111 W O O D FOR THE TREES Suffolk Naturalists' Society/Anglian Water Conference on British Woodlands October 28th 1995 OPENING ADDRESS EARL OF CRANBROOK (Chairman of English Nature, Patron of Suffolk Naturalists'Society) In my welcome to participants at these Conferences, it has become customary for me to say a few words to illustrate the involvement of English Nature in the subject under review. As most of you will know, formed as a consequence of the Environment Protection Act (1990), English Nature is the statutory nature conservation agency for England. Our main duties and powers have been given by Acts of Parliament of 1949, 1968, 1973, 1981 and 1985. In English Nature, we acknowledge that a major proportion of the national conservation resource is artificially created. Almost every hectare of the countryside is grazed, tilled, cropped or managed in some way, or has been at some time. The effects of these activities over hundreds of years have created the natural environment which we in England value. The beginnings of ecological development of modern northwestern Europe can be placed at the global temperature rise of a few degrees Celsius which ended the last Ice Age. Some 12,000 years ago, retreating glaciers exposed English soils to recolonisation by plants and animals from southerly refugia. On drained terrestrial lowlands, forest was the original climax Vegetation, often referred to as the 'wildwood' 1 . As melting ice raised world sea-levels, Britain was finally isolated from the continent about 5000 years ago. Humans were represented at first by Mesolithic societies which subsisted by hunting and gathering. Although plausibly blamed for catastrophic declines or extinctions of some large mammal species in specific locations (e.g., on Mediterranean islands), their overall impact was slight. The Neolithic revolution reached Europe during the eighth millennium BP. Thenceforward, human Intervention has progressively and dramatically modified the natural environment. The instances tabulated suggest that, across England, the wildwood was felled many generations ago and subsequent human Intervention has made significant and enduring impacts on the natural environment, including some irreversible changes. Lost species include the larger mammals, prevented from reinvading unassisted since the isolation of the British Isles. Many smaller organisms could have been exterminated unbeknownst, but the tree flora has not suffered in this respect. Indeed, English woodland has gained many species through introductions. Principal ecological effects have been the altered distributions and numbers of stenotopic species of plants and animals as the relative areas of specialised habitats have changed. Many of these artificially created habitats and their associated species are now threatened in turn, and have become the focus of attention for nature conservation. These modified habitats and species are vulnerable if the practices which produced them cease or change. Many habitats retain the capacity to revert
Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 32 (1996)