Ecos 33 3 4 2012 full version

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Winter 2012 issue 33(3/4) ECOS 33(3/4) 2012

Conservation without boundaries Partnerships - can they deliver more for nature?

Landscape-scale conservation - what does it mean in practice?

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ECOS

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

www.banc.org.uk

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012

ecos@easynet.co.uk Editorial

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

Connecting the connectivity

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.

Cover photo: Konik ponies grazing at Wicken Fen. Photo: National Trust.

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Since our college days of understanding island biogeography, it’s seemed dumb to work in a UK policy context that overlooks such a crucial concept. But now we have a momentum shift and the aims of the 2010 Lawton Report are being actioned.

Lawton urged-on the push for connectivity and reinforced the interest in ‘thinking big’ for reserves and their hinterlands. Ideas on Living Landscapes and landscapescale conservation have finally been championed at high-level, and a new era is upon us, as wildlife breaks out of its boundaries. Tight prescriptions for specialist species still have their place, but no longer should they prevent us taking steps to enrich nature beyond the demarcated places. Yes, more radical re-wildling is wanted by many of us, but let’s enjoy the walk now and run later.

So, in this issue, Nicholas Macgregor and colleagues explain how a ramble through England’s eastern fens crosses various big conservation schemes. These combine to offer a greater chunk of resilient land. On the ground and on the map the conservation estate is spreading. Likewise, in south west England, Lisa Schneidau notes the various projects branded as big-scale ventures in south west England, and she explains how one of the 12 Nature Improvement Areas, Northern Devon, under her charge, will boost the conservation agenda. NIAs need to prove their worth in double-quick time to justify their heightened attention and their budgets.

Our case study shows the full intentions of the NIA set up in Northern Devon, from protecting Culm grassland to helping people appreciate local special places.

Meanwhile, the very essence of much of Scotland’s great outdoors demands grandscale conservation, and progressive estates have delivered much we can learn from.

Bill Adams guides us through recent research on large-scale conservation in Scotland, and distinguishes the traits of different projects. This style of categorisation might help in England and Wales too. Knowing how projects compare and contrast may indicate what type of links are most useful and where there may be new cause and effect relationships across the landscape.

As the various big conservation schemes grapple with their targets and visions, what will be the actual wildlife results? More natural processes replacing traditional conservation management work, creating surprises regardless of our targets? More attention to nature’s healing powers, as we dabble further into social and health affairs? And what will be the affects of closer ties with the landscape agenda?

Our authors look at the complexities of embracing landscape character and seeing nature and the environment as a whole. In tough times it is good to see large scale conservation staying on course and offering new hope and fresh challenges. For now at least, don’t mention that other landscape-scale policy, the CAP… Geoffrey Wain

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Lands-caped crusaders Right across the conservation sector we are beginning to talk about conserving wildlife in whole landscapes. Do we appreciate the intellectual Pandora’s Box we’re opening?

GAVIN SAUNDERS A whole with holes Sometimes it feels like the concept of landscape-scale working is more amazing to conservationists than it is to ordinary folk. “Wow, wildlife needn’t just be concentrated on little islands of nature reserves and wildlife sites, but actually could spread out across the whole landscape, if it was, like, all connected up!” The idea seems like a revelation to those of us who have lived with maps of coloured-in wildlife site blobs on insipid white backgrounds for so many years. But most people perhaps see things from the other way round: they are aware of landscape – the vista of fields, trees, houses and roads around them – before they are aware of wildlife habitats, as such. They may not appreciate how fragmented that landscape is, in ecological terms, for a bee or a dormouse or a nesting bird, but it is a whole with holes, rather than a collection of blobs waiting to be joined up.

Even though the science of landscape ecology has a fairly long history, back at least to MacArthur and Wilson’s work on island biogeography in the mid 1960s, its adoption in the mainstream conservation lexicon only really dates back a decade or so, and it still has the appealing glow of a new idea about it. Conservationists now revel in the grandiloquent notion of Landscape. We relish the wide-open vistas the word conjures up. We talk of landscape in the context of enlarged scale, increased connection, and dynamic flow – as compared to the limited scale, connection and flow which was framed by our restricted reserves and wildlife sites of old. But there’s more to extending one’s perspective to a landscape scale, than simply the enticing prospect of making things bigger. Beyond the shrubby boundaries of wildlife sites there are a lot of other things happening ‘out there’. Not just dull green fields, hedges, watercourses, copses, and brownfield sites waiting to be coloured in with bright new habitat; but also parks, streets, gardens, homes, yards, factories and schools, inhabited by businesses, communities, politics, factions, interests, families and personalities.

Landscape – a confused concept While landscape-scale is the tag conservationists have adopted in England for the moment, many fellow practitioners have used the word ‘landscape’ in a different way for many generations. We risk a slight confusion of intent with concurrent, subtly different uses of the word side by side – the aesthetic landscape, as something to describe, characterise and defend, and the ecological landscape, as a space in which natural processes are played out. Common sense might suggest the two would benefit from coming together, but in practice each has developed its own arsenal of terminology and jealously guarded jargon, and the relationship can be 2

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 awkward, even when brought together under the roof of a single agency. In that respect, the European Landscape Convention’s definition of landscape helpfully bridges the divide: “An area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors”.

Nature in context Conservationists are fond of reminding everyone else that ecological processes underpin all of human society, but we’re not so good at acknowledging that wider society itself. A movement which began life trying to preserve wild places from the ravages of humanity set its focus on those wild places, and chose to see the rest of society as ‘other’. Though there was every good reason for doing so, this perspective set the tone for how we would relate to the rest of society for decades to come. It affected our language, our preferences and our comfort zone. It meant we felt we had to communicate with the rest of society either with an earnest, objective, scientific rigour, or with a slightly patronizing dumbed-down language of jolly oohs and ahhs about how amazing nature is, or with a regulatory officiousness about what is okay and what isn’t okay for the owners of pieces of landscape to do with their own property.

Talk of ‘landscape scale’ could be evidence of the gradual re-emergence of nature conservation from the shell of self-righteous indignation we’ve hidden in for the last 50 years: a recognition that the things we cherish are connected to everything else, and that the connection can be positive as well as negative. But if that’s the case, it’s only a start. Though the efforts to understand the ecology of whole landscapes are highly commendable, there remains something curiously dry, effete and unreal about connectivity maps, permeability quotients and minimum dynamic areas. They are at one and the same time, both holistic and reductionist. They look at the whole, but they only seem to see part of it.

The inconvenient whole Like eyes becoming accustomed to the dark, we might expect gradually to begin to see more detail, more features, more of the true landscape filled in. In essence we’re trying to grope towards holism – recognising connections, interdependencies between habitats and wider society. But that holism can’t – by definition – stop with the things we feel comfortable about. If it means anything it has to grasp that landscapes are interconnected webs in more senses than just the ecological ones.

Landscapes are products of history, reflections of economies, and accommodators of society, as well as collections of habitats and ecosystem processes. And they are viewed by 21st century people through a lens coloured and shaped by a messy legacy of Enlightenment and Romanticism baggage - warring notions from Apollo and Dionysus.

Landscape-scale conservation does not – cannot – mean doing the same things we’ve always tried to do, simply on a larger canvas. It means engaging with the messy reality of wider society, putting nature in context, making it more relevant and meaningful for different people, and learning to define what is ‘good enough’, rather than always wanting more and always being disappointed.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 continue to be economically irrelevant, legally constrained and socially detached would not – even if they were feasible - be much better, in the full sense, than the fragmented bits we have now.

NEIL BENNETT

Landscape is a process, an experience, a journey - something which happens, rather than something that is. It is something which can never be pinned down as a defined end-point or manifestation of a vision, but is a constantly shifting, slippery expression of interaction and multiple being, of human perception and expression amongst a living world.

This is not to suggest that conservation bodies should somehow try and encompass the whole shebang in their work. They have a niche to fulfil in a wider ecosystem, alongside business advisors, economists, engineers, planners, agronomists, foresters, landscape architects, hydrologists, teachers, community workers, public health practitioners and many others. But fulfilling one’s niche effectively requires an understanding of the context in which you fit. Each and every one of those practitioners should understand the wider landscape setting in which they work – the benefits their work can offer to the whole, and the constraints and responsibilities they are bound by. Conservation, as a progressive, visionary discipline, should be able to set the example for that.

Even if that is only partly true, measuring nature conservation’s success in terms of number of holdings visited, or amount of land into agreement, or area surveyed, won’t cut the mustard for much longer. Even defining progress in terms of increased populations of key wildlife species is to see only part of a true, desirable future.

What has really changed as a result of our work? What is functioning better? Is it economically viable? Who is working better with whom, and is there greater social equity as a result?

Perhaps we don’t yet fully appreciate how deep the water is, now that we’ve dived into the concept of holistic, interconnected landscapes.

Gavin Saunders leads a set of landscape and community initiatives in the Neroche Forest on the Blackdown Hills in Somerset. gavin.saunders@btinternet.com From a wildlife perspective, Britain’s landscapes consist of isolated fragments of semi-natural habitat surrounded by intensively managed land, as illustrated by this area of downland in the south of England.

Photo: Martin Warren

More, bigger, better…and real?

What is also curious about landscape-scale conservation thinking in England (in contrast, at least, to Scotland) is that it seems notably anaemic in having any sense of political (small p) context. In advocating an ecologically more connected landscape, landscape-scale initiatives seem to have little to say about land and our relationship to it. To achieve a truly sustainable, habitat-rich, climate-proofed landscape would require a wholly different approach by society to its landscape. It would affect our idea of place, of social justice as played out amongst those who work on, have access to, and benefit from the land. Are the cherished wildlife-rich future-scapes we describe in our glossy publications, places made by and for the people? Or are the people just supposed to obediently appreciate it once we’ve created it?

‘More, bigger, better and joined’, with the exception of the ‘joined’ bit, sounds to me more like a supermarket advertisement than a visionary call for future conservation. More, bigger areas of habitat, however lovely they might be, which 4

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Landscape scale - towards an integrated approach The term landscape scale means different things to different people, viewed through the prisms of ecology, history, geography or aesthetics. This article looks at opportunities for a common ground between perspectives. A meeting place outside traditional disciplines and comfort zones has potential to provide an integrated way of thinking to help guide the delivery of ecosystem services.

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 The ELC is a treaty adopted and promoted by the Council of Europe. It provides an international context for landscape, placing this important resource alongside biodiversity and cultural heritage. The convention is binding on the states that sign it and to date has been signed by 38 countries. It came into effect in March 2007 in Britain.

The Convention highlights the need to develop policies dedicated to the protection, management and planning of landscape. It requires the setting of agreed forward looking objectives for the landscape based on an understanding of all its multiple values and special qualities.

Box 1: What is landscape

KATE AHERN & LYNDIS COLE A new starting point on landscape The Oxford English Dictionary1 defines Landscape as “all the visible features of an area of land, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal”. This is the traditional interpretation of landscape with its strong emphasis on the visual and aesthetic. It suggests that landscape scale is ‘as far as you can see’, which, of course, will vary according to the type of landscape being experienced, from the far reaching horizons of a seascape or expansive chalk downland, to the intimate enclosed experience of a valley or townscape.

The European Landscape Convention (ELC) introduces a more relevant and allembracing definition of landscape as “an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors”.2 The ELC provides a holistic understanding of landscape which links people and place (see box 1). This is much more than visual and aesthetic factors, and recognises landscape as: • the result of the complex interaction of natural factors (e.g. geology, soils, biodiversity), cultural factors (e.g. settlement, land use) and perceptual and aesthetic qualities (e.g. experience, associations, tranquillity); • linking past with present, and representing a manifestation of the evolution of physical processes and human intervention; it recognises that landscape is dynamic and has evolved and will continue to change; • everywhere – covering all landscapes not just the special designated and protected areas but equally our ordinary and everyday places; all landscapes matter.

From: Landscape Character Assessment Guidance, SNH/CA (2002) CAX 84

• perceived by people and therefore representing multiple values, including both tangible and intangible ones;

Landscape character guidance and wildlife policy – the varying perspectives on landscape scale

• existing at any scale from large tracts of land, such as mountain ranges, to small locally important spaces such as parks and streetscape.

From the landscape perspective there is no such thing as a ‘landscape scale’ of working. Landscape exists at all scales whether it is the design of a paving scheme for a small urban site or the planning and management of a national park. The

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 variety and distinctiveness of the landscape is captured by the process of landscape character assessment, which operates at a hierarchy of scales from the national to the local. At the national level, in England, 159 National Character Areas have been identified each with its own distinct character and sense of place (there are comparable classifications in place in Wales and Scotland). The locations and their descriptions can be viewed on Natural England’s web site. More detailed landscape character assessments are undertaken at the local authority, neighbourhood and site scale; each picking out areas of distinct local identity at a greater level of detail and nuance than the one above. This hierarchy provides an important tool, not only for understanding the landscape but also a spatial framework for the implementation of policy, planning and management at all scales from the national to the local.

From the wildlife perspective, the term landscape scale has its origins in island biogeography and has been in use for many years, although is not precisely defined.

Operating at a ‘landscape scale’ has become embedded as a way of working, recognising that the traditional approach concentrating on individual habitats and species in isolated ‘islands’ will not be successful in the face of mounting pressures.

Climate change, the need for connectivity and ecosystem level management have been key drivers for this approach.

The Lawton Report on Making Space for Nature3 considers that past action for wildlife management has often taken place on too small a scale. It sets out a desired direction of travel for a connected, coherent and resilient ecological network, although it is careful to argue at the outset that landscape character cannot be a surrogate for species. It states that “landscapes can be richer and poorer in species and you cannot just tell by looking at them from a distance. Species keep conservation efforts honest and there is no surrogate metric that can reliably assess conservation success or failure without knowing what is happening to populations of plants and animals in the landscape”.

Some differences in interpretation of landscape and landscape scale therefore start to emerge from these perspectives.

The 2011 White Paper - The Natural Choice: Securing the Value of Nature 4 places considerable emphasis on action at a ‘landscape scale’. It recognises that addressing single issues in isolation does not reflect the way nature works as a system and promotes the National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) approach as a more integrated way of working.

The NEA underlines the importance of managing ecosystems in an integrated fashion, to achieve a wider range of services and benefits linking goals on wildlife, water, soil and landscape. These services include: • supporting services such as ecological processes, soil formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling, which underpin the operation of ecosystems as a whole; • provisioning services such as food, water and wood; 8

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 • regulating services which help us to control climate, floods, waste disposal, air and water quality; and • cultural services which include the recreational, educational, aesthetic and spiritual benefits that we receive from the environment.

The White Paper is a strong advocate of working at the landscape scale as the best way to achieve these multiple benefits.

Working at a ‘landscape scale’ There is no single accepted definition of ‘landscape scale’; rather, it is a term commonly used to refer to action that covers a large spatial scale, usually addressing a range of ecosystem processes, conservation objectives and land uses.

The ‘right scale’ might need to take account of the particular interest of those involved locally, aesthetic or cultural characteristics, natural features such as river catchment areas or particular habitats, or recognised areas such as the 159 National Character Areas.

Landscape scale conservation is characterised by the pursuit of multiple benefits across a defined area (e.g. water quality, biodiversity and access). The best examples also make links to wider economic and social priorities, where enhancing nature can provide benefits to the local economy and quality of life.

There are strong links between the landscape scale approach and an ‘ecosystems approach’, which encourages an integrated approach to land management, considering the costs and benefits of land use decisions, and pursuing those that minimise risks and maximise opportunities for people, for nature and for the economy.

From: The Natural Choice, Natural Environment White Paper, 2011

However, although implicit in the term nature or natural environment, there is relatively little direct reference to landscape in the White Paper although it is clear that landscape helps deliver many of the services and benefits outlined above. The use of the term landscape scale initiatives is not in itself a reference to landscape. It is simply an acknowledgement that ecosystem service delivery often needs to be planned over a significant scale.

This poses some interesting questions: Is there now a danger that instead of the biodiversity impoverished landscapes of the Lawton report, might we now end up with nature-rich areas offering a range of benefits and services but which do not respect their locality, identity, sense of place and character? And does this matter?

And furthermore in terms of scale, is bigger always better? Some thinking on these questions is amplified in the sections below.

The landscape-scale approach and the European Landscape Convention – a holistic view

More than just the natural environment: Landscape, reflecting the spirit of the European Landscape Convention, embracing the physical, natural, social and cultural dimensions of the environment and interactions between them, can be considered more comprehensive in scope than pure ecosystems. Arguably, landscape provides an ideal spatial framework at a range of scales to help link ecosystem service delivery with landscape conservation and enhancement. The definition of agreed forwardlooking objectives (as recommended by the ELC), recognising all the multiple values and dimensions of landscape, could provide this mechanism. This would involve stepping outside traditional disciplines and comfort zones.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 Functional places and environments: A better functioning, multi-purpose landscape offers a sustainable way forward and need not result in radically new and alien landscapes. Many of the features that are most enjoyed in the landscape, such as hedgerows, are those that can help make the landscape function better: reducing soil erosion and cross-land water flows, encouraging water infiltration, and trapping pollutants such as inorganic fertilisers to name just a few of the benefits that hedgerows can provide. So while the original reason why hedgerows were provided, for stock enclosure, is now less relevant, other ‘hidden’ functions that they perform become of increasing importance.

Opportunity and potential: There are a huge variety of natural features that can perform specific functions and deliver different ecosystem services and benefits.

This creates a ‘palette of opportunity’ with the chance to manage those features that are both best suited to the character of the local landscape and best able to address problems that have been identified across an area and its land management activities and its wildlife habitats.

So, there is a unique opportunity to develop enhanced landscapes, fit for the future, that function better and, in so doing, create nature-rich places and conserve and enrich desired landscape character. Because many landscape features and land management activities can provide a range of ecosystem services, there is the opportunity to promote those landscape features that can both address current and future failings in the local environment in tandem with enhancing our experience of it.

Turning around the words of the Lawton report, these would be functioning landscapes, visibly rich in wildlife, culturally distinct, as well as visually and aesthetically pleasing.

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 Focus on maximising multiple benefits or ecosystem services.

Understand that edges and boundaries are zones of transition and important places. Connectivity and working outside boundaries is the ultimate aim.

An example: ‘Valley of Visions’ The Landscape Partnerships Scheme is a grants programme of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). It is based on areas of land which have a distinct local character, recognised and valued by local people. Landscape Partnership Schemes are expected to cover an area between 20km2 and 200km2 and must deliver against multiple objectives.

The Valley of Visions Landscape Partnership Scheme operates in the Medway Gap in Kent. The £2.5m scheme is delivered through the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is investing in landscape, access, wildlife and heritage features whilst providing opportunities for people to explore and celebrate the local area.

It is a complex and distinctive landscape nestled in the broad valley that cuts through the Kent Downs, between Maidstone at the southern end and the Medway Towns in the north. This is an area in transition and under pressure as old industries decline, farming practices change and new housing and commercial developments are expanding. The scheme addresses these pressures by working with local communities, local authorities, landowners and developers to protect and enhance the area’s natural and cultural heritage assets.

Looking over the landscape of the Medway Gap in the Valley of Visions.

Photo: johnmillerphotography.com

An integrated approach to landscape scale The following pointers are suggested for any project aiming to work at the landscape scale: Be based on an area with coherence and integrity – these might be distinctive places recognised by local people, defined areas such as character areas, or functional areas such as river catchments.

Recognise that landscape can exist at all scales. Bigger is not always better – it is about operating at the right scale to achieve the desired objectives.

Take a holistic approach recognising the interaction of natural, cultural, perceptual and aesthetic factors as well as a full understanding of how the landscape functions.

Involve a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. This means a full range of partners and stakeholders – every sector has a role to play.

Agree forward looking outcomes and objectives based on professional and public consultation and involvement.

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Amongst the schemes integrated environmental objectives, it is working to enhance the area’s special role and potential as a ‘green hub’ at the intersection of key local and long-distance green routes linking many outstanding landscape, nature conservation and heritage features.

References 1. oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/landscape 2. Article 1. European Landscape Convention, definitions 3. Making Space for Nature: A review of England’s Wildlife Sites and Ecological Networks (the Lawton Report), 2010, for Defra.

4. The Natural Choice: Securing the Value of Nature, CM8082, 2011, TSO

Kate Ahern is a Landscape Planner and Principal of LUC. She has produced Guidelines on the Implementation of the ELC on behalf of Natural England and has recently prepared the update of the Landscape Character Assessment Guidance for England, Scotland and Wales. Kate.ahern@landuse.co.uk Lyndis Cole is a Principal of LUC and has extensive experience in landscape planning and rural land management. She has led thinking on integrated rural development, the link between landscapes and food production, and the monitoring of landscape change. Lyndis.cole@landuse.co.uk

The design of Wallasea Island Wild Coast in Essex includes four areas of intertidal habitat, one of which has the potential to act as a flood storage area and help reduce flood risk around the rest of the adjacent estuary on large surge tides. Before the intertidal habitat is created, land levels are being raised behind the current seawalls, through the beneficial use of excavated material from the London Crossrail project. This will minimise any potential detrimental effects on the rest of the estuary caused by a large increase in the volume of water entering and leaving it.

This aerial photograph shows the jetty (mid-left) constructed at Wallasea Island to receive excavated material arriving by boat. This material is transferred by conveyor to the handling area (right-hand side), and then used to build up land levels before the area is eventually returned to intertidal habitat.

Photo: RSPB

Large-scale conservation in Great Britain: taking stock Natural England has compiled a database of Large-Scale Conservation Projects and interviewed many practitioners involved in these schemes. This article reviews the findings to date and considers how the achievements of current and previous schemes can be taken forward.

NICHOLAS A. MACGREGOR, WILLIAM M. ADAMS, CHRIS T. HILL, FELIX EIGENBROD, PATRICK E. OSBORNE Nature Improvement Areas – continuing the large-scale conservation journey Just to the southwest of Peterborough in eastern England, covering 41,350ha of the flat, low-lying land along the River Nene and its tributaries, is the newly-established Nene Valley Nature Improvement Area (NIA). This is one of 12 NIAs – large areas across England that were established in April 2012 for ecological restoration, having been chosen for funding through a government-run competition that invited local partnerships to put forward proposals for their area. The aims of the NIA programme are to: • create more and better-connected habitats over large areas which provide the space for wildlife to thrive and adapt to climate change; • enhance the wide range of benefits that nature provides to people, such as recreation opportunities, flood protection, cleaner water and carbon storage; and • help to unite local communities, landowners and businesses through a shared vision for a better future for people and wildlife.1 Nature Improvement Areas are perhaps the most visible manifestation in England of the prominence of the ‘landscape-scale approach’ in current conservation policy (see Lisa Schneidau’s article on the Northern Devon NIA in this edition, for a further perspective on NIAs). But they are by no means the first attempt at this approach to conservation. If you went for a walk along the river system that makes up the new Nene Valley NIA you would also pass through an RSPB ‘Futurescape’, a Wildlife Trust ‘Living Landscape’, target areas for the government’s Higher Level Stewardship agrienvironment scheme, and a strategic river restoration area on the River Ise. Just outside the NIA boundary are a number of other large-scale conservation areas, including two priority catchments for the Catchment Sensitive Farming scheme (which also operates through local partners in the River Nene catchment itself).

The NIA partnership has grown out of many of these projects, building on existing partnerships between organisations and bringing in new partners, and those

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 existing projects in turn have developed from past conservation initiatives in the Nene Valley going back to the 1980s. This is just one small example of the variety, patchwork character, and evolution over time, of large-scale conservation areas across England, and Great Britain as a whole. This is a subject Natural England has been studying over the last couple of years, and we have found it richer and more fascinating, but also more complex, the more we looked into it. This article gives some reflections on our experiences.

A growing interest in ecological networks and large-scale conservation We began studying large-scale conservation (LSC) projects in England, Scotland and Wales in 2010, shortly before the Making Space for Nature2 report by John Lawton and his colleagues was published. As in other European countries3, there was already a growing interest across the British conservation community in the concept of ‘ecological networks’ and establishing conservation over large areas.

This interest was, and still is, driven by a range of inter-related factors: Concern over small and fragmented conservation sites, particularly if isolated by intensive land use, failing adequately to conserve biodiversity.4 Given the need to “manage the entire mosaic, not just the pieces”5, LSC approaches have been suggested to expand and link existing sites, provide zones of more sympathetic land use in the ‘matrix’ between them, and so better protect threatened species.6 Map showing the boundary of the Nene Valley Nature Improvement Area and the existing conservation areas that already existed in or near the new NIA when it was established. The boundary of the Wildlife Trust’s Living Landscape has since been adjusted to match the NIA boundary.

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 A desire to restore large areas to a ‘wilder’ state7, perhaps inspired by places such as Oosvaardersplassen in the Netherlands8 and by big ‘connectivity conservation’ projects further afield, such as in North America and Australia.9 Benefits to people: Increasing awareness that conservation needs to take account of the benefits the environment provides to people – ‘ecosystem services’10,11 – and recognition that some of these, such as drinking water, depend on large-scale ecological processes and need to be managed over large geographic areas such as whole river catchments.

A desire to reconnect people with the environment, reverse the homogenisation of landscapes and restore or create distinctive places that provide benefits for both wildlife and for people.12,13 Environmental change: Growing concern about climate change and the need to adapt conservation strategies to some inevitable amount of change. In a future in which landscapes and ecosystems appear likely to be become increasingly dynamic, with a resulting need to consider landscape change, species movement and resilience across wide areas14,15, large-scale approaches (both larger sites and better management coordination and functional links between them) will become increasingly important16,17,18, including for the provision of ‘ecosystem-based adaptation’ for people.19 Interest in LSC has continued to grow since the publication of Making Space for Nature. In England, the government’s policy aspirations for ecological networks were made explicit in the Natural Environment White Paper20 and the new conservation strategy for England, Biodiversity 2020.21 There are also equivalent policies in Wales22 and Scotland23, 24, though these are not necessarily directly influenced by the Lawton report. Natural England’s purpose is to conserve the natural environment for current and future generations. This includes an important role in helping to deliver the commitments in the White Paper and Biodiversity 2020. Natural England therefore has a strong interest in understanding how LSC can best be put into practice.

When Making Space for Nature was published, many LSC initiatives already existed.

These included the Wildlife Trust’s Living Landscapes programme25, the RSPB’s recently re-launched Futurescapes programme26, the England Biodiversity Group ‘Integrated Biodiversity Delivery Areas’27, and a variety of other projects and programmes, for example those managed by Butterfly Conservation, the Woodland Trust and the National Trust. There had been various small reviews and collections of case studies before28, but nothing comprehensive. We could not find a definitive list of all the existing projects and conservation areas. It seemed important to take stock.

We therefore began a project in the summer of 2010 to try to review the objectives, approaches, experiences and outcomes of existing LSC projects. The project started within Natural England and later brought in colleagues at Atkins, the University of Southampton and the University of Cambridge (who had been independently researching the same topic).

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Aims of the Natural England study In our study, we aim to: Build a good overview of large-scale conservation initiatives across Great Britain.

We want to know how many there are, which organisations are involved, the different aims being addressed, and whether different ‘types’ of project can be identified.

Explore the approaches being taken to setting up and managing LSC initiatives.

We are interested in what sorts of scientific and other information have been used, and in what ways, to inform site selection, scale and management. Given that LSC initiatives are potentially well-placed to address some aspects of adaptation to climate change, how important are adaptation considerations in influencing conservation goals and management decisions? We are also interested in gaining a better understanding of the social and institutional aspects of large scale conservation, which frequently involve partnerships and cooperation among multiple partners, landowners and volunteers. What kind of approach to setting up and managing LSC initiatives works best in different circumstances?

Determine whether areas with more large-scale conservation present have experienced better environmental outcomes. We know that some individual projects have been very successful at, for example, restoring areas of land and promoting some species populations29, but is this reflected in large-scale improvements across the country? Have existing projects achieved real gains for biodiversity and other aspects of the environment, or are these projects primarily a new way of describing ongoing conservation action rather than a truly novel departure? Or is it too early to tell?

To answer these questions, we have compiled a database of LSC projects or initiatives, and carried out web-based and in-depth face-to-face surveys of people managing initiatives. We have also undertaken a range of spatial analyses.

Our project is not yet finished, but below we offer some thoughts on our emerging results and conclusions. These are personal reflections and do not necessarily reflect the view of Natural England. Nor is there space in this article to cover everything we have found. Although our study covered England, Scotland and Wales, this article focuses to some extent on England. (The situation in Scotland is discussed in more detail in a separate article by Bill Adams in this edition of ECOS30.)

How do you define ‘large-scale conservation’?

We had a general working definition of what ‘large scale’ conservation might entail: something based on coherent and recognisable biogeographic, hydrological or geological areas; focusing beyond individual ‘sites’ to understand the dynamics and interactions between them, with a corresponding awareness of, and management for, ecological processes rather than just individual species or vegetation assemblages; ideally aspiring to management of the whole area of interest in a coherent and coordinated way; and likely to consider the interaction of people and nature.31 16

Sunset over Irthlingborough: Irthlingborough Lakes and Meadows is the Wildlife Trust’s newest nature reserve in Northamptonshire. Sitting at the heart of the Upper Nene Valley Gravel Pits SSSI, SPA and Ramsar site it has strategic importance for wildlife. The restored gravel workings provide a great resource for the local community.

With funding from HLF and SITA Trust as well as Natural England’s Higher Level scheme the site will be restored to its full potential with significant involvement from local people.

However, without necessarily moving away from such definitions, for the practical purposes of compiling and refining our list, we chose a simple definition; we included any conservation initiative with a focal area of at least 10 km2 (1000ha) that appeared to be a distinct project or initiative, had objectives that at least partly focused on conservation and involved management on the ground to address those objectives, so we excluded things like research projects and area plans that involved no direct management activity.

This has thrown up a wide variety of conservation initiatives, including programmes of landscape projects managed by RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts and other NGOs, individual estates (both private and owned by NGOs), large nature reserves, conservation projects within National Parks, target areas for government grant and advice schemes such as Catchment Sensitive Farming and Higher Level Stewardship, community forests, and river restoration projects, among many others.

These projects and initiatives fit at least most aspects of our definition of LSC, but they are hugely varied. They have a wide variety of approaches to land tenure and management, to project partnerships (number and type of partners), to community engagement, and to other aspects of their design and management, including the spatial area they cover and their conservation goals.

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The complexity of approaches to LSC in Great Britain means that it is difficult to produce a hard and fast definition of the features of a ‘typical’ LSC initiative. Rather, it is probably more useful to categorise and type the different initiatives, and to understand the reasons for the different approaches that have been taken and under which circumstances different approaches are most appropriate. One factor that clearly differentiates projects is the land tenure arrangement and approach to management. On that basis four distinct categories can be identified: 1. Conservation areas with a single landowner, such as private estates or owned nature reserves 2. Conservation areas or projects involving a small number of landowners that are all active partners in the conservation project (for example organisations with adjacent land holdings that they are managing together as a big reserve) 3. Target areas for government schemes such as Higher Level Stewardship or Catchment Sensitive Farming, where the area is designated by the funding provider, with many landowners involved 4. Projects led by a conservation partnership but seeking to influence management of land owned by many other landowners (often a large number of individual farmers.)

Even within these categories there are differences. We are currently exploring variation in characteristics such as spatial area, geographical location and conservation objectives, within and among projects in the four categories.

How many large scale conservation initiatives are there?

The identification and definition of some projects proved problematic. We found instances where one project might be given different names by two partner organisations, and certainly where different organisations had ‘projects’ that overlapped. This is nearly inevitable with vast regional project areas like some of the RSPB’s Futurescapes (the Fens or Thames Gateway for example), and by design where government schemes deliberately included partner organisation projects, or NGOs developed projects to nest inside target areas for government grant schemes.

In some cases it has been difficult to decide whether or not a particular project involves sufficient action on the ground to justify inclusion. Conversely, we may have missed things that involve active management coordinated at a large scale, but are not as visible as single ‘projects’. We certainly know we have missed some large privately-owned estates (particularly in Scotland) with significant engagement in conservation-focused land management; although there is a lot going on in such estates they are not necessarily prominently advertised as conservation projects, so are harder to spot.

Our list of LSC initiatives currently stands at around 800 (with the majority in England, though we believe the numbers for Scotland and Wales are an underestimate). Even 18

Castor Flood Meadows is a SSSI on the western edge of Peterborough. The backwater adjacent to it is a valuable fish refuge and provides habitat for aquatic plants and invertebrates. Prior to the Nature Improvement Area the Wildlife Trust assessed the value of backwaters and identified measures to improve them, and the NIA project will take this further. As the Nene is a navigable river for much of its length, features such as backwaters are valuable stepping stones for wildlife.

Photo: Wildlife Trust for Bedforshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire

with some uncertainty about the exact total, the sheer number of initiatives in three fairly small and densely populated countries was surprising.

The geographical spread We found that most of England’s 159 National Character Areas (divisions of the country recognised as having distinct landscape, biodiversity, geodiversity and cultural attributes), and the equivalent areas in Scotland and Wales, have at least one LSC initiative in them, and some have many more. When the approximate borders of all the initiatives are put on a single map, a large area is shaded in.

However, it’s important to note that in many cases the boundaries of an LSC initiative encompasses a wide area in which currently only a small percentage is being actively conserved or restored. So by simply looking at a map of all the existing projects, one could rightly conclude that there is a lot of activity going on by different organisations and partnerships, but there is a real risk of over-estimating the area of land that is being affected.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 Against this background of widespread activity, it is apparent that there are some areas in which there are numerous, in some cases overlapping, LSC initiatives.

Cumbria in northwest England and the Fens in the east are two particular hotspots.

New approaches to conservation, or more of the same?

Many of these projects do seem to represent the beginning of a move away from a focus simply on preserving the last remaining fragments of high-quality wildlife sites to a more proactive attempt at restoration and creation, in some cases at a very large and ambitious scale.32 This draws on, and develops further, real expertise that has been developed by many conservation organisations in recent decades in practical techniques for restoring particular habitat and ecosystem types, such as lowland reedbed and upland blanket bog.33,34 The ecological re-creation and restoration being done can have quite different goals in mind. In some cases, the aspiration is to (re)create specific vegetation types to support particular species populations; in others, such as at the National Trust’s Wicken Fen Vision project, the intention is to take a much more open-ended approach that focuses more on restoring ecological processes and less on reaching a specific endpoint.35 While we think that we are seeing a new approach to conservation in Britain, many projects are relatively new and it will take time for their efforts to have a large effect, as we discuss below. There is also a real need for continued scientific research and monitoring to inform future work.

Has the Lawton Report made a difference?

The recommendations of Making Space for Nature are strongly evident in the White Paper and Biodiversity 2020. The report’s strapline of ‘more, bigger, better, joined’ seems to have gained policy traction in England, and the recommendation for ‘Ecological Restoration Zones’ has resulted, less than two years later, in the 12 Nature Improvement Areas (albeit currently with funding only for a few years). The real test, however, will be whether this is carried through into a consistent long term framework to support future action.

Has Making Space for Nature influenced existing projects? We suspect its effects will be incremental. Overall, it has probably made project managers feel vindicated in what they are doing and make small adjustments rather than rewrite their management plans. This is partly because Making Space for Nature set out broad principles and general recommendations without going into specifics – as a result most existing projects can probably identify at least some aspects of Making Space for Nature’s recommendations that they are already addressing. It could also be argued that the influence has been in both directions, and that Lawton et al.’s conclusions were strongly influenced by the visions of some existing LSC programmes, particularly those managed by the large NGOs. In addition, we have found that principles of conservation science are only one aspect among several that influence and drive decision-making in LSC projects. Practical realities such as the availability of land and funding could in many cases have a greater influence, in the short term and at the scale of individual projects, on decisions about what conservation management should be done and in what spatial configurations.

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The future of large-scale conservation in Great Britain

Coordination: The wide variety of large-scale initiatives that exist in England, Scotland and Wales indicate, we believe, a high level of energy, commitment and ambition across the conservation sector. These initiatives have achieved a lot and have the potential to achieve a lot more. We need them to work if we are to reverse the decline in biodiversity and make our environment and landscapes a better place to live in. But there are a range of factors that the wider conservation community has to get right if that potential is to be fully realised. One challenge will be to coordinate better all the existing activity, and balance the need for area- and community-based projects that address local interests with some sort of overall vision and coordination at larger scales. This could be one of the real tests of success for the NIAs, many of which contain multiple well-established LSC initiatives led by different organisations.

Timescales: To be truly successful, such coordination will need to be long-term, as ecological networks can’t be built in a day, or even in a few years. Conservation of this sort is a long-term process, requiring long-term investment. Partnerships and community engagement take time to establish. Seeing a large-scale effect on the ground takes even longer. For example, the Great Fen project, in many ways one of the flagships for LSC in England, has been running for about 10 years. Although it has been extremely successful, it has only recently acquired enough land to have a sufficient influence over hydrology to be able to start major restoration of the new land bought by the project. Interviews with project managers suggest a careful balance can be required to sell a vision that inspires people while not creating unrealistic expectations about how much can be achieved in a short space of time.

Funding: Our interviews have also identified a clear need for sustainable funding structures, underpinned by policies that remain consistent over the long term. The funding sources that projects draw on are typically short-term in ecological terms.

This may have helped to drive innovation (e.g. to consider climate change, or to add community benefits to purely biodiversity-focused initiatives). On the other hand, short-term funding cycles can cause momentum to be lost, and divert time and resources from conservation on the ground and monitoring of its effectiveness.

They possibly also lead to unnecessary reinvention and prioritisation of novelty over consolidation on past successes.

There are some inspiring examples of conservation projects that have tapped into non-traditional funding sources. These include innovative partnerships between conservation organisations and water companies in river catchments in Devon, Lancashire, the Lake District, West Pennines, and the Peak District. The RSPB is also working with a gravel extraction company to create a new reserve on a former mining site in Cambridgeshire and with the Crossrail project to use excavated material produced by digging a new railway tunnel under London to create a new intertidal reserve on the Essex coast. Funding of this sort might provide one avenue to help secure a broader and more sustainable funding stream in future. But it doesn’t reduce the need for a long term and consistent policy framework and for the conservation community as a whole (both government and-non government) to consider how this promising approach to conservation can be sustained and funded in the long term.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 These are just some of a much wider set of conclusions that are emerging from our research. There was not space to cover them all here, but we will present our findings in detail in a report, A review of large-scale conservation in Great Britain, in 2013. We also hope to make available a database providing summary information about all the conservation initiatives we have identified.

Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge colleagues at Natural England, the University of Southampton, the University of Cambridge and Atkins who have worked with us on this project, especially Lindsey Sandbrook, Ian Hodge, Donna Clarke, Ilse Steyl, Andrew Thompson and Nikki van Dijk. We are grateful to Natural England, Defra, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Countryside Council for Wales for funding and support. We would also like to thank the large number of people in many different conservation organisations who provided information for our project.

References 1. Nature Improvement Areas: http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/biodiversity/funding/ nia/default.aspx 2. Lawton, J.H; Brotherton, P.N.M; Brown, V.K; Elphick, C; Fitter, A.H; Forshaw, J; Haddow,R.W; Hilborne, S; Leafe, R.N; Mace, G.M; Southgate, M.P; Sutherland, W.J; Tew, T.E; Varley, J & Wynne, G.R. (2010). Making space for nature: a review of England’s wildlife sites and ecological network. Report to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

3. Jongman RHG, Külvik M & Kristiansen I (2004) ‘European ecological networks and greenways’. Landscape and Urban Planning 68, 305-319 4. Fahrig L (2003) ‘Effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity’. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 34, 487-515 5. Lindenmayer D, Hobbs RJ, Montague-Drake R, Alexandra J, Bennett A, Burgman M, Cale P, Calhoun A, Cramer V, Cullen P, Driscoll D, Fahrig L, Fischer J, Franklin J, Haila Y, Hunter M, Gibbons P, Lake S, Luck G, MacGregor C, McIntyre S, MacNally R, Manning A, Miller J, Mooney H, Noss R, Possingham H, Saunders D, Schmiegelow F, Scott M, Simberloff D, Sisk T, Tabor G, Walker B, Wiens J, Woinarski J & Zavaleta E (2008) ‘A checklist for ecological management of landscapes for conservation’. Ecology Letters 11, 78-91 6. Boyd C, Brooks TM, Butchart SHM, Edgar GJ, da Fonseca GAB, Hawkins F, Hoffman M, Sechrest W, Stuart SM & van Dijk PP (2008) ‘Spatial scale and the conservation of threatened species’. Conservation Letters 1, 37-43 7. Kirby KJ (2009) ‘Policy in or for the wilderness?’ British Wildlife, 20:59-62 8. Vera FWM (2009) ‘Large-scale nature development – the Ooostvardersplassen’. British Wildlife 20, 28-36 9. Warboys GL, Francis WL, Lockwood M (eds) (2010) Connectivity conservation management: a global guide. Earthscan 10. Daily GC (ed.) (1997) Nature’s services: societal dependence on natural ecosystems, Island Press, Washington, D.C. 11. MA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment). 2005. Ecosystems and human well-being: the assessment series.

Island Press, Washington, DC 12. Council of Europe (2000) European Landscape Convention. CETS No. 176. Strasbourg.

13. Selman P (2012) Sustainable landscape planning – the reconnection agenda. Routledge 14. Morecroft MD, Crick HQP, Duffield SD & Macgregor NA (2012) ‘Resilience to climate change: translating principles into practice’. Journal of Applied Ecology 49, 547–55 15. Vos CC, Berry P, Opdam P, Baveco H, Nijhof B, O’Hanley J, Bell C, Kuipers H (2008) ‘Adapting landscapes to climate change: examples of climate-proof ecosystem networks and priority adaptation zones’. Journal of Applied Ecology 45, 1722–1731 16. Opdam P & Wascher D (2004). ‘Climate change meets habitat fragmentation: linking landscape and biogeographical scale levels in research and conservation’. Biological Conservation 117: 285-297.

17 Hopkins J J, Allison HM, Walmsley CA, Gaywood M & Thurgate G (2007) Conserving biodiversity in a changing climate: guidance on building capacity to adapt. Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. London.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 18. Heller NE & Zavaleta ES (2009) ‘Biodiversity management in the face of climate change: a review of 22 years of recommendations’. Biological Conservation 142, 14-32 19. Doswald N & Osti M (2011) Ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation and mitigation – good practice examples and lessons learned in Europe. Bundesamt für Naturschutz, Bonn.

20. HM Government (2011) The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature. The Stationery Office, London 21. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2012) Biodiversity 2020: a strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, London 22. Living Wales consultation document: http://wales.gov.uk/docs/desh/consultation/120210nefgreenpaperen.pdf 23. Central Scotland Green Network: http://centralscotlandgreennetwork.org/ 24. Scottish Forestry Strategy: http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-6AGGZW 25. Wildlife Trusts Living Landscapes: http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/living-landscape/living-landscape-schemes 26. RSPB Futurescapes: http://www.rspb.org.uk/futurescapes/ 27. Integrated Biodiversity Delivery Areas: http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/ biodiversity/protectandmanage/integratedbiodiversitydeliveryareas/default.aspx 28. Swales V (2009) Realising agricultural landscape-scale conservation. RSPB, Sandy 29. Ellis S, Bulman C R and Bourn N A D (2012) Landscape-scale conservation for butterflies and moths – lessons from the UK. Butterfly Conservation, Wareham, Dorset 30. Adams WM (2012) ‘Private and networked: large conservation areas in Scotland’. ECOS 33(3-4) 31. See also the definitions summarised in: Land Use Consultants & Worrell R (2012) Landscape-scale ecological restoration in Scotland. Land Use Consultants, Glasgow. Report to Forestry Commission Scotland and the Patsy Wood Trust 32. Manning AD, Lindenmayer DB & Fischer F (2006) ‘Stretch goals and backcasting: approaches for overcoming barriers to large-scale ecological restoration’. Restoration Ecology 14, 487–492 33. Sills N & Hirons G (2011) ‘From carrots to cranes: the creation of RSPB Lakenheath Fen, Suffolk’. British Wildlife 22, 381 34. Cris, R., Buckmaster, S., Bain, C. & Bonn, A. (Eds.) (2011) UK Peatland restoration — demonstrating success. IUCN UK National Committee Peatland Programme, Edinburgh.

35. Hughes FMR, Stroh PA, Adams WM, Kirby KJ, Mountford JO, Warrington S (2011) ‘Monitoring and evaluating large-scale, ‘open-ended’ habitat creation projects: a journey rather than a destination’. Journal for Nature Conservation 19, 245–253

Nicholas Macgregor is an ecologist at Natural England who works on conservation strategies, with a focus on ecological networks and adaptation to climate change. (nicholas.macgregor@ naturalengland.org.uk) Bill Adams teaches about conservation and development in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. (bill.adams@geog.cam.ac.uk) Chris Hill is director of the GeoData Institute at the University of Southampton, a multidisciplinary environment and spatial data management research group, with a focus on information management, analysis and exchange. (cth@geodata.soton.ac.uk) Felix Eigenbrod lectures on spatial ecology and ecosystem services in the Centre for Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton. (f.eigenbrod@soton.ac.uk) Patrick Osborne teaches environmental sciences at the University of Southampton and works at the interface of ecology, conservation, geography and statistics. (P.E.Osborne@soton.ac.uk)

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Private and networked: Large Conservation Areas in Scotland Scotland contains large conservation areas of many kinds. These range from estates managed as vast nature reserves or with conservation in mind, through collaborations between neighbouring properties to projects to create ecological networks or promote conservation over large tracts of country.

William M. Adams The Lawton report’s sound bite conclusion that English conservation needed ‘more, bigger, better and joined’ areas of wildlife habitat1 might suggest that Scotland is likely to be ahead of the game on large scale conservation. Certainly the idea of large protected areas is long established in Scotland. Britain’s first National Nature Reserve was a Scottish mountain, Beinn Eighe, and the roll-call of reserves of different kinds created since the 1950s continued the theme: Rum, Ben More Coigach, Ben Lawers Mar Lodge, Forsinard, Abernethy - the list is long and speaks of conservation writ large, on a mountainous scale. Much of Scotland is upland, a marked contrast and a different context to the lowland landscapes that dominate much of England.

Scotland has also adopted a series of what Richard Hobbs describes as ‘progressive forward-looking strategies’2 not only in specific fields like woodland restoration (in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and the Scottish Forestry Strategy)3, but arguably even in the much more generic Land Use Strategy, which specifically talks about the ecosystem approach and adapting to climate change.4 Thinking about conservation in Scotland while living in the flatlands of eastern England, farmed and urbanised within an inch of their life, drives home the many ways in which conservation in Scotland is distinctive.5 The study of large scale conservation (LSC) projects across Great Britain, reported elsewhere in this issue6, recognised this same point. How and why is Scotland different?

Space to be different Since the Nature Conservancy Council was broken up in 1992, conservation policies in Scotland, Wales and England have kept going more or less in the same direction, but as a convoy not a single ship. The variations, as summarised immediately below, reflect both the ideas of Scottish conservationists, and the very different environmental, political and economic context.7 24

The RSPB’s Loch Garten - home of the Osprey Centre and restored pinewoods.

Photo: Bill Adams

Ideas of Nation: Thinking about large scale conservation in Scotland is influenced by ideas of Nation, and the evolving public response to devolved government. There is a certain openness to ideas about new ways of operating, an interest in the future shape of land and landscape, and a sense of justice, that England mostly lacks. Rights of access to land in Scotland are widely understood very differently, and have a different legal basis: the Scottish Outdoor Access Code allows the right of responsible access to much of Scotland’s land and water.8 The Land Reform (Scotland) Act, 2003 creates the opportunity for local communities to buy land, opening up the possibility of land reform, on the model previously used on Eigg.9 The 2003 Act has not led to a transformation of land ownership, but the expectation is real enough, as is the potential in law.10, 11 Ideas of Nature: Thinking about conservation is informed by ideas of nature, themselves bound up with the history of the country.12, 13 Ideas of large landscapes for nature tend to be seen in terms the history of the highlands, the clearances, the history of landholding and the rise of the ‘sporting’ estate. Ideas such as wildness or wilderness that seem to strike such a chord in England, are received very differently in Scotland. To some people, remote wild lands speak of eviction as much or more than any romantic sense of the wonders of wild nature. Shooting estates are part of the structure of contemporary rural economy and society in large areas of Scotland, but the ideas of nature they reflect are deeply contested. Large scale conservation may in some ways be enabled by patterns of landholding, but it is also burdened by romanticised notions of sport and nature, and the ideological weight of the clearances.14 25

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The nature of rural society and economy: A big difference between England and Scotland is the concentration of landholding in Scotland15: There are big estates in England, but in Scotland they are ubiquitous. Half of the land area of Scotland is held by fewer than 600 owners, and sporting estates comprise over 40% of all private land in Scotland.16 They are economically and culturally powerful, framing debate about future landscapes, and shaping landscapes themselves through their business decisions about forestry, wind turbine infrastructure, deer and game bird shooting, and other enterprises.

scale’, like that of ‘large’, difficult to tie down. It also identified restoration as part of multifunctional forest estates such as Glenfeshie, Glen Affric, Rothiemurchus or Glen Tanar. In other locations, native trees were being planted at a great rate on open land (e.g. Glen Garry): future forests in the making.

There is a visceral opposition to conservation organisations by residents (on the part of both rich and poor) in many parts of rural Scotland.17 This applies particularly to Scottish Natural Heritage (which has in many quarters failed, despite heroic efforts, to live down completely the opprobrium attached to its predecessor, the Nature Conservancy Council). It also applies to the RSPB, and sometimes to the National Trust. All of these organisations are sometimes portrayed as elitist out-oftouch urban organisations from Edinburgh.18 One interviewee told me that their main problem when meeting farmers was to convince them they were not from SNH or the RSPB: “the first thing they say is “who are you, I’ve never heard of you, who’s been on my land, I didn’t know about this”, luckily though, ‘cause I wasn’t from SNH and RSPB [I could avoid] all the tirade of abuse you’d probably get about conservation.”

• Conservation Estates

Doing it differently: Scottish thinking about conservation is not joined at the hip with that south of the border: it has increasingly forged its own path in thinking about and delivering conservation. Thus Scotland acquired National Parks in 2002, half a century after they were created in the English uplands and Snowdonia. The Lawton report was a review of England’s wildlife sites, and the White paper that to some extent picked up Lawton’s challenge was for England, not Scotland. While some non-governmental organisations (and their conservation schemes) reach across the border (the RSPB’s ‘Futurescapes’, the Wildlife Trusts’s ‘Living Landscapes’ or Butterfly Conservation’s ‘Landscape Target Areas’), there are different NGO players in Scotland such as the National Trust for Scotland and the John Muir Trust, as well as quite separate government organisations.

Large Scale Conservation in Scotland Given this background, it is not surprising that thinking in Scotland has been concerned with ‘large scale’ conservation for some time. One root of this is the interest in woodland forest restoration, particularly the (re-)establishment of Scots pine.19 The Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and the Scottish Forestry Strategy both discuss the need for landscape-scale restoration, and native woodland restoration has been an important (sometimes all-important) part of the work of many conservation organisations (such as Trees for Life, Scottish Natural Heritage, National Trust for Scotland, Woodland Trust, RSPB), and also the Forestry Commission. A workshop in 2011 on ‘landscape scale ecological restoration’ initiated by Forestry Commission Scotland, led to the establishment of a partnership project on Landscape Scale Ecological Restoration (LSER).20

Approaches to Large Scale Conservation As in the Great Britain-wide study of LSCs (see the article by Nick Macgregor and others in this issue of ECOS), the LSER project found the definition of ‘landscape26

Here I distinguish four approaches to large scale conservation in Scotland. These are similar to the categories used in the GB study, but not identical:

• Collaborative Landscapes • Networks of Reconstruction • Conservation Zones

Conservation Estates

The most distinctive approach can best be described as Conservation Estates. This category comprises single estates of large extent where conservation is the primary or at least a systematically important factor driving land management. Such estates exist in England and Wales (the Knepp estate in Sussex for example, and the Wicken Vision in Cambridgeshire), but they are a minority of large conservation projects: in Scotland they are numerous, and indeed predominate.

The Great Britain study of LSCs reported in this issue, identified a significant number of Conservation Estates in Scotland, but probably missed others. The reason for this is that in many estates the importance of conservation is not easy to establish.

Several sub-categories exist. First, properties owned by recognised conservation organisations, which might be termed Heritage Estate Conservation Landscapes, are easy to identify. Government agencies with such estates include Scottish Natural Heritage (for example the isle of Rum or Creag Meagaidh), and Forestry Commission Scotland (e.g. Loch Katrine). Conservation NGOs owning such estates include the RSPB (e.g. Inversnaid, Abernethy or Forsinard Flows), the National Trust for Scotland (e.g. Mar Lodge, St Kilda, Canna or Ben Lawers), the Woodland Trust (Glen Finglas) or the John Muir Trust (e.g. Sandwood Bay). There are differences in the ways these areas are managed for conservation, for example in how issues of grazing, woodland regeneration, natural beauty and visitor facilities are approached. Thus the LSER report distinguished projects that focus on restoring the ‘functions’ of forests across landscape units such as catchments, and optimizing the supply of forest benefits (or, inevitably ‘services’), and a growing number that focus on areas of peat or other open habitats. However, these and many other sites (proportionately many more than in England) would qualify for most definitions of conservation planning and action over areas of large extent.

Second, it is also relatively easy to identify private estates where the owner has some kind of public commitment to conservation. Such estates might include Glen Tanar (Deeside) or Rothiemurchus or Glenfeshie (Speyside), Corrour (Inverness27

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shire) or Alladale (Sutherland). These might be called Private Estate Conservation Landscapes. This category is less firm at the edges. Some may have a single owner, others may be owned by a trust (e.g. a family trust), so that the distinction between public and private purposes is less easily established. In most of theses estates, conservation is just part of wider management aims. The value for conservation depends on the combination of management aims: uniform management for sheep, deer, forestry or grouse tends to produce standardised landscapes of very limited conservation interest.

However, here the issue of what is and is not a large conservation area in the Scottish context becomes harder to follow. Conceivably most sporting estates could claim some kind of conservation objective as part of their activities. The logic of this claim takes two forms. First, shooting estates that manage their game for sustainable harvests could claim that they are practicing conservation of a sort.

Second, most estates benefit from rural grant payments for forestry, agriculture and public access, and in as much as these support or are consistent with conservationfriendly land management, they could also be interpreted as enabling those estates to be seen as large conservation areas. Against this, single-minded management for grouse or deer (and the desire to maximise bags and maintain high deer numbers) tends to create uniform habitats of limited conservation value. Moreover various aspects of management (grazing, burning, predator and mountain hare control) are controversial. Sometimes only SSSI and SAC designation, and linked Deer Control Orders under Section 7 of the Deer (Scotland) Act 1996, persuade estates to reduce grazing pressure on important sites. Most sporting estates are owned and managed as a lifestyle choice, and management tends to be conservative and show reluctance to innovate.21 Some might qualify as Private Estate Conservation Landscapes. To decide which, would require meeting the owners, agents and managers, and walking the ground.

Collaborative Landscapes A number of large conservation areas in Scotland (including some Estates) exist as collaborations between several adjacent owners. These Collaborative Landscapes may involve a mix of private, non-governmental organisation and government agency landowners. Thus the Great Trossachs Forest22 is a collaboration between the Forestry Commission (managing land leased by Scottish Water), the Woodland Trust (Glen Finglas) and the RSPB (Inversnaid), under the banner of the Scottish Forest Alliance. Three estates together stretch along the north shore of Loch Katrine in the Trossachs to Loch Lomond. These organisations work together (and with the Loch Lomond National Park) on a programme of native woodland regeneration.

Some Collaborative Landscapes are more complicated. One example is the Coigach and Assynt Living Landscape between Ullapool and Lochinver. This vast area includes land owned by the Scottish Wildlife Trust (Ben More Coigach), the Assynt Foundation (Drumrunie and Glencanisp), the Culag Community Woodland Trust (Culag Wood), John Muir Trust (Quinag Estate) and the private owner of the Summer Isles. The aims of this collaboration include management to promote woodland restoration and to connect isolated areas of habitat, plus the creation of local employment and training opportunities.

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Landscape-scale or Large Scale Conservation in Scotland?

Photo: Bill Adams

Networks of Reconstruction The Coigach and Assynt Living Landscape comprises a single continuous area, but its work within this area resembles that of the third kind of large conservation area, Networks of Reconstruction. These tend to involve work with large or very large numbers of landowners, with the intention of creating or enhancing connectivity between habitats. Such networks are often the result of a funded project, which may itself have a number of partners. Thus the Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership, funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, is led by the South Lanarkshire Council, but has nine other partners (Scottish National Heritage, Scottish Wildlife Trust, RSPB, North Lanarkshire Council, Clydesdale Community Initiatives, Rural Development Trust, New Lanark Trust, Central Scotland Forest Trust and the Forestry Commission).23 The partnership’s aims are to develop projects that conserve both the natural and the built heritage of the Clyde and Avon valleys (steep oak woodlands, orchards, bridges and paths for example), and to strengthen connections between people and landscape, providing volunteering and learning opportunities in ‘heritage skills’ and land management practices.

Networks of Reconstruction reflect very different dimension of Scottish landscape history from that of the large Highland estates. The focus here is on the restoration of land transformed by past industrial activity to create a step change in environmental quality, and is therefore focused in the lowland and central belt. Concern for habitats and species is therefore accompanied by a concern for people, sustainable 29

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 development and quality of life, health and wellbeing, as well as for built heritage, and community engagement with the landscape.

The key initiative here is the Central Scotland Green Network.24 This covers a huge area2 of lowland Scotland (10,000km2), from Fife and the Lothians to Ayrshire and Inverclyde. The lead partners are Scottish Natural Heritage and the Forestry Commission, although a wide range of national, regional and local partners are involved, the ‘usual suspects’ as well as others such as the NHS.25 The vision is holistic: ‘By 2050, Central Scotland has been transformed into a place where the environment adds value to the economy and where people’s lives are enriched by its quality.’ In wildlife conservation terms, the key element of this project is the creation of an integrated habitat network across the whole area2 in which wildlife corridors link important sites and habitats. A great diversity of projects are being developed, rather in the spirit of letting a thousand flowers bloom.26 The idea of ecological networks is becoming established in Scottish planning.

The Scottish Government’s National Planning Framework identifies as an action ‘Develop a National Ecological Network potentially encompassing large strategic habitat restoration projects’.27 The lead partner in this is Scottish Natural Heritage, but almost every agency has a role. Plans include mapping of ‘green network’ opportunities in the inner Moray Firth, and work by the RSPB to restore wetlands within its Inner Forth Futurescapes project area and centred on the mudflats of its Skinflats reserve.

Conservation Zones Scotland also has a number of initiatives that involve attempts to promote conservation over very large areas working with a multiplicity of landowners. These could be described as Conservation Zones. The category has much in common with the previous one, but lacks a specific ecological network focus. Such projects tend to be led by one organisation, although often numerous partners are drawn together as participants of some kind. Sometimes these zones are centred on an existing reserve – in other cases these initiatives involve attempts to encourage or support landowners to manage land in particular ways. Many Conservation Zones are led by non governmental organisations, for example the RSPB Futurescapes28 such as Machair (the length of Na h-Eileanan Siar), Caledonian Forest (Speyside) or the Inner Forth. The Butterfly Conservation ‘Landscape Target Areas’ (described by Nigel Bourn and colleagues elsewhere in this issue) and the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Cumbernauld Living Landscape also fits this category. So too might the native forest restoration work of Trees for Life in Glen Affric.29 Some Conservation Zones are led by government organisations, for example the Sunart Oakwoods Initiative, led by Highland Regional Council and the Forestry Commission.30 A different form of Conservation Zone in Scotland involves the spatial targeting of grants under the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP). SRDP schemes include the Habitats Scheme, the Crofting Counties Agricultural Grant Scheme, Forestry Commission Challenge Funds and the Less Favoured Area Support Scheme.

It may seem far-fetched to see these as large scale conservation initiatives, but 30

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 they do support conservation-friendly land management within specific zones, with particular conservation objectives for each target area. Indeed, one could see National Scenic Areas and National Parks in the same light, as attempts by government to deliver conservation outcome by incentivising and regulating landowners.

Making Large Scale Conservation Work So, Scotland, like England and Wales, has a rich (and rather confusing) diversity of large conservation initiatives. Some are long established (such as Conservation Estates), some are more recent (Collaborative Landscapes and Networks of Reconstruction). Some aspects are similar to those in England, others (like the number and variety of estates) somewhat different. None can be described as a response to the Lawton report (which has less currency than in England and Wales): if anything, the report’s authors took inspiration from practical action on the ground in charting a new direction for UK conservation.

At the same time, there are many examples in Scotland for those enthusiastic about the Lawton report to study for insights into how to make large scale conservation happen. Talking to project managers about the things they are trying to do, and the ways they work with partner organisations, and partner landowners, several things become clear.

First, no two projects are the same. In this article, I have outlined some ‘types’ of initiatives, but there are overlaps between categories, different ways to cut the cake, and numerous projects not mentioned. Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, all project work in their own way. Individuals make a difference, particularly in providing vision, leadership and energy within lead organisations and partners. Yet initiatives develop organically, building on predecessors and often on long-standing relationships among partners and in the local area.

Second, projects therefore take time to develop. Genuine partnerships cannot be built quickly, for they demand trust, which is built through personal relationships.

Conservation success therefore favours a familiar face, people who are known in and members of a local community. As one interviewee said “they’re not too keen on a, you know, conservation body coming in to give them advice”. Word of mouth and reputation count for a great deal as project areas increase. Continuity of employment is an issue, for it allows conservation staff to become known and trusted. Short-term project funding is the enemy of continuity, and a key skill for a large conservation project manager is the capacity to negotiate transitions between big lumps of funding while maintaining continuity on the ground.

Third, funding is near the top of every project manager’s list of challenges.

Many of these large conservation initiatives are kept going by public funds, whether in the form of grants to enable conservation organisations to employ staff or increase their capacity to reach out to landowners, or in the availability of funds for landowners themselves. The future of the Scottish Rural Development Programme is critical to the success of large scale conservation in Scotland. Without external financial support, many large conservation projects will struggle to endure.

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Ultimately, the future of large scale conservation in Scotland will, like every other approach, depend on the kind of nature Scottish people want. Without doubt, large scale conservation can play an important role in creating lived-in and diverse landscapes, resilient against the future shocks of climatic and economic change.

At the same time, important questions remain. What should we expect large scale conservation to achieve which conservation in smaller areas cannot? What support is needed to enable conservation to compete with other forms of land use, and how do we measure and target the benefits of this support? Who should own large conservation landscapes and who will pay for their conservation? Such questions remain wide open.

24. http://www.centralscotlandgreennetwork.org/ 25. Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Forest Research, Central Scotland Green Network partners, NHS, Local Authority partnerships, Planning Authorities, Strategic Development Planning Authorities, Scottish Water, British Waterways, RSPB, Central Scotland Forest Trust, Green Network Partnerships and the Environmental Quality Directorate, Rural Directorate, Rural Payments and Inspections Directorate, Climate Change and Planning and Architecture sections of the Scottish Government.

26. http://www.centralscotlandgreennetwork.org/Projects/ 27. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Built-Environment/planning/National-Planning-Policy/npf/ EcologicalNetwork 28. http://www.rspb.org.uk/futurescapes/ 29. http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/tfl.visi.html 30. http://www.sunartoakwoods.org.uk/soitech/soitech.htm

References

Bill Adams teaches about conservation and development in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge (bill.adams@geog.cam.ac.uk). He blogs at: http://thinkinglikeahuman. wordpress.com/.

1. Lawton J H, Brotherton P N M, Brown V K, Elphick C, Fitter A H, Forshaw J Haddow R,W, Hilborne S, Leafe R, N, Mace G M, Southgate M P, Sutherland W J, Tew T E, Varley J and Wynne G R (2010) Making Space for Nature: a review of England’s wildlife sites and ecological network. Report to DEFRA 2. Hobbs, R. (2009) ‘Woodland restoration in Scotland: Ecology, history, culture, economics, politics and change’, Journal of Environmental Management 90: 2857-65 (p. 2862).

3. The Scottish Government (2012) A Consultation on the 2020 Challenge for Scotland’s Biodiversity, The Scottish Government, Edinburgh (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/07/5241/0) 4. The Scottish Government (2011) Getting The Best From Our Land: a guide to Scotland’s first land use strategy, The Scottish Government, Edinburgh (www.scotland.gov.uk) 5. This article draws on a project funded by Scottish Natural Heritage, but expresses my own personal opinions. I am grateful to Lindsey Sandbrook, Ian Hodge, Phil Baarda, Chris Hill and Nick Macgregor, and all those who agreed to be interviewed.

6. Macgregor, N.A., Adams, W.M., Hill, C. Eigenbrod, F. and Osborne P.E. (2013) ‘Reflections on studying large conservation initiatives in Great Britain’, ECOS 33(3-4) 7. For an excellent account see Warren, C.R. (2009) Managing Scotland’s Environment, Edinburgh University Press 8. http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ 9. McIntosh, A., (2001) Soil and Soul: People versus corporate power, Aurum Press, London.

10. Henderson, Alexandra (2012) ‘Scottish land reform: a lost opportunity for community ownership?’, ECOS 33(1): 21-26.

11. Warren, C.R. (2009) Managing Scotland’s Environment, Edinburgh University Press 12. Toogood, M. (1995) Representing ecology and highland tradition, Area 27: 102-109 13. Fraser MacDonald (1998) ‘Viewing Highland Scotland: ideology, representation and the ‘natural heritage’, Area 30: 237-244.

14. Lorimer, Hayden (2000) ‘Guns, Game and the Grandee: The Cultural Politics of Deerstalking in the Scottish Highlands.’ Ecumene 2000 7:403-31.

15. Wightman, A. (1996) Who owns Scotland? Canongate, Edinburgh; See also: http://www.whoownsscotland.org.uk/index.php 16. Warren, C.R. (2009) Managing Scotland’s Environment, Edinburgh University Press 17. MacMillan, D.C., Leitch, K., Wightman, A., and Higgins, P. (2010) ‘The Management and Role of Highland Sporting Estates in the Early Twenty-First Century: The Owner’s View of a Unique but Contested Form of Land Use’, Scottish Geographical Journal 126: 24–40 18. For example Ian Mitchell (1999) Isles of the West: A Hebridean Voyage, Birlinn, Edinburgh.

19. Hobbs, R. (2009) ‘Woodland restoration in Scotland: Ecology, history, culture, economics, politics and change’, Journal of Environmental Management 90: 2857-65 20. Land Use Consultants (2012) Landscape-scale ecological restoration in Scotland, Land Use Consultants, Glasgow for Forestry Commission Scotland and the Patsy Wood Trust.

21. MacMillan, D.C., Leitch, K., Wightman, A., and Higgins, P. (2010) ‘The Management and Role of Highland Sporting Estates in the Early Twenty-First Century: The Owner’s View of a Unique but Contested Form of Land Use’, Scottish Geographical Journal 126: 24–40 22. http://www.scottishforestalliance.org.uk/our-sites/the-great-trossachs-forest 23. http://www.clydeandavonvalley.com/

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Experienced project officers working closely with landowners and farmers is an important partnership for success, especially to achieve conservation at a wide scale across farms and estates.

Photo: Helen Bibby, Butterfly Conservation

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Landscape-scale conservation for butterflies and moths: lessons from the UK In recent years Butterfly Conservation has shifted the majority of its conservation work from a focus on single sites to networks of sites across a landscape. This article describes the main lessons from this experience.

NIGEL BOURN, SAM ELLIS & CAROLINE BULMAN Butterfly Conservation has published a new report (see www.butterfly-conservation. org/landscapereport1) on the organisation’s experience in delivering conservation at a landscape scale for nearly a decade. The report contains 12 case studies authored by members of staff and details the lessons learned. Here we summarise the report’s main messages.

Butterfly conservation and landscape-scale conservation Butterflies are still in serious decline and remain one of the UK’s most threatened wildlife groups. The results from Butterfly Conservation’s most recent analysis show that between 1995-99 and 2005-09, 72% of species declined in abundance (38 of 53 species assessed) at monitored sites and the distributions of 54% of species also declined during the same period (32 of 59 species assessed).2 Overall three-quarters of butterfly species declined in either distribution or population during this 10 year period.

During the last century extensive studies have been made on the biology and ecology of butterflies (and to a lesser extent moth species), making Lepidoptera one of the most widely understood insect groups. With increasing destruction, modification and fragmentation of our natural and semi-natural habitats research has frequently focused on the way that populations persist within these dynamic landscapes. The science of metapopulation biology has subsequently developed understanding of how individuals move between habitat patches within a landscape; as well as the effect of increasing isolation, changes in patch size and quality and the incidence of extinction and colonization (Hanski 1998).3 Butterfly populations became the main study system for this influential research and Butterfly Conservation responded by shifting the majority of its conservation work from a focus on single sites, to targeting networks of sites across a landscape.

The metapopulation concept can be thought of as a ‘population of populations’, occupying islands of habitat within a ‘sea’ of unsuitable habitat. This clearly describes the countryside we see in Britain today, where areas of remnant habitat such as chalk grassland, woodlands, wet meadows etc, are surrounded by an agriculturally 34

High Brown Fritillary, the UK’s fastest declining butterfly.

Photo: Neil Hulme

improved and developed landscape. The butterflies which inhabit these remnants tend to be the more specialist species that are rapidly declining. They are more prone to local extinction due to low population size, natural fluctuations and deteriorating habitat suitability. If extinction occurs there is the potential for re-colonisation by individuals from a nearby population. However, as further habitat destruction and change takes place, these sites become increasingly isolated, re-colonisation becomes less likely and the metapopulation will be at greater risk of extinction.

Butterfly Conservation defines landscape-scale conservation as “the coordinated conservation and management of habitats for a range of species across a large natural area, often made up of a network of sites”.4 Metapopulation theory has re-orientated conservation priorities to the landscape-scale by emphasising the importance of area and isolation (Hanski, 1999).5 However, research suggests that because rare species are restricted to very specific habitats or niches, it is just as important to maintain high quality habitat within individual sites, as to maintain the site network.6 This principle is central to Butterfly Conservation’s approach to landscape-scale conservation delivery. Moreover, in the context of climate change, a landscape-scale approach appears to be the best option for creating the habitat heterogeneity likely to be needed for species with changing ecological requirements as well as providing the opportunities for them to move through the landscape.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 We believe the publication of this report is timely as recent government initiatives such as Making Space for Nature: A Review of England’s Wildlife Sites and Ecological Network by Sir John Lawton7, have called for widespread use of landscape-scale conservation. The principles are embedded in the UK Government’s recent white paper, The natural choice: securing the value of nature8 and the recent updated biodiversity strategy from Defra, Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services.9 Fig. 1 Location of Butterfly Conservation’s 73 landscape target areas in the UK. Landscapes with current or recently completed projects are highlighted dark green and those with currently limited engagement or in a project development phase light green. The locations of the twelve landscapescale case studies are circled.

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Specific sites and their connectivity Landscape-scale conservation for Lepidoptera in practice has two main objectives.

First, to maximize habitat quality within individual sites by targeted management.

This is no different to managing a single site, but at the landscape-scale more consideration is given to the spatial context of the individual sites. For example, sites at the centre of a network may well be given higher priority for management than would a small, isolated site on the network’s periphery.

The second major objective is to improve connectivity both within and between sites, improving the mobility of butterflies and other organisms, thus increasing the rate of colonization. Managing to improve connectivity involves the removal of barriers to dispersal, such as felling strategically located plantations or planting flower-rich margins. It can also include management that improves habitat availability within the landscape, such as ride widening.

Since the turn of the millennium, Butterfly Conservation has been involved to a greater or lesser extent with 73 landscape-scale projects across the UK (Figure 1). These projects have targeted key areas for some of the UK’s most threatened species, nearly all have received some external funding, directly or indirectly, to enable delivery and all involve partnerships with government agencies, other conservation organisations and landowners.

Broadly we utilise two approaches to landscape-scale conservation: firstly to provide advice to landowners and encourage or assist with the uptake of agri-environment or woodland grant schemes; and secondly to secure funding to directly undertake habitat management under the guidance of Butterfly Conservation project officers.

Most projects have elements of both approaches.

For all our landscape-scale projects we try where resources allow, to monitor the impact on not just the target species, but on other wildlife and on habitat condition.

For Lepidoptera we adopt standard monitoring methods appropriate to the target species, such as species occupancy (presence/absence within a habitat patch or site), butterfly transects (full species weekly transects or single species transect counts), adult timed counts, larval or egg counts. Further details of these methods are available on the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme website (http://www.ukbms.org/).

The context of the case studies

© Crown Copyright and database rights [2012]. Ordnance Survey 100022021.

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The main focus of the case studies in the report are UK Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species butterflies and their habitats, Small Blue Cupido minimus, Duke of Burgundy Hamearis lucina, Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary Boloria selene, Pearlbordered Fritillary Boloria euphrosyne, High Brown Fritillary Argynnis adippe, Marsh Fritillary Euphydryas aurinia and Heath Fritillary Melitaea athalia. A group of Breckland moths are the focus of one case study, comprising the Grey Carpet Lithostege griseata, Basil Thyme Case-bearer Coleophora tricolor, Lunar Yellow Underwing Noctua orbona, Forester Adscita statices, Tawny Wave Scopula rubiginata and Marbled Clover Heliothis viriplaca. With the exception of Tawny Wave and Marbled Clover, these moths are also UK Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species. In 37

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England, all the BAP Priority Species are also listed under section 41 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act (2006). In Wales, the High Brown Fritillary is a section 42 species of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act (2006) and in Scotland, the Marsh Fritillary is a section 2.4 species of the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act (2004).

2. Tailored local management: Several of our case studies demonstrate that the extinction of species on small, isolated sites within a landscape need not be inevitable if they are properly managed and that the principles of landscape-scale conservation can be applied successfully at a relatively small spatial scale and are relevant even at the site level.

For each case study we describe the landscape, the target species and a summary of its autecology and habitat requirements. The project delivery mechanisms and funding sources are outlined, together with the land management outcomes achieved to date. Species responses to management are described; either changes in site or habitat patch occupancy, or population trends. Responses of non-target Lepidoptera are also reported where data are available.

Local extinctions and colonisations occur naturally within metapopulations, but the case studies all show that apparently catastrophic regional declines can be reversed. The first step in this process is to secure the surviving small, isolated populations. Once this is achieved the landscape can be assessed and the metapopulation can be more fully restored by improving the quality and connectivity of unoccupied habitat patches.

Community involvement in each project (such as public events, training and recruitment of volunteers) is a crucial component of every landscape project and we describe the contributions made to project delivery by volunteers. Finally we summarise the key successes and lessons learnt from each project and where relevant, plans to sustain the project outcomes in the future.

The twelve case studies described in the publication highlight a number of lessons which can inform current and future landscape-scale projects targeted at conserving threatened Lepidoptera in fragmented habitats. Many of these lessons apply equally to landscape-scale projects targeted at other species groups, as well as to more habitat focused schemes. Here we summarise the main lessons set out in the report:

Approaches to land management at the landscape-scale

1. Careful targeting is essential to maximise the success of a project across a landscape: Uniform land management is rarely applied across entire landscapes, nor is it a desirable approach, as a range of management options provides the specialist niches that threatened butterflies and moths require (e.g. variation in turf height within grasslands, or coppicing and ride management within otherwise mature woodland). Targeting of management is therefore required to provide this range of specialist habitats. In practice networks of sites that are in close enough proximity are managed to enable natural colonization of unoccupied patches.

Improvements in connectivity are achieved along linear features (e.g. woodland rides) or by removing barriers to dispersal (e.g. plantation forestry) but also where there is some prospect of restoring breeding habitat along the feature as well.

For species with the most demanding ecological requirements, careful targeting of management is required even within sites. In the Dartmoor Marsh Fritillary case study it has proven difficult to achieve appropriate grazing levels simultaneously on all sites within the valley system. However, as long as there is sufficient well-grazed habitat across the system as a whole, the metapopulation can be maintained in spite of some habitat being over or undergrazed. Thus by working on a number of sites with different owners and circumstances it is possible to ‘fail’ on some sites or patches without compromising the overall success of a project to restore a functioning metapopulation. In other words, dynamic changes in habitat quality can occur whilst still maintaining the target species in the landscape.

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Within the woods for example targeting of management to improve habitat quality and connectivity is an approach that is as relevant to individual woods as it is to woodland complexes.

Managing landscape-scale conservation projects

3. Skilled project officers are essential: Project officers are an essential component of effective landscape-scale conservation. They ensure that management is carefully targeted and that improved habitat quality and connectivity is delivered across the landscape. They achieve this by building up essential long-term relationships with landowners, contractors, volunteers, partner organisations and members of the local community. They can provide the ecological expertise necessary to improve conditions for habitat specialist species which may not be available to other land management advisors with a wider remit. By providing training for volunteers and local partners, and improving the knowledge base within the community, they greatly increase the likelihood of sustaining outcomes beyond the life of the original project. Unfortunately, our experience is that funding project officers to facilitate the uptake of schemes is currently far more difficult than funding direct management.

Research and monitoring landscape-scale conservation

4. The development and implementation of landscape-scale projects must be underpinned by sound ecological research and the establishment of suitable monitoring systems is essential to assess the effectiveness of the project: Basic autecological knowledge, which identifies the species’ habitat requirements, is invaluable in identifying management prescriptions. Similarly an understanding of a species’ mobility enables connectivity improvements to be factored into management of unoccupied sites isolated from existing populations.

Monitoring should include collecting baseline data before management begins as well as through the life of the project. Unfortunately, the short timescales of most funded projects make this difficult to do adequately. In the case of butterflies, the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme is incredibly valuable in providing regional and national trends to compare with landscape trends.10 5. Landscape-scale projects focused on a single butterfly can benefit a suite of other species which have broadly similar habitat requirements: 39

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For example management of limestone grassland and brownfields targeted at the Small Blue in Warwickshire clearly benefited three other threatened Lepidoptera, as well as other invertebrates. In this case the Small Blue proved to be an extremely effective ‘umbrella’ or ‘flagship’ species for the fauna of early successional habitats.

On Dorset Marsh Fritillary sites there is evidence that management for the butterfly has benefitted other invertebrates using Devil’s-bit Scabious, such as the Narrowbordered Bee Hawk-moth and the Jewel Beetle.

Funding landscape-scale conservation

6. Well designed agri-environment and woodland grant schemes are a key delivery mechanism for landscape-scale conservation: Agri-environment and woodland grant schemes are an essential tool to enable successful landscape-scale delivery. Schemes are not in themselves landscape-scale conservation initiatives. It is the specific elements of targeting, improving habitat quality and reducing isolation that adds the spatial element to deliver conservation across a landscape. Where habitat restoration is undertaken through a funded project then these schemes provide an opportunity to maintain the project gains, and therefore potentially an effective exit strategy.

7. The maintenance of existing high quality habitat is more cost effective in the long run than restoration management: Where habitat quality had deteriorated further because much more restoration management was required the per capita costs were much greater.

Working in partnership at the landscape-scale

8. Landscape-scale conservation involves partnership working: Butterfly Conservation staff developed and led all the case studies in the report, but all the case studies involved partnerships with a range of organisations and individuals.

This is partly because targeted management for Lepidoptera often takes place on land owned by others, and because the size and complexity of such projects is beyond the means of most conservation organisations to deliver alone. Even in the relatively small landscapes of some case studies, partnership working was essential and these projects would not have progressed as far without the input of others.

For advisory projects, a close working relationship with the government agencies administering agri-environment or woodland grant schemes is essential. Where landscape-scale projects are led by other organisations, Butterfly Conservation can provide much added value with specialist input ensuring management is targeted appropriately for Lepidoptera. These partnerships have often taken years to develop and evolve and are much easier to develop through a shared vision and action on the ground. They then have the potential to be more inclusive as the partnership grows to involve other interested bodies. In our experience broad partnerships for partnerships sake rarely have the vision to develop action on the ground.

The future of landscape-scale conservation Our experience over the last decade has taught us that large, and indeed, not so large, well-funded landscape-scale conservation projects, led by experienced project officers, are the most successful in conserving our threatened species. Increases 40

An essential tool for several of the case studies in the Butterfly Conservation landscape-scale work has been the availability of a well designed, targeted agri-environment or woodland grant scheme that rewards farmers and landowners for good management practice. For landscapes with significant areas of high nature value farmland, this is critical.

Photo: Rob Wolton

in populations of highly threatened species help to indicate that landscape-scale initiatives to restore habitats have been successful. For most rare and declining butterflies and moths, Butterfly Conservation will continue to focus resources on landscapes where there is a good chance of restoring networks of occupied and unoccupied habitat as well as improving connectivity between breeding patches.

This strategy gives the best chance of populations surviving in the long term and will build up the most resilience in the ecosystems in which they live. The work will inevitably support the conservation of a wide range of other wildlife living in the same landscapes. It will also continue to raise awareness amongst local communities and act as models for wider landscape-scale initiatives promoted in recent government biodiversity strategies.

References 1. Ellis S Bourn N A D and Bulman C R (2012) Landscape-scale conservation for butterflies and moths: lessons from the UK. Butterfly Conservation, Wareham, Dorset.

2. Fox R, Brereton T M, Roy D B, Asher J, Warren M S (2011) The State of the UK’s Butterflies 2011. Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wareham, Dorset

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 3. Hanski I (1998) Metapopulation dynamics. Nature 396: 41-49 4. Bourn N A D, Bulman C R (2005) Landscape scale conservation, theory into practice. In: Kuhn E, Feldmann R, Thomas J A, Settele J (eds) Studies on the Ecology and Conservation of Butterflies in Europe. Vol 1: General Concepts and Case Studies, pp111-112, Pensoft, Sofia, Bulgaria.

5. Hanski I (1999) Metapopulation ecology. Oxford University Press 6. Thomas J A, Bourn N A D, Clarke R T, Stewart K E, Simcox D J, Pearman G S, Curtis R, Goodger B (2001) The quality and isolation of habitat patches both determine where butterflies persist in fragmented landscapes. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London B. 268: 1791-1796 7. Lawton J H, Brotherton P N M, Brown V K, Elphick C, Fitter A H, Forshaw J, Haddow R W, Hilborne S, Leafe R N, Mace G M, Southgate M P, Sutherland W J, Tew T E, Varley J, Wynne G R (2010) Making Space for Nature: a review of England’s wildlife sites and ecological network. Report to Defra 8. The natural choice: securing the value of nature (TSO, 2011) 9. DEFRA (2011) Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services. HMSO. London.

10. Botham M S, Brereton T M, Middlebrook I, Randle Z, Roy D B (2011) United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme report for 2010. CEH Wallingford

Nigel Bourn is Director of Conservation (nboun@butterfly-conservation.org), Sam Ellis Head of Regions and Caroline Bulman Senior Species Ecologist at Butterfly Conservation.

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Landscape-scale conservation A progress report from the Weald The Wildlife Trusts have been talking about ‘bigger, better and more joined-up’ conservation for many years, primed by their Living Landscape programme launched in 2006. The Trusts recognise the importance of moving outside nature reserve boundaries and looking at connectivity in the wider countryside. Policies are now catching up with this thinking and the Lawton Review paved the way for the larger-scale aspirations of the 2011 Natural Environment White Paper. This article reflects on work by the West Weald Landscape Partnership. The activity began in 2004, building on research into wildlife connectivity of this landscape from 1998.

NEIL BENNETT

HENRI BOCKLEBANK Why work at a landscape scale?

Moving away from a site-scale focus has been a fundamental step forward for conservationists in the UK. Even if a specific site or nature reserve is managed perfectly for a specific species the future of that species is by no means secured.

Local extinctions are a real threat to an isolated population in a landscape across which it cannot thrive, colonise and disperse. The connectivity of the landscape is a vital factor at the heart of long-term concerns of many species and habitats.

Species needs and habitat processes are intrinsically linked to the wider landscape.

How ‘big’ a landscape-scale project should be depends very much on the issues that are being addressed. Project boundaries tend to reflect landscape character or catchment or sub-catchment limits.

Why the West Weald?

The West Weald is a large, relatively discreet tract of landscape (23,820 hectares) containing diverse and interconnected habitat patches moulded over centuries by both nature and people. This clay region is where ‘Silvia Anderida’ the primeval Wealden forest was found. This was the wildwood that once covered this part of Southern England. From the late medieval period to the 18th century the area hosted intensive iron production which meant that unlike other areas of the country where woodland was being cleared, the woodland was actively coppiced to fuel the local furnaces. Small remnants of Silvia Anderida are still present. The Mens Nature Reserve is designated as one of the most extensive examples of Wealden woodland in West Sussex, being important for its large scale, structural diversity and the extremely rich fungal and lichen floras. The West Weald remains a highly wooded area with nearly double the extent of ancient woodland of West Sussex county (itself boasting some of the highest Ancient Woodland coverage in the UK). 19.26% in the West Weald supports Ancient woodland coverage compared to 10.53% in West Sussex.

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Landscape connectivity The Sussex Wildlife Trust manages two Nature Reserves in the West Weald Landscape, Ebernoe Common and the Mens and was keen to start looking outside these well studied and well loved sites. Ebernoe Common ,with a thick understory of holly and numerous mature and damaged trees provides the warm and sheltered environment favoured by Barbastelle bats, a rare species in the UK. The natural history of this species was little understood until an innovative research project by Frank Greenaway began in 1998. Frank started radio tracking the Barbastelle bats that were breeding in Ebernoe Common, identifying nursery roosts and flight-lines. The Barbastelles were located and captured using bat detectors, mistnets, harp traps and information acquired on previous years. Captured Barbastelles were ringed, weighed, their reproductive status assessed, forearm length measured and the details logged to a database. A number of breeding females from each reserve were radio-tagged and subsequently tracked to identify exact roost locations, flight-lines and destination foraging areas. For the first time, scientific study demonstrated that individual bats were commuting nightly from their roosts to their feeding grounds.

In 2008 the neighbouring population in the Mens SAC were also studied, along with a repeat study of the activity in Ebernoe Common. The outcome of this fascinating work was to map the flight-lines and forage areas of the two populations. The result of Frank’s work was an inspirational example of how the landscape is used by a species. The specific flight-lines chosen by bats to commute to their wet grassland feeding sites demonstrated how thinking ‘bigger, better and more joined-up’, was the obvious way forward for nature conservation. The bats needed far more than a well managed NNR could offer them. The landscape around them was critical, specifically in terms of connectivity and good quality habitat.

Bat flight-lines in the West Weald.

Photo: Frank Greenaway

for nature’, encouraging natural processes and expanding the ecosystem services provided. The objectives were fourfold:

The concept of flagship species is often criticised in conservation circles as dumbing down the subtlety of wildlife related messages, but the story told by Frank’s research was so exciting that it gave the West Weald Landscape a conservation agenda that everyone could appreciate, from partner organisations, to local landowners, to funding organisations. The image below of a bat’s eye view of the West Weald Landscape, created by Frank, illustrates the concept of landscape scale thinking in such a way that it is one of the most useful tools that we have to illustrate the science behind large scale nature conservation to a ‘lay’ audience.

1. Conservation, enhancement and expansion of core areas of ecological interest.

An emerging vision

The project was to deliver all of the above through landowner advice and recommendations, guidance on sources of funding and input to grant applications, funded capital works for habitat creation and enhancement, regular workshops and events, information dissemination and surveys for key wildlife species and habitats.

With interest in landscape-scale conservation gathering momentum and the evidence of the bat flight-lines inspiring audiences, the West Weald Partnership needed to be clear about what it really wanted to do. Our vision was expressed in the following quote, but where should it lead to?

“A visionary partnership project that promotes the integrated management of a viable and enhanced landscape in the West Weald for people and nature” The Partnership aimed to enhance the project area through an integrated landscapescale approach to improve the condition of the natural environment, creating ‘space 44

2. Better connected habitats and species populations across the whole landscape.

3. Improved and more integrated delivery of conservation mechanisms.

4. Enhanced public enjoyment, understanding and access to and inspiration from the landscape.

Formalising the partnership The partnership started as an informal relationship between Natural England (then English Nature) and the Sussex Wildlife Trust, but as the vision for the partnership grew other partners came on board. It was apparent that if we really wanted to achieve anything in the West Weald we needed significant funding. A review of funding available at the time highlighted the Tubney Charitable Trust as the most 45

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 NEIL BENNETT

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 suitable donor, which meant sharpening our objectives and targets. In addition each one of the partners had to commit time or resources to provide the relevant match-funding that the bid required. It was time for the West Weald Landscape Partnership to get serious and really put its money where its mouth was. A suite of targets was agreed, based around numbers of holdings in government funding schemes such as ELS, HLS and EWGS; numbers of habitat enhancements made, and a vast raft of baseline surveying. These targets were essential to establish if we were in fact making a difference to the landscape, and how successful we had been in spreading our messages to key audiences. Setting visions and targets can take a very long time and you start questioning if you are ever going to get out of meetings and start delivering something on the ground!

The Tubney Charitable Trust had a keen emphasis on survey and monitoring and this meant that the project would have ambitious targets in an area that we would otherwise have been tempted to put less focus. However this focus has turned out to be a great strength of the project and one that has made the project a flagship for Living Landscape work in the region. The Tubney Funding afforded us a full time project officer and a part time landowner advisor, who together had the task of co-ordinating the efforts of the partnership whilst working towards meeting its ambitious targets.

Has the Lawton agenda made a difference?

WWLP was already a very strong partnership, embedded in principles of landscape scale ecology, so the publication of the Lawton review was more of an affirmation of our purpose than a call for a change in direction. The Lawton Review has however inspired more Living Landscape work elsewhere in Sussex and for Sussex Wildlife Trust to fast track its Living Landscape messages given that they had found their time.

The Lawton review of course influenced the later Natural Environment White Paper, which has had more subtle repercussions on the project. WWLP has strong links to the Sussex Local Nature Partnership and the ‘South Downs Way Ahead’ neighbouring Nature Improvement Area. These deepening relationships help enforce the role of landscape partnerships and the development of best practice. On many occasions the lessons learnt in the West Weald have helped inform and influence the agenda of other developing large-scale projects in the area.

Do landscape-scale projects stand up to scrutiny in practice October 2010 marked the mid-term of our Tubney Trust funding, and we needed to consider the actual influence of the West Weald Project. Were we improving the landscape for biodiversity and for people, or were we just a talking-shop?

To measure the effectiveness of the WWLP we went back to our original targets, which we’d been been obliged to make measurable and meaningful. It had been difficult at the outset to envisage what the partnership could achieve over five years, but retrospectively we can see that this was a fundamental building block to the foundations of the project, as well as the best tool for gauging the efficacy of our work. Using a traffic light system we could see that we were on track or exceeding 46

(green) the vast majority of our targets. The few that were not being achieved (red and amber) were largely due to influences beyond our control. However, like the bat research that could be illustrated so well with a single image, a map of landowner engagement and a few supporting statistics convey the main messages so far...

Since the receipt of funding from the Tubney Charitable Trust our work has had tangible outcomes on more than 40 land holdings, covering 4,823 ha area (20% of the total WWLP area and 50% of those contacted). We have also led practical habitat creation schemes on more than 30 holdings. The partnership felt that this really demonstrated the validity of our work and pointed us towards our legacy for the area once funding ceases in 2014.

Acknowledging the Partnership The strength of the project has undoubtedly been in the robustness of the partnership. Each partner is involved to a different degree in the area, but partners come together several times a year to create a synergy of their inputs, from landowner visits with statutory agencies like the Forestry Commission, to jointly run landowner workshops. These have been a mainstay of the project, typically bringing together the agendas of several partners simultaneously. The most recent event was on tree health, but wetland habitats, woodland grant schemes, horse pastures, and 47

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 hedge management have all been covered. The workshops demonstrate how the partnership brings together the agendas of different bodies, adding value to each.

The experience gained and the lessons provided Landscape partnerships can have a positive impact on the ground, but it needs wise application of targets and objectives and true partnership working.

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 Linking with others: Are you embedding your work into the aspirations of others?

For example, are you contributing to the Green Infrastructure strategies of the relevant local authorities Neighbourhood Plans? Make your project relevant on as many levels as you can.

Wise positioning in policy frameworks: For example how are you linking with the Water Framework Directive?

Through WWLP so far we have learnt interesting lessons that can be applied elsewhere: • Seed-funding habitat enhancements is an important tool for engagement; • Flagship species have a role in attracting publicity and funding; • Landowners are generally agreeable to paying a contribution towards habitat enhancements;

Get your results recorded: All new habitat management and restoration should be registered through the Biodiversity Action reporting System (BARS) so that your project can be counted with others towards biodiversity 2020 targets. Find a way locally to make this a straightforward process for all concerned.

Measurable outcomes: You need to be able to judge if you are succeeding in your overall vision. Mutually agreed targets are the mainstay of establishing if you are really making your landscape bigger, better and more joined up.

• Our advice has been welcomed and well received; • We expected to be influencing a largely agricultural community but found ourselves working with a more diverse range including traditional farmers, large estates, ‘hobby’ farmers, studs and stables, and community projects; • Carrying out project survey work is a useful way of meeting new landowners; • Landowner engagement is a balance between reactive and proactive work.

From my own experience, here are some key ingredients for a landscape-scale initiative.

Inspirational: Landscape scale conservation is exciting. Make sure that the passion that initiated the project stays focussed.

Partnership working: There are not many occasions where going it alone is relevant. Have you got the right people round the table? Welcome the input and opinion of others, even when it is in conflict with your own.

A sensible timeframe: If you only have short term funding you must be realistic about what you can achieve. Aim for a timeframe that can really deliver your goals.

A legacy: When the project is over and the project officers have gone home, how will your landscape be better for wildlife? And how long for? Is the right skill, information and knowledge base available for others to pick up your vision? Should you have been including others in your work earlier on with a view to them taking over one day?

The West Weald Landscape Partnership is based at the Sussex Wildlife Trust and is supported by The Tubney Charitable Trust, as well as by the BBC Wildlife Fund, Chichester District Council and West Sussex County Council. More details are at www.westweald.org.uk Henri Brocklebank is Head of Landscape Strategy at Sussex Wildlife Trust. henribrocklebank@sussexwt.org.uk

Community engagement: If your project has an aspect of community engagement then garnering opinion at the start of your project is a really useful gauge for measuring the impact of your work at a later date. Simple online surveys like ‘Survey Monkey’ are a great way of doing this.

Evidence base: An evidence base is crucial to demonstrate your aspirations and to re-enforce your vision. Time spent collating your evidence base is time well spent, from community surveys to habitat potential models.

Dialogue with landowners: Include landowners or landowner representatives at an early stage. Also consider who else is talking to landowners in the area? Should you be joining forces?

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Landscape-scale conservation in the South West Notes from the frontline Nature Improvement Areas are the current ‘big thing’ in landscape-scale conservation approaches. But how do they differ from all the other schemes? And what are the challenges ahead?

LISA SCHNEIDAU South West England is full of landscape-scale conservation schemes. From Living Landscapes to Futurescapes, Severn Vale to Wild Penwith, and Neroche to Upstream Thinking, a huge number of organisations and individuals are busy with site restoration, landowner advice, data collection and fundraising for their ‘next phase’.

Sometimes, we even find the time to tell others what we are trying to do, and to stop and consider just how far we think we have got in achieving our grand visions.

Nature Improvement Areas – fitting in My own experience of landscape-scale conservation over the last seven years has been primarily within the South West Wildlife Trusts, leading landscape-scale teams, developing new schemes, fundraising and partnerships. In 2012 I took on the role of project manager for the Northern Devon Nature Improvement Area (NIA). We are one of the twelve lucky schemes to have been awarded statutory funding and support as a result of the Government’s response to the Lawton Review.

The current Nature Improvement Areas are, of course, only a handful of the many landscape-scale schemes underway across the UK. However, NIAs have some important distinctions. First, the network of NIAs has national support from Defra and statutory environmental organisations. Second, in developing a ‘step change’ for conservation we are testing innovative new approaches (for example, ecosystem services), and investigating how they could work on the ground. Third, as integrated projects across a number of sectors and land uses, we are helping to develop and test the nature of landscape-scale partnerships themselves.

The Northern Devon NIA and its partnership has been built on at least 20 years’ experience of working with landowners across the river Torridge catchment, and it covers an area of some 72,000 hectares. For our first three years of the NIA, we have very ambitious targets. In addition to restoring 1660 hectares of habitat and creating a further 400 hectares of wetland and woodland, we want to explore with the community what ecosystem services really mean in practice; research the resilience of the landscape to climate change and other factors; link up the products of woodland management with the local woodfuel market; harness the 50

Schoolchildren on the Tarka Trail in north Devon with a storyteller, getting inspiration for writing their own stories about the river Torridge.

Photo: Lisa Schneidau

efforts of local parishes in surveys and conservation land management; make a significant dent in Water Framework Directive targets; develop an arts programme to explore and express the wonders of Torridge wildlife; and rejuvenate the remnant populations of the beleaguered freshwater pearl mussel. Amongst other things…!

Three years is, of course, only a blip of time in the conservation and political calendar, and the Northern Devon NIA partnership intends to carry on way past 2015. However, from this end of the project timeline, looking forward to the achievements we aim to be celebrating in two and a half years’ time, I have found myself reflecting on a few of the challenges ahead. Here are some thoughts, offered in the spirit of debate and development of a workable landscape-scale ethic.

Rigour and evidence As soon as nature conservation ventures outside nature reserves and SSSIs, it becomes a noisy and imprecise science to measure. Do we have the data we need to set a baseline, to target our work, to monitor our progress? How do we capture those ‘softer’ impacts of our work, such as awareness, buy-in, innovation, impact on markets? How do we genuinely involve a wider partnership in this effort, and make the whole exercise 51

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 sustainable in the longer term? Who should be able to access the data? How do we make sure our information is consistent with national systems and reporting?

More rigour in project planning, monitoring and reporting for landscape-scale work can only be welcome; but it is complicated, and it takes time and precious resources.

One of the huge benefits of statutory backing for NIAs is that we have support in developing comprehensive monitoring frameworks for our projects, connected to a national framework. However, I am sure I am not alone in feeling rather daunted by the monitoring effort monster that is developing for our NIA. Whatever we set up must be ongoing to be of real value, and so we must try to keep it relatively simple and use existing monitoring where possible. The monitoring framework has to have buy-in across the landscape-scale partnership and with the local records centre and the Local Nature Partnership: this means defining meaningful indicators that different partners can record easily. So achieving a useful and successfully implemented monitoring framework, covering all major aspects of the NIA, will be a significant achievement in itself.

Adventures in connectivity What is connectivity? A scientific, reductionist approach to connectivity naturally requires focus on the nature of connection, and substantiating the basis of connections. This includes studying the requirements of one species in detail, or defining ‘indices of risk’ or ‘indices of connection’ in an attempt to represent simple natural webs in the modelling of a landscape.

However, surely the very nature of connectivity is that it isn’t reductionist: it is working towards holism. In developing a ‘connectivity map’, one of the holy grails of landscape-scale conservation, we may find ourselves asking for a number of different ecological outcomes of the same piece of land. Any connectivity map which is reflecting an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to land management will find itself full of contradictions. At one recent landowner workshop in north Devon we found ourselves pondering: should this bit of land be grassland or woodland? Who decides which is best? The reality is inevitably pragmatic, and of course the actual decision lies with the landowner, influenced by advice and available funding.

I do believe that connectivity mapping is an important exercise to go through, to underpin our landscape-scale efforts. However, maps will need to have a number of layers of potential connection, according to habitats, species, opportunity, and perhaps even communities. The resulting maps must have support from partnerships to ensure they are used by everyone. To be of practical use, maps need to be simple enough to help in the targeting of land management advice; and they must tally with the monitoring framework so that we can record progress against them.

I have another nagging and rather uncomfortable question about connectivity mapping. By defining our aspirations on the map, are we moving towards trying to map what the conservation sector would consider adequate wildlife-rich land in a particular working landscape, given that the sector has never really been prepared to suggest ‘how much is enough’?

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The tools to deliver I saw a cartoon recently of an elephant on a therapist’s couch, saying “Sometimes, even when I stand in the middle of the room they pretend not to notice me.”

For land-based environmental management in England right now, the ‘elephant’ is the impending reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. The vast majority of our habitats are agricultural or woodland, and the lion’s share of our habitat restoration and re-creation work wouldn’t happen without this funding. We cannot deliver ‘bigger, better, more joined-up’ without the right tools for the job.

We’ve heard all this before. What schemes will be available to us from the beginning of 2014, and will there be enough funding to meet the ambitions set out in Lawton? The signs are not good on funding levels, and the concept of public funding for public goods (which I believe to be absolutely sound) is rarely heard these days. However, the transposition of EU regulations into UK devolved policy may give us some real opportunities to help landscape-scale efforts in the way that grant schemes are designed. Whatever happens, it is clear that the future of landscape-scale conservation in the UK for the next six years and beyond will stand or fall on this one policy mechanism.

Perhaps, in the longer term, it’s time for us to revisit the well-worn land management arguments of regulation (stick) versus incentive (carrot). Both are clearly still essential; but a third way to influence and encourage sustainable land management may be developing through ecosystem services, and through the market (particularly, in northern Devon, for woodland and wetland). A fourth way could be to revisit the land management systems themselves, and seek more genuinely sustainable alternatives which can produce both wildlife and other products, or compromisesystems which may achieve a modest level of biodiversity within more intensive land management. Landscape-scale schemes such as Nature Improvement Areas and Living Landscapes can surely provide trial areas for these concepts in a tangible way at the local level.

Partnerships, community, and real people A very dear friend of mine, and possibly the keenest birder I have ever met, once joked that he saw only two things in the countryside: birds, and bird food. Everyone has their own ‘filter’ on how they see the landscape. Foresters are trained to look for timber and pests and access, botanists and entomologists look for rarities in the sward, water scientists see which way the land is being ploughed along the slope, and landscape ecologists consider the age of the field boundaries. When a number of objectives are brought together in a landscape-scale scheme (say, wet grassland, woodland and water quality) then all these asks of the landscape are brought together into one seamless partnership. Or are they? Do we all talk the same language?

We are lucky in Northern Devon to have a vibrant and active partnership, with a tremendous amount of goodwill and enthusiasm for our project, bar none. I hope that each of the organisations involved will feel that they have a significant input, and that the project will achieve significant outcomes that apply to their own areas 53

NEIL BENNETT

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 cultural partner, to run alongside the ecological and community programmes. Deer management plans, social enterprise schemes, studentships and internships, more ambitions with schools… we have no shortage of development potential.

Other changes are happening too. What impact will ash dieback have on the Northern Devon NIA and the landscape, and what other native species should we be planting instead? What is the real potential for realising new habitat through biodiversity offsets in the next two and a half years? How is our scheme part of the Devon Local Nature Partnership’s work?

The nature of any partnership is that it is never static; it seems to me that landscapescale work is not simply about managing outcomes. It is also about letting go, and letting aspects of the landscape develop within an overall partnership framework.

Our project steering group will have the tricky task of keeping us to our original targets and ambitions, developing the NIA over time, and steering us through a time of considerable social, political and landscape change.

One thing is sure: we are ‘learning through doing’ in the Northern Devon NIA. The NIA partnership has embarked on three years-plus of creative, scientific, complex, rigorous, ambitious, challenging and participative nature conservation which we all hope will make a lasting difference to the landscape and the communities of the Torridge catchment.

of interest. The characters and personalities and energy that make up a landscapescale scheme will inevitably help shape a landscape. The most successful landscape schemes I have witnessed have all involved individuals with attitude: open-minded enough to listen and consider other perspectives, and brave enough to sometimes push the boundaries of their own areas of interest.

I firmly believe that a landscape-scale approach is not just about science and wildlife, it’s about people and communities – and yet those environmental targets must not lose centre stage. Our own partnerships and organisations are part of that local community, although it is often easy to talk about community as ‘other’. While we may start out with programmes to ‘engage the community’, the work that schemes such as Neroche have pioneered on social enterprise and community ownership are an inspiration for the longer term.

I know we share these aspirations for our own local landscape with a great many people in the conservation sector across the UK who are working on similar projects.

To share our learning of these landscape-scale journeys can only be helpful. Perhaps BANC has a valuable role to play here in the next few years?

Lisa Schneidau is the project manager of the Northern Devon Nature Improvement Area. The views expressed here are her own. lschneidau@devonwildlifetrust.org Culm grassland (here with meadow thistle) is one of the priority habitats in Northern Devon.

Photo: Mike Symes

Losing control?

I am fast becoming a ‘target wonk’ (as opposed to a ‘policy wonk’). Such is the lot of a project manager with an ambitious project to run, and the whole Northern Devon NIA team will throw our energy into achieving the annual wetland, woodland, water and community targets set out in the NIA project framework.

However, even five months in, the Northern Devon NIA is starting to grow and develop beyond its original work plan. A major arts scheme is emerging with Beaford Arts, our 54

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Wyre’s future forest – new ventures in a wooded landscape The Wyre Forest National Nature Reserve sits alongside tracts of extensive commercial forestry. This article looks at local ventures in the area’s environmental management from the authors’ experience based at a community land trust at Uncllys Farm within Wyre. The article also looks at how conservation and forestry experience are combining to create a new management plan for the whole Wyre Forest area.

JOHN & LINDA ILES Forestry and the environment converge The 6,000 acre Wyre Forest straddles the Worcestershire-Shropshire boundary and has benefited from the Heritage Lottery Funded Grow with Wyre Landscape Partnership Scheme (LPS) over the last three years. Natural England and the Forestry Commission, both major partners in the LPS and major landowners and managers in Wyre, have seen the benefits of working together and have now backed an initiative to explore more joint working and the development of a management plan for the whole forest. This plan will draw in private woodland owners and the surrounding assarted landscape of small scale meadows and traditional orchards.

The process will start in earnest from January 2013 with a new project officer to coordinate activities.

Paul Jackson from Coppice Creations describing how he uses oak coppice from the Wyre Forest National Nature Reserve to make rustic furniture by steaming off the bark - see www.coppicecreations.co.uk

Other areas being explored at Wyre over the coming years will include: • Adding value to oak saw logs through the use of a mobile saw mill, slabbing and seasoning oak;

The economic challenge for Wyre is to identify and develop new ways of using the predominantly oak coppice woodland that will make the forest sustainable.

Currently a large proportion of the Forestry Commission managed woodland is conifer and provides a regular and reasonably predictable income for the forest estate. A reduction in the size of the conifer plantation and its restoration to an oak coppice with standards system poses a big economic question about future viability.

• Establishing a Wyre Wood School to train young people in wood working skills and encourage the development of wood based crafts;

Woodland products and skills – taking new directions

• Careful and more precise management of the oak stands;

One avenue that the partners at Wyre are exploring in 2013 is the extent to which coppice product, such as 7-8 year old oak thicket material, can be converted readily into a form of charcoal known as biochar which is then used as a soil improver.

Work at Cornell University in the US is suggesting that biochar will remain as solid carbon (i.e. does not oxidise and form carbon dioxide) for over 1,000 years. If this is the case and proper auditing and tracking processes are in place, then it may well be possible for Wyre to act as part of a carbon sequestration process with oak coppice removing carbon from the atmosphere.

• Closer integration with local timber framers;

• More firewood self-supply and community forestry schemes for woodfuel; • Enhanced delivery of social forestry and Forest School schemes; • A clearer understanding of the contribution Wyre makes to the delivery of ecosystem services; • More of a market presence for local producers and their products and services.

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One thing is for sure, that the Wyre Forest is entering a new phase whereby its fantastic landscape and biodiversity heritage has been recognised and enhanced with the current challenge being its future economic viability.

The heart of Wyre - tales from Uncllys Farm Within the Wyre landscape, a 13 acre smallholding at Uncllys in north Worcestershire is part of the Guild of St George’s holding near Bewdley. The farm is a series of clearings surrounded by mature oak forest. This woodland is one of the most valuable in England and much of it is a National Nature Reserve.

In our stewardship of the holding and the development of the Wyre Community Land Trust, we are seeking to live out John Ruskin’s principles and ideas that form the basis of the charity he founded - the Guild of St George. We have seen many people come to the farm to help plant fruit trees, put up new fences, help move the cattle around the 66 different fields we are responsible for and work to re-establish the oak coppice. They, like many others, have a basic desire to reconnect with the environment in practical ways. Some are adults with learning difficulties or mental health issues and the experience of Uncllys is forming part of their development and healing.

Powering up the rejuvenated farm There appears to have been a dwelling at Uncllys since the 1600s, although the present farmhouse is the result of significant extension in the 1920s when, as followers of John Ruskin, the Quayle family moved down from Liverpool. During this period the cherry orchard was planted and a system to harvest rain water from the roof constructed – the water supply at that time being a spring 150m down a steep hill.

The farm is not connected to the electricity grid and for many years a Lister diesel generator has given reliable service but at a price – both financial (around £40 per week) and environmental through burning fossil fuels. We wanted to install a renewable system. Wind has the advantage that it is strongest in the winter when our demand is at its highest but the house is surrounded by a high forest canopy which absorbs the wind’s power. We therefore installed a 3KW photovoltaic array on the roof of one of the farm buildings which uses the energy from the sun to charge up a large 48v battery. Then an inverter converts the current from the battery into useful 240v ac to power normal domestic appliances.

The system has been working since November 2004 but during the winter months when the sun is weak and low in the sky only a small amount is generated and the generator has to be used. Each year from March though as the light becomes stronger and the days lengthen, we hardly have to use the generator.

At present generating solar electricity is expensive. Our installation cost over £20,000 but we were helped by a 50% government available before the introduction of the Feed in Tariff. The alternatives were either a very expensive cable to the mains or burning a lot of diesel. We heat the house and hot water from burning wood in a multifuel cooker 58

Part of the Uncllys Farm complex at Wyre Forest. This building is used as a meeting space and comes highly recommended from BANC’s 2012 field visit. As well as using solar thermal and solar PV, the construction is from local materials.

linked to an underfloor heating system. We have also installed a wood burning stove in the lounge. We are able to collect and store oak from the forest around us. The fuel is not ‘free’ as it takes a lot of sweat, a chainsaw and effort to collect, split and stack but it is satisfying to know that this is a sustainable source of heat.

Management of meadow and orchard habitats The farm is on very poor quality soils and is all put to pasture. Our Higher Level Stewardship Agreement with Natural England sets out how the land is to be managed – mostly through grazing and hay cutting – and in return we get a payment. The pasture is semi-improved grassland and is responding well to the grazing from our herd of Dexter rare-breed cattle and our Jacob sheep. The grassland is home to a great variety of wild flowers which are nurtured by the careful grazing regime.

The 6 acre cherry orchard was planted in the 1920s and in the 1930s would have produced a valuable crop. Only 31 of the original 100 or so trees are still alive and many are dying. The orchard is part of the Wyre Site of Special Scientific Interest mainly because of the many different invertebrates that live on the dead cherry wood, including the rare Noble Chafer beetle (Gnorimus nobilis). Ironically the richness of this habitat depends on there being more dead wood in the future, so we are pruning the old trees to help them to live longer and have planted 27 new cherry trees and over 100 new apple trees using traditional local varieties.

Sustainable products from a sustainable landscape Encouraged by Natural England we have extended our work to bring fresh life and vitality to Uncllys and now use the herd to graze the wildflower meadows 59

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Reintroducing charismatic species to Scotland: the rhetoric and politics of a 21st century agenda Little attention is generally paid to how experts involved in species reintroductions argue, and how this relates to political decision-making. On the basis of text analysis of expert documents and in-depths interviews with key players in the Scottish reintroduction scene, this article provides insight into these matters.

Left: The orchards in Bewdley, Wyre c.1948 Right: Recent Orchard restoration work here at Uncllys Farm, Wyre Forest

of the National Nature Reserve and have established the Wyre Community Land Trust based at the farm. The Trust works as a social enterprise bringing together land, resources and people. The Trust employs a Farm & Conservation Manager and manages over 350 acres of grazing land and organises a regular team of volunteers.

We also buy in pigs as weaners to assist in the regeneration of the oak woodlands around us for Natural England by rooting out the bramble and bracken which smother the oak seedlings.

To develop a sustainable business we need to find ways of adding value to our basic products. The beef is of high quality and commands a premium. We sell directly locally through our network of volunteers and interested local people.

The farm has really come alive over the last few years and we are seeing increases in the number of volunteers getting involved as well as the variety and numbers of wildlife species in the area. Over the next year we will be participating in a research project about the bats in the area, running a further series of rural skills and crafts training courses and developing a woodfuel social enterprise. We hope to host more visitors who will draw inspiration from Uncllys and perhaps decide for themselves ways in which they could tread more lightly on the earth, and swap notes with us about their vision of future forests, meadows or orchards.

John & Linda Iles john@uncllys.co.uk www.uncllys.co.uk www.wyreclt.org.uk

KOEN ARTS, ANKE FISCHER & RENÉ VAN DER WAL Reintroductions, defined by the IUCN as “an attempt to establish a species in an area which was once part of its historical range, but from which it has been extirpated or become extinct”1, have become an important nature conservation tool, globally, in Europe and in the UK. Reintroductions are often presented as a component of broader ecological restoration enterprises, and seen as an indispensable element of ‘rewilding’. But regardless of their precise motivation or justification, reintroductions frequently induce controversy. Such controversy may be related to damage claims, perceived danger to human safety, or to local land owners’ sense of losing authority over their land.

Studies on understanding and mitigating reintroduction conflicts are conducted by experts who are often sympathetic to reintroductions, and thus could be called proponents. Such studies are vital but it is important to bear in mind that they have a blind spot too. Opposing views may not only concern the topic of reintroduction itself, but may also be the result of the behaviour and power position of proponents.

Instead of studying opposition, we provide a resume of our recent studies 2,3,4 in which proponents’ behaviour, and decision-making procedures surrounding the politics of reintroductions are analysed. Our focus is on charismatic species such as birds of prey and larger mammals. From that group we choose three species that are the subject of current reintroductions debates in Scotland: the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), the beaver (Castor fiber) and as a potential future candidate, the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx).

Scottish reintroductions: white-tailed eagle, beaver and lynx Scotland is geographically isolated from mainland Europe, making reintroduction schemes for many former native species the only way of re-establishment. Because

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Scotland is relatively sparsely populated by humans and contains many large seminatural areas, its potential for reintroduction is often regarded as high. As a result of the process towards Scottish devolution that started in the late 1990s, the Scottish Minister for Environment is now empowered to grant licences for reintroductions to Scottish territory. With respect to state actors in the Scottish reintroduction arena, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is the single most important actor. It is a public body that advises Scottish Government about sustainable use and conservation of the natural environment. The main non-governmental organisations in favour of certain reintroductions are the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

The white-tailed eagle is a bird of prey that became extinct in Scotland in 1918, supposedly as a result of prolonged human persecution. In 1975, the predecessor of SNH embarked on what turned out to be a triple-phased programme (19751985 Isle of Rum; 1993-1998 Wester Ross; 2007-2012 eastern Scottish mainland) in which more than 150 juveniles were released in total.

The beaver probably disappeared from Scotland in the 16th century. Early debate about a possible reintroduction dates from the late 1970s, but only in 1995 did SNH start investigating the feasibility and desirability of a beaver reintroduction.

This resulted in a license request by SNH for a trial reintroduction in 2001, which was rejected in 2005. In 2007, the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland submitted a new proposal, which was approved in 2008 by Scotland’s Minister for Environment. After a period of quarantine, three Norwegian beaver families were released at Argyll’s Knapdale Forest in May 2009 for a trial period of five years. In 2014, the Minister is expected to decide on the future of beaver reintroductions to Scotland.

The lynx was believed to have disappeared from Great Britain long Before Christ.

But a re-analysis of skull samples in 1997 questioned this assumption, and gradually the idea took hold that the lynx had been present until the early Middle Ages.

In 2005 it was concluded that a reintroduction to Scotland was feasible from an ecological perspective, which allowed the debate to expand.5 Other than that, no further concrete steps have yet been taken. Still, the lynx is regularly singled out as the most suitable mammalian predator to be reintroduced to Scotland.

The iconic White tailed eagle Photo: Jens Fischer

Table 1. Storylines and sub-storylines identified in expert documents on lynx reintroduction Storylines Because the lynx became extinct due to human causes, it qualifies as a reintroduction candidate

Minor livestock problems compared to major ecological benefits

Rhetoric and argument in expert documents The first part of our analysis is a text analysis of expert documents in support of Scottish reintroductions. Our collection of policy documents, commissioned reports, scientific papers and essays resulted in 43 white-tailed eagle, 48 beaver and 20 lynx documents. The main authors of the studied texts are representatives of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), researchers and individuals with a strong interest in the topic. As the main tool for our text analysis, we used the ‘storyline’ method. A storyline is a central idea that summarises complex debates.6 It is designed to capture both the main arguments and the rhetorical nuances of a collection of texts. Table 1 shows the storylines and sub-storylines (the latter feed into the main storylines) we identified in the documents on a potential lynx reintroduction to Scotland.

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Every aspect of the reintroduction needs thorough study and alignment with both the law and public acceptance

Sub-storylines (i) No Mesolithic extinction (due to climate change) as originally asumed (ii) Because extinction was medieval, humans were responsible (iii) Following IUCN criteria is crucial (iv) Extinction factors not operating anymore (i) Reintroduction will be a success from a population viability perspective (estimation of 450 lynx) (ii) Beneficial impact of top predator on deer densities and ecosystems as a whole (iii) Some sheep predation expected, but of minimal levels and well manageable as European examples show (i) Openness towards, and support of, stakeholders and general public is crucial (ii) Being a non-wolf, the lynx is an ideal first top predator for reintroduction (iii) Return of the lynx symbolises a culturally richer life (iv) International formal guidelines have to be followed

Our analysis shows that although storylines tend to be presented as indisputable facts by proponents, they bring together beliefs, narratives and rhetoric into poignant expressions. That may explain their appeal, and the common tendency of authors to uncritically reproduce them.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 The study reveals clear similarities across the three species at the level of storylines. First, there are historical and ethical justifications for the intervention itself. This is normally followed by strong emphasis on the positive economic and ecological benefits of a reintroduction. This pattern can, to a large degree, be explained by the IUCN guidelines that underpin reintroduction practices. Likewise, the debates on the beaver and the lynx show a primacy of ‘biodiversity’, which reflects the importance of that notion in the policy arena since the 1990s. Second, a key characteristic of the identified storylines is that they present reintroductions as beneficial to a variety of stakeholders. As such, the pro-reintroduction discourse is very similar to other environmental discourses.7 A crucial finding is that, over time, storylines increase in argumentative complexity (i.e. the last storyline of the lynx; also found for the beaver). More specifically, this phenomenon could be called ‘reflexivity’: recent (sub)storylines often adjust their own position in relation to arguments of opponents (e.g. Table 1, sub-storyline C-ii: a lynx reintroduction is presented as less harmful than a potential wolf reintroduction). Furthermore, these reflexive storylines are ‘self-aware’ of their role in the process of advancing the cause of reintroduction: through cross-references and the anticipation of future research, a goal-oriented chain of publications is created. These reflexive storylines suggest that the debate is no longer only about the species, but increasingly about the reintroduction process.

Analysis of politics through interviews Our document analysis shows the rhetoric and arguments used by proponents.

However, the studied texts give little away as to what goes on behind the scenes of the formal texts. To gain a more complete picture, we conducted a complementary analysis of proponents’ perceptions on political decision-making. In-depth interviews were held with 16 key actors, all involved in the reintroduction process of at least one of the three focal species. These actors can be seen as political coordinators, either managing (generally those from the NGOs) or monitoring (governmental organisations – GOs). In particular, our focus is on the democratic content of decision-making in relation to key governance shifts of the last two decades. With these shifts we refer to a changing political landscape in European countries in which new steering mechanisms develop, and boundaries between state, market and civil society blur.8 The question we pose is whether decision-making on reintroductions has become more democratic as a result of these governance shifts.

As main democratic principles we use: Accountability – political actors have an obligation to explain their behaviour; Legality – the correctness of decision-making procedures according to the law; Legitimacy – the acceptance of the decision-making process by stakeholders; Democratic procedures – decision-making on the basis of a majority principle while safeguarding political equality.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 Our study highlights that political coordinators of reintroductions have indeed been making efforts to reform decision-making processes. This can be seen in the rise of steering and management groups, numerous consultation reports, and increasing NGO involvement. However, in our interviews with experts, issues with all four democratic principles became visible.

Accountability Profuse expert documentation surrounding reintroductions has become the norm.

While this provides a thorough account of the issues at stake, interviewees also pointed out that it leads to long delays and a lack of efficiency. In the worst case, this documentation may actually conceal political motives. This seems to have been the case with the initial beaver application submitted in 2001, and rejected three and a half years later. Scottish Government required more documentation from the applicant, SNH. But, according to the interviewees, there was a discrepancy between the formal and informal reasons for the rejection, pointing at a lack of accountability regarding the Scottish Government’s own decisions.

Legality The current legal framework for reintroductions was generally approved of by the interviewees. However, some grey areas were identified that would benefit from clearer formal guidance, namely: the decision-making procedures concerning licensing, the jurisdiction of the National Species Reintroduction Forum, and the relative influence stakeholders should have in decision-making. Our findings suggest that the lack of clear formal guidance helps to sustain the political power of Scottish Government and SNH. A more precise specification of political procedures could thus be an important step towards a more democratic decision-making process.

Legitimacy Legitimacy issues came to the fore when discussing white-tailed eagle post-release management schemes. In the view of a number of interviewees, these schemes were partly used as a tool to increase sheep farmers’ acceptance of the reintroduction by compensating for white-tailed eagle predation of lambs. Such an approach seems precarious as it can backfire when farmers start communicating their alleged losses, for instance through the media, in order to be included in the scheme. In other words, using compensation schemes as a political tool may actually harm the reintroduction by undermining rather than strengthening its legitimacy. There was a different, positive, legitimacy aspect is SNH’s changing role from applying (beaver licence 2001) to monitoring (notably from 2007 onwards, when two NGOs applied for a beaver trial licence). As a result, a wider range of societal groups got involved, a more independent monitoring body came into play and, in the words of one interviewee, the objectivity of this part of the decision-making increased.

Democratic procedures The National Species Reintroduction Forum could be regarded as part of SNH’s approach to achieve a more democratic and inclusive decision-making process.

It has been pointed out, however, that SNH’s control remains extensive in that it decides on membership invitations and acts as chair. In terms of the forum’s actual 65

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 Second, as storylines become rhetorically advanced and increasingly aim to pre-empt anticipated problems, debates could get frozen at an early stage. Ironically, opposing voices or critical consideration may subsequently be given less attention. The political process surrounding the document production is then likely to harden as well.

Third, reflexive storylines may narrow scientific knowledge production. This is particularly harmful when bearing in mind that the majority of expert documents feeding into the policy arena are in favour of reintroductions, which already creates an imbalance in decision-making. It is conceivable that, as a result, opponents are further alienated from ‘knowledge based’ policy making, and invest more in lobbying for example. Then, the gap further increases between the dominant ‘managerial’ side, representing a science-based technocratic worldview, and its ‘populist’ counterpart that portrays local actors as the victims of external intervention.⁷ Unfortunately, there are many 20th century reintroduction examples in which a proper democratic decision-making process was given insufficient consideration.

For reintroductions to be a sound 21st century agenda – especially when it involves charismatic species – communication will need to go beyond politically correct rhetoric, and those involved need to be truly open to any outcome of a democratic decision-making process. This will ensure that if a reintroduction receives a green light from politicians and society, the context is set for a story of success.

An eagle watch security sign on Isle of Mull for the White-tailed eagle.

References

Photo: Koen Arts

functioning, most interviewees think that early involvement of many stakeholders is, in principle, a good thing. But when assessing the interviewees’ comments on the forum against its own terms of reference – e.g. having a proactive role – there seems to be ample room for improvement. For example, there is much uncertainty about who should take the next step in a potential lynx reintroduction.9 It seems also unlikely that the forum will change the ‘established’ political rules of the game. The main issue here is not whether SNH is intentionally creating an “oldboy network” (as one of the interviewees called it), but whether new forms of governance endorse old political power structures.

Conclusion: an agenda for the 21st century Recent storylines and findings from our political analysis show an increased awareness of the need for public support and transparent communication between decisionmakers and other stakeholders. This is in many ways a positive development, and in line with for instance the Aarhus Convention which promotes information access, justice and public participation in environmental decision-making.10 Yet, there is also a flip side of the coin. First, there is a danger that reflexive storylines conceal a discrepancy between ‘good language’ and ‘good practice’. This point is also underpinned by our interview findings: the new governance mechanisms promise more democratic decision-making; yet, their implementation may cause severe delays, prevent political action, and in the worst case even keep old ‘top-down’ power structures in place.

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1. IUCN (1998 – first version from 1987) Guidelines for Re-introductions. IUCN, Gland.

2. Arts, K (2012) Wilderness restoration and animal reintroduction: ideas, discourses and policies. PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen.

3. Arts, K, Fischer, A, Van der Wal, R (2012) Common stories of reintroduction: a discourse analysis of documents supporting animal reintroductions to Scotland. Land Use Policy, 29, 911-920.

4. Arts, K, Fischer, A, Van der Wal, R (under submission) Political decision-making, governance shifts and Scottish animal reintroductions: are democratic principles at stake?

5. Hetherington, D (2005) The Feasibility of Reintroducing the Eurasian Lynx, Lynx lynx to Scotland. PhD Thesis, University of Aberdeen.

6. Hajer, M (1995) The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process.

Clarendon Press, Oxford.

7. Adger, W, Benjaminsen, T, Brown, K, Svarstad, H (2001) Advancing a political ecology of global environmental discourses. Development and Change, 4, 681-715.

8. Arnouts, R and Arts, B (2009) Environmental governance failure: the ‘dark side’ of an essentially optimistic concept. In: Arts, B., Lagendijk, A., Van Houtum, H.J., Editors, The Disoriented State: Shifts in Governmentality, Territoriality and Governance, Springer, pp. 201-228.

9. Thomson, J (2012) Letting the cat our of the bag: Eurasian lynx reintroduction to Scotland. ECOS, 33 (1), 27-34.

10. Aarhus Convention (1998) United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, 25th June 1998, Aarhus, Denmark.

Koen Arts is a social scientist research fellow in the Natural Resource Conservation group at dot. rural (University of Aberdeen). His PhD thesis² was supervised by Anke Fischer, an environmental social scientist at the James Hutton Institute (Aberdeen), and René van der Wal, an ecologist at the University of Aberdeen’s Centre for Environmental Sustainability. See www.koenarts.com for more information. k.arts@abdn.ac.uk

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012

The wildwood – giving up its secrets?

Two children, two landowners and two zoologists were amongst visitors to the big cats stand at the 2012 Stroud Festival of Nature. Their comments and questions, summarised here, reflect different views on the parallel universe presented by big cats in Britain’s landscape.

RICK MINTER A realisation?

“We’ve got big cats in the woods where I live” announced a young girl. She was entering my Big Cats stall in Stroud during the town’s September nature festival. Charming and confident in her manner, I guessed she was 11 at most. I asked whereabouts the woods were and from her response knew she was talking of a hot-spot for sightings and suspicious deer kills. “Yes - I go there sometimes in case there might be things to look for” I said with a calm voice. The wood in question is a wildlife-rich forest, as highly labelled as you can get in conservation terms.

It snakes through remote Cotswolds valleys, well known to locals but otherwise not well trammelled. I joined in a dawn chorus walk there when I first moved to Gloucestershire. It seemed wild and mysterious on that Beltane morning, but it has taken on other dimensions now.

As I awaited the arrival of her parents I asked how she felt about big cats being about.

“It’s okay” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt she was anything but freaked out at the thought of local panthers. We discussed how often a big cat might visit that area, and we wondered how many people realised that such animals were really around. She suggested her neighbours knew but kept it to themselves. She drifted out as gracefully as she’d arrived. No parents came along, and I wondered if my words were adequate. Maybe it didn’t much matter, so long as I’d been responsible and allowed her a voice. The five minute conversation seemed more awkward for me than for her. I’d been wondering what balance to strike, while she’d simply come to tell of a roaming panther in her corner of Gloucestershire. That was all. Big cats were part of the scene, in people’s minds at least, where she was growing up.

Another visitor to the stall, a young lad deep in concentration, was of the same age I thought. He was equally composed. In three separate visits he studied all the items, props and publications spread across the tables around the stall. With colourful activities on offer throughout the park, I was flattered to see him spend over an hour at my stand. He was good company, biding his time to ask questions in the lulls amongst the flow of people. Eventually his mother came along. She confirmed his opening query. Could there be a big cat in this park, in this neighbourhood, on the edge of Stroud? Their whole family was curious because the dad, just a few days previously had opened the front door where they lived, right next to the park and 68

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 gasped. He claimed he’d seen a cat in the front garden “as big as a Labrador dog”. I played it down. I recalled two sightings in a field near the park in the past. These were close-up reports that witnesses were rock-solid about. Leopards and pumas can be night-time shadows in the towns of their native lands, and we get plausible reports of such cats around the edge of both Gloucester and Cheltenham. Here the scrubby hillsides blend with the suburbs. A large carnivore might well patrol the grazing deer along these slopes. I’d have liked to take the father in Stroud through a checklist, to clarify how sure he’d been. But overall, it was pleasing that the boy seemed so genuinely curious. If this one visit to my stall, and the incident in his garden, real or not, had nudged him towards a lasting interest in big cats or in any wildlife, any part of the natural world, that was good. It made my efforts all worthwhile.

A transition?

I am intrigued as people study the items, photos and material at the stall. It is a rare thing to watch youngsters and teenagers focus for several minutes, thinking quietly, forgetting their phones and gadgets. The big cats stall can be a place of deep concentration on people’s faces. There is puzzlement and wonder as visitors consider possible large predators in their own district, and realise that it actually may not be a myth. And there are conversations, many polite, some earnest, and others light-hearted and scoffing, amongst friends and within families, as different beliefs are aired and evidence sifted.

My reward comes from seeing this interaction and togetherness, from helping to start the conversation, and beat away the taboo about unofficial big cats. Ok, so a landowner that day gave me a pretty good picture of a panther in his woodland.

That’s a good reward too. Not often do we see the actual animals caught on camera.

He’d looked at another landowner’s photo which I had displayed at the stall, and which people were asked to judge. By the end of the day, the sticky-dot votes on the big board showed that most people thought the animal, slightly blurred as the camera caught it mid-stride, was feline of some sort, and just over half viewed it as a genuine big cat. I liked the photo. It seemed the best ‘likely’ big cat snapped to date on a trip camera, and it was from the Stroud valleys. The anonymous landowner had provided it for education and awareness, but he wanted the location to remain vague, to avoid hassle and invasion, for him and the presumed cat. For me this photograph serves a bigger purpose. It allows a transition in our minds. Each of us can look with our own bias. For some with open minds the picture helps big cats become clearer - to move from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’. For outright believers it confirms the animal can at last be captured on film. But for those who dismiss big cats, the picture is inevitably a dog.

Nothing large and feline is in the realms of possibility.

The visiting landowner I got chatting to was not from the area. He’d not seen the tantalising photo on display, but he wasn’t too impressed for a wholly different reason. “Mines better then that” he casually announced. “What?” I uttered. I wondered if this guy, who appeared wise and experienced, was an example of people who have the actual evidence but prefer not to suggest that big cats are about, especially on their own land. “Yes – I’ve a better one, I’ll send it if you like” he remarked. I stressed I’d keep it to myself, and would be pleased to see it. As 69

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good as his word, the photo was in my email box that evening. My son grasped my mobile phone when it arrived, studying the picture at all angles. “The sceptic might say it’s a large feral”, he declared, in a grown-up reaction to what he knew seemed a good picture of a dark leopard-like cat, stationed in a southern England copse. So yes, there are other rewards from having conversations about mystery cats. New friends and contacts can emerge, and the chance to share their closely guarded secret.

A challenge?

Finally, a note about two more visitors during the day, and a reminder that people vary even in the same professional camp. Two zoologists announced themselves at different times. Number one entered amidst the mid-morning buzz. He listened with respect. His family bought my book, and he used his knowledge to cautiously add to my own. I mentioned a tree scratch spotted by a farmer friend. We thought it might be cat related – raking of the claws on a tree as an indication of the predator’s territory. The scores through the bark matched claw spacing across two paws. We tried to reproduce the cuts with our own knife in the next tree, but completely failed with our own jittery slots. The marks didn’t seem human ones or from the fraying of antlers, which would be a more conventional explanation. But the overall pattern seemed a might too big for a black leopard or a puma, which are our candidate cats. The scale was “scary” according to my son. The zoologist explained how the splay and deep grooving of a leopard or puma’s striation could seem enlarged from the actual paws, so it was worth considering, he suggested.

Here was a scientist happy to build the conversation, and keep the learning process going. He agreed that it was no great shock to have feral pumas and leopards. They are the great survivors and the adapters amongst bigger cats across the world.

Zoologist number two caught me unawares. I was flagging late in the afternoon, describing to a curious visitor how some people even claim to hear the call of pumas as well as describe the animal. “Foxes - they’ll be foxes that people are hearing” came an assertive voice behind me. I recognised it as the grudging tone of a sceptic.

I politely stated that people do make mistakes, including on noises, and yes, fox calls could be tangled with puma sounds, but a puma scream is distinct and is well described by people. The man before me now stated his credentials. It mattered that he was a “professional zoologist”. After ignoring my confidence on pumas, he wanted to pick me up on adaptation. He’d heard my thoughts about some big cats possibly adapting in form, due to their situation in Britain. He sought an explanation.

I stated that many reports fitted a text book black leopard or a conventional puma, albeit that individuals differ. But I stressed that some descriptions suggest a higher looking, longer legged cat, and that this was enough to get people wondering – was some kind of adaptation occurring? “No” was his emphatic response. “Not in such quick time”. He may be right, but I’d prefer to give it consideration rather than close down debate, and some ecologists do take the opposite view. After all, the former Peak District wallabies were exhibiting traits of their own in their feral freedom, over just a few generations. In addition, evolution under duress may happen faster than we think, and if a successful hybridisation is present amongst some of these larger cats, that may be a relatively quick process to show effects.

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Tooth pit study at the Royal Agricultural College led by Dr Andrew Hemmings. Dental putty is applied to tooth marks on skeletal samples, and the results matched against different scales of carnivore dentition.

The zoologist had a simple explanation for the ‘upright panther’ sightings: “Dogs!

Wouldn’t you say they are pretty good descriptions of dogs?” he remarked with a sense of despair at how I was missing the obvious. In fact, people are adamant their sightings are nothing like a dog, often because of the fluid and stealthy movement as well as the feline form. And the nervous reactions of some people’s own dogs, and sometimes horses, reinforce the possibility of a large predator in view. I declined his challenge and let him stride off. His body language suggested he felt I was a fraud. Never mind I’d spent five years buried away preparing a book on the topic, and turning every stone.1 It is tempting to let such people know that secrets are held in various quarters, and there is more than can be told. But with the subject seen as a Pandora’s Box, it might be best for evidence and awareness of big cats to emerge gradually, along with discussion on the various implications.

Beyond the evidence kept under wraps, the police have already declared breeding big cats in both Gloucestershire and the Thames Valley area. The known primary 71

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Book Reviews

evidence starts in 2003 in Lincolnshire, when a black hair sample registered positive for leopard DNA. In 2011 some black hair from a north Devon hotspot also proved positive for leopard. The Home Office verified the cast of a puma print taken by Thames Valley police in 2011, and a previous puma result came from a south Wales hair sample in 2005. Also in south Wales, tooth-pit analysis concluded leopard impressions on skeletal remains of sheep found in the early 90s.2 A new phase of tooth-pit study is currently underway in Gloucestershire, and along with other tests going on, including on a putative large felid skull recently discovered, will be reported in 2013.3

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

2. Coard, R (2007) Ascertaining an agent: using tooth pit data to determine the carnivore/s responsible for predation in cases of suspected big cat kills in an upland area of Britain. Journal of Archaeological Science 34 1677-1684 3. Minter, R (2013 forthcoming) Big cats living wild in Britain – implications of the primary and secondary evidence.

Rick Minter is studying feral big cats with the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester. rickminter@easynet.co.uk

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personal history and making the book more like a text on conservation policy.

In the author’s mind I think the book is both these and other things besides. It is simultaneously didactic and messianic, with the final chapter entitled `What we need to do to win’. There is evidence that the work was originally intended to be a more conventional autobiography.

Thus witness a chapter called ‘Snippets’ containing stories and anecdotes that couldn’t be fitted in the main text. Samuel Becket had something similar in his novel Watt; words and phrases thought of but not used. In that case however they were included as an addendum.

But to say that this book is idiosyncratic is in no way to condemn it. I couldn’t put it down. It is a damned good read packed with interesting information and insider insights into some of the classic conservation battles of the period. All students of conservation should read it.

I would particularly recommend some of the case studies in chapter 13, the chapter appropriately titled ‘The raptor haters’ and his assessments in chapter 16 of the conservation industry.

Suspected tree raking from a leopard-like cat. These markings ranged from three feet to nine feet high on the trunk, appearing overnight in Gloucestershire in November 2012 on land where black panthers have been reported in autumn-winter 2011 and 2012.

The brush with the second zoologist served a purpose. A reminder that big cats living wild, naturalising even, in our own familiar countryside present a deep challenge, culturally and scientifically, to us all, but maybe to some more than others. I can only hope that he and his peers stumble upon things for themselves – perhaps notice rake-like markings down a tree, or see an interesting mammal that might not be a dog or may not sound like a fox, so that the discovery and the wonder is more widely shared. Meanwhile, there is a conversation going on about Panther Britannica, in all its guises, and anyone willing is welcome to join in.

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FIGHTING FOR BIRDS 25 Years in Nature Conservation Mark Avery Pelagic Publishing 2012, 324 Pages Pbk, £12.99 ISBN 987-1-907807-29-9 This book might be described as an analytical autobiography. It is intensely personal, presenting many details of the author’s life but woven around a discussion of the development of RSPB policy on conservation of birds where the author played a central role, and drawing lessons for policy from personal experience. Each chapter finishes with a summary of the main points made; not what one would normally expect in a

The author spent 25 years working for RSPB and remains deeply committed to it as the ideal model for a conservation NGO containing the optimum mix of advocacy, political pressure, direct action and scientific analysis. In his view all other conservation bodies fall short of the ideal. The Wildlife Trusts have lost their way, placing too much emphasis on people and too little on wildlife (the reviewer is sympathetic on this one). Greenpeace and FOE have other concerns, certainly no less important than wildlife conservation but to a degree in conflict with them at least in terms of resource allocation. The nearest to the RSPB perfection are recent specialist 73

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 bodies: Plantlife; Butterfly Conservation and Buglife; but these outfits are too small, lacking the membership and therefore the clout of RSPB and the last chapters speculate as to whether RSPB should extend its remit to take over their territory or otherwise help to strengthen them and how far it should become a multi-national extending the RSPB experience overseas. Undoubtedly RSPB is the largest and most successful wildlife NGO in Europe with a reach now extending outside of the continent.

It is to be congratulated on its success and Mark Avery to be thanked for the pivotal role he has played in it. However it falls to the reviewer to pour a touch of cold water on the author’s enthusiasm.

From its inception, and written into its charter, the RSPB has been restrained from attacking the interests of the landed gentry; most obviously preventing any challenge to the upper class obsession with killing animals and birds, categorised as hunting or vermin control. These constraints remain and Avery confesses to wanting to launch a campaign against grouse shooting but knowing that within RSPB he could not do so. But the interests of the landed classes extend beyond the slaughter of innocent raptors, gamebirds and Mustelids; they are reflected in received understanding, or lack of it, of the economics of farming and forestry.

While regarding the NFU as part of the enemy, Avery none-the-less subscribes to the hoary old lie that intensification with its resulting monocultures is the consequence of economic pressures facing farmers. It isn’t. It is the result of the reduction and distortion of risk brought about by agricultural support and protection. If this support were wholly withdrawn then farm enterprises would perforce shift back to crop rotations, lower intensity of cultivation and mixed 74

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 farming as a rational strategy to minimise financial risk. Ricardo demonstrated this in the nineteenth century; that in adversity agriculture would retreat on both the intensive and extensive margins.

But you don’t have to be an historian of economic thought to understand it. It was explained to the conservation community in the late 1960s, and in the 1970s and 80s I was involved in explaining it to the RSPB. I’m afraid that I failed; the message was well understood in some quarters but the constraints on the organisation meant that it was never acted on. The reasons are obvious. Agricultural support does not benefit tenant farmers who simply face rising rents and land prices; it enriches their landlords. But the principal social cost of our obsession with looking after farmers and wealthy landlords is the destruction of wildlife habitat and the decimation of birds and other taxa.

Any realistic programme to reverse these trends has to start from there.

The economics of forestry is subject to a similar fallacy and this one too has been repeatedly demonstrated. It is not economic to grow trees for commercial purposes in the UK – which is not to say that we should not maintain and manage semi-natural woodlands.

Commercial forestry exists to supply tax concessions to the wealthy and increasingly to multi-national companies with a by-product of providing shelter for pheasant rearing. What Mark Avery saw in the Flow Country where the trees would often not even properly grow is equally true in the lowlands. The starting and finishing point of any forestry policy as with agricultural policy therefore is the interest of those who pay the piper.

But despite the constraints facing RSPB it has come a long way and has done a lot at least to mitigate the environmental

consequences of land-holding. Avery’s book explains and celebrates this progress. The hope for Buglife and the other conservation bodies that Avery admires is that their power base is mainly urban not rural. Let us hope it remains that way. Meanwhile I look forward to meeting him on the picket line on August 12th.

John Bowers

Charles Edward Stuart, the well known Italian, went round the western end of what was left of the Wall to Carlisle, since the only other possible route lay through thoroughly unsympathetic Newcastle posted at the other end. The centrally placed A68 crosses the line of the Wall at Corbridge, a route of Roman origin that leads nowhere fast. This inconvenient siting has protected the landscape from much of the impact of the motor car in modern times; a landscape that looks after itself. It does cross superb countryside, nowhere more so than at Tyne Gap, where the high Pennines are split geologically from the wild fells to the north and through which famous rivers flow.

Thus Hadrian’s Wildlife presents as a guide book to the complex landscapes, social and natural history of a narrow strip of country whose axis lies east-west across the narrowest part of the island of Great Britain. It is, in fact, rather more than that and better for it.

HADRIAN’S WILDLIFE John Miles Whittles Publishing, 2012, 134 pages Pbk £16.99 ISBN 978–1–84995–063–3 Quite why the Emperor Hadrian had this wall built is, to me at least, a mystery. It defends nothing and played no further part in history. To me the Wall seems more akin to the vanity projects of retiring French presidents awaiting trial. The last miscreant coming down from the north,

John Miles was sometime RSPB warden for Geltsdale, itself part of a slab of high moorland that lies just to the north of the line of the wall. Memories of his experience in this role informs the text to great advantage. Tasked with protecting birds on a reserve surrounded by grouse moors – a reserve moreover where the shooting rights had been retained – was awkward, given the birds to be protected, hen harriers, are anathema to gamekeepers. Red Grouse management does not get a good press in this guide.

These recollections – Mr Miles is today a freelance consultant and tour leader – give the narrative an edge that a guidebook normally lacks. Perhaps too large (and handsome) for carrying outdoors, yet ideal for reading in the B&B 75

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 in this case Alcoa in Western Australia, are getting in on the conservation act; and he shows how consumption and conservation can coexist through using the Marine Stewardship Council’s work as an example.

or under cover, I suspect it has a useful life as background information and species lists preceding a visit. Combined with map reading, it will give shape and focus to what is in fact a widely spread series of reserves and ecological sites along the Wall or close by. Then there is the little matter of the Wall itself and associated Roman sites. There is a lot to see, many miles to travel.

A small scale map of the entire Wall with reference points is included but does not have the detail by itself to assist visitors I feel. Good maps are as essential here as outdoor clothing; be prepared. Hadrian’s Wildlife is well illustrated with drawings by Mike Henry and many excellent photographs. But do enjoy the text; for one thing, visitors from further afield may be surprised to learn that much of remote Britain is still controlled by toffs who, irrespective of the law, carry on much as they have always done when it comes to wildlife.

Barry Larking

WILD HOPE On the Front Lines of Conservation Success Andrew Balmford The University of Chicago Press, 2012, 240 pages Pbk, £17 ISBN 10: 0226035927 Who can argue with a book of good news! It is as scarce a commodity in the conservation world today as some of the endangered species we are trying to protect. In this book Andrew Balmford leaves behind the world of peer review papers to give us a travelogue of conservation success.

Filled with stories of the people who have made conservation work through 76

The approach is different from the usual heavily referenced second-hand accounts of case studies, as each chapter is based on the author’s actual visits to the areas and his conversations with local people and conservationists. Of course there are facts and figures too, but these take a back seat in the book.

appendix one wonders – perhaps an indication of the audience confusion) which is clearly aimed at the ‘western’ consumer, although not actually defined as such. The first action is ‘support the professionals’ by giving money to conservation organisations (well I can’t argue with that), followed by a call for volunteers, for letter writing campaigns, careful consumption, reduced consumption and the like. This is all perfectly sensible for a certain type of audience, but generally the list has little relation to the actual examples in the book.

Sue Stolton

their innovation and perseverance, the book reflects its optimistic title.

For those in conservation the success stories are generally part of the familiar but depressingly small litany of case studies we draw on to show that the millions of dollars spent on conservation actually work. This familiarity was partly the premise of the book: a personal quest by the author to see if these successes are real and, if so, what lessons can be learnt. So Andrew confirms the continuing success of Rhino conservation in Kazaringa, India; he charts the long road to the successful protection of woodpeckers and forests in America; he relates the innovation of prioritising invasive species control for watershed protection in South Africa; he reports how the valuation of ecosystem services is providing powerful arguments for conservation in many communities in Ecuador and Costa Rica; he finds out that even large companies,

The question which kept popping into my head as I read each chapter was: who is the audience for this hopeful venture?

For many in the conservation field this book, although an engaging read from a well respected author, probably will not tell you much. Mind you, having a book of mainly good news on one’s bookshelf might be a handy tonic for conservation blues.

The final chapter focuses on what conservationists can draw from the stories told in the book. The underlying message is that to save special places you need special people, who can think creatively, be ambitious, and are politically savvy and able to engage with anyone and everyone who might be able to help a good cause. But just in case the reader gets too carried away with Andrew’s hopeful vision the book ends as it began with a reminder of how fragile our planet is and how tenuous our grip is on achieving successful conservation in the face of an increasing litany of threats.

My only niggle is that the book ends with a list of actions we can all take ‘to save nature’ in the appendix (why the

RAMBLE ON The story of our love of walking Britain Sinclair McKay Fourth Estate, 2012, 291 pages Hbk £14.99, ISBN 978-0-00-742864-9 This book is full of interesting nuggets, and if you put the bits together there is an overall story of how rambling became popular and ramblers confronted landowners to achieve greater access to land.

McKay notes that “The story of rambling, is in one sense, a prism through which we can view the ebbs and flows of social conflict in Britain …a story of a social movement”. No surprises then that the book starts with a visit to Edale to honour the 1932 Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout and pioneers like Benny Rothman. The author also shows how walking became a cultural delight and pastime, so there is Wordsworth and Wainright in the Lake District and Miss Austen’s picnic on Box Hill, as well as numerous mentions of characters and settings from books and films.

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ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 seaside town” and there is a “mellowing light of late summer”. At times there is a townee goes to the countryside and a breaking out of the M25 cordon feel to it all. For a moment I did wonder if this was all a spoof, but no, my thoughts had just strayed in a wrong direction.

Most sections feature one of the author’s walks, resulting in chapter headings such as ‘Rannoch to Corrour Shooting Lodge in a Howling storm; An investigation of the Lure of Wilderness, and the Earliest Days of Organised Rambling’. Or ‘Warminster to Battlebury Fort, Salisbury Plain – an Effort to Reach England’s inland Atlantis’ and ‘Exploring the Preternatural Forest of Dean and Woodland Legends – While Examining the Beguiling History of Youth Hostels and B&Bs’. These chapter titles demonstrate the populist tone of the whole book, moving the Daily Telelgraph reviewer to remark: “he cannot be accused of being too earnest…”

It’s all very chatty, unremittingly chatty.

“There we go: processing up slopes, in lines, like fluorescent ants. We are the very image of unabashed enthusiasm”.

“Hares go loping off in all directions”, Dawlish is an “absurdly cute Devon 78

Primarily about rambling and ramblers, the text does touch a little on some of the broader aspects of walking. After quoting from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Walking Tours where a case is made for the freedom of journeying alone, McKay says “Surely this depends on what sort of country one is passing through. Certainly if one is ambling through the meadows of east Sussex, or dawdling along high banked Devon lanes, then certainly one’s mood will be lifted like a swallow on a warm breeze.

Out here in the Cairngorms, the solitary walker is not so much absorbing the landscape, as defining himself against it. Moods are not quite so osmotic or tranquil. In solitude, a walker develops a distinct relationship with the landscape around him; one that tends to intensify the sense of a spirit of the place. But just because a place has a distinct feel to it does not mean that one will feel at one with it”. Mckay goes on to talk about The Grey Man of Ben Macdhui, a ghostly presence felt and heard on the mountain but there are other ways of being aware of and even utilising consciousness when walking . For instance, readers get introduced to the Sunday Tramps, a club of intellectuals, writers, scientists and naturalists, all men, who left London in the 1880s for 25 mile walks. A leader of the Tramps was Sir Leslie Stephen, enthusiastic mountaineer and Cambridge intellectual, who wrote “tramping with them, one has the world under review, as well as pretty scenery”. This led me to wonder if the club consciously appreciated, as I and many

other folk do, that walking is a way of having a different sort of conversation than over a desk. And I am intrigued to realise that many academics are now exploring walking as a practice and methodology, and not just in the arts.

But back to the book where later chapters touch more specifically on topical matters such as access and the profound joy for older travellers and tourists being able to get up onto the Cairngorm via the railway, or the responsibilities of land ownership and changing attitudes post the CRoW Act and the changes in rural livelihoods while accommodating more walkers.

This also prompts some discussion about the commodification and popularising of walking territory in a chapter called ‘A Day Out in Bronte Country – What happens When Much-Treasured Walking Landscapes Become Theme Parks’. That is blunt but very much to the point.

Lots of people, not just ramblers, social historians and country lovers, will enjoy this easy-to-read book and will be more patient than I with the whimsical tone.

policy by the publishers of this book, but it is not a commonly identifiable term in the UK within agriculture and its related environmental sectors. It is rather, a concept very much more familiar within the international and more specifically European organizations and agencies.

Very broadly HNV farming in the UK would particularly equate to farmers participating in the higher tiers of agrienvironment schemes including organic and a high proportion of upland farms.

Notwithstanding this circumstance, the book does provide a clear introduction to HNV farming and to its ecological context. The latter chapters that address the agricultural policy context are particularly good, but suffer the inevitable time lag difficulties inherent with publications, and inevitable with the relatively fast changing arena of CAP reform. There are subsequently some frustrating omissions and also inconsistencies within the individual country examples.

High Nature Value (HNV) farming can be used to describe certain types of low intensity farming commonly characterized by high levels of wildlife interest.

The 35 country examples of HNV farming comprise over half of the book, and are presented alphabetically as individual case studies following a broadly similar format. There is some comparative uniformity in the presentation of background agricultural information describing their respective agricultural sectors which is useful.

The levels and lengths of information detailing examples and importance of HNV farming within each country are however, and perhaps inevitably, inconsistent. This also extends to presentational aspects for example the inconsistent citation of figures and tables.

HNV farming is described as being at the centre of EU rural development

The over-riding issue with this book is the question of its purpose and its audience.

Alison Parfitt

HIGH NATURE FARMING IN EUROPE 35 European countries – Experiences and Perspectives Rainer Oppermann, Guy Beaufoy, Gwyn Jones (Eds) verlag regionalkultur, 2012, 544 pages Hbk, £40.00, ISBN 978-3-89735-657-3

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BACK COPIES OF ECOS

ECOS 33(3/4) 2012 It is essentially descriptive, but includes throughout advisory components and a policy lobbying content. The specialist ecological terms which are used serve to limit its readability. It is not directed at the agricultural practice and policy sectors, but rather the book can provide a broad reference into HNV farming or equivalents across Europe for ecologists and rural development policy specialists.

Will Manley

CONVERGENCE WITH NATURE A Daoist perspective David E. Cooper Green Books, 2012, 168 pages Pbk, £10.95, 978-0-85784-023-3 Cooper’s closing words may disappoint some green-minded readers who may have been enthused by bubbles of wisdom gleaned from interpretations of Buddhism, Native American, Ancient Celtic, and Whatnot – not to mention Daoist (Taoist) – traditions.

As usual, the situation turns out to be more subtle than the interpreters suggested. “Daoism’s contribution to environmental ethics is not a new principle for governing humankind’s treatment of the environment, nor a new plan to rescue the planet. It is, instead, a portrait of how an individual person, in making consonance with the source of things – with dao – may live well in relation to nature.”

Daoists, explains Cooper, will be noticeably few amongst factory-farm employees, but also amongst ecowarriors. They will be found feeding birds in winter, and they have aptly been described as the gardeners of the world.

He provides a succinct guide through some of the implications of what he 80

prefers to call Daodeism (dao – usually translated as ‘way’ or ‘path’; de – essence, power, excellence, etc.). He moves too fast at times, for instance referring to parallels in early Indian and Greek traditions, and leaving a blur between Daoism and Zen, which may indeed be there. The role of the classical Chinese language in Chinese thinking, keeping the focus on events rather than things, might have been made a little clearer.

Dao does not need an external source for change comes self-motivated. His subject is by no means straightforward; his book, however, is stimulating, and likely to prove widely useful as a careful and personal insight into a philosophy that will undoubtedly continue to have a strong influence on parts of the environment and conservation movements.

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o 33 (2)

o 33 (1)

Lynx, Badgers, Bees & Beavers; Do we need new groups? o 32 (3/4) The Woodland Edge essays from the wildwood

o 32 (1)

BANC inspires innovation

Defending land-use planning; Development pressures in middle England; Forestry Panel review;

o 32 (2)

www.banc.org.uk

White Paper review, Ecosystem Assessment verdicts, Red Tape rebuff Public Forests Campaign, Big Society, Beavers, Big Birds

in conservation.

President:

John Bowers

Vice-Presidents: Marion Shoard

Adrian Phillips

Chair:

Gavin Saunders

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Ruth Boogert

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Jeremy Owen

o 31 (3/4) Lawton Report, Big Society, Nature

in Austerity

o 31 (2)

Strategies for boar, big cats, dog owners, & wild goats

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Natural aliens; climate resilience; tips for the recession

He helps clarify some misunderstandings: “Give me…”, he quotes Thoreau, “the wilderness”. This is increasingly difficult, if not impossible; but we can certainly still have wildness, even in the midst of the city. Cooper points out that Daoism is not antagonistic towards real wilderness, but “nor is the ‘wilderness experience’ privileged by Daoists over engagement with human landscapes, with cultivated environments”. Humans can be ‘natural’ as much in the garden as in the wilderness. Indeed, harmoniousness and ‘convergence’ would seem to imply some movement towards each other by both parties.

Martin Spray

o 27(1) o 26(3/4) o 26(2)

o 30 (3/4) Ecological skills; Getting started

in conservation

o 30 (2) Nature at our service? o 30 (1) 30 years back – and forward o 29 (3/4) New nature – old creatures o 29 (2) Nature’s tonic o 29 (1) Walking the talk in conservation o 28 (3/4) Climate Change adaptation –

helping nature cope

o 28(2) o 28(1) o 27(3/4) o 27(2)

Nature’s Id

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Loving Nature?

Accepting the wild?

Shores and seas – the push for protection Species reintroductions Aliens in control Carbon, conservation and renewables

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Feature Articles

Winter 2012 issue 33(3/4) www.banc.org.uk

1. Connecting the connectivity. Geoffrey Wain 2. Lands-caped crusaders. Gavin Saunders 6. Landscape scale - towards an integrated approach.

Kate Ahern & Lyndis Cole 13. Large-scale conservation in Great Britain: taking stock. Nicholas A Macgregor, William M Adams, Chris T Hill, Felix Eigenbrod & Patrick E Osborne 24. Private and networked: Large Conservation Areas in Scotland.

William M Adams 34. Landscape-scale conservation for butterflies and moths: lessons from the UK. Nigel Bourn, Sam Ellis & Caroline Bulman 43. Landscape-scale conservation. A progress report from the Weald. Henri Brocklebank 50. Landscape-scale conservation in the South West. Notes from the frontline. Lisa Schneidau 56. Wyre’s future forest – new ventures in a wooded landscape.

John and Linda Iles 61. Reintroducing charismatic species to Scotland: the rhetoric and politics of a 21st century agenda. Koen Arts, Anke Fischer & Rene Van Der Wal 68. The Wildwood – giving up its secrets? Rick Minter

73. Book Reviews • • • • • •

Fighting For Birds Hadrian’s Wildlife Wild Hope Ramble On High Nature Farming in Europe Convergence with Nature

2012 British Association of Nature Conservationists.

ISSN 0143-9073.

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