for more money. Ignorance of natural history can be a distinct advantage in this world. Hence, if in the later chapters of this book, I may sometimes seem rather sceptical about the claims of the conservation industry, and its official agencies in particular, it is because I have seen something of this world from the inside. Conservation bodies rarely stoop to deliberate distortion, but their version of events can be coloured by the views of their ‘clients’ and partners, by the attitude of their political masters or by that of a mass-membership. You do not, for example, hear the RSPB talking much about cats, or the Wildlife Trusts about fox hunting. Nature conservation in a crowded island in which all land is property is bound to be difficult, even when everyone agrees that wildlife is a good thing. Conservation can be seen in different ways, depending on how you are affected by it: as a moral absolute, as a cumbersome, bureaucratic restriction, as an unjust imposition by ignorant outsiders, as a potential source of income. I think wildlife is a good thing. Indeed, in my own life I think it is probably the most important thing. I would like my country to preserve as much wildlife and countryside as possible, but without enmeshing rural life in petty restrictions. The standpoint of this book is a love of wildlife but not necessarily conservationists. In these pages you may therefore find a lot of ‘buts’. I hope it will not sound unduly negative. I feel it may be necessary. An account of nature conservation in Britain devoid of individual opinion would be a dull read, indeed not worth reading. I hope this book is worth reading.

PART I Dramatis Personae

       2 The Official Conservation Agencies

      The British government has always delegated its responsibilities for nature conservation to a semiautonomous agency. The governments of other European countries tend to keep theirs within agricultural departments or National Park bodies. The reason why Britain behaves differently probably lies in our early start and the influence of science in the 1940s (for a good account of this postwar science boom, see Sheail 1998). The founders of the Nature Conservancy, the first official conservation agency in Britain, saw it as a biological service, comparable with a research council or scientific institution, like the Soil Association. They hoped it would develop as a science-based body, using its own research programme to advise government on land-use policies affecting wildlife. As Professor Smout has pointed out, ‘the rule of the bureaucrat guided by the scientific expert has been highly prized in government for most of the twentieth century’ (Smout 2000). They were anxious that nature conservation should not be swallowed up in the departments for agriculture and forestry, where, as a newcomer, and so starting at the bottom of the civil service peck order, its influence would be stifled. Max Nicholson, who directed the Nature Conservancy between 1951 and 1965, had influence in high places and ensured that, as a semi-specialised body, it secured a semidetached status as a research council under the wing of Herbert Morrison, then Lord President of Council. As such, it could not be bossed about by predatory departments of state. There are advantages to ministers in such arrangements. Expertise is ‘on tap, not on top’, and if anything goes wrong it is the agency’s fault, not the minister’s. Dispensable Board chairmen can be sacked, but the minister need not resign. Much of the history of the Nature Conservancy and its successor bodies hovers around the tension between the zeal of semiautonomous agency officials and the brake of government (the appointed Councils of these bodies have tended to be part of the braking mechanism rather than the zeal). It is there between the lines of their annual reports and, now that the papers are at last available under the ridiculous 30-year-rule, you can read about the formative years of that thorny relationship in a fine, detailed book by John Sheail (1998). But here I need to skip over those, to many, golden, well-remembered early years with unseemly haste.

      Max Nicholson, Director of the Nature Conservancy 1951-1965. (NCC)

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