Ecos 33 1 entire issue

www.banc.org.uk

Spring 2012 issue 33(1)

Deep in the forest... might lynx stalk our deer?

Too many groups? The reality of campaigning for nature Recession bites - can conservation groups survive and prosper?

ECOS

A REVIEW OF CONSERVATION ECOS is the journal of the British Association of Nature Conservationists

www.banc.org.uk

ECOS 33(1) 2012

ecos@easynet.co.uk Editorial

Managing Editor: Rick Minter 07768 748301 ecos@easynet.co.uk

Back to basics

Assistant Editor: Martin Spray Hillside, Aston Bridge Road, Pludds, Ruardean, Glos. GL17 9TZ 01594-861404 Acknowledgements This issue was edited by Rick Minter and Martin Spray.

Front and back cover photo by George Wheelhouse.

The opinions expressed in ECOS are not necessarily those of BANC Council or of the Editors ECOS may not be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, in English or other languages, without the prior written consent of the publisher, BANC.

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President: John Bowers

Chair: Gavin Saunders

Vice-Presidents: Marion Shoard Adrian Phillips

Secretary: Ruth Boogert Treasurer: Jeremy Owen

BANC is a non profit making company limited by guarantee, registered in England No. 2136042. Registered charity No.327595

ECOS is printed by Severnprint using Cocoon Silk 300gsm cover and Cocoon uncoated 100gsm text paper. Both papers have a 100% recycled content and are FSC certified. The electricity used during printing is generated from renewable sources. The magazine is printed under the SylvaPack environmental print route using no alcohol and processless plates. Severnprint donates to Tree Aid to support tree planting in sub-Saharan Africa.

“The picture is bleak for the foreseeable future – fundraising and finance shortfalls are likely to continue.” This is the grim but expected outlook for nature conservation, as concluded by Jonathan Somper in his review of economic trends in this issue. Looking at market intelligence in the volatile world of funding, he notes that conservation activity has fared better than some sectors, and there are winners and losers amongst specific strands of wildlife and environmental work. His tips for survival include harnessing the world of social media, and striving to win hearts and minds, as conservation battles to keep public attention.

Peter Shirley’s contribution reminds us that the big players in conservation have built strong empires in past decades, with expanding staff levels and much more land acquired during the good times, as interest in the natural world has flourished.

But Peter Shirley has worries too. Politically, things now seem to be on the slide for nature. He notes we have “a Government dedicated to economic growth at the expense of all else, itself a symptom of a world in thrall to big business”. We may have had years of mainstreaming wildlife and landscape protection in policy, and demonstrating that the natural world is a force for economic health, but the Chancellor and his allies reject this. Their ideology views the environment as something to be railroaded, even (or especially) if there are European regulations involved. We will explore these dangers in the next ECOS, as the formal protection of prime sites and landscapes seems in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, should we be cheered by new measures like Local Nature Partnerships, Nature Improvement Areas, and Biodiversity Offsetting? Could these have much to offer if wisely implemented and properly resourced? Alas, they have emerged at such awkward times in the public sector that they seem destined to struggle. Our good friends at the Association of Local Government Ecologists recently surveyed their members, and found that council ecologists were in a beleaguered state. The survey report declared: “It seems increasingly unlikely that local government will have the capacity to engage in these initiatives in the way Central Government would wish. Never before have so few been expected to do so much with so little!”

Despite government rhetoric and a hopeful White Paper, we now face losing many of the past generations’ carefully crafted conservation gains, as a fundamentalist approach to development and jobs holds sway. As our resolve is tested further, we should avoid responding with fundamentalism of our own – that will be counterproductive. There is ample evidence for nature’s central role in human wellbeing, and we should keep making the case.

Geoffrey Wain

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Cometh the hour?

This article discusses the current forces affecting the role and the influence of wildlife bodies, and considers why providing leadership in the conservation movement is such a challenge in present circumstances.

PETER SHIRLEY Drafting this on the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth I cannot resist the thought that for nature conservation this may be the best of times and the worst of times.

It is the best of times because never before have we had so many people and organisations working in the sector. Despite the recent decline in resources there is still an enormous amount of money available, at least outside government. The amount being wholly inadequate to meet perceived needs masks this, and leads to constant protestations of poverty in the sector.

Reasons to be cheerful or cheerless?

The positive things include the Natural Environment White Paper and the National Ecosystem Assessment. There is a National Biodiversity Network, broad agreement about priority habitats and species, and understanding that these need to be placed in the context of wider landscapes. Citizen science is booming, with tens of thousands of people engaged in recording birds, insects and animals, all facilitated by modern communications technology. Organisations such as the Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB, the National Trust and the Woodland Trust are managing large, if fragmented estates, for nature conservation and public access and enjoyment.

The negative things include a Government dedicated to economic growth at the expense of all else, itself a symptom of a world in thrall to big business. We have continuing and unaddressed widespread ecological illiteracy, gross pollution and declining biodiversity. Nature protection policies, nurtured and developed over many years, are under threat, and cuts in public expenditure are bearing more heavily on environmental activities than elsewhere. Badgers are to be culled and the implementation of the Habitats Regulations is to be reviewed.

Mixed messages amongst NGOs Natural England, which long ago lost any resemblance to the old Nature Conservancy, is weighed down with the bureaucracy of agricultural payments and other farm support, shackled by having to be silent on government policy, and emasculated by staff cuts. Would ‘Neutered England’ be a better name? It and the Environment Agency are losing 5,000 to 8,000 jobs out of an initial total of about 30,000. Overall, government environmental spending is being cut by about 30%, compared to all government spending for which the average reduction is 17%.

So, with the major conservation NGOs having their hands full doing the good stuff, but operating as contractors as much as campaigners, and certainly as corporate entities 2

ECOS 33(1) 2012 rather than member-driven bodies, questions are being asked as to where is the political leadership needed to address the bad stuff. As Peter Marren said last November: “Nature conservation in Britain has been under political attack for the past twelve months, and its defenders, to put it as mildly as possible, seem to have left the battleground”.1 These questions were brought into sharp focus during last year’s forestry debacle, the fallout from which continues. The details are well documented elsewhere, but it seems that the major NGOs completely misjudged the public mood about the need for our forests and woodlands to remain as public goods largely in public ownership. It is ironic that in their constant striving to engage people they turned a golden opportunity to do this into a hideous own goal. The NGOs were perceived by many as being in league with government and eager to expand their own land holdings rather than to address the wider issues involved.

To be fair to the NGOs their reaction was not really surprising. Two of the most involved, the Wildlife Trusts and the National Trust, have land acquisition hardwired into their cultural DNA. It’s why they were originally founded, and although the founders are long gone they would naturally have worked with the sort of Government and the people in it which we now have.

Whatever the reasons, conscious and unconscious, others, in particular Jonathon Porritt, picked up on the popular feeling. Starting with fair criticism of the NGOs he has moved on to vituperative and unfair criticism. For example he has made requests under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain details of the discussions between the NGOs and Government officials, including so-called ‘shopping lists’ of the sites each would want to acquire. There are in fact very good reasons for the NGOs to take on some of these sites, and in the normal course of events they might have changed hands unremarked.

For some reason Porritt seemed to need to turn the knife. He went on to say that the NGOs “…betrayed their members absolutely” 2, a bit of an overstatement, and further criticised them for discussing various options for the forest estate with the Government. This latter criticism must arise either from naivety or disingenuousness. As an experienced negotiator himself he must know that subjects are raised in discussions to elicit thinking, attitudes and expectations, and to allow positions and strategies to be developed, often in order to better resist the other side’s intentions and wishes.

Take me to your leader Which brings us back to the leadership issue. In his own blog Porritt waxes vengefully against the NGOs, on the 5 February 2011 he said that their inaction “…represents a massive failure of collective leadership’.3 In the Guardian 4 although Porritt’s invective is very well responded to by the Wildlife Trusts’ ‘spokeswoman’, this is an anonymous source carrying little weight against the guru. Simon Pryor, natural environment director at the National Trust had the decency to admit “The scale of public support for the forests of England caught everyone by surprise …”.5 With respect to Simon how much more impact could have been generated by a more well known public figure answering the charges.

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In saying this I am not criticising the NGOs and what may be called their ‘internal leadership’ of CEOs and other officers, I am rather bemoaning the lack of ‘external leadership’ and a public face for the movement as a whole. The public will respond to the right cues: it took the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB about a century to accrete nearly two million members.6 It took a web-based body (38 Degrees) a matter of days to collect over half a million signatures on an e-petition about forests.7

Do not leaders, whether organisations or individuals, emerge in response to an opportunity or crisis, or both? They are not generally set up by committees, joint or otherwise, they are not created out of the fog of policy-making, visioning, planning and evaluation. The need and the niche seems to be there, who is going to fill it?

This is not a job for a hard-pressed chief executive, or even one of the regiment of public relations people now working in the sector.

In my time in nature conservation, and in this context, three individuals stand out for me: Max Nicholson, David Bellamy and David Attenborough. Of these Max, although enormously influential, was never a household name. He worked in a different age when operating behind the scenes was how to make a difference, before the all-seeing eye of the media captured everything.

Many people like me could write the job description, but where do we look for the candidates? The old saying has it that ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man (or woman)’: well, if there is anybody there will they please make themselves known to the nearest steward.

The two Davids remain, I suggest, the best known faces of nature conservation.

Others will have a different view, but the one is still before us with increasingly stunning television series, and the other is still known, even to people who could never have seen much of his original work. They have both served as Presidents of the Wildlife Trusts (and no doubt in honorary capacities with other organisations) and at various times commanded the public’s attention and respect. I mention them not as candidates to fill the current leadership vacuum, but as examples of people who at one time did so or could have done so, and for whom there does not seem to be a current equivalent.

1. Mark Avery’s Blog 13/11/11. www.markavery.info/blog 2. Damien Carrington, The Guardian 3. Jonathon Porritt’s Blog 05/02/11 4. Damien Carrington, The Guardian 5. Ibid 6. http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/who-we-are, http://www.rspb.org.uk/about/facts.aspx 7. http://www.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns 8. Mark Avery’s Blog 19/09/11

Stepping on toes?

References

Peter Shirley is a former Wildlife Trust Director and former Chair of BANC. petershirley@blueyonder.co.uk

Mark Avery, once the RSPB’s Conservation Director now runs a lively blog. Amongst the e-chatter the idea of a ‘super NGO’ was floated and largely rejected – see the adapted article from his blog on this matter in this edition. Such a beast would surely be mired in corporate consensus speak, hardly cutting edge or incisive. Countryside Link may already be that organisation, notwithstanding its many virtues. It has not been prominent in the current debates.

The problem seems to be with what may be called a ‘mature’ nature conservation sector. There is not enough common ground, or willingness to give ground, between the major players. They all have vested interests and vulnerable activities to preserve.

Some have a history of battling with each other for members and land, they have different histories and cultures. Derek Moore and Peter Marren wrote that they think that the biggest enemies of wildlife are nature conservationists! What Derek wrote was: “... more than once I have considered that nature conservationists themselves might be the biggest threat to our wildlife.” He concludes by calling for ‘REVOLUTION’.8 A side-show in this debate has been the perennial ‘there are too many nature conservation organisations, why cannot they merge, share services, work together more?’ Both Derek Moore and I have experience of trying to facilitate these things: for various reasons what seems to be common sense rarely turns out to be either welcome or practical. Curiously though Porritt is now fronting a new body called ‘Our Forests’ which everyone will have to make space for. Perhaps it could merge with the Woodland Trust?

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ECOS 33(1) 2012

For Nature’s sake

ECOS 33(1) 2012 might point out that there is a lot of replication and that surely there could be more sharing of resources. They might ask that organisations at least think of where efficiencies could be delivered by working together better.

MARK AVERY

Does nature benefit from this diversity of organisations, with overlapping overall purposes but subtly different perspectives, each spending money on membership recruitment, sending people to the same meetings, many buying land and managing their own nature reserve, each trying to figure out health and safety issues, each talking to the press and trying to comment on the same issues?

The rich mix of green

Fellow travellers?

I wrote the original version of this text on my blogsite following Peter Marren’s thought-provoking opinion piece (Our Wildlife Needs a Voice) in the Independent on 14 Sepember 2011. The gist of Peter’s article was that the coalition government had removed some voices that could speak up for nature (the Sustainable Development Commission, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution) and silenced some others (Natural England, Environment Agency and Forestry Commission). This much is true, although some of the aforementioned bodies were never that good at speaking out - and others were clearly too good.

Might there be benefits to nature if there were more sharing of backroom resources in computing, land management, human resources etc? It is worth thinking a lot more seriously about these aspects of collaboration.

British nature needs a strong campaigning voice. Public bodies charged with defending wildlife are becoming more timid and constrained as government responds to the age of austerity. Wildlife needs defending in its own right, on its terms…

Peter went further and suggested that the NGO community had not risen to this challenge through a mixture of self-interest and sheer timidity, and that there was a need for a strong voice for nature conservation to replace, coordinate or out-shout those rather quiet NGO voices.

The roster of nature conservation organisations is already almost as diverse as the biodiversity these organisations aim to help. There are the big and the small, the old and the new, the land-owning and the not land-owning, the campaigning and the not-campaigning, the single-species, multi-species, habitat-based and issue-based, the scientific and the off-the-cuff, the county, country, British, UK, and, to various extents, international.

Diversity and chaos Some organisations, most notably Friends of the Earth, but also WWF and Greenpeace, used to be much more active in UK nature conservation but now benefit UK nature mostly through their general work on sustainable development.

This is the tangled bank of UK nature conservation organisations, and like Darwin’s tangled bank it is a struggle for survival. Is there grandeur in this view of life?

Anyone viewing this tangled bank might think that they were looking at a bit of a mess. But like species in the real world, nature conservation organisations will come and go, thrive and decline, wax and wane according to how well they are managed and what potential funders, including the public, think about them. And we are where we are.

But what would nature think? If you asked the sharks, fungi, dragonflies and hen harriers, how they would like things to be ordered, what would they say? They 6

In the past there have been serious talks about real mergers - quite some time ago between the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB - but these seem unlikely to take place in the near future. One reason is that conservation organisations have drifted apart in their thinking. UK nature conservation bodies do not all think the same and that makes collaboration between them difficult. And I’m not just talking about the gulf between, say, Greenpeace and the National Trust, I mean between organisations with, on the face of it, fairly similar objectives and means of operation. These differences usually focus around whether nature conservation is for nature or for people, how environmental organisations should relate to businesses, whether you measure conservation success through the fate of species or habitats or through actions carried out, or whether you measure success at all.

Speaking up for nature But we haven’t yet considered Peter Marren’s big suggestion - setting up an organisation that could be a stronger voice for nature - what of that?

Peter’s thesis was that conservation NGOs have become self-serving, timid and irrelevant. They pull their punches because they are too dependent on government funding, have become too international, have gone off chasing climate change issues or have simply lost the plot. Is there any truth in this? Yes, some, but it’s a harsh analysis to apply to all these diverse bodies equally. Different parts of the tangled bank deserve different levels of opprobrium and it is fair to say that, for example, different organisations looked with varying levels of horror and anticipation at the prospect of government getting out of National Nature Reserve management, and then out of the timber business. Nature could be forgiven for thinking that some organisations lacked a clear sense of what was best for nature conservation, and perhaps it was unenlightened self-interest that clouded their view.

The organisation that is missing from the tangled bank is the thoughtful, outspoken, raging-against-the-idiocy-of-it organisation - the organisation that is outside of government and outside of industry, which can say what nature needs in an uncompromising but authoritative fashion. The organisation that has nature’s 7

ECOS 33(1) 2012 needs not people’s needs at its core. The organisation that doesn’t say ‘it’s all about people’ or ‘it’s all about ecosystem services’ but ‘it’s all about nature’. This organisation could be FoE if it rediscovered nature. But if it doesn’t, and there are no signs that it has, then there is, perhaps, an empty niche in the tangled bank of UK nature conservation organisations. Not because the other species are bad, or inadequate or evil or hopeless - but because nature abhors a vacuum.

Mark Avery is the former conservation director of the RSPB. This article is a slightly shortened version of a blog which appeared on 19 September 2011 on Mark Avery’s Standing up for Nature blog www.markavery.info/blog

ECOS 33(1) 2012

Wildlife fallback – are we prepared?

Despite the recent advances in nature conservation are we about to see a rapid return to habitat fragmentation following CAP reform (post 2013) and increased food demand?

DAVID WEST Recent conservation measures - a big step forward Over the last 10 years we have seen a major growth in some really exciting landscape-scale nature conservation projects. Particular ‘beacons of hope’ for me have included: • the HLF’s Landscape Partnership Scheme1 • the Wildlife Trusts Living Landscapes programme2 • major land purchases by the RSPB3 and others • at least 12 major catchment–scale river restoration projects4 • growth in agri-environment programmes • projects empowering local communities to take responsibility for conserving their landscapes (such as Neroche); and • the Lawton report leading to 12 Nature Improvement Areas (NIA) and 22 Local Nature Partnership pilots funded by Defra.

There seems to be a general recognition that habitat connectivity and major habitat improvement and expansion is now a crucial part of any long-term strategy to conserve wildlife, given past declines and present threats to biodiversity. So why be pessimistic?

World food demands

NEIL BENNETT

Unusually there is a palpable optimism in the lowland farming community at the moment. A glance through any of the major agricultural journals will reveal a high proportion of upbeat articles referring to investing in a new era of increased productivity. The world population graph (see below) lies at the heart of this debate.

Sanitised Scotland... An environmental disaster on the dunes faces another out at sea at the Aberdeenshire coast

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A recent FAO5 report predicts that the world’s population will reach 9.1bn (a staggering 34% higher than today) by 2050 with nearly all of this population increase occurring in developing countries. This population will be more urban (70% as opposed to the current 49%) and richer. In order to feed this growing 9

ECOS 33(1) 2012 World population growth

ECOS 33(1) 2012 population, the FAO predict that food production needs to increase by 70% with annual cereal production rising to 3bn tonnes (2.1bn today) and annual meat production rising to over 200m tonnes to reach 470m tonnes.

Back to Europe and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) While the recent allocation of £7.5m from Defra to fund 12 Nature Improvement Areas is to be welcomed, it is rather dwarfed by the annual CAP budget for farm payments (Pillars 1 and 2) in the UK of over £4bn.6 Agri-environment programmes such as Higher Level Stewardship, Environmentally Sensitive Areas and Countryside Stewardship have been critical to the widespread development of landscape-scale conservation.

They have been the glue that has enabled joined up landscape programmes on privately owned farmland for periods of 10 years and beyond. The table below shows the impressive percentage of agricultural land in higher level or targeted agri-environment schemes and entry level schemes in England, Scotland and Wales in 2010.7 The future for agri-environment budgets in the UK is however now under real threat.

Country % Agricultural land in % Agricultural land in entry

higher level/targeted programmes (eg HLS) level programmes (eg ELS) England 18% 63% Wales 26% 19% Scotland 10% 7%

CAP reform 2013 Once again we are about to see significant reforms to the CAP. With Europe’s economic growth in the doldrums, and fierce competition from emerging giants like China and India, there is a growing political view that the EU needs to pay less for farming (currently 47% of the total EU budget) and invest more in scientific research and technology. Within the CAP, there is also pressure to spend less on subsidies and more on agricultural research, to improve crop varieties and livestock, which could benefit developing countries.

In terms of final decision making on CAP reform 2013 it is still early days, although outline proposals were published over four months ago. A generic ‘greening’ payment is being suggested as a 30% top up payment. Given the world food demands situation, it is perhaps not surprising that the NFU and other farming bodies in Europe are concerned that this proposed compulsory greening could ‘impede increased farming competitiveness’.

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So why worry about future CAP impacts?

While nothing is yet certain in CAP reform, it would seem fairly likely that the total amount of money available for agri-environment schemes will reduce significantly beyond 2013. This factor, combined with rising commodity prices for meat and cereals, makes a strong business case for farmers to maximise productivity on any agricultural land with potential for food production. How many nature conservation schemes in the wider countryside would survive against this market pressure? My pessimistic prediction is that only the most marginal of areas or designated sites on farmed land will remain in 10 year schemes with huge areas of, particularly lowland farms, returning to more intensive land management regimes. While the UK map of landscape-scale conservation initiatives currently looks impressive, by how much will this area shrink over the next 10 years?

Fallback positions for nature The next stage in the CAP reform process will be the publication of the European Parliaments draft report with more detailed proposals. This is expected in midJune 2012 and should perhaps be on the essential reading list of all conservation practitioners. In my opinion, decisions made following this document and the subsequent implementation of CAP reform in the UK post 2013 will be far more critical for nature conservationists to try to influence than worrying about delivering Local Nature Partnerships or attempting to value Eco-system Services! Are we giving this policy influencing the proportional resources it truly needs?

We also need to start thinking hard about a ‘Plan B’. Is the payment of agrienvironment monies the only way to secure a much needed network of connected wildlife habitats across our farmed land? Sadly almost all of our landscape conservation schemes could not survive currently if the annual payment was removed, so creative thinking about incentives and viability in conservation is badly needed. Is there a case for state or third sector ownership of much more environmentally sensitive land, to help wildlife connectivity and delivery of key ideals in the Lawton Report? The conservation sector needs to give these matters some urgent and critical thought.

References 1.

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7.

Annual budget increased from £10M to £17M in 2011.

Now over 100 Living Landscape initiatives in the UK. Between 1997 and 2007 RSPB purchased over 11,300 acres (4,600 ha) of land Source: Review of Catchment Scale River Restoration Projects – River Restoration Centre 2005 Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations ‘How to feed the World in 2050’ 2009 total budget for CAP – £58.9Bn – UK received 7%: source European Commission.

Data source – 2010 statistics for agri-environment JNCC

David West is Development Manager at the Forestry Commission’s Peninsula Region. The views expressed here are his own. david.m.west@forestry.gsi.gov.uk

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A lifeless living Wales?

Consultations on green reforms in Wales, including a single environmental delivery body, have set alarm bells ringing amongst conservationists. Policy making for wildlife looks set to become diluted and led by an economic imperative. This article assesses the task of salvaging something worthwhile from the drastic proposals.

MICK GREEN Consultations and changing the rules Two important consultations have recently been launched that will fundamentally change the way Wales’ natural environment is managed and governed. Both consultations build on the ‘Natural Environment Framework’ which has been gaining momentum since 2010 (See ECOS 31(2), pages 4-5). The framework proposed an ecosystem based approach to wildlife conservation, with a move away from conservation based on small sites or individual species to a wider countryside approach. It also began the development of a new body for delivery of the framework, with the abolition of the Countryside Council for Wales, the Environment Agency (Wales) and the Forestry Commission (Wales) and the creation of a new ‘single environment body’ to co-ordinate countryside management and wildlife licensing.

The first consultation – entitled ‘Sustaining a Living Wales’ – is a green paper on ‘a new approach to natural resource management in Wales’. This was given a public launch by the Environment Minister John Griffiths at the end of January. The second – entitled ‘Natural Resources Wales’ – was slipped out more quietly a week later and is a consultation on ‘proposed arrangements for establishing a new body for the management of Wales’ natural resources’.

Upheaval at what environmental cost?

The development of the Natural Environment Framework was originally driven by Wales’ failure to meet the 2010 targets to stem the decline in biodiversity. It was generally welcomed as a positive approach although the main concern amongst most respondents was that the document lacked details on how the new approach would actually be implemented.

Since the initial consultations, and following a change of Minister, the new consultations have changed the emphasis considerably and set alarm bells ringing amongst conservationists in Wales. The launch of the Living Wales consultation was at Port Talbot Steel Works where the Minister said “Our natural environment here in Wales is crucial to both our future and our economy. That is why it is so important that we fully understand its value and manage it in a way that delivers the best environmental and economic outcomes for Wales, both now and in the future”. The emphasis of the launch was on the economic benefits of our natural resources, and the need to make regulation more ‘streamlined’.

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 When the consultation on the single environment body (its working title through earlier consultations) was slipped out it was noticeable that the word ‘environment’ had been dropped from its title. It has also been made clear that this is not a merger of the existing bodies, they are to be abolished and a new body will be put in their place – the consultation is on the working arrangements, not on whether it is a good idea.

The current Living Wales consultation suffers from the same problem as earlier versions: there is no structure given as to how the new approach will be implemented. For those of us who have been pushing for a move away from a reliance on site and species based conservation to a more holistic approach, and responded enthusiastically to the earlier iterations of the framework, the Green Paper is more than a disappointment, it is highly worrying. While introducing the ecosystem approach as defined by the Conference of the Parties on the Convention on Biological Diversity as: “A strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes nature conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way recognising that humans with their cultural diversity are an integral part of ecosystems” the rest of the document concentrates on natural resource management with an emphasis on what the natural environment can do for us, not what we can do for the environment. The tone of the document is shown by the 11 references to biodiversity compared with 55 references to development.

‘Biodiversity’ is seen as underpinning ecosystem services and our place in those ecosystems seems to be to exploit their services, not to act as an integral part of nature. The overall aim is to manage the environment as a whole in order “to ensure that Wales has increasingly resilient and diverse ecosystems that deliver environmental, economic and social benefits now and in the future”. There is no mention of protecting our environment and its wildlife for its intrinsic value.

There is little mention of the existing protection measures such a SSSIs. We are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Unless there is a firm commitment to retain, improve and extend existing sites we could lose the little we already have before any new approach is properly implemented. The existing suite of protected sites needs to act as a reservoir from which wildlife can spread into properly managed countryside beyond.

Helping development or wildlife?

The Green Paper lacks any real aspiration and concentrates too much on mechanisms to deliver an ill-defined target. There should be much more emphasis on what are the environmental outcomes that we are aiming for along with a real aspiration for more wildlife, more and better condition habitats along with the welcome aim of ‘more resilient ecosystems’. One of the core problems of the document is that there is no mechanism for delivery of an ‘ecosystem approach’ in the wider countryside. There is a nod to ‘Glastir’ (the new and much derided Welsh Agri-environment scheme) but no analysis of how that might help deliver better outcomes in terms of wildlife.

Much of the document looks at ‘streamlining’ the consents and licensing processes.

Whilst these processes can certainly be improved, they should not be streamlined to make life easier for developers at the expense of the environment.

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The independent voice for nature – to be swallowed whole?

The consultation on the single (now a non-environmental) body is more worrying.

The overall aim of the body is “To ensure that Wales has increasingly resilient and diverse ecosystems that deliver environmental, economic and social benefits now and in the future”. The main factors driving the need for change are given as: The need to modernise regulation and natural resource management; the need to focus on Wales’ priorities; opportunities and challenges reflected in Welsh legislation and policy; and the need to ensure value for money. The original driver for change – the failure to meet our 2010 target and the continued loss of wildlife – has been lost.

The new organisation is to be purely a delivery body. All work on policy is to be moved into the Welsh Government. This means there will be no independent official voice on conservation policy in Wales. The considerable expertise within the existing bodies will be lost and the Welsh Assembly and its predecessors do not have a good track record on environmental policy.

Unless protection and improvement of wildlife and habitats is legally embedded in the constitution of the new organisation it is in danger of becoming lost and overwhelmed in the drive to become a streamlined ‘enabling’ body, giving out consents and licences to one and all. If, as stated above, Glastir is to be a major delivery mechanism then it would need to be delivered by the new body – however it is to remain, along with the rest of the agricultural regulatory mechanisms, within Welsh government, leaving a gaping hole in the potential for a holistic approach to countryside management. Similarly, in the marine environment, fisheries management remains within the Welsh Government’s remit so that there can be no joined-up management of our marine ecosystems.

The UK context for Welsh wildlife protection Whilst organisations in Wales will no doubt be responding robustly to the consultation it is worrying that the proposals appear unreported in the rest of the UK – if it had been proposed to abolish the equivalent bodies in England it would have received considerable coverage and national conservation organisations would probably have put much greater resources into responses. Whilst the original driver and ideas for this change were sound the process has been hijacked and it is vital that we get the process back on track to ensure a sound future for the wildlife of Wales. For this we need support from across the UK. Mick Green runs the consultancy Ecology Matters. mick@gn.apc.org

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Heartlands and wildwoods This article considers the potential for native woodland restoration in the Welsh Uplands.

It reflects on the cultural tensions surrounding rewilding in Wales in the late 1990s and discusses the progress of the fledgling Cambrian Wildwood, and wildwoods across Wales in the context of impending CAP reform.

SOPHIE WYNNE JONES Travelling back from a recent trip to the Scottish borders, serendipity took me down the A708 towards Moffat where a sign caught my eye: ‘Carrifran Wildwood’. I stopped the car and announced to my bemused partner that we must have a look.

This was a celebrated project I had heard of around the turn of millennium, when the Borders Forest Trust first bought the site and set about planting over half a million trees in this previously denuded valley. Ten years on, and the results were breath-taking, with impressively diverse native woodland now clearly established in the valley bottom and rising to staggering heights towards the peaks, where juniper, birch, rowan, and willow prospered. Inspired by data from pollen cores which revealed the valley’s forgotten inhabitants, this particular wildwood has set a precedent for woodland restoration, both within Scotland and across the UK. Returning home to the depths of Mid-Wales, I was affronted of the denuded state of our uplands, but inspired to investigate the extent of reforestation projects here.

Rewilding Wales My starting point was the work of Peter Taylor who put forward aspirations to rewild the British uplands at the end of the 1990s, in his book Beyond Conservation.

Taylor began his exploration of rewilding whilst living in Wales, in the Rhinogedd near Harlech. Here he launched an appeal for a wildwood stretching across Snowdonia, which could one day support a wilder ecosystem incorporating lynx and wild herbivores. Explaining his motivation, Taylor argued that conservation had operated off the back foot for too long, and it was time to become more proactive, to re-create what had been lost.

At the outset, his message was entertained by some of the major NGOs, with the National Trust in particular taking a keen interest in the potential for rewilding around their iconic Snowdon estate. But later, the staunch reaction from the farming community laid rest to any further discussions. Typifying the response from farmers, but also many conservationists arguing for a distinctly Welsh vision, the conservationgrazing group PONT1 gave the following statement in 2008: “If we apply international definitions of wilderness, there are no wilderness areas in Wales, and there is no potential for such areas... In its place, we have a glorious landscape, the wildlife of which has been shaped over thousands of years as the mainly unintentional by-product of generations of people toiling to provide a living for their families. This is also our cultural landscape and it is special and precious; its values should be celebrated and not diminished through comparison with something that happens elsewhere.”

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 Similarly, by reflecting on clues in the Welsh language it is again evident that wilderness is seen as an anathema, with anailwch (perhaps the nearest translation) simply meaning land that has not yet been cultured and tamed. Clearly, whilst there is nothing uniquely Welsh about the anger resulting from suggestions to reverse centuries of hard-work, which farming families have invested to ‘improve’ the land for agricultural purposes, what is notably Welsh is the central role of farming as an assumed bedrock of our national identity.2 Consequently, rewilding has struggled to gain a foothold. However, some successes have been won, and it is here that the story of the Cambrian Wildwood begins.

ECOS 33(1) 2012 Beaver habitat in the Welsh Wildwood: beavers arrived in 2011 from consultant Derek Gow at this lake at Blaeneinion.

Photo: Sophie Wynne-Jones

The Cambrian Wildwood The vision for the Cambrian Wildwood began with a group of friends including Peter Taylor and fellow rewilding enthusiast Simon Ayres, who were inspired by the potential of an upland site at the head of Cwm Einion south of Machynlleth, surrounding a farm called Pemprys (OS 715942).

They formed the Wales Wild Land Foundation, and have since strengthening their numbers with a community group of around 50 volunteers now working to champion the cause of the Wildwood. Despite some early set-backs, their ambition has not waned with a bold target now set for 7000 acres of woodland regeneration across the Northern Cambrians, with the intent to work with a range of partners including the Forestry Commission and private land owners in the area.

Most recently the group have worked with permaculture practitioner Sharon Girardi, on her farm at Blaeneinion, which neighbours the original Pemprys site the Wildwood group had hoped to work on. At Blaeneinion tree planting has been taken forward as part of a community focused project which will also include the creation of edible landscapes, including fruiting hedgerows and orchards. Planting has been done by dedicated volunteers, with 8000 trees going in over the winter of 2010-11, and plans for a further 35 acres over the next five years.3 Sharon Girardi has also emphasised the importance of quality rather than quantity, focusing on the need to nurture community support and involvement as well as the young saplings.

Consequently, rewilding can be understood here as an aspiration to restore both human and woodland ecology.

Alongside the trees, the introduction of two European beavers in November 2011 has also added to the excitement and the vision of the project, making a wider appeal to the ethos of rewilding.

Looking to the future, the Wildwood Group hope to see further woodland regeneration in what are currently conifer plantations surrounding the Blaeneinion site. Whilst over in the neighbouring valley of Dynyn, exciting connections could also be made with tree planting around the site of a housing co-operative located there. This was pioneered 20 years ago by then co-op members Ritchie Tassell and Deirdre Raffan, and is a testament to the potential for reforestation in these remote upland locations.

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Beyond the Wildwood But what of those hills spreading south-east from the head of Cwn Einion into the vast empty peaks of Pumlumon? In a visioning exercise conducted by the Countryside Council for Wales in 2007, compiled in its Upland Framework document 4, there was enthusiasm for the restoration of native woodlands on a much larger scale. Equally, the UK National Ecosystem Assessment has highlighted the potential wealth to be gained from wider woodland creation across Wales, pointing to the importance of trees for both their carbon sequestration and recreational values, alongside their more traditional role of timber production. Perhaps most critically, the UK NEA compared the ecosystem service value of continued farming against that of woodland creation, coming out in favour of woodland across a large proportion of Wales.5 Notably, not all of the uplands are considered suitable, with deep peat and blanket bog habitats serving as key reservoirs of carbon and biodiversity. But beyond these enclaves, there is a lot of degraded upland covered in a near monoculture of molinia which stretches across a heartbreakingly large area, particularly so in the Cambrian mountains.

I am courting controversy here I know, because many people find this open landscape beautiful, and the Cambrian Mountain’s Society are trying to gain AONB status to preserve it.6 Yet, whilst I can relate on one level to the bleak isolation and solitude, I can not help but remember there is soil there under that molinia; soil which could, and once did, support a greater array of habitats than the suffocating moor grass. So, it is in the face of such ecological impoverishment that I begin to imagine trees and scrubby montane species being replanted across this landscape.

Changing cultures and reforming CAP However, despite increasing support for a wildwood in some quarters, elsewhere the age-old tension of trees versus sheep has continued to play out. Even for those farmers willing to engage in planting through the new Glastir Woodland Creation scheme, there have been some problems, as discussed in my previous ECOS article.7 Nevertheless, despite a seeming impasse, there is a looming spectre which threatens to shake-up these long held cultural norms. The Common Agricultural Policy was once responsible for high levels of grazing in the uplands. It is now orientated towards the delivery of public and environmental benefits, with subsidies re-directed from supporting production to conservation. However, generic support still remains in the form of the Single Farm Payment. Although continued pressure on this raises the question of whether it will be available over the longer term, and whether farmers will have to engage further with the delivery of environmental goods and services. Single Farm Payments comprised 85% of the income of upland farms in Wales in 2010 8, suggesting that many would go out of business without it.

Currently, hill farmers are no longer set to receive additional financial support, unless they also engage with the new Glastir agri-environment scheme.9 The Government has signalled that simply farming the uplands is not enough on its own, and that clear environmental gains have to be included.

Nevertheless, a more dramatic shift away from livestock husbandry as the primary method of managing the uplands seems unlikely. The current approach is to 18

ECOS 33(1) 2012 work alongside farming as the primary land-use rather than presume to replace it with a new form of production tailored towards environmental goods. Even with pioneering work such as the RSPB-LIFE project in the Berwyns, where farmers have been encouraged to restore degraded blanket-bog to deliver biodiversity, carbon, and water benefits10, there is no question of whether this land should be removed from farming altogether. For many habitats grazing can be maintained as part of a sustainable management plan, including areas of mature woodland where grazing can be incorporated as part of an agro-forestry production system. But this does not include areas of woodland restoration from which stock need to be excluded.

Whilst not all Welsh farmers are opposed to woodland creation, there is a clear culture of animal husbandry and shepherding across the Welsh uplands, with little understanding of wood-based livelihoods, despite the many woodland associations in Celtic ancestry and clues within the archaeology of the land itself. Even the insights of contemporary agro-forestry research, which demonstrate an important model of synergistic production, have struggled to gain credence amongst the farming community.11 In research undertaken into farmers’ decision making, in 2011, many farmers were not even prepared to change the use of their holdings for short term financial gain, because they were concerned to maintain the fertility of their land for food production over the long term, and maintain what they perceived to be a sustainable business for their families’ future. Consequently, it is evident that Welsh farmers are still strongly wedded to the need to maintain food production, and perhaps now increasingly so given the demand for global food security and increasing food prices.

Who can deliver rewilding?

Perhaps farmers are not the best people to pursue rewilding or even ecosystem service delivery when it requires a more dramatic change in land use. Instead, should we be looking to a new generation of land managers who are prepared to work with this very different vision? Rewilding projects such as Carrifran have often been presented as ‘one offs’ which will serve as inspirational and educational artefacts in a wider working landscape. As such, advocates have tried to avoid an adversarial stance, which could threaten wider community interests. These cultural norms now need to be readdressed, given the current acknowledgement of the ecological damage incurred through intensive farming, , and the question of how to maintain a sustainable farm income in future years.

Whilst the issues raised here are by no means new, with the tensions surrounding rewilding and reforestation long being debated, it is important to acknowledge the current melting pot of opportunities available to us: We have the inspiration and ecological guidelines available from early pioneering projects; and we also have a greater public awareness of environmental degradation, coupled with the realisation that current land-use practise is no longer viable. Equally we have the recognition that woodland restoration is an excellent way to deliver the plethora of essential ecosystem goods and services now in demand. Consequently, we may have a policy window which encourages rewilding. So, whilst I wholeheartedly 19

ECOS 33(1) 2012 support the work of standalone projects like the Cambrian Wildwood, I hope such ventures can prompt debate on the worth of wildwoods right across our heartlands.

References 1. Pori Natur a Threftadaeth, is the Welsh arm of the Grazing Advice Partnership (GAP) which works to facilitate appropriate and sustainable grazing across Wales (http://www.grazinganimalsproject.org.uk/ pont_home.html).

2. J. Morris (1998) Epic Views of a Small Country. OUP; Penguin ed. 2000.

3. http://www.blaeneinion.co.uk/Permaculture---The-Wildwood.html 4. B. Jones, (2007) CCW’s Upland Framework.

5. UK National Ecosystem Assessment (2011) The UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis of the Key Findings. UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge. p44 Figure 19.

6. http://www.cambrian-mountains.co.uk/aonb-proposal-intro.php 7. S. Wynne-Jones (2011) Glastir Woodland Creation or Consternation? ECOS 32 (2) pages 29-33.

8. Farm Business Survey (2010) Farm Business Survey Wales, IBERS. Aberystwyth University.

9. http://wales.gov.uk/topics/environmentcountryside/farmingandcountryside/farming/glastirhome/?lang=en 10. http://www.blanketbogswales.org/ 11. Hamer,E. (2011) Agroforestry in the UK. The Land 11: 32-35.

Sophie Wynne-Jones is a Research Associate with the Wales Rural Observatory. She has recently finished a report on Farmers’ Decision Making for the Welsh Government, which addresses many of the issues outlined in this article. Available to download from www.walesruralobservatory.org.uk The views expressed here are purely her own and are not intended to represent the WRO or Welsh Government. sxw@aber.ac.uk

ECOS 33(1) 2012

Scottish and reform: a lost opportunity for community landownership?

Land reform in Scotland raises huge opportunities for remote areas of the Highlands and Islands to improve the local environment and gain associated livelihoods. This article assesses the scale of the challenge in harnessing the legislation.

ALEXANDRA HENDERSON The establishment of the crofting community The pattern of Scottish land ownership has undergone enormous change in the last 300 years. Prior to the union of Scotland and England in 1707, the Highlanders were left largely to their own devices and were organised by clans. The vision of the Gaelic society was the Clan owned the land and the Laird was the Clan leader.

By the mid-eighteenth century the Highlanders began to follow the example set by their southern neighbours and the Clan Chiefs began to conform.1 James Hunter describes the “bonds of kinship and mutual obligation on which clans were based effectively precluded the introduction of the impersonal money relationships”. Thus monetary relationships were established in the Highlands and Islands, and the title Laird shifted from leader to landowner and the crofting system emerged. This was a time of great instability in Scotland. No sooner than the crofting system was established, the infamous Highland Clearances began. Landowners became driven by profit and quickly realised sheep farming to generate wool and kelping on the shore would be more profitable than tenanting land to crofters. Vast interiors of land were cleared and hundreds of townships across the crofting counties became a ‘redundant’ population2 and were moved, not just to other parts of the estate, to less fertile ground (as seen on Harris, Lewis and parts of Skye), but off the estate altogether.3 The Clearances continued for a century and the introduction of intensive sheep farming has had severe social and ecological implications in the Highlands and Islands.

Scottish land reform The large-scale clearances during the 18th & 19th centuries put community rights (particularly those of crofting communities) firmly on the national political map. The historical episodes of struggle, dislocation and resilience have become a fundamental part of Scotland’s cultural identity and an important source of contemporary imagery today. However, the remaining local residents were soon to face another challenge.

By the late 1850s almost two-thirds of Highland properties were sold to wealthy lowland and English interests3 and landownership in the Highlands and Islands was revolutionised. McIntosh4 describes this transition: “…cheap fleece imports 20

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from Australia, and constantly improving breeds from agricultural innovation had devastated the wool market. A new use had to be found for the land. That was sport. So it was that all over the Highlands in the 1880s sporting estates were set up and castles built to provide the Industrial Revolution’s nouveau riche with trappings just like those of the old-moneyed landed power.”

For the first time land was owned by people outwith Scotland; not just in England but worldwide. Scottish land became a commodity and was subject to fads and fashion; undergoing an Arab period, a Dutch period, an on going Danish period, even a rock group period on the landowning scene.5 Over time this underlying inequality of ownership contributed to a simmering unrest6, the landowners’ higher status and position in law established a class-like model of ‘the people’ versus ‘the landowners’. By the 1990s a quiet revolution had began. We were witness to a number of community buy-outs including the North Lochinver Estate by the Assynt Crofters, Isle of Eigg and Knoydart.

Chenevix-Trench and Philip7 explained that the perceived economic constraints of the landownership system, combined with emotions of social injustice created a powerful movement for reform. The Scottish Government published the Land Reform (Scotland) Act (LR(S)A 2003). At this time it was seen as a ‘historic bill’ aiming to establish statutory access rights for ramblers and create opportunities for community land ownership. The LR(S)A 2003 contains three distinct parts: Part I, Access Rights; Part II, The community right to buy; and Part III, The crofting community right to buy.

Political perspectives on land reform

The right to buy fundamentally gives communities the right to be, a secure placebased arena of common identity and interests, protected by legal title.8 By allowing communities first refusal to purchase local land when it comes on the market and by offering crofting communities the right to force a sale, this was a big step forward in attempting to diversify Scottish landownership, promote better land management, and reconnect communities to the land, usually for the first time in centuries.

Indicating the political polarisation, Roseanna Cunningham, Scottish National Party, agreed the new law would mark: “...the beginning of a significant change in the pattern of land ownership in Scotland” whilst Tory MSP Bill Aitken said: “...this type of legislation has no place in modern Scotland. It will have a dreadful effect not only on those living in rural areas, but on city-dwellers whose hard-earned tax will be used to pay for this Mugabe-style land grab”.9 When the bill entered statutory law expectations were high. In the first year 20 applications were submitted by communities registering an interest in local land and this number steadily grew to a total of 131 by 2011. However, these communities were not just registering to purchase large estates (like some predicted) but more often communities wanted to buy small areas of communal land or buildings, such as disused churches, pubs, even an old Scottish Water Chisholm Tank. Nine years on a staggering 163 community bodies had been formed under the Act, but only 10 purchases had been made by 8 different communities, 4 of which are located in the Highlands and Islands.

The implications of defining ‘community’ The legislation gives the community the right to buy, rather than just an individual. It relies heavily on creative community planning and learning and is 22

Small-scale wind turbines installed by the Isle of Eigg Trust.

Photo: Maggie Fyffe

thus simultaneously a top-down and bottom-up approach to reform. Whilst this creates a number of opportunities it can also create a number of difficulties. The Act accepts, fairly uncritically, the notion of community. The term itself is woven into texts with minor attention to the complexity; and it is fraught with definitional and operational problems. Brown10 explains that “legally speaking there is no such thing as a crofting community – there are only individually registered crofts and common grazing committees.” In the Highlands and Islands, particularly crofting areas, populations are in decline and there are serious problems associated with absenteeism. One area was found to have 70% of its crofts vacant. The Crofters Commission has been trying to resolve this issue for a number of years because it has a severe impact on communities, reducing social cohesion, impacting on the condition of housing stock, creating areas of neglect and affecting practical community crofting.

The Act defines community as “tenants or grazing shareholders of the land and residents of the townships, all provided they are registered electors”. This solely takes geographical location as the definition but for many this is not the only way.

MacDonald3 believes “communities have been assumed to ‘be traditional’, to have ‘culture’, ‘heritage’ and ‘authenticity’, to be ‘integrated’ and homogenous, and to 23

ECOS 33(1) 2012 be ‘meaningful’ to their members.” This rather romantic insight provides a deeper understanding of what individuals feel creates a community. For some communities this feeling has been lost. The regulated way the legislation goes about creating a community has the potential to stop groups from using the legislation and has lead to disputes.

Whilst any community which fits the above criteria can submit an interest on a local asset, it takes a determined group of people to successfully use the legislation. Not all communities are aware of a potential asset until an opportunity arises, however communities must register in advance of the asset entering the open market but some believe this has the potential to antagonise the current landowner. It takes vision, drive and knowledge to see the value of an asset and to push through the process to secure community ownership. The process can be very difficult and demanding on time, resources, money and even friendships.

For many communities registering an interest will be the only step they make in the process. Large areas of privately owned land may never enter the open market, with landowners unwilling to sell. This is a somewhat tentative step towards land reform11 as it still creates very little change in the pattern of landownership. When the Scottish Government consulted on the legislation, one crofting community on Loch Eriboll in Sutherland explained that they were having significant problems with an absentee landowner and unless they had a way to force a sale Part II was going to be useless. As a result Part III was prepared and has been called ‘radical’, giving crofting communities the absolute right to acquire croft land without the consent of the owner. It is meant as a tool of last resort but in many ways this is the only true way to achieve land reform, particularly when landowners are unwilling to sell.

Funding For communities that do make it through to purchase the next major challenge is funding. A lack of funding accounts for 8 out of 9 unsuccessful applications. At the Orbost Estate on the Isle of Skye the buy-out was meant to be a showcase. Skye and Lochalsh Enterprise purchased the 1,856ha estate in 1997 for £511,000 with the intention of selling it back to the community, but this has still yet to be achieved.

A resident at Orbost explained: “…we got together and we did amazingly well to form a trust and produce this wonderful plan and it was a good plan and they pulled the plug the week before. We can’t give it to you; we can’t transfer it to you because we can’t fund ourselves to buy it again. So therefore it is not happening.”

Funding is a major problem in connection to community landownership yet this was not always the case. In 2000 the Scottish Land Fund (SLF) was established, capitalising on the UK lottery-funded New Opportunities Fund and was granted £10m (later increased to £15m) to assist rural communities to acquire and develop community land and buildings. The idea at the time was for the LR(S)A 2003 and the SLF to coincide and work together to promote community landownership across Scotland. Unfortunately this did not quite go to plan as the vast majority of the SLF had been spent and delivered before the Scottish Government made it through the legislation process.

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 This meant that whilst communities have the opportunity to register an interest and gain the right-to-buy it is becoming increasingly difficult to source money to successfully purchase the land or asset. Once a community has raised money to purchase the asset it often requires more investment to manage the project. The issue surrounding funding creates uncertainty for communities. Unless we see a source of money available to work alongside land reform, we will not see a change in direction.

Ecological and environmental Implications Some of the most critical conservation issues in the UK today relate to the abandonment of traditional agricultural practices12 and the Clearances are a perfect example of this. The combination of intensive sheep farming and absentee landowners has taken its toll on the environment. Across Europe traditional practices are being abandoned in favour of intensification of farming, but some of Europe’s most valued biotopes occur on low-intensity farmland.12 Crofting is seen to be beneficial to a wide range of flora and fauna but the intensification of farming methods has led to extensive habitat loss and a decline in biodiversity.13 As more of the public demand conservation practices and environmental benefits the current form of land management has come under close scrutiny.7 The Isle of Eigg “fitted the pattern of rural disempowerment elsewhere, not just in Highland Scotland but in much of the world”.4 The island experienced neglect and conflict from a series of landowners but on 12 June 1997 the Eigg Heritage Trust purchased the island. By doing so they were able to combine the aims of the community and conservation interests to create a broader rationale. The Trust now acts as a guardian of the island, working in partnership with residents, Highland Council and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Since gaining ownership it has been able to achieve virtually full employment and a green energy grid. Another and more recent example was the creation of the Bute Community Land Company which in July 2010 purchased 161 hectares of Rhubodach Forest. Its vision combines community development and conservation of their remote environment. Land reform and community landownership is changing the way Scottish land is managed and is about creating new opportunities for rural communities, without damaging wild environments.5

Rights and responsibilities of land ownership Nine years on there is still a steady flow of communities registering to use the LR(S) A 2003. But there hasn’t been the big change in overall land ownership that many were expecting back in 2003. The way the legislation was developed means that the majority of communities are forced to wait for the asset to enter the market and only the owner knows when that will be, if ever. Part III does offer crofting communities the right to force a sale but there is only one example of this, the Pairc Trust which has shown it is not an easy process. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) has said the threat of the legislation alone is influencing landowners’ decisions on selling their land. Glason community applied to use Part III of the Act and following its application to the Scottish Executive to purchase the common grazing on the estate the landowner entered into private negotiations with the Trust and the purchase is now complete.

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 Back in 2001 Roger Sidaway commented the “real debate is about redefining the rights and responsibilities of ownership, invigorating rural economies and restoring biodiversity while the rhetorical debate is more concerned with righting the wrongs of the Clearances or attacking the conspicuous consumption of the landed gentry.”

This still stands true today. For the time being I do not think the landed gentry have too much to worry about.

References 1. Hunter J. (2000) The Making of the Crofting Community. Birlinn Ltd. Edinburgh 2. Devine T. M. (1994) Clanship to Crofters’ War: The social transformation of the Scottish Highlands.

Manchester University Press: Manchester and New York 3. MacDonald S. (1997) Reimagining Culture: Histories, Identities and the Gaelic Renaissance. Berg: Oxford and New York 4. McIntosh A. (2004) Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power. Aurum Press Ltd. London 5. Cramb A. (2000) Who owns Scotland Now? The Use and Abuse of Private Land. Mainstream Publishing: Edinburgh and London 6. Woodin T., Crook D. and Carpentier V. (2010) Community and mutual ownership: a historical review.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation: York 7. Chenevix-Trench H. and Philip L. J (2001) Community and conservation land ownership in highland Scotland: A common focus in s changing context. Scottish Geographical Journal 117(20): 139-156 8. Bryden J. and Geilser C. (2007) Community-based land reform: Lessons from Scotland. Land Use Policy 24: 24-35 9. BBC News (2003) Land Reform Bill Wins Support. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2686445.stm 10. Brown A. P. (2008) Crofter Forestry, Land Reform and the Ideology of Community. Social Legal Studies 17(3): 333-349.

11. Satsangi M. (2007) Land Tenure Change and Rural Housing in Scotland. Scottish Geographical Journal 123(1): 33-47 12. Bignal E. M. and McCracken D. I. (1996) Low-Intensity Farming Systems in the Conservation of the Countryside. Journal of Applied Ecology 33(3): 413-424 13. Redpath N., Osgathorpe L. M., Park K. and Goulson D. (2010) Crofting and bumblebee conservation: The impact of land management practices on bumblebee populations in northwest Scotland. Biological Conservation143: 492-500

Alexandra Henderson is based at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh where she works with universities and colleges across Scotland to promote the environmental agenda. alex3henderson@gmail.com

ECOS 33(1) 2012

Letting the cat out of the bag: Eurasian lynx reintroduction in Scotland Conservation, game and land owning bodies have recently been discussing the conditions for any future reintroduction of lynx to Scotland. This article considers the debate amongst organisations who would be central to the possible return of the lynx.

JAMES THOMSON In August 2011 it was announced that Mar Lodge estate, managed by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), could face financial penalties from Scottish Natural Heritage for failing to curtail its deer population to predefined targets.1 As the Scottish Government drives home plans to increase national forest cover from 17% to 25% by 2050, NTS is unlikely to be the only landowner facing such penalisation. Naturally, many groups oppose the aggressive deer culling tactics required to enable native forest regeneration to take place, on ethical as well as economic grounds. The Scottish Gamekeepers Association is demanding to know how rural communities, dependent on red deer populations to feed their fragile stalking industry, are supposed to get by as a result.2 While emotions run high, a handful of land management organisations have recently begun to contemplate an alternative way forward.

Bringing back the lynx – the human perspectives The ecological feasibility of reintroducing the Eurasian lynx to Scotland has been expressed by a number of scientific experts in recent decades. Meanwhile the case for returning large carnivores has ignited debate about the relationships we have with a range of predator species both present and extinct.3 But in contemplating the practicalities of returning any large mammal to Scotland, have the relationships between different user-groups of the countryside been overlooked?

Through my dissertation at Edinburgh University I hoped to offer a springboard for different stakeholders to express their views about lynx reintroduction. Many of the interviewees that took part in my study later shared their perspectives at a symposium at the university. First to present was David Hetherington of the Cairngorms National Park Authority who had previously studied the feasibility of lynx reintroduction in Scotland at the University of Aberdeen. By calculating the amount of suitable habitat and the availability of natural prey for reintroduced lynx, he proposed that Scotland could accommodate up to 450 lynx. He then declared honestly: “Lynx do eat sheep. They can kill them and they do kill them”.

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Sheep left to graze in open forest are most vulnerable to lynx predation. This extraordinary image, captured by Norwegian sheep farmer Jostein Hunstad, shows a lynx attempting to steal one of his lambs. Hunstad managed to spook the ultra shy predator with the sound of his voice, rescuing the lamb to safety.

Photo: Jostein Hunstad

ECOS 33(1) 2012 In continental Europe, the number of sheep predated by lynx can vary significantly depending on the method of animal husbandry in use. Norwegian farmers for example, who allow their sheep to graze in communal areas of forest during the summer, routinely experience losses of between 5,000 and 8,000 sheep.4 In Switzerland, however, where sheep are normally grazed on open pastures, its estimated population of 120 lynx typically take between 15 and 40 sheep each year.5

Sheep security Alex Hogg, Chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, spoke at the symposium of his sense of doubt over the lynx’s potential predatory habits contending: “there’s hardly a field without a wee bit of woodland around it. I don’t know about lynx, but this might just be Bed & Breakfast for them if they were wild in Scotland”. Alex expressed some of the difficulties inherent in returning an apex predator into the highly managed landscape which Scotland has become. Despite a general aversion toward the idea, Alex proposed that a small number of lynx might be placed in a large fenced off area of land, allowing tourists the chance to catch a glimpse of one.

Whilst Alex’s comments are no doubt constructive, they are a nod in the direction of Paul Lister’s plans to erect a 37mile long, 8 feet high electric fence around the perimeter of his Highland estate to hold wolves, lynx and bears. In 2005, Lister upset a range of recreational users of the Highlands, who interpreted his proposals as a violation of their hard earned Right to Roam detailed under The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.6 Attending the symposium from Scottish Government’s Rural & Environment Directorate, Hugh Dignon brushed away any Alladale-type suggestions concluding “We don’t consider that to be a proper reintroduction I should say, it’s a zoo project, as far as I’m concerned”.

Next to present was Douglas Richardson, Animal Collection Manager at the Highland Wildlife Park. He spoke about the role which old and new technologies might one day play in allaying some of the concerns raised already by Alex Hogg. Douglas empathised with the difficulties associated with managing elusive predators in the wild and described how a GPS device with an inbuilt anaesthetic delivery system within the collar could provide some peace of mind for a range of stakeholders during a trial reintroduction. As with the reintroduction of the red wolf into the US state of North Carolina, any lynx fitted with such a collar during a trial could, in theory, be knocked out at a touch of a button.

Chairman of the Slovak Wildlife Society, Robin Rigg travelled all the way from Slovakia to deliver his presentation. During the last 20 years, Robin has worked 28

with a number of livestock farmers in the Tatra Mountains, implementing a range of non-lethal measures to mitigate conflict between humans and large carnivores.

Rigg believes that the potential level of disruption caused by any reintroduced lynx in Scotland is likely to be negligible: “Based on interviews with livestock owners and shepherds, we estimated that wolves kill something like 1600 sheep a year, bears around 300 and lynx around 4 or 5… So really it’s totally insignificant in Slovakia” Major highway and infrastructure developments brought about by its induction into the EU have transformed Slovakia’s image as an untarnished wilderness area, but the country has still managed to retain a healthy population of lynx. Rigg contended that Slovakia arguably constitutes a human-modified landscape comparable to that of Scotland’s today, with well over half the country’s landmass under agricultural management. But in spite of their resemblances, David Hetherington felt that the Slovakian experience of lynx-livestock predation was an “absolutely optimal” scenario and estimated that losses in Scotland were more likely to be in the region of 50 and 400 sheep a year.

Richard Morley, Director of the Wolves & Humans Foundation, said his charity would be prepared to set up a fund using private donations to compensate for any losses to livestock in Scotland. David Hetherington suggested that a pro-active system of financial compensation, currently used in Sweden, would arguably yield the most economically sustainable results. Authorities in Sweden offer farmers annual payments for having lynx present on their land, regardless of any predation, so that farmers benefit economically from the presence of lynx in their area. As losses are not compensated for, the impetus lies with them to shield any vulnerable livestock from predation.

A Licence to manage or to kill?

Attending the symposium discussion was Doug McAdam, CEO of the influential landowner group Scottish Land & Estates. In 2008, the organisation helped Scottish Natural Heritage to establish the National Species Reintroduction Forum, offering stakeholders an arena to voice their perspectives long before licences are granted by Scottish Government. Doug agreed with suggestions that a pragmatic Exit Strategy would be a necessary component of any serious reintroduction proposal, but felt that more thought could be given towards policies that dictate their capacity to manage the impact of existing species: “The experience that we’ve had to date with some of these reintroductions is that these reintroduced species are here now, consultation beforehand was very poor, the process was not transparent and not inclusive. These protected species are now having very significant impacts on people who live and work in the countryside and we have no tools to deal with that.”

The “tools” that are referred to here are culling licences issued by SNH under the Wildlife & Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011. They allow gamekeepers to deal with problematic species, normally protected by law, which are significantly affecting their stock. In Switzerland compromises have been made to allow a range of strictly protected predator species, including the lynx and the grey wolf, to be controlled. Qualified state gamekeepers are invited to remove, under licence, 29

ECOS 33(1) 2012 ‘problem’ animals which have been shown to have killed numbers of livestock above a set threshold. Such a management strategy could be welcomed by some people in rural communities who may be nervous about having an unfamiliar, large carnivore around.

Unlike Switzerland which is not part of the EU, Scotland would have to conform to the Habitats Directive which grants the Eurasian lynx strict protection status under European law. As an endangered species, the lynx’s categorisation under Annexe IV of the Habitats Directive currently presents an obstacle in the minds of those who wish to exercise a greater degree of control over species reintroduction projects in Scotland.

How wildlife enthusiasts will respond to talk of killing an endangered predator is another matter of contention. But there is a growing consensus among wildlife

ECOS 33(1) 2012 managers that the lethal control of problematic predators in founder populations could be an essential tool for ensuring their successful reintroduction. If carried out strategically over extended periods of time, lethal removal can help managers select against depredation behaviours in predator populations.7 Excessive concern for a particular individual animal, or public distaste towards a particular management technique, can be indulged at the cost of a species’ national reputation and subsequent recovery. This is known as social carrying capacity.

Taking the proposed policy step in his stride, Donnie Broad, a member of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, spoke with some optimism for future lynx management prospects. In addition to the 1,500 acre Pitcastle sporting estate in Perthshire which he manages, Donnie takes care of 20,000 acres of farmland in Glenlochay in the Central Belt. He agrees that the ability to deal with problematic lynx would be his priority. Whilst Donnie explained that he was pro lynx reintroduction, he suggested that the breed of livestock threatened by predation would be an important factor in determining other landowners’ attitudes towards the idea: “We’ve got 2,600 breeding ewes on the open hill in Glenlochay, so losing one of them to a lynx now and again is insignificant compared to losses to weather and existing predation. But if you’ve got a pedigree flock outside Perth with a hundred sheep, losing one of them to lynx is indeed something… It’s proportional.”

In order to understand how conflicts might develop with different varieties of livestock in Scotland, it’s widely accepted that a trial reintroduction of lynx would ultimately be required. During a previous interview I conducted for my dissertation, Drew McFarlane-Slack of Scottish Land & Estates suggested that a series of trial reintroductions could take place at the same time as each other, with communities and stakeholders directing the research activity. McFarlane-Slack suggested that lynx behaviour would need to be scrutinized against a wide variety of social factors, including higher human population density and higher road density towards more urbanised parts of the Central Belt.8 The US Department of Agriculture has recently set up the Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Research Centre, a federally managed facility dedicated to resolving conflicts between people and wildlife. Scotland might require a facility of this kind to provide an initial testing ground for examining the effects of returned lynx. Among the technologies tested at the National Wildlife Research Centre in Utah is the Electronic Guard. To deter predators from livestock rearing areas this device emits colourful strobe lights and warning sirens from its programmable MP3 player. Although the technology appears to be a positive development, John Schivik reports that intelligent predators have learnt to perceive the threat as harmless and advocates greater success with the use of livestock guarding animals.9 Touching on this subject, Douglas Richardson warned the symposium audience of hikers being attacked by Livestock Guarding Dogs on the continent and promoted llamas and donkeys as a safer, more effective option.

Photo: Tourist operators in Siberia, such as Hunt-Russia, currently charge their clients $4,700 to hunt a single Eurasian lynx.

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Photo: Hunt-Russia

In the United States guard llamas are seen as a low maintenance, non-lethal alternative for mitigating livestock predation, requiring little training and care in 31

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Guard Llamas can be very loyal to their flock of sheep. In America they will defend livestock from cougars and coyotes. Llamas can live for many years and do not require additional feeding. In Belize, donkeys have been used with great affect to warn off jaguars.

Photo: Laura Jennings

ECOS 33(1) 2012 comparison to Livestock Guarding Dogs.

Studies carried out on farms in Utah found that average rates of sheep predation due to coyote attack fell from 8% to 1% after the introduction of a Guard Llama to repel predators such as the coyote, with more than half of farmers having their livestock losses reduced to zero.10 Encouraging conservation NGOs and farmers to work alongside each other in this way as they test the effectiveness of old and new technologies could be important way of establishing trust in the process of bringing back a species.

Local communities have a right to be engaged Contemplating the return of the lynx to Scotland, a government licence would need to be granted to authorise proceedings. Hugh Dignon, the man in charge of facilitating that process, suggested that Ministers’ minds are focused at present on the specific reintroductions in progress now, such as the beaver. He stated “there is clearly a role, for groups, for NGOs, for others to keep the subject at the forefront of people’s attention”. Brushing away claims that government wasn’t doing enough to coordinate the process Dignon highlighted the role of Scottish Natural Heritage’s Species Action Framework, which currently prioritises 32 native species for wildlife conservation and future reintroduction.

During 2012 groups within the National Species Reintroduction Forum will be able to advise SNH on whether the lynx, amongst other candidate species, should be a species whose reintroduction merits more detailed investigation and discussion.

Stakeholders within the forum, particularly those involved in livestock farming, may be conscious of the EU’s CAP review coming up in 2013. The restructuring of agricultural subsidies will soon determine Scotland’s ability to embrace a burgeoning global demand for meats such as lamb. But while NFU Scotland will have a chance to convey its opinions on the matter, what about the increasing swathes of people raising the odd hen or pig in their back gardens? According to Drew McfarlaneSlack, Highlands Manager of Scottish Land & Estates: “Having a lynx would provide a new top-range predator and that would have to be factored into the way stock is managed… Increasing numbers of people are keeping domestic chickens and ducks, geese and the like, all of these would become potential targets… chicken farmers for example would probably need to increase the security of their premises to deal with that”.11 Support and advisory schemes will have to be developed long in advance to ensure that rural communities are properly equipped to share their territory with the lynx.

For instance the Florida Wildlife Commission (FWC) employs a team of rangers to help people know how to respond to encounters with the likes of a cougar.

Another key responsibility of the FWC response unit is to share knowledge between residents, including how best to protect domestic livestock from predation.12 32

An enclosure in Germany’s Harz National Park containing a habituated lynx that is unsuitable for release into the wild.

Photo: Harz National Park

Prepare to be surprised Some scientists have suggested that lynx should be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices to monitor and protect them in the wild. Recent revelations about the widespread use of GPS jamming technology throughout the UK13 make me question how sensible that might be though, both logistically and economically.

When powerful jamming equipment was deployed during Europe’s largest joint military exercise in 2011 for example, fishermen off the west coast of Scotland found their GPS navigational systems failed to work. The incident followed a report published by the Royal Academy of Engineering warning of the UK’s over reliance on GPS. Despite initial apprehension toward the reintroduction of 20 lynx into the Harz National Park in Germany in 2000, the German Hunting Federation recently declared that a €6,000 fund created to deal with lynx-livestock predation in the region has yet to be exhausted.14 As a symbol of the iconic species’ pulling power, its home territory has being marketed as “The Kingdom of the Lynx” and local hoteliers have reported a 25% increase in revenue due to the area’s lynx branding.15 One of the keys to the project’s success is the enclosure for the lynx deemed unsuitable for release. The facility allows people to watch lynx during feeding times, and park rangers can inform visitors about lynx behaviour.

At the symposium it was announced that the Highland Wildlife Park, situated in the Cairngorms National Park, is preparing for the arrival from Sweden and Latvia of two Eurasian lynx of the Northern subspecies, which is considered to be the 33

ECOS 33(1) 2012 appropriate sub-species for reintroduction into Scotland. Douglas Richardson of HWP hopes this will provide a tangible platform for people’s engagement on the subject. Being proactive and inviting local farmers and landowners to see first hand the same variety of lynx they might one day be asked to learn to live alongside can surely do no harm, coupled with other measures for people to discuss the merits and the detail of possibly bringing back lynx.

The politics on the ground are in flux, but small partnerships are slowly but surely being forged between landowners, conservationists, ecologists and gamekeepers in contemplating how Eurasian lynx reintroduction might one day become socially feasible. Compared to other reintroduction projects, the lynx has a different rhythm in its stride and I doubt this will go unnoticed by politicians as they prepare to mount the campaign for independence.

References 1. BBC News Website (2011), Marr Lodge faces SNH penalty over forest regeneration.

2. Frasier, P (2012). The economic importance of red deer to Scotland’s rural economy and the political threat now facing the country’s iconic species. The Scottish Gamekeepers Association.

3. Cairns, P. Hamblin, M (2007). Tooth & Claw. Whittles Publishing, Caithness.

4. Odden, J., Linnell, J.D.C., Moa, P.F., Herfindal, I., Kvam, T. & Andersen, R. (2002). Lynx depredation on domestic sheep in Norway. Journal of Wildlife Management, 66, 98-105.

5. KORA (2007). Livestock Damage Statistics.

6. Morris, D (2008). Ramblers Scotland position statement on reintroductions: Alladale and the Reintroduction of wolves. Ramblers Association Scotland Website, 7. Schivik, J A (2006). Tools for the edge: what’s new for conserving carnivores. BioScience. Vol. 56 (p257). No, 3.

8. Thomson, J (2011). Interview with Drew-Mcfarlane Slack. Developing a Community Engagement Strategy for the reintroduction of the Eurasian lynx to Scotland.

9. Schivik, J A. (2006) Tools for the edge: what’s new for conserving carnivores (p255). BioScience. / Vol. 56 No. 3.

10. Franklin, W., Powell, KJ (2006). Guard llamas: A part of integrated sheep protection. Department of Animal Ecology, College of Agriculture, Iowa State University.

11. Thomson, J (2011). Interview with Drewe-Mcfarlane Slack. Developing a Community Engagement Strategy for the reintroduction of the Eurasian lynx to Scotland. The University of Edinburgh.

12. FWC (2008). Interagency Florida Panther Response Team Annual Report: 2007-2008.

13. UK Sentinel study reveals GPS jammer use (2012). http://www.ZNET.com 14. Pace, G. (2010). Back to the Wild: Predatory Cats Return to the Harz Mountain in Bad Harzburg, Germany.

Der Spiegel.

15. Benvie, N (2006). Europe’s little lion: the lynx. Images from the Edge.

James Thomson is Project Manager at Melt. To download meeting minutes from the University of Edinburgh symposium and a copy of a sound recording which accompanies it, visit the BANC website. Jamesthomson20@hotmail.com

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Tolerating the Tay beavers The Tay beavers will be monitored between now and the end of the Knapdale beaver trial in 2015, when a decision will be made about the future re-introduction of beavers to Scotland as a whole. This article assesses the implications of the decision for beavers to be monitored, not captured or culled.

DEREK GOW The announcement in March that the free-living European beavers on the river Tay are to be monitored rather than captured or culled is to be welcomed. Although the establishment of this population was unconventional in its nature there was strong support for their retention. This decision may now ensure that the aspiration of a wild population of beavers in a modern, cultural British landscape transmits from mirage to reality. While this is a remarkable happening any jubilation should be carefully tempered until their future is clear. Although it is unlikely that any organised programme of removal will ever again be contemplated their current position remains precarious. The local monitoring group led by Scottish Natural Heritage will involve key groups such as the Tay District Salmon Fishery Board, and local landowners as well as conservation groups including Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

A plea for pragmatism The ability of the organisations and individuals concerned with the beavers’ future to compromise in a climate of pragmatism will prove critical. The long-term survival of the beavers will only prove possible if the majority of relevant landowners are prepared to tolerate their presence. This tolerance is only likely to emerge if they are free to mitigate for and ultimately control beaver activity within an agreed management mantel. Failure to realise this may result in significant inconvenience to some landowners and could easily result in the emergence of a determined cartel of individuals who wish to see the beavers gone. It is unlikely that SNH will accord the beavers protection and although this issue could perhaps be pursued via the Habitats Directive their survival on the ground will only be secured through reasoned tolerance, flexibility of management approach and understanding.

The retention of both the beavers and their wetlands could be incentivised through agri-environment, Water Framework Directive, carbon capture, and development offset schemes. While there will be many areas where they can live with little impact, others which they can adapt with tolerance and some where an installed infrastructure will mitigate for their presence in the long term there will be scenarios where their presence is not tolerated. The landscape they inhabit is latticed by flood walls, drainage ditches, arable crops, low lying roads and human settlements. With adaptation for landscape differences such as hedgerow systems and extensive fruit cultivation the established management systems from countries like Bavaria which allow targeted humane culling as a tool will in time be absolutely applicable to the Tay. 35

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ECOS 33(1) 2012

Beavers are not an insignificant species. Their presence will in time guarantee environmental dynamism on a scale to which we are completely unused. While their landscape manipulation in the upper catchments of river systems has a significant role in the purification, storage and regulation of water their wider habitat impacts are varied, extensive and profound. Although the forgoing is clearly welcome we should not underestimate the general depth of wider ignorance regarding both the animal itself and its associated activities. The landscapes beavers create can easily be perceived as ‘physical chaos’ and a long term process of education, awareness and training must now prepare the way for greater understanding.

The existence of the Tay beavers provides an opportunity without historic parallel.

We now have a viable population in Britain which is perfectly capable of enriching and creating wetland landscapes on a substantive scale. If we can demonstrate that their tolerable existence is possible on the Tay then this example could prepare the way for their restoration throughout the rest of Britain.

Derek Gow specialises in ethical wildlife mitigation, breeding, reintroduction and translocation of protected British mammals and reptiles. derekjgow@aol.com Juvenile beaver at a licensed beaver habitat enclosure at Bamff in Scotland.

Photo : Paul Ramsay

Ups and downs for the Badger Two six-week badger cull trials are scheduled to take place from August 2012 and may lead to wider culls countrywide. This article considers the unintended consequences which may result from the Government’s trial badger control exercise.

IAN ROTHERHAM The killing fields…

As the football pundit once famously stated ‘it’s a funny old world…….’, and that sentiment surely applies to the world of the badger. On the one hand, through the huge efforts of badger groups nationally, this most iconic of our larger native mammals has made a remarkable come-back from a low point of persecution in the 1970s. Badger digging and baiting had by that time almost entirely eradicated the population over much of the country and especially in deep-mining and other industrial regions. On the other hand, for many in the dairy farming industry, the badger remains public enemy number one. This last situation is most peculiar since all the rigorous scientific evidence is that badgers are not the primary cause of the spread of Bovine TB and the undoubted suffering caused to cattle. Indeed, where control trials have been carried out the evidence is that removal of badgers will cause rapid dispersal of remaining animals, and potentially of disease too, across the landscape.

In fact common-sense also would lead to the observation that such interference will have the wrong effect. Furthermore, even if a cull of badgers was in part effective, it would have to carry on from now into the foreseeable future. Are we really prepared to countenance that? In a democracy, are the public willing to sanction such a longterm persecution of one of the British public’s favourite mammals?

The UK Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), or ‘Krebs Trial’, indicated that culls would make the disease worse by disturbing the badgers’ social structure.

Culling would make them range out beyond their normal territory and so spread the tuberculosis bacterium to other nearby farms. Furthermore, there are widely held concerns that the effectiveness of the ‘free shooting’ to be used in the pilots is questionable. There are no studies to inform what will happen where the badgers are simply shot. A one-time government scientist recently suggested that ‘free shooting’ was “a recipe for perturbation” and the complications implied by that. Defra staff argue that if certain conditions are met, culling might reduce disease incidence by 16% over a 9 year period. Each killing zone must extend over at least 150 square kilometres and culling must take place on 70% or more of the land inside the zone.

The objective is to reduce the badger populations inside the ‘cull zones’ by at least 70%. Natural England will be prepared to issue licences for the pilot schemes but only if the groups of farmers and landowners provide plans meeting these criteria. The badger cull pilots will be in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset in 2012, but for

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 security reasons the precise areas are being kept secret. Most of the Gloucestershire cull area is around Tewkesbury and the Forest of Dean, and the Somerset zone includes part of Taunton Deane. Culling will begin in August for an initial period of six weeks and further areas will follow. Costs and funding for the cull or kill, and the associated police security operations remain murky.

Political excuses Interviewed on BBC TV’s Countryfile by John Craven on 15 January 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron tried to justify his stance on Bovine TB and the badger cull which the coalition government means to carry out. Some £4m will be spent on the two trials, in part because of the number of activists who are expected to try to frustrate the shooting of the badgers. In fact Cameron demonstrated that the decision is inherently politically-based rather than scientifically sound. He acknowledged that Badger cull trials would not end the difficulties, and that there were concerns over policing. However, the Prime Minister insisted that despite the concerns of wildlife campaigners the two pilot schemes which are intended to control the spread of bovine TB were “…the right thing to do”. He claimed that the protesters against the decision to cull badgers were forgetting that the species also suffers from this “terrible” disease. He went on: “I think it is right to take this difficult step to have these pilots – we are going to have to watch very closely about how they are put in place, how they are carried out, but in the end the aim is healthy cattle, healthy badgers”. Mr Cameron accepted the trials could be difficult to police, but insisted “…the question we faced as a Government is when you have got all this evidence that culling should be part of - only part of - a balanced package of measures, do you just sweep it under the carpet and announce another review or do you say OK, we need to get on and see if we can make this work?” So the essence of his argument was that now is the time for action. But with badgers the reality is complicated and a quick-fix scenario favoured by Cameron is really a non-starter.

ECOS 33(1) 2012 cowpats from fields where badger activity is a problem, and perhaps controversially, to arrange for problem setts to be closed. The intention of the latter would be to restrict and reduce badger encroachment into sensitive dairy farm areas. Badgers are highly territorial animals with sometimes long-term clan colonies. The resources within their patch will lead to long-term population stabilisation and pressure to move out and into new areas. Sometimes this means conflict with dairy farmers as setts move more into the working farm. If such access is effectively restrained, then classical ecology tells us that the population will to a large extent, control itself; Nature is an effective if cruel arbiter of populations and survival.

Sett management could then be undertaken by professionals who understand badger behaviour and needs, and the requirement to shoot or gas would be averted. The strategic approach would seek to reduce lines of tension between badger colonies and dairy herds. Finally, programmes of Bovine TB vaccination, for both cattle and badgers, would be implemented as a rolling programme to manage infection levels down. The bonus of this approach to badger populations, to farm hygiene and badger-proof boundaries, would be the creation of some livelihoods in rural areas: a ‘win-win’ situation. Indeed as I write this, in March 2012, the Bow Group, an influential conservative think tank, has called for Defra to focus on badger vaccination instead of culling.

Sending the wrong message?

Here in my own South Yorkshire we are unlikely to be directly affected by the early phases at least of these culls. However, there is a spill-over into issues nationally.

A badger caught on a trail camera in Gloucestershire at a location which may be in one of the proposed cull areas.

Dry conditions through winter and early spring 2012 have presented stressed conditions for many badgers in SW England.

A strategic alternative From a conservation viewpoint I believe that there is a need to work more closely with the dairy farming industry and to develop a long-term, sustainable solution.

This should be a strategic approach to working with badgers and with dairy farming. At present, the badger is in many ways the victim of Bovine TB but is being turned into the villain, because in our blame-culture society, someone or something ultimately has to be held to be at fault. Observation and common-sense suggest that badgers contract Bovine TB through feeding on insects, worms and other invertebrates in and around dung-pats from infected cattle. Clearly too, the badger numbers in some areas such as south-west England, are causing concerns for some, though by no means all, farmers. Management of farm hygiene and sensitive management of badger populations seems to be the approach to take in order to resolve the problem long-term. However, such a strategy would not be a one-off, but a long-term on-going commitment. Tax-payers money is being spent and the present approach may satiate a few appetites for action but it won’t solve the problem. Funding needs to be made available to help farmers improve farm hygiene, to restrict badger access to parts of farms with dairy cattle, to remove 38

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These measures potentially take us back into a Dark Ages of badger persecution.

Having spent several decades campaigning and supporting local and regional badger groups to get our badger populations back, this is a desperate plight to be in. How can you explain to badger diggers and baiters across the region, that it is illegal for them to persecute badgers, and that they may be fined and/or imprisoned, but it is perfectly acceptable and legal for farmers in Devon to shoot badgers? I still recall talking to local gardeners and labourers in the 1970s, about how they would ‘go out that weekend to do ‘a job’ (badger digging) for local farmers. That was their recreation and they might even get paid for doing it. They couldn’t comprehend why we wanted to make what they did illegal. Now, this latest bizarre example of political expediency takes us on a giant leap back into a pre-conservation era.

Furthermore, for farming as an industry, this could amount to one of the biggest PR disasters in living memory. In a world where the public and media have a big influence on grants, subsidies and support, this is not a good idea.

Bee conservation: A call for coherence, cohesion and co-operation Conservation actions for different groups of bees would be improved if a more coherent, scale-aware approach is taken amongst organisations concerned with bees.

EMILY ADAMS, PHILIP DONKERSLEY, ALISTAIR CAMPBELL

Reference

A pollination crisis? From awareness to action

Rotherham, I.D. (2010) Don’t badger the Badger. ECOS 31 (3/4), 15-17

The media regularly report scare stories about large-scale declines in bee populations, commentaries on the causes of these declines (generally reduced to pesticides, diseases and habitat loss) and the consequences for our food security; as well as a few encouraging articles on how people can help by planting wild flowers in their gardens. There have been several recent TV shows on bees, most recently the BBC 2 series ‘Bees, Butterflies and Blooms’ which explored a variety of issues around declining populations of insect pollinators like bees and butterflies, and encouraged local communities to change their gardening habits and manage village landscapes to better support these species. The RSBP and other wildlife organisations have broadened their remits to include insect pollinators, for example by selling ‘minibug houses’ and providing advice for gardeners on insect habitats. The UK government has provided £10m over 5 years to set up the Insect Pollinator Initiative1, a series of research projects into many aspects of insect pollinator populations. There has been a huge upsurge in membership of beekeeping organisations, and growing interest in bee-specific conservation organisations like the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

Professor Ian D. Rotherham is writer, broadcaster, and Professor of Environmental Geography, Reader in Tourism & Environmental Change at Sheffield Hallam University.

Photo: Dave Pressland

Insect pollinator population decline is a complex subject – there are many factors involved, ranging from impacts of new pests and diseases, through changes in land use and agricultural policy, all the way to international trade in vegetables and fruit, via issues of pesticides, public awareness and ecosystem service provision.

The current energy and enthusiasm for supporting, researching and conserving the many species of bee in the UK should be harnessed into a more coherent approach to bee conservation, which would allow the numerous and diverse groups involved with bees to act together, sharing resources and expertise. Each species or group of bee pollinators should be both considered separately and collectively, as representatives of a rich pollinator community, rather than being considered in isolation as often happens now. What affects one species will affect many others in the same way, but the degree of impact will vary depending on the type of bee and the scale at which threats or problems are being considered. Whilst honeybees and bumblebees often dominate discussions of the so-called pollination crisis2, this may overshadow the 40

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plight of the many other species of bee pollinator, often of solitary habit, which are arguably a much greater cause for conservation concern for both their high sensitivity to environmental change and their importance as pollinators.

The value of bee pollinators Around 70% of the world’s crops are in some way reliant on the action of insect pollinators3,which represents around 35% of global production in terms of yield.4 In the UK, insect-pollinated crops take up around 20% of arable land, which represents 19% of total farm-gate crop value.5 The value of honey bee pollination in the UK alone is valued at around £200m annually6, although current estimates of honeybee populations suggest that these insects are only capable of ensuring pollination services to 34.1% of the UK’s flowering crops.5 Furthermore, in some agro-ecosystems such as apple orchards, honeybees may not be the most effective bee pollinator in terms of single visit pollen contributions7 and so, the importance of other bee taxa such as bumblebees and solitary bees, as well as insects from Female Bombus lapidarius on a Phacelia flower

A female Andrena haemorrhoa on apple blossom

other orders e.g. Syrphid flies, must be considered in discussions of insect pollinator conservation and ecosystem service delivery. However, having said this, whilst honey bees may not be as efficient as other pollinating insects when compared per visit, the absolute number of foragers can readily compensate for any inefficiency.8 Yet, no one species or taxonomic group is universally the best pollinator and a multitude of studies from agro-ecosystems across the globe have highlighted how diverse pollinator communities (including managed species) may provide more effective pollination services that are more robust to the consequences of local extinction and environmental stochasticity than species-poor assemblages.9

Issues: the importance of scale Possibly the most important issue affecting all insect pollinators is habitat loss, specifically changes in the spatial configuration of resources like forage and nesting sites in both managed and unmanaged ecosystems. All bees require access to pollen and nectar from flowers to raise young and sustain adults, and the abundance and diversity of both solitary bees10 and bumblebees11 is strongly determined by nest resource availability, although this is not applicable to honey bees.

Changes in the spatial distribution of these resources, through changes in land use and management practise have differential effects on the various guilds of bee pollinator (Table 1). Solitary bees tend to be more sensitive to even small changes in resource availability, due to their often limited foraging range (in terms of both distance and feeding niche).12 Eusocial and pseudo-social bees tend to respond 42

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 Table 1: The main issues facing the different groups of bees.

to land use change at larger scales and are seemingly less affected by small scale changes in resource availability.13 The crop protection industry has been cited as one of the major causes of insect pollinator declines. Recently focus has been on the negative effects of honey bee exposure to the neonicotinoid group of pesticides, such as imidacloprid, commonly used in oil seed rape and sunflower crops. The different bee taxa vary in their susceptibility to agrochemicals: solitary bees are the most vulnerable to the effects of agrochemicals, honey bees are less sensitive due to their more effective detoxifying adaptations14 and life history traits15 and bumblebees, having a greater body mass than solitary bees, benefit from an increased ability to tolerate lesser exposures.16

A call for coherence in bee conservation There are a huge number of stakeholders involved with bees. The motivations of these stakeholders vary: some are interested in the current availability of funding for conservation activities related to bees and other insect pollinators, others are dedicated to particular species or groups of bees, yet more are motivated by a desire to broaden their attractiveness as organisations. Just within the world of beekeeping, which focuses on one species, there are dozens of specialist groups (e.g. focussing on bee improvement, ‘natural’ beekeeping, beekeeper education) all of whom are fundamentally working towards supporting honey bee populations, but from many different, occasionally incompatible directions.

ECOS 33(1) 2012 management. However, each management measure adopted does depend on other activities also aimed at protecting or assisting insect pollinators – there is little point in creating solitary bee nesting habitat if the surrounding habitat is regularly sprayed with agrochemicals. Ensuring that effort expended to conserve bees in one way is not undermined through lack of communication or poor planning is vital if conservationists are to have a significant impact in the battle to reverse the declines witnessed across taxa and entire regions.17 Thus, the major challenge for bee conservation is for effective coordination amongst all the various stakeholders. The recently formed Healthy Bees Plan18 brings together the commercial and parts of the hobby beekeeping communities with the government bodies responsible for honey bees (the National Bee Unit and FERA).

Although the HBP looks at one species, its success in creating a place for creative and constructive discussion between very different stakeholder groups about the future of honey bees in the UK suggests that there might be appetite within the wider insect pollinator stakeholder pool for something similar.

In order to conserve the diverse array of bees and other insect pollinators, and the ecosystem services they provide, we need a reciprocal diversity in academic research effort, government policy and funding, and enthusiasm of specialist groups, with a willingness to engage with each other.

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) drinking spilt nectar outside a hive

Bee conservation needs greater coherence at both landscape and local scales, especially when management measures are being discussed (Table 2). Whilst most landscape-scale measures implemented to assist insect pollinators are likely to benefit all species to an extent, increasing the density of honey bees indefinitely can be problematic, especially in terms of disease transmission and competition for resources.

Likewise, local-scale, intensive Table 2: management efforts for Effect of intensive and extensive management on different bee species. solitary bees to improve their access to forage and nesting resources, whilst likely to also benefit bumblebees to an extent, are different to the requirements for intensive management of honey bees which generally involves disease and pest 44

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References 1. Insect Pollinator Initiative. http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/pollinators/ (accessed 24/2/2012).

2. Ghazoul, J. 2005. Buzziness as usual? Questioning the global pollination crisis. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 20(7): p. 367-373 3. Ricketts, T.H.,. Regetz, J., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Cunningham, S.A., Kremen, C., Bogdanski, A ., GemmillHerren, B., Greenleaf, S.S., Klein, A.M., Mayfield, M.M., Morandin, L.A., Ochieng, A., Viana, B.F. 2008.

Landscape effects on crop pollination: are there general patterns? Ecology Letters, 11: 499-515.

4. Klein, A.M. Vaissiere, B.E., Cane, J.H., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Cunningham, S.A., Kremen, C., Tscharntke, T. 2007. Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops. Proceedings of the Royal Society B – Biological Sciences, 274: 303-313.

5. Breeze, T., Bailey, A., Balcombe, K., Potts, S. 2011. Pollination services in the UK: how important are honeybees? Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 142: 137-143.

6. National Audit Office. 2009. The health of livestock and honey bees. Report for DEFRA. 7. Vicens, N. and J. Bosch. 2009. Pollinating efficacy of Osmia cornuta and Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera : Megachilidae, Apidae) on ‘red Delicious’ apple. Environmental Entomology, 2000. 29(2): p. 235-240.

8. Rader, R., Howlett, B.G., Cunningham, S.A., Westcott, D.A., Newstrom-Lloyd, L.E., Walker, M.K., Teulon, D.A.J., Edwards, W. 2009. Alternative pollinator taxa are equally efficient but not as effective as the honey bee in a mass flowering crop. Journal of Applied Ecology, 46: 1080-1087.

9. Winfree, R. and C. Kremen, 2009. Are ecosystem services stabilized by differences among species? A test using crop pollination. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 276(1655): p. 229-237.

10. Potts, S.G., B. Vulliamy, S. Roberts, C. O’Toole, A. Dafni, G. Ne’eman, and P. Willmer. 2005. Role of nesting resources in organising diverse bee communities in a Mediterranean landscape. Ecological Entomology, 30(1): p. 78-85.

11. Svensson, B., Lagerlöf, J. Svensson, B.G. 2000. Habitat preferences of nest-seeking bumble bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in an agricultural landscape. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 77(3): p. 247-255.

12. Greenleaf, S.S., Williams, N.M., Winfree, R., Kremen, C. 2007. Bee foraging ranges and their relationship to body size. Oecologia, 153: 589-596.

13. Steffan-Dewenter, I., Munzenberg, U., Burger, C., Thies, C., Tscharntke, T. 2002. Scale-dependent effects of landscape context on three pollinator guilds. Ecology, 83: 1421-1432.

14. Smirle, M.J. and M.L. Winston. 1988. Detoxifying Enzyme-Activity in Worker Honey Bees - An Adaptation for Foraging in Contaminated Ecosystems. Canadian Journal of Zoology-Revue Canadienne De Zoologie, 66(9): p. 1938-1942 15. Hardstone, M.C. and J.G. Scott. 2010. Is Apis mellifera more sensitive to insecticides than other insects?

Pest Management Science, 66(11): p. 1171-1180 16. Scott-Dupree, C.D., L. Conroy, and C.R. Harris. 2009. Impact of Currently Used or Potentially Useful Insecticides for Canola Agroecosystems on Bombus impatiens (Hymenoptera: Apidae), Megachile rotundata (Hymentoptera: Megachilidae), and Osmia lignaria (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae). Journal of Economic Entomology, 102(1): p. 177-182.

17. Biesmeijer, J. C., S. P. M. Roberts, M. Reemer, R. Ohlemuller, M. Edwards, T. Peeters, A. P. Schaffers, S. G. Potts, R. Kleukers, C. D. Thomas, J. Settele, and W. E. Kunin. 2006. Parallel declines in pollinators and insect-pollinated plants in Britain and the Netherlands. Science, 313(5785): p. 351-354.

18. Healthy Bees Plan. https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/index.cfm?sectionid=41 (accessed 24/2/2012).

The authors are PhD researchers at Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University. Emily Adams is studying beekeeping and honey bee health; Alistair Campbell is investigating the potential of wildflower strips to conserve and enhance pollinators and pest control agents in cider apple orchards; and Phil Donkersley is researching the nutrition of honey bees and the associations of nutrition with certain microorganisms present in the bee hive. Contact: emilyadams13@gmail.com

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Today we live without them: the erasure of animals and plants in the language of ecosystem assessment This article examines the representation of animals and plants in the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, showing how they are systematically erased from consciousness through a variety of linguistic devices. The consequences for engaging and motiving people in the UK who care about the wellbeing, welfare, and lives of animals and plants are discussed, and the conclusion calls for more balanced ways of representing the natural world.

ARRAN STIBBE Teeming with life?

In his famous essay Why look at animals? John Berger made a poignant and controversial statement: “In the last two centuries animals have gradually disappeared. Today we live without them”.1 There is little doubt that when Berger made this statement, and even more so today, interactions with animals happen increasingly at a distance: mediated by nature programs, cartoons, logos, museums, books, soft toys, and social media with its innumerable videos of amusing animal antics. Jonathan Burt is critical of the historical accuracy of Berger’s account but still agrees that: “The historical trajectory [Berger] outlines of the disappearance of animals and their replacement by signs, and the manner in which humans and animals are increasingly alienated in modernity, provides a pessimistic vision with which it is hard to argue”.2 Randy Malamud is also critical of Berger, arguing that representations of animals can be positive3 - we can still live with animals in our heads through reading or viewing evocative descriptions, even without direct contact with them. Berger’s statement that “we live without them” is clearly an exaggeration for rhetorical effect, and something that is more or less true for different groups of people in different situations. For this article I am going to choose a very specific situation: a man or woman is sitting at a desk reading the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, in a room with strip-lighting and no windows. Ecosystems are, of course, teeming with life, with humans, animals and plants living their lives and interacting with each other and the physical environment in ways that sustain all life. The question is whether the reader of the report is living with or without animals and plants while reading it. Clearly their mind is interacting with signs in an artificial environment, 47

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Abstract or real nature?

There is an assumption behind the analysis that I am about to carry out, and one that the UK National Ecosystem Assessment4 explicitly agrees with. That ‘birds of all kinds, butterflies, trees such as oak, beech and birch, mammals such as badgers, otters and seals’…are of “great cultural significance” and “undoubtedly have a huge hold over the popular imagination” (p19). A great many people care about the wellbeing, welfare and lives of the other animals and plants who make their homes in the UK, and that this can be a powerful force in motivating them to protect the ecosystems that all life needs for continuing survival. There may even be ‘policymakers’ who care.

But does the form of language used in the National Ecosystem Assessment encourage them to visualise and respect the animals and plants who make up ecosystems? Or does it paint a lonely picture of humans living in the UK by themselves, surrounded not by other species living their own lives for their own purposes but instead by ‘terrestrial resources’, ‘natural capital’ and ‘cultural amenity providers’? Does it paint a picture of people whose concern is solely focused on prosperity and human wellbeing without a moment’s consideration of the wellbeing and lives of other species?

I am going to analyse the discourse of the 87 page Synthesis of the Key Findings report from the UK National Ecosystem Assessment as a representative sample of a discourse which goes far wider than this one document, appearing in the other documents that form the UK NEA as well as similar reports such as the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA). For the purposes of this article, the term discourse refers to a specific way of using language which encodes a particular worldview.

For example, while there may be no exact sentences that the NEA and MEA have in common, they both use the same discourse, i.e., they employ the same ways of talking about the world based on the same (or a very similar) worldview. Through analysing the ways of using language in a discourse it is possible to reveal the worldview that underlies it, and expose it for questioning.5 The Synthesis of the Key Findings report6 (which I will refer to for convenience as simply ‘the NEA’) was chosen since of all the NEA documents it is the one that policymakers and the public are most likely to read and be influenced by.

A starting point in the analysis is to ask the ‘where are the animals and plants’ in the discourse of the NEA? In the statement ‘birds of all kinds, butterflies, trees such as oak, beech and birch, mammals such as badgers, otters and seals’ (p19) the trees and animals exist within the sentence quite directly through the presence of their species names. This is the most concretely imaginable or ‘basic level’ of representation, with anything above the basic level, such as ‘mammal’ or ‘invertebrate’ being less likely to result in a vivid mental images.7 Photographs, of course, convey images directly, and the photographs and images which accompany the text show people walking in beautiful countryside with trees, a dragonfly, a cow, and close up shots of individual birds. This direct and immediate form of representation, however, only occurs occasionally in the NEA. For much of the rest of the document, I am going to argue that animals and plants have been erased.

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Erasure Erasure occurs when beings in the real world are represented by, replaced by, signs in text. What is erased (from readers’ minds) is the unique nature and complexity of the beings being represented. Nothing about the word ‘oak’ conveys the myriad of shapes of the actual trees, their colours, smells, textures or the complexity of their forms. Following Jean Baudrillard I will treat erasure as a matter of degree – some forms of language convey more vivid and evocative images of beings while others erase them almost completely. Representations can be anywhere on a scale of “the reflection of a profound reality” to “no relation to any reality whatsoever”.8 Erasure does not just mean an absence of animals and plants in a text. For instance, Allen Williams et al found that animals and nature have simply disappeared from many recent children’s books9, and the environmental charity ABC noticed that nature vocabulary such as ‘beaver’ and ‘dandelion’ disappeared from the Oxford Junior dictionary to be replaced with technological vocabulary such as ‘blog’ and ‘broadband’.10 Instead erasure means that animals and plants are present in a text but in a distant and diminished form, remaining only as traces.

NEIL BENNETT

but are those signs evocative enough to allow them to visualise the people, animals, plants and natural environments that make up the ecosystems?

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The mildest form of erasure occurs when animals and plants are replaced by species names such as ‘oak’ (p19), ‘badger’ (p19), ‘halibut’ (p30), ‘trout and salmon’ (p32), or their movements are frozen in two dimensional, enframed photographs. Then there are more abstract representations when a hypernym11 replaces the species name – ‘birds and mammals’ (p23), ‘nursery grounds for fish’ (p23), ‘a loss of species’ (p4), ‘organisms...provide us with food’ (p7), and progressively more abstract until we get to ‘native flora and fauna’ (p48). And the complex and contested term ‘biodiversity’ used throughout the report is far, far up the scale of abstraction.

These terms at least remain within the semantic domain of living beings, but when animals and plants find themselves as hyponyms of ‘our resources’ (p53), ‘the UK’s natural capital’ (p47) or ‘terrestrial, marine and freshwater resources’ then they are part of a larger semantic domain, lumped together with physical resources such as oil, water or sand. As Norman Fairclough points out, items which are co-hyponyms are represented as being equivalent in some way, draining the life and individuality from animals and plants by making them part of a long list of resources.12 Then there are representations which contain traces of animals and plants by mentioning the places where they live, but not the dwellers themselves: ‘urban greenspace amenity’ (p51) includes trees and plants as the merest of traces in the 49

ECOS 33(1) 2012 ‘green’ of ‘greenspace’; ‘living and physical environments’ (p4) and ‘environmental resources’ (p32) represent animals and plants as part of an all-encompassing environment surrounding humans; ‘wild habitat’ (p5) and ‘wetland habitat’ (p24) represent what Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert call ‘beastly places’13, though without the beasts. Likewise ‘seasonally grazed floodplains’ (p23) contains a trace of animals, for who else is doing the grazing, and a hint of plants, for what else is being grazed. The word ‘types’ takes the erasure up a level in expressions such as ‘aquatic habitat types’ (p10).

Another way that animals and plants are erased is through being referred to metonymically by the function they are serving within an ecosystem: ‘pollinators’, ‘primary producers’, ‘dispersers’, or the slightly more vivid ‘pollinating insects’ (p19).

These at least are count nouns, suggesting a multitude of individuals, but in the expressions ‘wood and non-woody biomass’ (p18) and ‘27 million tonnes per year of additional biomass imports’, trees and plants are represented as mass nouns, as mere tonnages of stuff.

Fish are erased through taking the place of a modifier in a noun phrase ‘fish stocks’ (p8), ‘fish catches’ (p10), ‘catch rates of fish’ (p31), ‘fishing technology’ (p55), or ‘landings of marine fish’ (p2). When fish are modifiers of other nouns, they have been pushed to the periphery, the sentence being about something else. And the erasure is taken even further with the expression ‘fisheries’, where the fish themselves remain in the morphology of the word, but just a trace within a large commercial operation.

Intrinsic worth There is a hidden ideology that runs throughout the NEA: that the wellbeing, welfare and lives of animals and plants is not worthy of ethical, moral or compassionate consideration. This is because, as Martin Spray and Alison Parfitt describe: “We are accustomed to equate a thing’s...value with the use we have for it. A parcel of woodland has timber / fuel / hunting / scientific / recreational / educational / aesthetic value: but what of the value of it? Things remain valueless until some use is discovered: some use, that is, for us. The uses for it that other beings have found score little”.14 When humans pollute air, land and water, and destroy habitats, there is an eventual impact on humans, but immediate harm occurs to the many species who live in the affected regions. The ideology is not explicit in the NEA but occurs through nonmentioning, through erasure. A sentence like “The natural world, its biodiversity and its constituent ecosystems are critically important to our well-being and economic prosperity” (p5) presupposes that ‘our well-being’ and ‘economic prosperity’ are valued goals, the unquestioned ethical ‘good’ that we should aim towards. The absence here of any ethical good related to allowing abundant and diverse species of animals and plants to live and thrive according to their nature erases them from moral consideration. The following sentence: “Diversification of forest structure for biodiversity benefits improves cultural services through better amenity value, while increases in forest cover potentially benefit carbon regulation (p24)” is absolutely 50

ECOS 33(1) 2012 true but what has been missed out are the benefits of increased forest cover for a great range of species other than humans. Similarly ‘cultural services may have deteriorated, for example, hedgerows have been lost’ (p25) describes hedgerows as providing a cultural service to humans who may enjoy looking out at picturesque scenery, without mentioning the far more important service that hedgerows play in the lives of those who live within them. Overall, the ethical goals assumed by the language of the NEA include ‘health, wealth and happiness’ (p31), ‘our wellbeing’, ‘human wellbeing’ (p5), ‘efficient resource allocation’ (p13), ‘social wellbeing’ (p13), ‘cultural services’ (p18), ‘society’ (p24), ‘the nation’s continuing prosperity’ (p87), and ‘economic prosperity’ (p5) but nothing beyond narrow human interests.

The political idiolect I am not the first to make critical comments about the discourse of ecology and conservation in ECOS. Mathew Oates writes that: “working within today’s wildlife and environmental movement can sever personal relationships with the world of Nature... we have paid so much attention to the (rapid) development of the scientific, ecological idiolect...that we have lost contact with our core language - the poetic language of passion for, of, with and within Nature”.15 Paul Evans similarly writes: “...many conservationists prefer to hide behind the language of science. But why should we be scared of poetic description? Why should we not be concerned with the specific, the individual, the particular and the spirit of place”.16 In the case of the NEA, however, it is not just the ‘scientific, ecological idiolect’ that is at work, it is also a political idiolect – one which privileges in one breath human wellbeing and national economic prosperity and steadfastly avoids vocabulary which might question the ethics of consumerism or the environmental destruction and the harm it causes. Both ‘the economic liberalisation of trade’ and ‘consumption patterns’ are expressed neutrally as ‘drivers of change in UK ecosystem services’ (p26), and the harm and destruction caused by them is equally expressed neutrally as placing ‘a greater demand on the services provided by UK ecosystems’ (p26).

The NEA comes close to expressing regret at ecological damage in ‘Ecosystems and their services have been directly affected by conversion of natural habitats, pollution of air, land and water…’ (p8), though this is expressed through the neutral verb ‘affected’ rather than any word with negative connotations such as harm, hurt, damage, or destroy. At least the following sentence uses the word ‘adversely’ to provide some evaluative force ‘major increases in fertiliser use… have adversely affected aquatic ecosystems’ (p8), but still the harmed participant is ‘aquatic ecosystems’ without mention of the fish who are starved of oxygen and die because of the eutrophication. The word ‘impact’ is the most frequent way of describing harm – ‘human impacts on the natural environment’ (p40), ‘the ecological impacts of fisheries’ (p10), or ‘[energy and transport sectors] had major impacts on ecosystems’ (p10). The word ‘impact’ is a noun form, unlike verb forms such as ‘harmed’ which more clearly and strongly suggest agency (and blame).

Another way of denying agency is through verbs such as ‘decline’ and ‘deteriorate’ which do not require any kind of causal agent and make it seem as if damage to 51

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ecosystems is occurring spontaneously: ‘many ecosystem system services continue to decline’ (p10), ‘Ecosystem services…continue to deteriorate’ (p10).

slightest consideration then they diminish life itself, and all forms of life, including our own.

Real life

Notes and References

The de-valuing and erasure of animals in the discourse of ecology is something that I have examined before, in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), the pre-cursor of the UK NEA.17 In response to that research, one senior figure in the production of the report commented: “Although [the anthropocentric discourse of the MEA] has benefits in terms of articulating the issues in terms that many who hold real power can understand (e.g., finance ministers, CEOs of companies, planning ministers), it also has costs in devaluing the intrinsic worth of species as you note. For the audience we were aiming at, that cost was worth paying in my view but ideally in the future assessments might be able to provide a better balance here (personal communication)”.

1. Berger, J. (1980) About looking. New York: Vintage, p. 10 2. Burt, J. (2005) John Berger’s “Why Look at Animals?”: A Close Reading. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology. 9:2:203-218, p. 203 3. Malamud, R. (1998). Reading zoos: Representations of animals and captivity. New York University Press 4. Numbers in parentheses in the text refer to the page numbers in the UK National Ecosystem Assessment: synthesis of the key findings. http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/ 5. Discourse analysis is a useful way of critiquing ecological texts and forms the basis of the emerging discipline of ecolinguistics. See the Language and Ecology Research Forum (www.ecoling.net) and Alexander, R. (2010) Framing discourse on the environment. London: Routledge; also, chapters 4 to 7 in Stibbe, A. (2012) Animals erased: discourse, ecology and reconnection with the natural world.

Middletown: Wesleyan University Press 6. UK National Ecosystem Assessment: synthesis of the key findings (2011). http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/ 7. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. (1990) Women, fire and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. University of Chicago Press 8. Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press 9. Williams, J. et al (2011) The human-environmental dialog in award-winning children’s picture books.

Sociological Inquiry 82:1:145-159 10. see http://www.gettingkidsoutdoors.org/removal-of-nature-words-from-dictionary-causes-uproar/ 11. Hypernyms are category names and hyponyms are members of the category (e.g., rose and tulip are cohyponyms of the hypernym flower).

12. Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge 13. Philo and Wilbert (2000) Animal spaces, beastly places: new geographies of human-animal relations.

London: Routledge 14. Spray, M. and A. Parfitt (2011) A step in the right direction. ECOS 32:2:1-8, p.2 15. Oates, M. (2008) Obfuscation and the language of nature conservation. ECOS 29:1:10-18, p.10 and p.18 16. Evans, P. (1996) Biodiversity: nature for nerds? ECOS 17:2:7-11, p.11 17. Stibbe, A. (2006) Deep Ecology and Language: The curtailed journey of the Atlantic salmon. Society and Animals 14:1:61-77 18. Common Cause (2010) Common cause: the case for working with our values. http://www.wwf.org.uk/ wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=4224 19. Wain, G. (2007) Feral feelings. ECOS: A Review of Conservation. 28:2:1 20. Carson, R. (1962) Silent spring. Harmondworth: Penguin, p.123

It seems that the UK NEA, as a ‘future assessment’, did not manage to achieve a better balance. An influential WWF project, Common Cause, cautions against the deliberate watering down of ethical values in order to have a short term impact on policymakers.18 It argues that discourses which do this frame the issues in ways which reproduce the forms of thinking which caused the problems in the first place (e.g., a narrow focus on economic prosperity and an anthropocentric view of nature as resources to be exploited). There is a perception that policymakers are cold hearted and robotic, only responding to measurable economic factors, but that is not necessarily so, and the question is whether discourses should encourage this mindset, challenge it, or go for a win-win though aiming for balance.

Creating a ‘better balance’ would involve crafting a discourse which makes the human wellbeing and ecosystem services points but which also erases animals and plants to a far lesser degree, by representing them actively within the text as agents of their own lives living and thriving in the ecosystems that are being described.

Geoffrey Wain suggests that we draw inspiration from a recent book which makes the real thing vivid - Jim Crumley’s Brother Nature: “Crumley takes us up-close to ospreys, kites, wild swans, beavers, and even bears. He reveals the savage beauty of nature in the landscapes of his beloved Highland edge”.19 There are many other possible sources of inspiration for crafting new ecological discourses: Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Kathleen Jamie, Jay Griffiths, Nan Shepard, David Abram, and Gary Snyder to name just a few. The vivid and lyrical forms of writing that such authors employ can be drawn on to create a more balanced hybrid discourse that aims for traction in political circles without the wholesale erasure of animals, plants and nature. It does not require philosophical discussions about whether animals and plants have intrinsic value or not, but just writing with care, as Rachel Carson demonstrates so well: “Dead and dying fish, including many young salmon, were found along the banks of the stream…All the life of the stream was stilled”.20

Arran Stibbe is a reader in ecological linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire and author of Animals Erased: discourse, ecology and reconnection with the natural world (Wesleyan University press, 2012). astibbe@glos.ac.uk

In the end it comes down to an appreciation of life. If ecological discourses diminish some forms of life through erasing them and treating them as unworthy of even the 52

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When the going gets tough...

ECOS 33(1) 2012

JONATHAN SOMPER

Some 28% of environmental charities said that membership was their most important source of income and fortunately 75% of charities funded in this way reported that their membership subscriptions had stayed the same over the previous 6 months, with only 7% expecting them to decrease over the next 12 months.

Two years on, anecdotal evidence suggests that some of the larger national and international conservation NGOs are now haemorrhaging members at a faster rate than previously; in contrast local organisations are maintaining their supporter base where effort is being invested in recruitment and appropriate retention strategies (see my article in ECOS 30(1) 2009). In addition, canny organisations have been reinvestigating their donation data in an attempt to find previously untapped donors, particularly individuals with a high net worth.5

Growth trend at an end?

The benefits of mixed funding

Evidence suggests that around one half of NGOs are coping with the challenging financial times to varying degrees, but the rest may not be. Which category does your organisation fall into and are there any actions that you can take to tough it out? This article takes a detailed look at the evidence and identifies a number of opportunities for enhancing income.

Research conducted for the Where the Green Grants Went 5 (2012) found that in the five years from 2004-5-2009-10 a sample of 75 environmental NGOs whose combined income represented about one quarter of the environment sector by income enjoyed strong income growth, registering an average of 21% in real terms; although the campaigning organisations in the sample showed a slight decline in income over the 5 year period.1 In particular, the research found that: • NGOs working on biodiversity reflected the overall income growth trend; • NGOs working on terrestrial ecosystems and land use grew above the trend;

The Charity Commission survey broke down the different funding sources for the sample of environmental charities and indicated that: • 6 out of 10 received funding from the public and 22% of environmental charities indicated that this was their most important income by type; • Around one quarter received income from investments and 10% said that this was their most important source of income; • More than one quarter received public sector grants and contracts and 15% indicated that this was their most important income by type;

• however, NGOs working on agriculture income grew less than the overall trend: whilst, • NGOs working on sustainable communities actually saw their income stagnate.

Evidence implies that a portfolio of diverse income streams have in the main enabled environmental organisations to spread risk.

What they all have in common is that without significant cash reserves NGOs are vulnerable to hikes in costs or sudden loss of income e.g. due to public sector cuts. Around 40,000 third sector organisations are reliant on some form of state funding! Since the general public is the largest source of income for campaigning organisations, providing two-thirds on average, according to the Where the Green Grants Went 5 (2012),2 they are susceptible to changes in donation behaviour. It is likely that most environmental NGOs in the last two years, rather than growing, have been pedalling hard just to keep afloat.

Donations are in the balance

Back to the future

In 2010-11 the public gave £11bn to charities. In comparison with the previous year, 1.1 million more people donated to charity, although the average (median) amount fell from £12 to £11 (UK Giving 2011, NCVO, Charities Aid Foundation CAF). In real terms the total value of donations (£11bn) remained the same as the previous year. In fact, donations in real terms are now worth £900 million less than the total given in 2007-08, prior to the UK entering recession. Nearly 6 out of every 10 adults (aged 16 or over) in the UK donated to charity and 1.6 million people donated to environment charities on a monthly basis, illustrating that people are still prepared to give to charities in straitened times, despite many having less to give. Cash donors account for 47% whilst almost one third of donors use direct debit and 42% use Gift Aid.

Delving into the Charity Commission’s 2010 survey we find a useful breakdown of how environmental and not-for-profit conservation organisations had coped with the UK recession.3 A total of 40 “environmental” charities were included in the sample.4 At this time only around one half of these environmental charities (47%) said that they were affected by the economic downturn, which was a significantly smaller proportion than other types of charities, where around 70% indicated that they had been affected. Despite the economic downturn one quarter of environmental charities had seen an increase in public support over the previous 12 months (2009-10).

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With household incomes under pressure and growing unemployment, the biennial State of the Sector survey (January 2012) of more than 700 staff by Third Sector and the consultancy company nfpSynergy, found a mixed picture regarding donations.

Although one third of respondents said that donated income had fallen in 2011, 43% said that it had stayed the same or actually increased. At the same time around one half of organisations said that overall income had remained the same or indeed risen.6

The General Public continues to be generous7

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Patterns of giving changing These giving trends are largely reinforced by a survey conducted online by DMS across a representative sample of the British population (where the definition of giving to charity was at least £5 in the last year - Direct Marketing Agency Donating in tough times). DMS found that around 7 out of 10 online respondents had given to charity in each of the last two years.8 DMS discovered that those respondents prepared to make regular donations i.e. via standing order or direct debit fell from 41% in the year to August 2010 to just 34% in the year to September 2011; whilst those making one-off gifts by credit cards or cheques actually rose from 22% to 25% during these same two time periods.

However, whereas UK Giving 2011 found just 5% of all donors gave to environmental charities 2010-119; the DMS survey revealed significantly higher financial support for the following causes: the environment (15%), birds (16%) and wildlife (24%) in September 2011; perhaps illustrating that a higher proportion of environmental supporters are online compared with donors to other causes. Half of those who give claimed that their current financial situation was constraining their giving behaviour (especially those within “family” years) and economic uncertainty is impacting on charitable giving with more saying they expect to give less next year10, but overall 4% still intended to give more!

Research commissioned by Investec Bank11 confirmed that people are giving less and calculated that people gave around 12% less to charity in 2011 than in 2010.

Heartening news is that only 6% of those who gave to charity in 2010 said they gave nothing at all in 2011. The average amount respondents said they gave to charity in 2011 was £186.15, with considerable regional variation ranging from £82.03 in the East Midlands, to London where the average was around five times greater at £420.20. Similarly, London had the highest proportion of givers at around 85% compared with 73% in North-west England.

Sector employment and pay falling NCVO’s analysis of the Labour Force Survey shows that employment in the voluntary sector has fallen by nearly 9% over the past 12 months. This is more than double the rate of decline in the public sector where employment fell by just 4.3% in the year, and over the same period private sector employment actually rose by 1.5%.12

NEIL BENNETT

Giving less

despite falling public expenditure and increasing environmental threats. Only around 10% of trusts providing environmental grants had a substantial proportion of their grants (40-80%) directed towards environmental initiatives.13 In 2009/2010 Environmental philanthropy totalled around £75.5 million of which just £38.9m stayed in the UK.14 Grants from charitable trusts to The Wildlife Trusts partnership between 2007/08 and 2009/10 totalled more than £18.5 million.15

There has also been an annual fall in pay in the voluntary sector. Median gross hourly pay fell to £10.00 per hour, a reduction of 3% overall. In stark contrast both public and private sector workers experienced an increase in pay over this period. Nevertheless, Where the Green Grants Went 5 (2012) showed that average employment costs for environmental NGOs, including tax, National Insurance and pensions rose during the period (2004-5-2009-10) from £24,988 to £31,223.

According to Where the Green Grants Went 5 (2012) over eight years, the largest share of funding has gone to ‘biodiversity and species preservation’, receiving between 20-25% of all grants by value in each year. In general ‘Agriculture and food’ has also received a significant funding share, receiving between 16% and 21% of funding each year. In 2009-10 climate and atmosphere, and terrestrial ecosystems and land use both received a little more than 10% of grant funding (12.5% and 11.1% over the 3 years combined respectively). In the three years from 2007-08 to 2009-10 Climate Change work has secured circa 21% of the funding, up from 9% before this period and in 2009-10, grants of £15.8m were made for climate change mitigation.

Environmental philanthropy is bearing up

Changing grant criteria

According to Where the Green Grants Went 5 (2012) environmental philanthropy is still relatively low, representing less than 3% of total UK philanthropy (circa £3bn), 56

A Survey of grants made by independent trusts and foundations, by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF, 2000), found that environment grants were mainly targeted 57

ECOS 33(1) 2012 at young people, enabling the latter to experience and enjoy nature first hand.

Around two thirds of grants were for project funding (67%); around one quarter were for core funding (24%); and 10% was for capital funding.16 More recently charitable trusts and foundations like the Tubney Charitable Trust and the Esmée Fairburn Foundation have supported strategic landscape-scale delivery.

Partnership working has worked well in the conservation sector and now trusts are offering significant funds with the proviso that organisations in the same field work together to address an issue; for example, £750,000 was made available for shark conservation in Europe by the Pew Charitable Trusts on this basis.

In terms of prioritising species recovery funding for BAP mammals, those in most urgent need have been identified as: water vole, barbastelle bat, pine martin, dormouse, greater horseshoe bat, red squirrel and Bechstein’s bat. Environmental philanthropy has been supportive of saving individual species, for example from 2007-8 to 2009-10, over £1.6m of funding was given for conservation of moths and butterflies, and over £1.0m each for protecting bats and water voles.

Philanthropy feels the pinch The financial crisis has had an affect on philanthropy. Coutts’s Million Pound Donors report which tracks donations of £1 million or more, showed that between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2010 the value of gifts had fallen by 15% compared with the previous two year period.17,18 For future applicants, almost nine out of ten of the philanthropists claimed that they only invest in charities that can clearly demonstrate their impact. Less than two thirds of Rich List members who completed the survey were satisfied with the feedback they received from charities; consequently many charities need to improve their communications. The survey also asked what motivated philanthropists to give and received these responses:

ECOS 33(1) 2012 consequently charities will need to look to innovation to maintain and increase giving.20 Third Sector & nfpSynergy’s State of the Sector Survey (2012) found that statutory income was a factor for just over half of all respondents.21 In total, statutory sources provide around one-third of the income of environmental NGOs, significantly more than philanthropy, which provides less than one-tenth. To give an idea of scale Where the Green Grants Went 5 (2012) reported that the Joint Nature Conservation Committee estimated that in 2009-10 total public sector spending on UK and global biodiversity was £611m compared with just £17m from philanthropic spending on biodiversity in the same year.

The decline in Agency funding Following the Government’s Spending Review in October 2010 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) had its total budget cut by 30%, (significantly higher than the government average of 19%.22 Consequently today Natural England, the National Park Authorities, and the Environment Agency are enduring budget reductions of between 20% and 30% in real terms. Some valuable environmental funding schemes have become casualties like the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund. The significant reduction in funds and staff from these agencies (estimated to be 5,000-8,000 out of a total of 30,000 jobs), raises the question of how they will be able to administer and deliver some of the EU derived funding streams in the future.

Where the Green Grants Went 5 (2012) sample of 75 environmental NGOs indicated that although the general public was the single largest source of income (34% of income), statutory sources provided 29% of income. It is estimated that between 2010-11 and 2014-15 annual grants and contracts to the voluntary and community sector by Defra will fall from £40.7m per year to £28.7m per year (2010-11 prices), a cut of 30% in real terms. Similarly it is estimated that DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) spending on the sector will fall from £21.3m to £15.9m, a cut of 25% in real terms.23,24

• personal values (97%); • influenced by personal experiences (76%); • enjoyment from giving (69%); • to leave a positive legacy (57%).

Similarly, Trusts and Foundations stressed that environmental NGOs need to make their proposals easy to understand (less jargon), meet governance requirements (addressing any Trustee skill gaps), report appropriately (NGOs have expressed concern where the detail required is disproportionate to the scale of the project) and have good regular communications. 19

Statutory income continues to dwarf philanthropy Government funding is calculated to reduce by £2.8bn between 2011 and 2016, and it has been noted previously that charitable giving has currently plateaued, 58

Scottish ministers recently warned that Scotland’s main nature conservation agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, would have to absorb at least a 20% budget cut over several years putting in jeopardy both projects to promote rare and endangered species such as: red squirrels and sea eagles, as well as plans to combat invasive species such as signal crayfish, American mink, rhododendron and Japanese knotweed.25

How does this affect environmental NGOs? As well as less government agency funding being available from the likes of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Natural England and the Countryside Council for Wales, for example, some conservation organisations are finding that they are being asked at very short notice to apply for small amounts of funding at the end of the financial year, when budgets have to be used up or lost. Defra contracts and calls to tender seem to be one way forward, so the emphasis for many organisations is changing from soliciting sources of funding to pursue their projects, to Defra in part dictating their agenda. The up-shot of these cut backs is that national monitoring programmes, such as for butterflies, are being detrimentally affected 59

ECOS 33(1) 2012 as monitoring organisations have to make redundancies. In order to succeed in this difficult environment, conservation organisations need to be more creative in their search for funds. In Wales for example, a Bat Roost enhancement was funded by the local authority through heritage grants supporting the listed building complex and scheduled ancient monument. With schools also feeling the pinch in these challenging times, environmental educators need to visit them rather than vice versa, so outreach is one way forward.

Stewardship funds and Living Landscapes The agri-environment Stewardship scheme and especially High Level Stewardship (HLS) dispersing Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) funding from Europe which runs until 2013, had enabled Natural England to be proactive and target specific areas. Its decline in availability not only reduces conservation bodies’ ability to influence agricultural practices, but HLS is the main scheme used to support the management of SSSIs. HLS money has successfully been used to target farmland birds, such as corn buntings, lapwings, grey partridge, turtle doves, and yellow wagtail, perhaps a reflection of RSPB’s ability to lobby. The scheme initially had targets of attracting 5% of the farm-holding into the scheme, but it is actually achieving 12.5% on average in the South West; for the farmer it means that 12.5% of their farmland has a guaranteed income in difficult times.

In the last five years the Wildlife Trusts’ Living Landscapes programme has been supported by HLS funding. For example, in Gloucestershire it has been used to reduce habitat fragmentation, facilitating the movement of wildlife and consequently climate change adaptation. A similar strategy can be implemented for all species trapped in small pockets of habitats. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has also been working in partnership with other water course owners from surrounding counties using HLS funding to address vegetation control and to ensure the survival of a population of water voles on a network of connected water courses in the East Cotswolds. HLS has been good at delivering environmental benefits, but as more money is ploughed into farming practices and focusing on how the land is farmed, less is available for species recovery work and as the overall HLS budget is reduced, this trade-off is likely to be exacerbated.

Can you have quantity and quality for less?

Anecdotal evidence supported findings from the State of the Sector survey (2012), that many UK charities managed to provide more services despite fewer resources.

Although 48% of respondents reported a fall in income, nearly three quarters of organisations indicated that they had increased services (45%) or maintained them at a similar level during 2011 (27%), while only 22% reduced services. Working smarter makes sense, but efficiency does not necessarily imply effectiveness.26

Two funding mechanisms that changed the conservation landscape for good Of the restricted funding pots, probably the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and Landfill Tax Credits have had the most significant impact on conservation organisations’ activities over the last 20 years. Bringing in money for land purchase, management and conservation work, HLF had more funds available than previous schemes. Indeed, 60

ECOS 33(1) 2012 initially, when it was centrally administered, competition was less and grants were easier to access than through the regions subsequently. This five year funding enabled Wildlife Trusts to make significant improvements to the management of their portfolio of freehold nature reserves. When the Landfill Tax scheme was launched in the early 90s it wasn’t especially regulated and money was quickly accessible.

With their high gearing ratios against matched funds (10-25%), both these funding streams enabled land purchase and management, and particularly larger scale projects to be pursued than hitherto. The challenge now is to elicit additional funding for site development including interpretation for the public’s benefit, as this does not generally fit within these schemes’ criteria. Landscape-scale projects like Paxton Pits in Cambridgeshire and the Great Fens project near Peterborough which received £1.5m from the HLF are examples of the direction of future funding.

Restoring peat lands is a priority in farmed peat soils such as in East Anglia.27

Chugger bashing

City Councils are clamping down on street fundraising (chugging) for example after ‘overwhelming public feedback’ The City Council in Wolverhampton has brought in the restrictions that limit the days that street fundraisers can operate as has Burnley; similarly Newcastle City Council is contemplating by-laws to limit the times and places that street fundraisers can work.28 Whilst after a poor winter of trading the charity street fundraising company Gift Fundraising went into administration this February making 300 employees redundant29, so conservation and environmental campaigning charities may need to review this element of their fund raising strategy.

Legacies Just 7% of the UK population currently leaves a legacy to charity and legacy income is currently worth almost £2bn a year.30 However, in the last five years local charities increased legacy income faster than national charities, by 5.4% and 2.5% respectively which is good news for the Wildlife Trusts (2011 Legacy Market Snapshot). Against this Legacy income fell by 1.6% in 2011 compared with the previous year according to Legacy Foresight.31 However, a new inheritance tax measure reduces the rate of inheritance tax from 40 to 36% if 10% of your estate is left to charity. Pre-empting this tax change a new legacy campaign “Legacy10” was launched in November 2011. The campaign has already won support from the leaders of the three main British political parties as well as other household names such as Sir Richard Branson.32

Improving on-line donation rates According to a new report by Nomensa33, online donating accounts for just 7% of total giving. Whilst the DMS online survey34 found that 12% of respondents had made a donation via the internet, and 25-34 year olds were much more likely to use this method than other age categories. Currently 47% of donors give up before they have made a donation (similar to online shopping baskets), because the online journey is not intuitive and engaging, so there is considerable online potential to exploit. A major criticism is that many charities simply copy what others are doing, rather than understanding what is required to actually increase contributions.

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 Although charities are taking donations via their websites, the experience has been described as like “buying travel insurance”, because too many organisations prioritise data collection over income.35 Most environmental and conservation charities are looking to develop their websites, but developing a digital engagement strategy is crucial to fostering an online revenue stream.

Nomensa maintains that the spinoff benefits of making donors feel good about their donation experience include: • an increase in the number and value of online donations; • the donor is more likely to ‘spread the word’ about the charity; • the donor is more likely to support the charity in the future such as financially, volunteering or campaigning.

Other digital engagement tips include: Supporters need to receive regular updates encouraging them to share the progress of the organisation with their network (including blogpost, Facebook updates, tweets, videos). In this way supporters ‘invest’ in the organisation’s work or a project, making it a more rewarding and fulfilling experience for them. NGOs need to embrace social media to expand their network of supporters online. Environmental and conservation charities also need to be aware that the way websites are accessed is changing, throwing up new communication opportunities i.e. it is predicted that half of all web visits will soon be made from a mobile phone. Finally, nfpSynergy’s Brand Attributes Monitor in Autumn 2011 found that ‘Trustworthy’ was the top characteristic the public wanted to see from their ideal charity working in the environment and conservation sector.36

Crystal ball gazing The picture is bleak for the foreseeable future - fundraising and finance shortfalls are likely to continue, as fall out from public service cuts and unemployment worsen. NGOs, charitable trusts and foundations dependant on endowment income continue to be hamstrung by low interest rates, and with failing businesses, corporate funding is becoming increasingly strategic with budgets tightening and is often the first thing to be cut.37 However, there are ‘some reasons to be cheerful’: 65% of charity leaders expect to collaborate more with other organisations over the next year, a recognition that working in partnership is the way forward, especially to elicit larger grants. The opportunities presented by digital and social media also remain largely un-tapped.

Philanthropy is just about holding up despite everything that is happening, as are donations and there is scope to increase gift aid; whilst environmental NGOs seem on the whole to be more robust than their charity counterparts, underpinned by a loyal membership in many cases. Finally, where corporate involvement is desirable organisations should look to develop a suite of options so that companies can choose to support appropriately and provide additional opportunities for their staff to engage with them and so build a long term relationship.

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 Two years ago I concluded my article with the following tips [ECOS 31(1) 2010]: “For conservation organisations looking to become more secure and also costeffective post recession, the way forward is: to review your costs, to look after your membership, to develop unrestricted income flow, for example, through major donor programmes, and to immerse the organisation in the virtual world that is social networking.” These are tips are clearly still very pertinent today.

Tap into free resources

NfpSynergy’s report Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!, A guide for organisations new to fundraising or just starting out raising money, (Saxton.J, 2011), is a useful guide for small NGOs looking to develop a fundraising strategy38; whilst many elements of the PEST analysis carried out by the same organisation are still relevant today.39 The latter report noted that there is wide public concern over many environmental issues, although the financial squeeze has reduced their ability and resolution to pay extra for greener products and services. The report predicted that there will be more pressure on charities to cut down their paper trail and carbon footprint, and this is especially so in the case of environmental NGOs who need to be seen to take the lead.

Last words A particular conservation organisation reliant on investment income (turnover c.£1m) has found that the accumulated 3-4 year of reduced returns - which shows no signs of getting any better in the next two years - has impacted significantly on their staffing levels. Not only are they eating into their capital, but they had to make two field conservationists redundant at the end of 2011. They have also found it necessary to dispose of a couple of woodland sites and fields, which are no longer a conservation priority, to raise operational funds.

For another example, perhaps it is apposite to leave the last word to a senior member of staff at a Wildlife Trust, Michael Jeeves, Head of Conservation, Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust commented: “It is tough. Our Trust’s membership is holding up so far, but has levelled out. The loss of the Aggregates Level Sustainability Fund was a blow to us and other grants still available are few and far between (everyone seems to be chasing the HLF!). We haven’t had to lose any staff (yet). Others around us have all cut back. We don’t very often see anyone from Natural England or Environment Agency any more. Several local authority Country Parks staff have been made redundant and our local authority run Local Records Centre is also being severely cut. Still, I always did say that landscape-scale nature conservation schemes need to be seen as a long-term ventures. We have an awful lot of hearts and minds to be influenced first. “ Ed’s note: If you have examples of best practice or other experiences that you wish to share, both positive and negative, from the testing economic climate of the last two years, please contact Jonathan Somper directly (mail@jonathansomper.plus. com). A follow up article will be prepared on this topic for ECOS in 2013.

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References 1. Where the Green Grants Went 5, Patterns of UK Funding for Environmental and Conservation Work, Jon Cracknell, Heather Godwin, Nick Perks and Harriet Williams, JANUARY 2012, 2. Rising to over 90% of income for Friends of the Earth, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and Greenpeace.

3. Charity Commission - Charities and the economic downturn, 4th Economic Survey of Charities, March 2010, 1,010 telephone interviews were carried out with a random sample of registered charities in England and Wales in Jan/Feb 2010.

4. This was broad definition e.g. encompassing natural and build environment, recycling and pollution.

5. https://www.cafonline.org/charity-finance--fundraising/charity-fundraising--support/e-newsletter-forcharities/january-2012/creative-thinking-to-cope-with.aspx 6. State of the Sector, run by Third Sector and nfpSynergy, also suggests sector is doing more with less Stephen Cook, Third Sector Online, 3 January 2012, Survey shows donations held up well in 2011 7. UK Giving 2011, NCVO, Charities Aid Foundation CAF survey is carried out by the Office for National Statistics three times during the year with over 3,000 adults in the UK aged 16 or over.

8. 70.7% had given to charity in the year up to August 2010 (sample total 1,061) and this had risen slightly to 72.6% in the year to September 2011, (sample size 1,944).Donating in tough times, DMS, Cheltenham, UK. www.dmsagency.co.uk.

9. Where environment included conservation, the environment and heritage.

10. 13% in September 2011 compared with 9% in August 2010.

11. Giving down by 12 per cent in 2011, survey indicates - Sophie Hudson, Third Sector Online, 10 January 2012 - Only 11 per cent gave more to charity in 2011, according to Investec Bank survey http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2012-01-11/uk-charitable-giving-drops-in-2011 12. http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/news/people-hr-employment/charity-workforce-shrinks-nearly-9 Charity workforce shrinks by nearly 9%, 9th January 2012, NCVO - Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) in partnership with Skills -Third Sector.

13. Where the Green Grants Went 5, Patterns of UK Funding for Environmental and Conservation Work, Jon Cracknell, Heather Godwin, Nick Perks and Harriet Williams, JANUARY 2012 14. The rest, almost half (48.3%), went towards overseas grants and almost 10% of these went to Africa (9.6%).

15. Where the Green Grants Went 5, Patterns of UK Funding for Environmental and Conservation Work, Jon Cracknell, Heather Godwin, Nick Perks and Harriet Williams, JANUARY 2012, 16. A Survey of grants made by independent trusts and foundations, Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), Jeremy Vincent, Cathy Pharoah, West malling, Kent, Dimensions 2000, Volume 3, Patterns of Independent GrantMaking in the UK. 17. UK charitable giving drops in 2011, Sarah Krouse, 11 January 2012, Financial News.

18. Whilst the Sunday Times Giving List (published May 2011), showed that the top 100 philanthropists donated £1.67bn to charity overall, a fall of £818m from the previous year. This was despite the number of £1m+ donors growing from 118 to 129 in the period and also the leading 30 philanthropists in the list giving relatively more of their wealth away, donating at least 3.42% compared to 3.22% in the previous year.

19. One new fund was highlighted, Synchronicity Earth; however, against a climate of organisational cutbacks the BBC has withdrawn support for the BBC Wildlife Fund.

20. http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/Finance/article/1083871/public-funding-charitiesfall-28bnnext-five-years-ncvo-warns/ 21. State of the Sector survey, run by Third Sector and nfpSynergy, also suggests the sector is doing more with less. Stephanie Cook, Third Sector Online, 3 January 2012, Survey shows donations held up well in 2011.

22. Juliette Jowit,20th October 2010, Spending review, the greenest government ever reserves worse cuts for Defra, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/20/spending-review-cuts-environment 23. David Kane and James Allen, Counting the Cuts, NCVO, 2011 and data appendix: http://www.ncvo-vol. org.uk/sites/default/files/Counting_the_Cuts_data_appendix.xls.

24. Where the Green Grants Went 5, Patterns of UK Funding for Environmental and Conservation Work, Jon Cracknell, Heather Godwin, Nick Perks and Harriet Williams, JANUARY 2012 25. The Guardian, 27th December 2011, Spending cuts threaten Scotland’s endangered species, Severin Carrell.

26. State of the Sector survey, run by Third Sector and nfpSynergy, also suggests the sector is doing more with

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 less. Stephanie Cook, Third Sector Online, 3 January 2012, Survey shows donations held up well in 2011.

27. For example, carbon dioxide, Holme Fen in one year releases the equivalent Carbon Dioxide of 9,000 transatlantic flights.

28. Sophie Hudson [Fundraising.thirdsector@haymarket.com] Tue 07/02/2012 16:23, Tue 28/02/2012 15:01 29. Sophie Hudson, Third Sector Fundraising, 21st February 2012 30. 20th October, 2011, Nicola Hill, Philanthropy UK 31. Sophie Hudson, Third Sector FR, 16th February, 2012) 32. Cameron, Clegg and Milliband pledge to leave 10 per cent of their estates to charity

By Sophie Hudson, Third Sector Online, 16 January 2012, Leaders of three main parties give their backing to the Legacy10 campaign 33. Methodology included Expert User Experience Review, Usability Testing, Social Media Benchmarking 34. Donating in tough times, DMS, Cheltenham, UK 35. http://www.nomensa.com/whitepapers/creating-perfect-donation-experience/5946d70558de331bd0089f3 1d16ea36d 36. Christine Choe, nypSnergy news, 20/02/2012 37. https://www.cafonline.org/charity-finance--fundraising/charity-fundraising--support/e-newsletter-forcharities/january-2012/creative-thinking-to-cope-with.aspx 38. http://www.nfpsynergy.net/includes/documents/cm_docs/2011/g/gimme_gimme_gimme_a_guide_to_fr_ for_small_organisations.pdf 39. “Look - nfpSynergy have done my PEST analysis”, The socio-economic trends affecting charities today (Mhairi Guild & Joe Saxton).February 2011.

Jonathan Somper is an independent consultant with over 25 years experience who provides bespoke research, practical marketing support, and membership know-how to charities, companies and organisations committed to wildlife, the environment and a more sustainable future. mail@jonathansomper.plus.com

NEIL BENNETT

ECOS 33(1) 2012

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ECOS 33(1) 2012

Peak Panthers This article provides an account of big cat sightings in north-east Derbyshire and the eastern Peak District. All instances are based on first hand testimonies.

DAVID SIDDON A shadow on the moor My interest in big cats started in 2003 on a July day stuck in a traffic jam caused by resurfacing work on the A6. I had been inching towards the Firth Rixon factory and now had the offending traffic lights in sight. To combat the boredom I was admiring the view across a field, the Peak Rail tracks and the distant rise of the watch tower on Stanton Moor. Whilst I watched, what I took to be a large black tom cat appeared, it seemed, from out of the ground over by the stark white concrete posts of the railway. It busied itself rubbing and marking several of the fence-posts and as I watched I realised that there was something wrong about its shape, the body seemed more low slung, the head too small with ears that looked more rounded than the points I associated with your standard moggy. It also seemed to have an exceptionally long tail held in a graceful Clues to a large feline predator? The landowner, who wanted the location kept unknown, discovered this roe deer carcass freshly despatched and clinically consumed overnight. A black panther type cat was seen at the location several weeks before this find. The puncture marks at the windpipe suggest canines 4cms apart.

ECOS 33(1) 2012 arc. What eventually set alarm bells ringing was when it lifted slightly off its front paws to rub its head on the top of the post and the true scale of the animal became apparent.

As it moved along I estimated its size using the gaps between the fence posts behind it.

Then with the traffic edging forward the cement tanker behind me sounded his horn. I had to move on and was denied further study of the animal.

I was sufficiently intrigued that I returned some days later and walked to the exact spot of the strange sighting. There was a deep ditch along which the animal must have been travelling and measuring the gaps between the fence posts gave a nose to end-of-tail estimation of no less than 5 feet in length. Although I could find no physical evidence a couple of the posts had a dark, slightly greasy deposit near the top although there was no distinctive odour I could detect. I considered informing the authorities but with images of idiots with guns hunting the Beast of Bodmin I decided to keep quiet on the matter.

The adapting lynx A couple of years later I was returning to Chesterfield with a friend over Leash Fen close to the top of Pudding Pie Hill. Turning a steep bend I was confronted by a largish animal in the road. Slamming on the brakes I narrowly missed running the animal down. Trapped between the car and a steep bank it leapt at and rebounded from the car to land full in the headlights. No doubting whatsoever, the creature was a lynx with distinctive red brown and grey fur with black patterning. Although the ears were back the tufts at their tips were visible. It crouched low and spat defiance at us before running past into the darkness. I had sufficient presence of mind to engage reverse gear so the lights at the back offered some illumination. We were just in time to see it disappearing up an old blocked off lane to the old quarries used in the construction of the Linacre Reservoirs.

We were rattled enough that we pulled over to discuss what we had seen and agreed entirely on the details, it had even left a slight dent in the offside front door!

I had seen lynxes several years previously as nearby the zoo at Riber Castle estate had been a breeding centre for the species. One slight difference I had noticed was the thickness of the fur in this instance, the tail in particular had looked rather like the padded end of a bell rope. Perhaps this was an adaptation to winter weather, especially in this high part of the country.

I teach photography and one of my students mentioned that she had worked in a summer job at Riber Castle estate. Obviously I mentioned my sighting and she related an incident I had forgotten about. Some years previously, animal rights activists released all the lynxes from the zoo at the castle estate and although for public consumption it was declared that all animals were recaptured, in reality several were never accounted for. She explained that some weeks later a lynx was killed in a road traffic accident on the A6 but it was reported to the police and the body collected quickly by the zoo. Given a mixed population of around 6 feral animals it would allow for a life span of around 40 years before inbreeding introduced fatal weaknesses or sterility killing decedents off, so lynxes could be dispersed around this area for a decade or so yet. It therefore makes me smile when people debate bringing back the lynx - too late in this part of England!

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Close encounters Over the years I have spoken to several people who claim to have had close encounters with large cats. One colleague worked at the former Coalite plant near Bolsover and remained there until full closure some 15 or so years ago. As staff numbers dwindled everyone had to lend a hand in emergencies and so when security reported seeing movement in the sidings it was all hands on deck as metal thieves were suspected. The sidings were floodlit but with the rows of wagons this just created areas of intense shadow. Walking up the edge of the property my colleague heard a strange low snarl he described as being somewhat like a huge Siamese cat’s meow, just before he was bowled onto his back by a blow to the chest. He remembers seeing this large black shape sailing over his head as he fell backwards and his friends saw the animal running down the railway track and reported it as a black panther. Fortunately he was wearing a tough nylon jacket which had torn but not been punctured. He reported the smell from the area of the impact as like the scenting from a tom-cat but “far more powerful and fruity”.

I also attended a lecture based on a two-year photographic survey of the wildlife in a Derbyshire drift lead mine. It was in itself most absorbing running from cave spiders to parasitic moulds and fungi. In the final comments the speaker mentioned meeting a large black leopard-like animal one day when entering the mine to take photographs. The animal emerged from the mine entrance and he backed slowly up the drift to a point where the cat could leap up and get away. On entering the mine he found a partially consumed and freshly killed fox carcass.

ECOS 33(1) 2012 qualified as a distinct sub-species. However as the population was virtually extinct this contentious claim was never fully investigated.

Adaptation amongst feral big cats – has it begun?

Given 30 years since the likely original releases of big cats such as black leopards, and a dynamic and demanding environment it is not beyond the realms of possibility that a big cat species could show similar adaptations. We must also bear in mind that the original animals were more acclimatised to living around humans, which is a trait they may pass on to their offspring. This would mean that they would more readily exploit the advantages of living in our shadow rather in the manner of urban-adapting species such as foxes and badgers.

It has been argued that evolutionary processes cannot work this rapidly but even Darwin postulated that given specific circumstances specialisation and adaptation could appear within a few generations. One need not look any further than our own native badger to see a prime example of this. Throughout Europe the exact same species is noted as aggressive. In the UK where population per area is far greater and therefore human interaction more common, the badger is a retiring and relatively benign animal. We should not therefore judge our big cats with sole references to A naturalising cat? The puma, also called cougar and mountain lion, in its native North America. (Photo taken in a habitat enclosure). In the UK, witnesses report a large cat resembling this animal, with descriptions including “a rope like tail” and a creamy muzzle. The distinctive scream of a puma is also reported. Based on both national and locally kept sightings-figures, around a quarter of witness reports each year suggest a puma-type cat.

Photo: Patty & Jerry Corbin

I also spoke to a train driver who reported seeing lynx-like cats running across the Derby-Matlock line on several occasions. This was backed up by several reports in the local papers of big cat sightings in the Whatstandwell area, which is an intermediate station on the line. There were also reports of a large black cat that had a fondness for attacking dogs in the Carsington-Hopton area.

Feral survivors The release of lynxes from Riber Castle is recorded fact, as is the admission of a Sheffield scrap merchant who kept several black leopards he released into the Peak District at various points. See the new book on big cats for these and other examples.1 That exotic species can comfortably survive is illustrated by the red-necked wallabies that lived, and some claim may still be living, at the Roaches for well over half a century. Around 50 animals were released from a private menagerie in the grounds of Roaches Hall near Leek at the outset of the Second World War by the eccentric Captain Courtney Brocklehurst. This population thrived until inbreeding and accidents reduced and weakened the breeding stock.

Manchester University undertook several surveys of these animals and autopsies of road-kill specimens showed distinct evidence of differences and specialisation occurring quite rapidly. Especially noted were adaptations to diet, body fat and bone density. It was also noted that the Derbyshire wallabies had noticeably thicker fur. By the final generation studied in the early 1990s it was argued that they 68

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 their wild equivalents elsewhere in the world as they may be very different creatures indeed. A frequent phenomenon is that of people reporting stalking behaviour, which I believe may be misunderstood. Bear in mind these animals are, or have bred from animals that experienced close contact with humans and some seem to prefer living on the edges of habitation rather than remote from it.

It is also argued that Britain is too densely populated for such animals to live without more frequent observation, and that predation would give ample proof of their existence. Certainly the Peak District is well visited but this is combined with vast tracts of land that are little visited and lost to mind, countless old quarries and barren stretches of moorland. Most of the area formed part of the ancient Royal Forest which in this context means scattered stands of trees with large tracts of open ground in between. If you view the area from the air you will see that this is still largely true.

Book Reviews

The high moors are also managed, one might be tempted to say over-managed, for the shooting fraternity. Grouse and especially pheasant numbers are at almost nuisance levels and the rabbit and hare population are also very healthy. One only has to drive the lanes to see road-kill every few yards. Bear in mind that there are also wild and semi wild herds of roe-deer in the Peak and the issue of food source for a big cat population is easily resolved. Farmers themselves may not be entirely hostile to the idea either as big cats such as black leopards and lynx would on balance kill more animals that are deemed to be a problem to the farm, and occasional livestock loss may be tolerated.

The Peak District of Derbyshire could easily support a far larger population of big cats without any visible signs of their presence apart from the odd chance encounter.

And whilst scientific orthodoxy is based on evidential proof there comes a time when healthy cynicism becomes a stubborn refusal to accept facts. Although there is no official stance on big cats in Derbyshire, reports are so frequent that both the police authorities and some wildlife practitioners have acknowledged the possibility of their existence.

Reference

WILDLIFE CRIME The Makings of an Investigations Officer Dave Dick Whittles Publishing, 2012, 196 pages £18.99 Pbk ISBN 978-1-84995-036-7

1. Minter R (2011) Big Cats, Facing Britain’s Wild Predators, Whittles Publishing

David Siddon is Team Leader for Sports and Public Services at Chesterfield College. siddon@chesterfield.ac.uk

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Having laws is one thing, but enforcing them and gaining successful prosecutions is quite another. This can be particularly true in the deep countryside where offences can easily go unobserved by members of the public and are far from the reach of the CCTV cameras and Police Community Support Officers so ubiquitous in our towns and suburbs. In addition, in close knit and isolated communities the social and economic costs of reporting the crimes of one’s neighbours can be

ECOS 33(1) 2012 high. Add these factors to those of enclosed private land ownership, the breeding, or encouragement of certain species as ‘crops’ to be harvested and protected from ‘pests’ and a certain ‘out-‘, or ‘beyond-‘ law mentality amongst some rural custodians and in the case of wildlife crime one can find a toxic mix.

Dave Dick gets to the heart of these matters in this autobiographical book recounting his 22 years as the RSPB’s Senior Scottish Investigation Officer. At the core of the book is an account of the prominent cases and categories of wildlife crime he encountered. Much of Dick’s work concerned investigating the illegal killing of raptors, including rare and iconic species such as the Golden Eagle.

Although the author acknowledges and debates the views of perpetrators, a picture emerges of animosity, distrust and entrenched positions. In some cases, systematic eradication of supposedly protected species on driven-grouse and pheasant shooting estates operated as a clandestine practice in relation to which a host of justifications, denials and neutralizations had been devised to deny the legitimacy of the law. This book is not an easy read for animal lovers as it provides graphic accounts of cruelty and of indiscriminate disregard for both the natural world and human communities. Poisoned carcasses, for example, might equally be visited by crows, eagles, foxes, working dogs, or family pets. Yet, the author’s humorous asides, as well as the insights offered into the culture of a small and dedicated band of proud Scots living the outdoor life, ensures that this is a lively read and not simply a dark catalogue of people’s inhumanity to nature. Neither is it that most lifeless of creatures, the text book!

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 The wider issues here are those of the economic concerns of minority rural stakeholders overriding those of conservation and of the scientific evidence. Particularly in times of economic retraction, the pressure toward finding the least costly, most rapid and easily understood response to economic ‘losses’ can involve the blaming and culling of particular wild animals, either through specially licensed or illegal means. Yet, the pressure to pursue and eradicate is certainly not felt by all rural dwellers let alone the urban visitors and foreign tourists who make major contributions to the rural economy and would likely make considerably more if – as in Lancashire’s Forest of Bowland – offered even the faintest chance of spotting a hen harrier.1 Hopefully, this book will help increase the pressure to find more sustainable solutions through action on wildlife, providing rich habitats for the flourishing of predator and prey alike. Such things take time, money and vision, which are perhaps in shorter supply today than they have been in recent years. Nonetheless, many of the solutions are well understood from an ecological perspective and conservationists have a key role to play in convincing relevant agencies to put theory into practice; that is to get on with it! With texts on UK wildlife crime more scarce even than successful convictions, Dave Dick has provided essential reading for anyone seeking to get off the ‘vermin’ encrusted fence and take a stand.

1. In this small corner of England’s northern uplands a monitoring project has maintained the bird’s survival, visitor interest encouraging its use as the emblem of the local area’s AONB designation.

Phil Hadfield

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ECOS 33(1) 2012 ANTICIPATORY HISTORY Caitlin DeSilvey, Simon Naylor & Colin Sackett (Eds) Uniformbooks, 2011, 80 pages £9.00 Pbk ISBN10: 095685592X This unusual book is not only elegantly designed, but despite being a collection of contributions by many hands, is uniformly erudite and well-written. It is a form of gazetteer owing something to Raymond Williams’ pioneering work Keywords, which made it clear how much of our thinking is both illuminated or occluded by the manifold meanings of some of the complex words used in political and cultural discourse. It also builds on that fine 2004 collection, Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture, and to a lesser degree, Common Ground’s enchanting 2006 compendium, England in Particular.

In brief, various authors have been given free rein to elaborate upon a number of critical terms now at work in debates about landscape, ecology, climate change and futurology, ranging from the technical to the poetical, and from the instrumental to the epiphanic. Thus we get wonderful expositions on what is meant by Adaptation, Dream-maps, Entropy, Liminality, Memory, Rewilding, and Presentism, amongst many others – in fact 50 glossaries in all. The initial brief for this research endeavour was to: “explore the roles that history and story-telling play in helping us to apprehend and respond to changing landscapes, and to changes to the wildlife and plant populations they support”. The editors rightly caution themselves and their readers against the dangers of instrumentalising the historywriting process, bending a reading of the past to suit the needs of the present and the future.

Not surprisingly forms of land ownership and its management and stewardship loom large. The short essay on ‘Commons’ rehearses Garrett Hardin’s famous essay on ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, which suggested that self-interest will always ultimately defeat the social aims of things held in common. However, it doesn’t reprise historian E.P.Thompson’s counterargument that in particular societies at particular times, a ‘moral economy’ is brought into play to regulate private behaviour. It was also surprising - though perhaps there wasn’t enough room - that the entry on ‘Rewilding’ focused entirely on vegetative succession with no mention of the fearful ‘Beast of Bodmin Moor’, nor of the proposal to re-introduce sea-eagles to the East Anglian shoreline.

Attention also gravitates towards the newer, more problematic landscapes which now require a fuller understanding of how they might be managed in the future: the ‘edgelands’ or ‘drossscapes’ produced by failed urbanisation or de-industrialisation.

Are these settings just as valuable and worth conserving as farmed or so-called natural habitat? What was once called the search for authenticity in human existential terms, now applies to concrete and clay.

Here the newer discourses of psychogeography and psycho-biogeography are proving to be invaluable in summoning meaning and history from even the bleakest terrain (on such matters see the excellent entry, ‘Liminal zone’).

There are no settled positions on any of these matters any more, as the entry on ‘Enclosure’ concludes. Open common land was once hedged in and parcelled up into private lots, which had very bad social consequences. When, a century or so later, the hedgerows were uprooted in the name of industrialised farming, much of the flora and fauna using them

as habitat disappeared. Now we are re-instating hedges. The author of this entry concludes: “perhaps we might think of enclosure as an example of the human modification of land that slips from its moorings, and accept that each generation makes the enclosure it needs”.

The book contains words, terms and concepts that are completely new to me, including the book’s suggestive title, ‘Anticipatory History’. I had not heard of Rephotography before, nor ‘Shifting baseline syndrome’ let alone ‘Palliative curation’. ‘Presentism’ I knew, but not how to pronounce it – and still don’t.

Yet these elucidations are vital resources in the debates ahead about how we handle the transition from the past into the future, and provide a much-needed contribution to the crucial matter of ‘inter-generational equity’. A terrific and thought-provoking book.

Ken Worpole (Details of Ken Worpole’s study of the Essex coastline, 350 Miles, with photographer Jason Orton, can be found at www.worpole.net) EDGELANDS Journeys into England’s True Wilderness Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts Jonathan Cape, 2011, 266 pages Hbk £12.99 ISBN 9780224089029 For those of us involved in nature conservation in towns and cities the urban fringe holds much of interest and value. Not always aesthetically pleasing, but often packed with wildlife, the ‘urban commons’ as Oliver Gilbert has described them are rich and varied. Richard Mabey has written about them, and BANC’s own Marion Shoard probably coined the term ‘edgelands’ to encompass them.

The authors of this book acknowledge that her work was their starting point.

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NEIL BENNETT

ECOS 33(1) 2012

ECOS 33(1) 2012 are indeed all of these things, but in this book they are just themselves, amongst other things apparently “the kingdom of the Buddleia”. The authors’ definition of ‘edgelands’ is suitably broad, allowing city centre sites and even seaside piers to come within the compass of the book.

One of the great pleasures of reading this work is the frequency with which places that I know turn up: places in Wolverhampton, Rugeley Power Station, the National Exhibition Centre, parts of Knowsley, and several others. Because railways (abandoned and operational) occupy the edgelands I suspect that this will hold true for many readers, even if only as a fleeting glimpse en route to the next meeting.

Farley and Symmons provide a celebration of these edgelands in the romantic tradition. This book is written by two poets: not for them a technical treatise or a catalogue of ills and remedies, but rather a wry and friendly look at, amongst others, the allotments, scraps of scrub and woodland, land around power stations and sewage works, wetlands and old mining areas. The authors struck a chord with me with this comparison between the edgelands and many of our designated nature conservation sites: “At their most unruly and chaotic, edgelands make a great deal of our official wilderness seem like the enshrined, ecologically arrested, controlled garden space it really is”.

The great thing about the book is the way it allows the edgelands to just be.

The whole world, including me I may say, engages in trying to ‘improve’ them, whether for another retail park or another local nature reserve. They are seen as ripe for economic development, ideal for formal recreation and amenity, invaluable for wildlife, vital elements of sustainability and green infrastructure. The edgelands 74

There are 28 chapters, each an individual essay, with titles which include Canals, Wasteland, Woodlands, Mines, Dens, Gardens and Landfill. The nostalgia and romance of the book is an indulgence in the world of policies, strategies, visions and mission statements, and the hard grind of fund-raising. The dirt, dereliction and danger will still be present amidst the edgelands once you have read the book, but perhaps you will enjoy the reality of these places whilst developing your next project. As Wallace might say “Cracking read Grommet”.

Peter Shirley

ECOLOGICAL ETHICS An Introduction Patrick Curry Polity, 2011, 332 pages Pbk £16.99 ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5126-2 The trouble with many approaches to ecological ethics is that they can be

intrinsic values equivalent of angels-onpinhead debates. Meanwhile, the devil gets on and does his darnedest. Stuck in the realms of the head, much academic treatment of ethics still avoids the heart that passionately pumps blood to the brain, or the hands’ practical application to burning issues.

In contrast, Patrick Curry’s revised and expanded Ecological Ethics nicely balances the 3-Hs of head, heart and hand. He runs through the standard stuff that would be expected in a textbook: realism and relativism, the relationship between deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics, the light and dark green debate, and ecofeminist and spiritual perspectives. But woven through it all is his urge for meaning and application.

I was not always comfortable with some of his examples. Curry tends strongly though not absolutely towards vegetarianism, even veganism, and gives little quarter to those of us who are omnivores. He concedes that circumpolar people have a case for hunting wild animals, but hailing from the Isle of Lewis, I did wonder whether he might concede to moving his definition of circumpolar down to the 58th parallel to include those of us for whom a sheep or cow is the most suitable way to convert cellulose. I also wondered how he sees the ethics of culling in balance with nature, for where I come from, the stags don’t use condoms.

Such live debates are what make this book engaging, but what pleased me most were Curry’s remarks, especially towards the end, about the further reaches of human nature. He says, for example, that he has been “struck by the way that many of the writers whom we have found with much to offer in the course of this book are ones who not

only respect the importance of culture, imagination and narrative, but are not afraid of their spiritual dimension.”

I hear similar observations more and more these days, whether in the politics of the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring, or in the worlds of art and music becoming weary of materialistic nihilism. Who knows, perhaps a new ethic really is on the horizon. I won’t be holding my breath, but I hope so.

Alastair McIntosh

TOWARDS A NEW PARADIGM FOR THE ECOLOGY OF NORTHERN AND WESTERN SCOTLAND A synthesis of issues James Fenton 2011, www.james-hc-fenton.eu/page19.html Ecology is no more immune than any other subject from an accumulation of threadbare and moth-eaten ideas that we hang on to like old jackets. The actions we take on the basis of these ideas can sometimes become liabilities.

Equally, ecology is not immune from the discarding of only lightly used ideas because of fashion changes – or peer pressure. In the recent past, succession to climax has been revisited; and the slogan ‘Diversity = Stability’ has been avoided for quite a while. More recently, the concept of the ecosystem has needed clarifying, and the role of grazing mammals in the evolution of European vegetation has been reviewed. Now we are being encouraged to think again about the role of Hom,sap. in this process.

James Fenton, sometime ecologist with the National Trust for Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage, has packed into these 47 pages enough pointers to what he sees as mistaken ideas about 75

BACK COPIES OF ECOS

ECOS 33(1) 2012 the ecology and the historical status of Scotland’s woodlands and moorlands to make many an ecologist, landscape historian, and conservationist, apoplectic.

He wishes to replace the notion that upland-ish Scotland is a degraded landscape, impoverished by humans, with the notion of it as “one of the most natural vegetation patterns in Europe, the current rarity of woodland … being a key biodiversity feature”. This synthesis of issues offers glimpses of evidence, but is (I hope) the mere prospectus for a thorough and thoroughly peerdebated study, not self-published. In the meantime, do read it, and check through your mental wardrobe.

I am not competent to pass judgement on the likely verity or otherwise of James’s ideas, unless allowed that sensible verdict of Scottish courts: Not proven. A few things, however, do seem to be clear.

First, iIt is surprising, but for several critically important issues we appear not to have more than rudimentary, fragmented, or confusing evidence. In particular, we do not have sufficient evidence – scientific and historical – to say whether or not moor is largely manmade or natural.

Second, parts of the accepted story may not be verifiable. Of the ‘Great Forest of

Caledon’, for instance, environmental historian T.C. Smout has written: “It is in every sense of the word a myth”.

Third, Highland vegetation has been too much described by ecologists oriented to the examination of lowland, especially English, vegetation, and often insular in perspective.

Fourth, the ‘high value’ to conservation of rarities – species, communities or habitats – is not necessarily merited; for example, low species diversity vegetation of rare or restricted occurrence might out-value commonplace high-diversity types.

Fifth, if we are using mistaken paradigms to direct our conservation efforts, then as they say of the wanderer, the further he doth go, the further he doth stray.

In particular, projects to ‘re-establish’ woodland on moor, mire and heath just might be up to 180 degrees wrong.

Fenton sees his ‘synthesis’ as “a unified and internally consistent approach to nature conservation”. This is of considerable academic interest – though much further research is needed. It may, indeed, become fashionable. Even good science, however, does not, in itself, tell us in which direction conservationists ought to pursue their action.

Martin Spray

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Feature Articles 1. Back to basics. Geoffrey Wain 2. Cometh the Hour? Peter Shirley 6. For nature’s sake. Mark Avery 9. Wildlife fallback – are we prepared? David West

Spring 2012 issue 33(1) www.banc.org.uk

12. A lifeless living Wales? Mick Green 15. Heartlands and wildwoods. Sophie Wynne-Jones 21. Scottish land reform – a lost opportunity for community environmental development? Alexandra Henderson 27. Letting the cat out of the bag: Eurasian lynx reintroduction in Scotland. James Thomson 35. Tolerating the Tay beavers. Derek Gow 37. Ups and downs for the Badger. Ian Rotherham 41. Bee conservation: A call for coherence, cohesion and co-operation. Emily Adams, Philip Donkersley & Alistair Campbell 47. Today we live without them: the erasure of animals and plants in the language of ecosystem assessment. Arran Stibbe 54. When the going gets tough... Jonathan Somper 66. Peak Panthers. David Siddon

71. Book Reviews • Wildlife Crime • Anticipatory History • Edgelands • Ecological Ethics • Towards a new paradigm for the ecology of Northern and Western Scotland

2012 British Association of Nature Conservationists.

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