Ecos 36 1 whole edition

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2015 issue 36(1)

New lives in the forest Conservation in the doldrums?

Communal conservation - lessons in enterprise

ECOS

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

www.banc.org.uk

ECOS 36(1) 2015

ecos@easynet.co.uk Editorial

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

Bob, badgers and business

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: The Vote Bob campaign, courtesy RSPB. The opinions expressed in ECOS are not necessarily those of BANC Council or of the Editors.

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President: John Bowers

Chair: Gavin Saunders

Vice-Presidents: Marion Shoard Adrian Phillips

Secretary: Alison Parfitt Treasurer: Ruth Boogert

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

‘Cull the Tories’ said the badger stickers. They’d been stuck to road signs across Gloucestershire in the election run-up, pushing the plight of badgers right in our face. But middle-England voters have culled the Lib Dems and stuck with the Tory devil. We can now expect more rows on the justification for badger culling, despite the poor evidence. When it suits government, evidence can be fudged, as we’ve seen with the alleged impacts of wildlife regulation on enterprise. Nature groups are already primed to defend the Habitats and the Birds Directives, both of which risk being loosened up because of an unsubstantiated block on business.

Elsewhere in the election, Bob the red squirrel led the fight with RSPB’s clever campaign to move wildlife up the agenda. Bob was a furry mascot squirrel out on the lawns at Westminster, and a placard-waving image on the web and social media. Did Bob have an effect? At national level, alas - no. David Cameron famously uttered “cut the green crap” signalling a limit to his environmental posturing. Crap or not, green concerns were absent from election scripts of main parties in 2015.

Constituency debates were different, with the environment featuring in many local quarrels, but on the national stage green matters were crowded out. We will hear lessons from the Vote Bob campaign, and other post-election analysis in the next ECOS, as authors look to the new political context and worry whether key public bodies face deathly reorganisation and meagre funds.

Five years back, at the start of the Coalition’s reign, David Cameron trumpeted Big Society, promoting community action in civic life. But Big Society was a big flop.

It quickly faded. Maybe the Conservatives noticed that volunteering has the best record amongst countries that back it with public funds. In this ECOS we look at a range of communal approaches to managing nature on the ground. Different models of social enterprise and community trusts may be crucial to keep valued places and features viable, and there are associated skills, confidence and livelihoods for people. To explore these points further on the BANC web site our core questions are these: How will nature conservation get support amidst an extended period of austerity? What’s the likely balance between public, private and social funding for conservation? What are the likely trends and how will this shape conservation activity in coming years? We hope there’s food for thought in this issue.

Finally, welcome to a new lease of life for ECOS in the digital age, after our 35 years of publishing. As a taster for a coming theme, we begin with some upbeat views on rejuvenating conservation. Times may be hard for many of us grafting to help the natural world, but Bob demands we press on.

Geoffrey Wain

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ECOS 36(1) 2015

ECOS 36(1) 2015

Re-freshing conservation Cries from the heart Is conservation in a new crisis? Is the influence of the wildlife sector on the wane and are those who work in nature conservation becoming too demoralised to be effective?

These have been perennial concerns much discussed in ECOS, but recent austerity measures limiting conservation activity have added to the woes. To gauge some grassroots views on the matter, ECOS sought comments from some close friends and allies.

The resulting quotes, set out below, reveal a healthy fighting spirit…

Conservation in the Doldrums

“Doldrums: a geographical zone where a sailing ship comes to a halt and drifts due to a lack of energy to drive it forward. A perfect description of where we are and it’s got very little to do with government policies, shrinking budgets, ages of austerity or an obsession with making government smaller; although none of those things help.

We still have to make the ‘step change’ that was described in the pivotal Lawton Report Making Space for Nature. Where’s the ambition to do bigger, better, faster and to go further? It has to come from us, we have to change the way in which we do business because doing the same old things in the same old way just is not working.”

Dave Blake

Glass half full?

NEIL BENNETT

“Nature conservation is definitely in the doldrums, but some people are a lot more demoralized than others I think. It all depends on your age, who you work for and what your expectations are!”

Michael Jeeves

Stress the positive

“The mainstream conservation and environment sectors have lost their influence in public policy, funding is tight, and the conservation workforce is frustrated with its lot. The way to respond to this situation is not to become more shrill and upset large segments of people, politicians and businesses, yet this is happening too much.

Yes we should stay robust to opposing forces, but pushing unreasonable demands on people will not give green matters or wildlife concerns the attention they need.

We need positive engagement rather than exasperated radicalism. Is it time for us to stand up to the doomsayers? If people associate conservation messages as relentlessly gloomy is that really going to achieve much?”

Geoffrey Wain

Conservation and financial priorities

“Conservation in the UK in the UK is failing fast due to economic short sight.

Farmers, the natural custodians of the countryside, have been forced into a level of intensive agriculture they don’t like, and which still fails to generate adequate 2

returns due to retailer pressure. The system is only maintained by massive taxpayer subsidy. Government support for National Parks, AONBs and agencies such as Natural England is slashed to the point where even maintaining statutory purposes may not be viable, and relaxed planning guidance puts new tracts of land at risk of permanent wildlife loss to create more enclaves of low-rise housing boxes. It is hard to see government of any hue having the guts to change this pattern of decline, especially in a country where population will have increased by 45% in 2060.”

Steve Head

On a point of order Mr Chairman

“Too late has British conservation woken up from its stamp collecting days, when a species or habitat was valued in inverse ratio to its abundance. Ospreys were 3

ECOS 36(1) 2015 showered with conservation cash, while house sparrow number crashed without concern. We are now more habitats-focused, and are aware of the collapse of once abundant species of real ecological significance. Yet we remain hampered by a bureaucratic biodiversity management system, which flags 1150 Priority Species and 65 Priority Habitats, and has sites labelled as SSSI, SAC, Ramsar, SINC, NNR and LNR. It was always said that to destroy a movement one would divide and conquer, and to kill an idea, shroud it with paperwork.”

Steve Head

Hoorah! It’s all change folks!

“Conservation may have failed, but that is because it is trying to conserve a pattern of biodiversity that evolved in only 10,000 years, with people the major control for the last 4,000. Key conservation habitats like the Broads, coppice woodland and chalk grassland are the result of early economic activities that have now failed, and it is really expensive to replicate them, even with volunteers. Right now the future of moorlands is at risk because farming them is increasingly economically impossible. So stop looking back! We have a rapidly growing population and each Brit has an area of 60x60m for all housing farming, communications and recreation needs. We have climate change which will make a nonsense of our precious ‘native’ fauna and flora, and will see most reserves lose the species they were designated to protect. We need to start again. Whatever space left for wildlife needs protecting.

Abandon rear-guard action for individual species and tiny habitat patches. Plan for how an overcrowded off-shore island can contribute to European biodiversity, and embrace change. And to make this all politically acceptable, be very clear on what the ordinary Brits want from nature, educate them to understand how much they need it, and manage for wildlife alongside people.”

Steve Head

Reactive or pro-active?

“I am focused on rewilding, the wilding of place and people, so I am in optimistic company given recent attention on the topic. I marvel how these ideas about natural processes reveal potential for shifts in consciousness, particularly about how the human species relates to all the others. So my glass is not half full but over filling almost.

Nonetheless, I am dismayed and sometimes angry at the present struggles of longtime friends and colleagues working in what I think of as conventional conservation.

Times past we had worked with public bodies, NGOs, landowners and local people, exploring more integrated ways to care for nature. Now, with the exception of the NIAs, how much of that is happening?

Recently I was at a workshop with the ‘landscape scale conservationists’. I agree with them that ‘bigger better and joined’ (the Lawton report exhortation) is a good step. During the event, viewing the highly managed Somerset Levels, hearing about negotiations with recalcitrant drainage boards and hard-won micro changes in water levels, I wondered what we’d lose and gain by allowing more natural ebb 4

ECOS 36(1) 2015 and flow of the water? Would more conservationists, when tracking the changes, smile and laugh and be full of wonder again?”

Alison Parfitt

Nature in charge

“On good days I look at the wildlife in my garden, flying over my home, burrowing into my walls and fences, and I marvel at it all, and I think to myself - how can it be? On bad days, I look at the mono-culture and the concrete, and the destruction without thought or even any sense of care, and I think to myself - how can we let it be? Then I ponder and remember - we are part of nature too. It will still be there long after we’re gone.“ James Lovelock has a similar perspective on enduring nature, as reproduced below: “The concept of Gaia or of the world of nature has never appealed to towndwellers, except as entertainment. We lost contact with the Earth when our food and sustenance was no longer immediately and obviously dependent on the weather. Our fish, meat, fruit and vegetables now come from the supermarket, and only a rare flood or heavy snowstorm impedes a Tesco harvest. When the weather is cold or hot the thermostat takes care to keep our internal environment comfortable. Howling wind and lashing rain against our storm-proof windows can enhance our sense of cosy comfort and not, as they once did, bring fear of crop lost as the grain was driven into the muddy fields.

Much too slowly some begin to understand the welfare of Gaia is more important than the welfare of humankind. The science of Gaia confirms the threat to the Earth but allows us to continue the older naturalism where normally the Earth is benign but like the ancient goddesses sometimes ruthless, and only humans are sentimental. To be truly green we have to rid ourselves of the illusion that we are separate from Gaia in any way. We are as much a part of her as anything alive and we should feel tied, as in a good and loving marriage, until death us do part”. p 148 in James Lovelock (2009) The Vanishing Face of Gaia. A Final Warning Jeremy Owen

Holistic nature

“Nature is complicated to define, yet it remains a constant theme in discussions about the environment and how society should behave. At its most fundamental, nature is the atoms and molecules from which we and everything around us (living, geological, atmospheric) is constructed. At its most conceptual, nature is an idea embraced by some, ignored by others, lived by many and an important part of our species psyche. ‘Conservation’ is also a complex term: part vocation, part crusade, part crisis-driven and part ideological, and often self-righteous.

Whilst the term itself may be used by a relatively clearly-defined set of people (often those engaged in protecting natural and semi-natural habitats and species either practically or through research), there are many areas of society where ‘conservation’ as a term may be missing but which none-the-less embrace the fundamental idea 5

ECOS 36(1) 2015 behind the conservation movement of a closer, less destructive engagement with nature. For example, the interest in the power of natural, outdoors environments in helping people recovering from mental health problems, or cultivation projects with the disempowered and impoverished which give them skills and a sense of achievement, or the upsurge in interest in hobbies like allotmenteering, beekeeping and crafting which encourage resource reuse and recycling, and which offer a closer engagement with nature than is achievable in ‘normal’ life.

The challenge for the conservation sector today is to expand from the current focus on species and habitats to embrace this societal, bottom-up change, and help those working from non-environmental standpoints (e.g. medicine, crafting and making, self-sufficiency) to realise their potential as stewards of the environment, and ambassadors for a new way of living”.

Emily Adams

The rustic corporate Capital

“It’s been a strange five years. From a conservation charity’s perspective, the operational eye is ever sharper on the bottom line with a concerted attempt to maintain membership support (mostly by aiming to reduce ‘attrition’), and to widen that supporter base – which appears inevitably to involve the private sector corporates.

Whilst none of this is new, the focus is more defined, and underlying it is a feeling of potential mission creep. In London we have an economy that represents the epitome of a world gone stupid. And the danger is that charities needing to keep afloat could enter into a bizarre and worrying Blairite triangulation that somehow believes it can straddle the needs for nature and the gleaming glass’n’steel social exclusion of turbo-regeneration.

However, a counter-direction could be the growing recognition of green infrastructure and its role in ecosystem services. Ecologists working within City Hall have helped convince the Mayor’s team of the value of this as London develops with a devoted chapter in the London Infrastructure Plan 2050; and reflected in a new Green Infrastructure Taskforce. However, how much of this turns out to be greenwash and whether it will provide leg, fin and wing-room for nature is yet to be determined. My worry is that the efforts that have been spent over the past 30 years to integrate the nature that we value has meant that we’ve unintentionally diluted and refined it to such an extent that it’s become a simplistic design tool. Wild? If only.

And yet and yet... Localist urban rusticism has taken off; hives a-plenty, wildflower meadows springing up in estates and playgrounds, and edible plots bulging with peppers and squashes. Bloggers, poets, artists all making their mark, with a voice for nature on many of London’s streets and open spaces. The key thing – and yet the least remarked by the larger organisations – is that this localist expression is ignorant of strategies and the ‘proper way’ of doing things. Crowd funding, cloud mapping and tweeting on the Project Dirt ether is triggering new audiences, throwing up new ideas, and wrestling the power from the old guard. Can we be brave enough to let go…?”

Mathew Frith 6

ECOS 36(1) 2015

The true riches of nature

“Nature conservation has suffered particularly badly from the prevailing one-sided culture on the rise in our country’s decision-making over the last five years: that something is only worthwhile if it can generate money, or if it is good for business. Hence all the activity around ecosystem services, some of which I believe has been valuable to understand the hidden values of nature to society, but it’s nowhere near the whole story.

We do both nature and society a disservice if we fail to shout up for nature in its own right, and fail to demand the delivery of more nature by those who have responsibility for our land and seas. Selfishly, it’s about the quality and richness of human life. More broadly, it’s about holding and honouring beliefs that are more than just pandering to the lowest common denominators of commodities and individual convenience. It’s about inspiration, and it’s about living with heart and community. And I believe that good living must include nature at its core.

Curiously, I think the sector has remained resilient and diversified significantly over the last five years in response to austerity, despite eye-watering financial and job cuts. We still have far more membership of the conservation NGOs than all the political parties put together. But we need to find more courage and creativity within ourselves to shout up for what we believe in, to work within the current system and continue to push the boundaries. There’s little scope to become battleweary. We have to press on.”

Lisa Schneidau

Wise radicalism

“It’s time to be radical - but with an understanding of the true meaning of that word. Radical means going back to the root of things, as well as favouring change from accepted norms. The root of most conservationists’ commitment to the natural world is their own, personal experience - a passion kindled in childhood, a cerebral journey later in life, or a momentary spiritual epiphany. Those individual experiences have not been fuelled by multi-syllabic pompous descriptions of nature, nor by complex economic or geo-political arguments, however intellectually robust.

Ok, public policy may be shaped by economic arguments, but those arguments are hollow without the fire which comes from what we feel, as people.

The greatest gift any conservationist has, is the ability to pass on his or her passion to another human being - face to face, side by side. If we use that gift wisely, we will broaden, deepen and strengthen the support for conserving wild nature more effectively than any policy document, campaign strategy, legal clause or grant scheme.”

Gavin Saunders

Refreshing or rethinking conservation - where next?

The collection of views above reflects a range of starting points… Are we on a rescue mission for the official nature and the wildlife we know and love, or are we looking to build a bolder future, perhaps embracing strands of rewilding, landscape-scale visions, and a broader agenda for nature conservation? Or should we be arming ourselves to tackle all of these goals and challenges, mindful of resources?

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 And what do we mean by nature? Is it just special wildlife or the complete natural world, or all of that, combined with human endeavour and our sense of wellbeing when we engage with nature? Several comments above frame nature in this widest sense, and present a different set of questions values and hopes to an agenda focused on protecting special vulnerable wildlife. ECOS has always promoted the holistic outlook, while recognising the need for specialist strands of nature conservation to pursue their cause, care for what is deemed important, debate their concerns, and inform the whole.

ECOS and BANC return to the theme of rejuvenating conservation on all levels, in forthcoming articles and in discussion on the web site. Much attention will be devoted to how the conservation workforce stays motivated and regains confidence after recent years struggling for resources and influence. Please get in touch if you’d like to contribute... ecos@easynet.co.uk Roundhouse at Young Wood, Somerset – the venue for BANC's 2015 event...

BANC 2015 mini-conference & AGM Revitalising conservation: Redefining our relationship with nature Saturday 26 September 2015. See page 72 and BANC web site for full details.

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The expensive education of Britain’s nature conservation community There seems little unified thinking amongst UK wildlife groups, resulting in a lack of direction and shared vision. Where is the anger within the nature conservation community at the losses of species and habitats? Where is the challenge to the current approach which has delivered so little? This article suggests causes for the loss of direction along with some of the actions that are required to turn the situation around.

ALISTAIR CROWLE “Like many applied scientists I started my career believing that the principal block to effective action was lack of scientific knowledge, and that once the true facts were known the appropriate action would follow almost automatically.

Experience taught me that in most cases enough was already known to solve the problem. The difficult part was to explain the necessity for action to people with different points of reference and habits of thought, particularly when immediate self-interest made them unwilling to try to understand another point of view. By using the same words we kid ourselves into believing we mean the same thing.”

Norman Moore The bird of time.1 It is now more than 20 years since the British Government signed up to the Convention of Biological Diversity2, where two of the three main objectives were the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of its components.

The dizzy optimism of those days is long gone. How are we in Britain doing?

It is clear that we are experiencing an unprecedented decline and loss of the nature conservation (biodiversity) interest in Britain, and whilst there are examples of successes, these are few and far between. We are losing the battle to protect our flora and fauna. Several recent documents paint a sorry picture.3, 4, 5 Despite the evidence of loss and the fact that 78% of respondents to a recent survey “worry about changes to the countryside in the UK and loss of native animals and plants” people appear surprisingly indifferent to the fact that the current approach to protecting and restoring biodiversity is demonstrably not working.6 Despite recent cuts, there are probably more people employed within nature conservation than ever before, in the statutory agencies, local authorities, utilities and voluntary bodies.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 Considering these numbers, there appears to be very little consensus between nature conservation organisations, resulting in a lack of direction. Where is the courage and drive required just to stem the rise in wildlife losses? Actual restoration of that which has been lost is just a fantasy at present.

Working in nature conservation has some similarities to being a doctor. Both involve choosing to live a life of responsibility – and both have a choice as to how well to do that work.7 As conservationists, our decisions are not usually life-and-death ones for humans, but they often are for other species. Affected plants, animals and fungi cannot bring legal challenges to defend themselves and although they are a vital part of the land, they can claim few rights by dint of ownership. It falls to the nature conservation community then, to make the case for the natural world and it falls to us to decide how well we do it.

ECOS 36(1) 2015 than 100 National Nature Reserves (NNRs) with something like 2 million people visiting Welsh NNRs alone. The number of visits to National Parks increased from 66 million in 2009-10 to 78 million visits in 2012-13 and Local Nature Reserves were subject to an increase in the number of visits from 63 million in 2009 to almost 100 million in 2012-13.11 Nature conservation is big business socially, if not necessarily financially. There is a job to be done in helping those who visit these areas understand that much of what they enjoy is derived from nature conservation, rather than anything else.

The use of agri-environment schemes in the wider countryside The last 25 years has seen the development of Agri-environment Schemes, paying farmers and land managers to manage their land in ways that ‘bring

A shared understanding? Nature versus environment Many people think that nature conservation and protecting the environment are the same thing. Even within the nature conservation community this appears to be the case. Environment is important: it includes green space, water, air and carbon, all fundamental to life. Successful nature conservation is very different as it requires an understanding of the fine-scale processes taking place and the appropriate application of this understanding. Broad sweeping laws created to reduce carbon emissions may work for the environment, but make little real difference to flora and fauna. Indeed, they can actively work against nature conservation interests, such as the development of industrial scale wind turbines upon blanket peat or tidal barrages in estuaries. In these cases, it is usually (but not always) the nature conservation interest that loses out. Every-one understands the importance of clean drinking water but only a tiny number of people, by comparison, understand why open areas of grassland near to ponds are important for the newts, frogs and dragonflies using those ponds. This may be why many think of England as a green and pleasant land, despite the fact that the bulk of it is subject to industrial farming which has laid waste to the wildlife interest from the greater part of its surface area and why most of us rejoice in our grassy and heathy hills for the most part bereft of natural woodland cover, and drained and burned on an industrial scale.

The importance of environment is largely understood by the majority; that nature conservation is something different, is not. Explaining that difference successfully will be an important step in reversing wildlife declines.

The cost of nature conservation Nature conservation is often promoted as a mindset which is an obstacle to development or to economic growth. Chancellor George Osborne commissioned an inquiry into how many times environmental concerns prevented economic development.8 This inquiry largely found that there was no case to answer. Indeed for example, RSPB Reserves across the UK contributed an estimated £66m and 1,872 jobs to local communities9 - not to mention that RSPB itself employs over 2,000 staff. National Nature Reserves in England were estimated to contribute nearly 700 full-time jobs and £23m to the local rural economy.10 Wildlife Trusts manage 2,300 nature reserves across Britain, while Scotland and Wales have more 10

Grey Partridge – their ecology is well understood but reversing declines depends upon persuading more land-managers to carry out appropriate land management.

Photo: Allan Drewitt

ECOS 36(1) 2015 benefits’ to the environment. The sums involved add up to billions of pounds across Britain and yet over this period we have seen the continued loss of much of the wildlife that this funding is intended to restore. Originally these payments were made under the Environmentally Sensitive Areas Scheme, then Countryside Stewardship, then by Environmental Stewardship in England, with equivalents in Scotland and Wales. For some of this period, the statutory nature conservation bodies also had the ability to make payments to secure management agreements, almost exclusively on designated nature conservation sites. Between 2007– 2013 something in the region of £3bn was spent on agri-environment agreements in England, Wales and Scotland.12, 13, 14, 15 In England, for example, 70% of agricultural land is managed under some form of agreement. Given the length of time that agri-environment agreements have been in existence and the huge sums of money involved in securing environmentally sound management, we might reasonably expect this 70% of agricultural land at the very least, to be an effective refuge for wildlife.

Yet experts in the development of agri-environment prescriptions, still talk in terms of the ‘potential’ offered by the agri-environment approach.16 For that potential to be realized, all the appropriate options need to be taken up by those eligible in the right places and tend only to work well when additional funding or specialist support is made available. In general, the most wildlife beneficial options are not taken up by land managers in the numbers required for the options to make a significant impact. The case of the grey partridge is an example: less than 2% of farmers have taken up options which incentivise the creation of beetle banks or conservation headlands.17 If the once commonplace grey partridge is struggling, is it any wonder that we cannot prevent the decline of less familiar, less charismatic and less-easily identifiable species? This presents the fundamental problem with the agri-environment approach: the scheme that pays millions of pounds per year in competition with a subsidy system that offers billions of pounds, basically, just for being a farmer. Some people view agri-environment payments as a form of social payment – something which is allowed under EU rules, it is just that the UK chooses to use the money in this case, for payments to promote environmental benefits not social ones. If we wish farmers to live and farm in certain areas for social purposes, it would be more honest to have a public debate about this and make funding available explicitly for that.

In England alone, 943, species have been identified by the Secretary of State as nature conservation priorities.18 Of these, 635 species have been identified as requiring agri-environment or woodland grant funding as an element of their conservation. We have an explicit requirement and an agreed method of delivery, but does this really withstand scrutiny? Published reports (e.g. 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24) show that in the main agri-environment schemes have achieved little nature conservation benefit and other research has caused many to question whether agri-environment can really deliver the complex interactions that are required by many species and habitats.25, 26 In the meantime, farmland wildlife continues to decline as the abundance and range of many of the characteristic species diminishes, heading the way of so many which have been lost altogether.

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Alternatives for helping wildlife How much better off would the nature conservation interest of Britain be if the amounts of money available under agri-environment schemes (projected as being more than £3bn in the new scheme under development) across Britain, were invested in purchasing, restoring and maintaining land to expand or establish new nature reserves (that could include working landscapes) or to enable us to learn more about the fundamental ecological requirements of the very many species we know little or nothing about? Imagine if government policy had been to use some of this money to purchase blocks of farmland across Britain where the emphasis had been upon producing wildlife benefits rather than maximum yields? This may well have provided improved safeguards for the likes of cirl bunting, stone curlew and corncrake. It would have also provided greater scope for restoring declining plants and insects.

This may be considered fanciful (not least because it may require re-negotiation with the European Commission on the rules as to how this money could be spent) but one need only consider the success stories of the last 20 years to see that recovery projects with dedicated project officers tend to be those which are the most successful i.e. red kites, large blue butterfly, reed beds and bitterns. Some of the successful projects such as red kites, ospreys and sea eagles were successful due to changing attitudes rather than habitat restoration. Similar examples of unequivocal nature conservation gain realised through agri-environment expenditure are the cirl bunting, stone curlew, corncrake, greater horseshoe bat and the marsh fritillary.

These show the effectiveness of augmenting agri-environment expenditure with project officers and recovery projects paid for from other budgets to ensure that agri-environment spend was appropriately targeted and policed. Some argue in the defence of the agri-environment approach that at least the rate of decline amongst our flora and fauna has probably been slowed and the situation may be even worse in the absence of this mechanism. This is a distinct possibility, but it doesn’t say much about an approach that is supposed to reverse wildlife loss and still fails to acknowledge that the approach itself is not fulfilling its intention.

Research funding and academia In Britain we are blessed with an amateur naturalist movement with hundreds of years of history and recording effort which forms the basis of much of what we know about the wildlife of the country - in the past and now. Unfortunately, the gaps in what we know are considerable and filling them must be a priority if we are to take effective action on any basis other than educated guesswork or trial and error. The question is who should fill the gap? The increasing requirement to publish work in academic circles favours the ‘breakthrough’ and the ‘new idea’ rather than the establishment of new facts and there is a notable tendency for research councils to only make funds available for the support of new and innovative ideas.

In general, the academic community is therefore unlikely to contribute significantly to the requirement we have to understand the life histories and needs of our native species. Aside from the difficulties in obtaining funding for students, the complexity of species and habitat interactions are such that many of the required studies need to be long-term, militating against funding and execution by students conducting 13

ECOS 36(1) 2015 research for their doctorates. Academics are now being required to demonstrate the impact of their work. Might this provide the opportunity for them to choose to seek funding to allow them to better contribute to the restoration of declining or lost wildlife? Will the likes of NERC and the other big funding institutes take this on board or are they too obsessed with being new and novel?

The professional conservation environment Not that long ago, if you admitted you worked in nature conservation you got a surprised look and the acknowledgement that you were clearly not in that job (if indeed they viewed it as a job) for the money. Somewhere along the line, as general awareness of the “environment” increased, nature conservation became respectable. As the sector grew, so the notion of an individual actually having a career became a possibility and then a reality. This in turn led to the importation of management ‘skills’ and production line processes along with, perhaps inevitably, the emergence of what I term as the Power-Point Conservationist. These people are self-styled ‘enablers’ and ‘managers’ – and usually have little technical or operational knowledge or experience or even interest - yet they can end up in positions of great influence. There is however, in my experience, a sizeable sub-section of this group who do have a background in the subject but have got to a position where they are comfortable and appear reluctant to provide the challenge to alter the status quo.

This lack of leadership and understanding is corrosive and undermines our ability to develop actions to protect and restore our wildlife.

Everyone’s a winner Historically, much nature conservation activity has focused upon conflict – the fight for legislation worth the name, the fight to make sure that the legislation was followed and enforced and the fight to make people aware of the value of the natural environment.

Most but not all of these battles, have taken place since the establishment of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949.e.g. 27 It seems that people have largely forgotten these early struggles and how important they were in shaping many of the organisations found in nature conservation today. We are now entering an era where a return to the campaigning spirit of earlier times is required.

Targets – the good, the bad and the unintended consequences We live in a world dominated by targets and they can be useful. The SSSI Public Service Agreement Targets forced a whole range of organisations across Britain to start addressing some fairly basic issues that up until then, had been ignored.

Problems arise when the target deadline approaches. Invariably, new interpretations are introduced to ensure that the targets are thought of as having being met.

But who checks that what has been reported is actually accurate and reflects the situation at the site level? The statutory agencies took different approaches to the reporting of the condition of SSSIs but who provided the quality assurance? In England, for example, I have yet to meet anyone who really believes the target of 95% of SSSIs by area to be in favourable or recovering condition by 2010 was really met, but how are we to know? The only people with the necessary scientific and land management skills to be able to probe what has been presented are the voluntary nature conservation organisations but they remain silent.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 Many would ask “why revisit these old targets? It is all history” but these earlier targets are used as the basis for the next round of targets across Britain, in this case for example, the Biodiversity 2020 targets.28 If the condition of habitats and species is actually different from that reported in 2010, what does this mean for the likelihood of reaching the 2020 objectives? In addition to questionable baselines, many of the targets repeat the mantras of the past that have clearly not delivered, such as maximising the area under agri-environment schemes. There is also an emphasis upon sustainable development and human health – important subjects and critical to society but should they be so prominent in documents that are about nature conservation? The few hard targets amongst the plethora of activities based on raising awareness by 2020 seem hopelessly ambitious in the light of evidence on the state of the wildlife in Britain. Do we really have to wait five years before there is acknowledgement that the targets were wildly unrealistic given the approach and resources allocated to achieving them?

Winning hearts and minds It appears that nature conservation is no longer the central driver for the statutory nature conservation agencies. Their funding is increasingly being cut and they are subject to ever more political control and objectives that are in conflict with each other. Who then should be taking responsibility for championing the cause of nature conservation? For the time being at least, the voluntary sector is where the hope for our flora and fauna lies, but these groups have become too reliant on state funding with many also being badly exposed when funding was cut following the recent global financial recession. In addition to the financial reliance, the voluntary sector has seemingly become too soft, apparently unwilling to challenge government and the agencies providing funding, or speaking out on matters which might cost them existing supporters.

To be fair, the voluntary bodies do periodically get together to produce a review that re-confirms that wildlife is largely in free fall. But this unity is all too short-lived. The only way to change government thinking is by galvanizing people, yet the voluntary sector is failing to do this. Its combined membership in the low millions is small compared to the number of people that surveys tell us are interested in wildlife and the environment. New and innovative ways need to be developed to engage this apparently interested and willing audience. The public response to the proposed selloff of the nation’s forestry land reaffirmed that people out there do care, although it may be that they care about the loss of dog-walking facilities rather than loss of access to wildlife: much more effort needs to be spent in engaging with the variety of people who use these sites. Perhaps the secret is not to try and recruit members but to persuade people to play a role in lobbying government for change. The use of social media in forcing changes in how supermarkets operate in relation to the sale of fish may provide clues as to how to tap into and utilize the wider public.

The military know that no amount of smart-weaponry will replace size 12 boots in establishing dominance over a piece of ground and the nature conservation sector must re-learn that no amount of rhetoric about partnership, balance or outcomes will replace the protection and security provided by ownership of land. One way to 15

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Where do we go from here?

We need to start planning now to create a scheme that will deliver measurable and significant nature conservation gain and for this to happen, there needs to be a fundamental rethink of what the model for land management should be. Regardless of Britain’s future in or out of Europe, it is clear that from a nature conservation perspective, the existing Plan A consists of hoping EU legislation will be enough to protect internationally important sites and that agri-environment will deliver wildlife recovery. There is more than a strong argument to say that both are failing so what is Plan B? If for example, the UK were to come out of Europe, it seems unlikely that demarcating a wildlife area as a Site of Special Scientific Interest will be enough to provide adequate protection. Where would the large-scale funding come from?

The Heritage Lottery Fund is now starting to look at funding of nature conservation projects but make no mistake, it will only be interested in bespoke proposals. In a world of weakened site protection and reduced funding (which may equally be the future within the EU as well) what should the strategy be for protecting and restoring the nature conservation interest of the nation?

• People are starting to recognise the importance of expressing the value of the environment and wildlife in economic and non-economic terms and the real cost of destroying it.30 But in the meantime we need to do the following: • Harness people power to slow this loss and buy time for the development of a new approach; • Connect with people of all ages and backgrounds, not in the future but now; • Promote skills such as advocacy which seem to have largely fallen by the wayside and allow people to be passionate without fear of being mocked;

Large Blue Butterfly – an example of where successful restoration has been achieved through the use of project officers and targeted work.

Photo: Tim Melling

gain influence is to increase the sizes of existing reserves and to consider purchasing land strategically either to increase connectivity or to trade at a later date.

It would be easy to denigrate the outgoing coalition government’s record in relation to the environment but the lesson is that we cannot afford to put our trust in politicians of any party.29 Regardless of which government is in office, it should be anticipated that in future, the pressure to promote economic growth of some sort will trump the needs of the environment and that when a developer wins, it is for-ever but when the conservation argument wins, it is only until the next development comes along. The nature conservation sector needs to develop and implement a strategy for dealing with this rather than rely on weak environmental impact assessments and the vague use of sustainable development commitments by the business and construction sector.

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• Develop a social environment that encourages constructive challenge to colleagues, decision-takers and politicians without fear of rebuke.

Could this really happen? I believe so. Whilst humans are clearly the most destructive organisms on the planet, we do have the capacity to appreciate a situation and make radical changes to our behaviour. Most obvious are pesticides, acid rain and the ozone layer. These examples are largely environmental ones where broadactions can have significant positive outcomes. Nature conservation is inherently more complex where solutions may need to be intricate and certainly bespoke.

Leadership questions To my mind, whether we restore our lost wildlife or not, is largely in the hands of the voluntary sector. It may appear unfair to be pushing the responsibility in this way but voluntary bodies are the only ones with the technical expertise and the flexibility to provide the required leadership. They are the only ones that collectively have enough weight to provide challenge to the government of the day and who can provide a robust framework for the development of informed thinking. To do this successfully, they will need to examine themselves critically, to ensure they have 17

ECOS 36(1) 2015 the right people of the right quality providing the drive and clarity of vision that is required. They will also have to harness a public that is jaundiced about messages on loss of wildlife but who are still, for the present, interested.

To make any progress will at the very least require addressing the comment by Norman Moore at the start of this article. It is time to drop the flowery rhetoric of recent decades and start putting more effort into ensuring we do mean the same thing and this shared language must also be understood by the public as well.31 The challenge is immense. There will be plenty who read this article who are paid to address this challenge, and they need to take the rest of us with them. We could do worse than to return to Atul Gawande, who, whilst writing about the medical world, offers us lessons that apply equally to all walks of life: “Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try”.7

Acknowledgements

A variety of people provided challenge and discussion during the drawing up of this paper including: John Bratton, Andy Brown, Louise Crowle, Allan Drewitt, Ian Carter, Dave Glaves, Phil Grice, Chris Rollie and Dave Stone. I am grateful to all, both named and unnamed for their interest and time and to the photographers for the use of their photos. The late David Halberstam would no doubt be intrigued at just how far his influence has reached.

References and notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

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Moore, N.W. (1987) The bird of time, The science and politics of nature conservation. Cambridge University Press. http://www.cbd.int/convention/ Accessed 21/1/2015 Defra (2014) Wild bird populations in the UK, 1970 to 2013.

Fox, R., Parsons, M.S., Chapman, J.W., Woiwod, I.P., Warren, M.S. & Brooks, D.R. (2013) The State of Britains Larger Moths 2013. Butterfly Conservation and Rothamsted Research, Wareham, Dorset, UK. Natural England (2010) England’s lost and threatened species. Natural England.

Defra (2011) Attitudes and knowledge relating to biodiversity and the natural environment, 2007 – 2011. From the survey of public attitudes and behaviour towards the environment. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov. uk/20130123162956/http:/www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/environment/public-attitude/ accessed 30/11/14.

Gawande, A (2007) Better. A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance. Profile Books.

HM Government. 2012. Report of the Habitats and Wild Birds Directives Implementation Review.

RSPB (2012) Natural Foundations: conservation and local employment in the UK. RSPB, Sandy.

Natural England (2013) The economic impact of Natural England’s National Nature Reserves.

Natural England (2013) Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment: The national survey on people and the natural environment. Annual Report 2012-2103. NECR122.

Defra (2014) http://archive.defra.gov.uk/rural/rdpe/secta.htm RDPE Budget 2007-2013 accessed 11 May 2014.

Natural England (2013) Submission to Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmenvfru/745/745we05.htm ADAS and Agra CEAS Consulting (2010) Mid Term Evaluation of the Wales Rural Development Plan 2007 – 13, final report to Welsh Assembly Government, ADAS, Wolverhampton, UK. Scottish Government: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/farmingrural/SRDP/RuralPriorities/ RuralPrioritiesStats Accessed 26/04/2014 Wilson, JD, Evans, AD & Grice, P.V. (2009) Bird Conservation and Agriculture. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Ewald, J.A., Aebischer, N.J., Richardson, S.M., Grice, P.V., Cooke, A.I. (2010) The effect of agri-environment schemes on grey partridges at the farm level in England. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 138: 55-63.

ECOS 36(1) 2015 18. Natural England http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/4958719460769792 Accessed 21/1/2015 19. Ecosscope (2003) Review of agri-environment schemes – monitoring and R&D results (RMP/1596). Report to Defra.

20. Pe’er, G, Dicks, et al. EU agricultural reform fails on biodiversity. SCIENCE, 6 June 2014, Vol. 344, Issue 6188. DOI: 10.1126/science.1253425. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1253425 21. Natural England. 2014. Agri-environment schemes in England 2009 (NE194) http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/46002 22. Natural England. 2014. Monitoring the outcomes of Higher Level Stewardship: Results of a 3-year agreement monitoring programme (NECR114) http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/11462046 23. National Archives (for early ESA monitoring reports): http://collections.europarchive.org/ tna/20081027092120/http://defra.gov.uk/erdp/schemes/esas/monitoring/default.htm Accessed 26/4/2014 24. Boccaccio, L., Brunner, A. and Powell, A. (2009) Could do better. How is EU Rural Development policy delivering for biodiversity? Birdlife International.

25. Whittingham, M.J. (2007) Guest Editorial - Will agri-environment scheme deliver substanial biodiversity gain, and if not why not? Journal of Applied Ecology, 44: 1-5.

26. Smart, J., Bolton, M., Hunter, F., Quayle, H., Thomas, G. and Gregory, R.D. (2013) Managing uplands for biodiversity: Do agri-environment schemes deliver benefits for breeding lapwing Vanellus vanellus? Journal of Applied Ecology, 50: 794-804.

27. Marren, P. (2002) Nature Conservation, A Review of the Conservation of Wildlife in Britain 1950-2001. The New Naturalist. HarperCollins Publishers.

28. Biodiversity 2020 Targets https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/biodiversity-2020-a-strategy-forengland-s-wildlife-and-ecosystem-services Accessed 21/1/2015 29. Wildlife and Countryside Link ( 2013) Nature Check 2013. An analysis of the Governments natural environment commitments.

30. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity http://www.teebweb.org/ 31. Metz, D. and Weigel, L. (2009) The Language of Conservation: How to Communicate Effectively to Build Support for Conservation. Public Opinions Strategies & Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz and Associates.

Alistair Crowle is a professional ecologist with a particular interest in upland areas. Over the last twenty years he has worked for both the statutory and non-statutory nature conservation sectors.

The views expressed in this article are his own and not those of any organization with which he may be associated. alistair@crowle01.plus.com

Red kite – a project that used multiple project officers to re-establish the UK population but where changing attitudes was the key factor in its success.

Photo Tim Melling.

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A Forest Charter Pointers to the future from lessons of the past This article reviews the challenge of making progress on wildlife protection amidst governments fixated by growth at all costs. It argues that a new Forest Charter would help care for woodlands and recognise the public’s desire for closer connections with woods and forests.

FRANCES WINDER Toothless targets and tools?

Following the signing of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Rio in 1992 the UK was an early adopter of the biodiversity action planning process. Plans were created for all manner of species and habitats felt to be of conservation concern, and a complex web of governance and delivery was developed. Unfortunately, despite some high profile successes, we failed to meet our own targets or fulfil our international commitments and much of our important wildlife is still in serious decline. Many of the existing biodiversity planning processes have now been dismantled and the national biodiversity strategy has been recast, but in 2015 – half way through the international decadal biodiversity plan – little progress will have been demonstrated in England. The rest of the UK has fared no better, and the trend in breeding birds in woodland, depicted below, is one example of evidence which should give rise to concern.

ECOS 36(1) 2015 The UK is, however, justifiably proud of its history of environmental and nature protection with over 100 years of species and habitat legislation culminating in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, but there has been no real development, effectively, since then. We have a tendency to stick to the tried and trusted mechanisms which could largely be described as the “thou shalt not” school of legislation. Unfortunately this can lead to two major misapprehensions: on the one side that the act of listing a species or habitat for protection automatically confers successful wildlife outcomes; and on the other side the perception that any provision of protection is a barrier to development, even when there is little or no evidence to support this view.

Where governments have sought to be less prescriptive in environmental legislation and followed a more enabling mechanism, such as the biodiversity duty under the 2006 Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, the outcomes have been distinctly underwhelming. The biodiversity duty has been treated with disrespect, has been largely ignored, and unenforced. This has been both as a result of, and contributed to, the feeling that nature is a barrier, something that is nice to do but only when we can afford it. And so we are caught between a rock and a hard place.

Not only that. The drive to release the constraints and to lubricate the machinery of development is in conflict with the gradual starvation of the necessary resources required to monitor, advise and where necessary control that development.

Whilst the previous Coalition government’s tenure started with some very positive statements such as those within the Natural Environment White Paper there have been no real resources allocated to implement them. The situation is not helped by continuing declines in relevant expertise. Research from 2004 showed that in total only 35% of all English planning authorities employ an ecologist.1 This story is replicated by the situation within the statutory licensing authorities.

Gaining planning permission where protected species are involved is time consuming but gaining the necessary licences once permission has been granted can take even longer; how can it be anything else when there are so few staff left to assess and administer the processes?

Biodiversity - a block on business?

Where legislation has got bite it is being continuously undermined by the very people who should be defending it. The announcement in 2011’s Autumn budget statement by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer that there was going to be a review of the implementation of the Habitats Regulations in England was a bit of a shock to everyone (including Defra it seemed), though it had been building for a little time. There was a lot of talk about how these EU-originated regulations were both a burden and a ridiculous cost to British business. The terms of reference for the review referred to compliance cost, delays, and regulations being applied too rigorously. The overall message was that this piece of wildlife legislation was a major obstacle in the way of getting Britain back to growth.

Defra (2014) Biodiversity 2020: a strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services, Indicators

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In the end the results were not announced as part of the 2012 budget but were put out the following day. Why? Well it turns out that there was little or no evidence 21

ECOS 36(1) 2015 that the Habitats Regulations are causing problems! The report had a list of 28 measures for improvement, some of which were about holding more meetings to discuss things in more detail but others included making sure that we improve ecological knowledge in planning authorities so that better informed decisions can be made, providing better guidance for applicants, sharing of data and monitoring of impacts once permissions have been given so that we can learn from the process.

New narratives needed?

If you have developed a convenient mantra that if it wasn’t for those pesky EU regulations we would all be rich and happy (the pursuit of money as the answer to contentment is inextricably linked in this argument) then the lack of evidence to support your view does not mean the battle ceases. Hence the current push from the UK, now supported by the Netherlands, to have the EU Nature Directives reviewed by the EU. The point here is that we need a new discourse, for two reasons: the hierarchy of site protection leads to a separation of “nature” from the rest – even where this is a totally false understanding of species and habitat interactions - and because we have allowed the negative message to become the most commonly heard, when the science is beginning to show that we must consider ourselves to be a part of the environment if we are to maximise our gains from it.

Politics old and new So where does nature conservation find itself after the May 2015 General Election? In an alternative view on the mantra that in today’s society ’50 is the new 30’, perhaps we should look further into the past, to make 2015 the new 1215: perhaps the circumstances and solutions of exactly 800 years ago might provide a way forward!

In the years leading up to 1215, natural resources (and freedoms) were being appropriated for a singular economic purpose, perhaps not unlike today. Disaffection with the resultant divestment led firstly to the sealing of the Magna Carta by King John, but perhaps more importantly there followed in 1217 the ‘signing’ of the Forest Charter – perhaps our first piece of environmental law. At that time the word “Forest” referred to land reserved by the king for hunting. Much was wooded, but it also included open areas, including heathland and areas that were farmed.

Norman Kings had taken control of this land, removing rights of access and use from their current owners and from local people, and the 1217 Charter set out the rights of Free Men in England to enter these areas and use them, for example for grazing or collection of fuel.

Fast forward, then, back to the present, when once again our trees, woods and forests give us so much: timber and fuel, clean air and water, places to play and refresh our souls. But they are also facing unprecedented threats in the form of climate change, pests and diseases, pollution, invasive species, and inappropriate or damaging land uses. And when the previous coalition government proposed the disposal of some of the public-owned forest in 2010, over half a million people and hundreds of communities rose up and objected. It became clear how much woods 22

ECOS 36(1) 2015 and trees matter to people and that they want more say in how we can all enjoy, use and guarantee an accessible future for them.

The case for a new Forest Charter Following the public reaction in 2011, the Government asked an Independent Panel to report on the future care of England’s forests. That Panel recommended a new Charter for the Public Forest Estate, refreshed every 10 years, setting out rights and responsibilities and a plan of action, but we have seen nothing since that commitment was made. Also, its proposal was much more of a governance document for the future of the Forestry Commission than a revisit of the original rights of people drawn up in The Forest Charter.

The Woodland Trust suggests that we need something much more fundamental: a new Forest Charter that looks in a holistic way at our relationship with all woods and trees and across the whole of the UK. We need this because the meaning of the word “forest” has changed through the centuries and we now use it to refer to woods. More extensively, woodland cover in the landscape has been steadily eroded over centuries, with the UK now one of the least wooded parts of Europe, and people no longer have the same direct connection with woods and trees that they had in the past.

Yet we have not lost our love for trees or indeed our need of them. The history of our trees, woods and forests is inextricably linked with our own story, and they have shaped us as much as we have shaped them. They are the backdrop to countless legends and fairy tales, and the inspiration for some of our oldest traditions.

Ancient, venerable trees, some over one thousand years old, stud our landscape like no other country in Europe, and with ancient woodlands, they provide a direct, living connection to our most distant past, from the un-documented world well before even 1217 and the Wildwood. In short they are central to our sense of who we are, our sense of place and our sense of national identity. Using more modern analysis the Natural Capital Committee demonstrates other values:2 “Carefully planned investments in natural capital, targeted at the best locations, will deliver significant value for money and generate large economic returns. These are competitive with the returns generated by more traditional infrastructure investments…

Woodland planting of up to 250,000 additional hectares. Located near towns and cities, such areas can generate net societal benefits in excess of £500 million per annum”

Local identity, local values, local control…

The Woodland Trust feels it is time to go back to the original values of The Forest Charter and seriously assess how this could or should relate to the twenty first century. However, this is also going to need to tackle a core obstacle in previous regimes - that local people have a place in the management of important national resources; well the existing experts have not always done a great job! We need to release the reins of control from the centre. This occurs both because there is a fear that that the only knowledge which is of value is that which occurs in the 23

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 why the Charter and the local woods it represents are so important to society. It also needs the backing of opinion-formers, decision-makers, thought-leaders and where beneficial, political figures who can help secure the Charter’s success through policy change, as politically trees and woods become more demonstrably relevant to our daily lives.

Shaping the Forest Charter So what would a new charter look like? We don’t know. The commoners’ rights enshrined in the original Charter still live on in historic Forest areas such as the New Forest and Forest of Dean, which also happen to be well-wooded, containing woods dating back to medieval times. A new Charter, refreshed every 10 years, would set out rights and responsibilities and a plan of action. We need to develop a mechanism that enables this to be possible and the answers are likely to be as variable as the habitats, geography and people which make them. In the longer term there may be a need for legislation but it is more likely to be in the form of enabling legislation, perhaps to allow community ownership or conservation covenants.

Life in the forest: woodland ventures can lead to new skills, livelihoods and social skills.

centrally controlled agencies, but also a fear of not using public money in the most efficient way.

Encouragingly, there is a growing body of evidence that where the knowledge is generated within stakeholders and land managers, rather than imposed from outsiders, then it may provide a level of social legitimacy to conservation knowledge.

And maybe we should reconsider the economic models we use to assess “value”; if the money is raised locally, used locally and the democratic responsibility stays local then is “number of jobs created” really better as a means of measurement than well-being of the constituency?

Without demonstrable strong public support for our trees and woods, very little is likely to happen, though. We could start this by enabling people who already care about forests, trees and woodlands and who know about the less tangible but essential benefits they still provide for us today to reach out to others – friends, family members and people at work, college or school – and help create a moment when the nation once again focuses on what we need forests to do for us, and what we need to do for forests.

There will be a need for involvement from the Government, forestry industry and the public at large – those communities and individuals who add the local flavour of 24

The Charter could enable local communities to take over management of neglected woods – the right to access being given with the responsibility for management for future generations. The Charter could restrict changes to locally designated valued woodland without a public vote. In the same way that allotments were once an integral part of life for many people without their own gardens, perhaps land could be designated as woodland crofts to enable the planting of trees for wood production for woodland crafts; the Charter would enable residents to identify the need and have an expectation that land would be identified. Urban residents could use a new Forest Charter to identify green lungs in the city and work to create and manage networks of street trees to connect them.

In a time of ideological shift from government to governance, the idea of increasing social empowerment – perhaps even letting go – is politically scary for many. It is of no surprise, then, that idea of a Forest Charter is increasingly finding favour within local communities but resistance within government. Perhaps, though the models of community-owned or managed woodlands should be more fully embraced and bundled-up into something more universally democratised (how about, even, a Wildlife Charter?) rather than legislatively and centrally protected.

Ultimately, the job of the Charter is to act as the catalyst for a ‘social movement’, which sees woods and trees being increasingly valued for the cultural and practical benefits they bring. Imagine a UK rich in woods and trees, enjoyed and valued by everyone for everyone, and all backed by a Charter.

References 1. ALGE (2004) Measuring The Momentum - Biodiversity Services In Local Government A Baseline Study.

2. Natural Capital Committee (2015) The State of Natural Capital, Protecting and Improving Natural Capital for Prosperity and Wellbeing. Third report to the Economic Affairs Committee

Frances Winder is Conservation Policy Lead at the Woodland Trust. franceswinder@woodlandtrust.org.uk, charter@woodlandtrust.org.uk

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Community conservation at Neroche – surviving adolescence The Neroche Scheme in the Blackdown Hills AONB started life as an agency-led Lottery partnership, but its legacy has been the establishment of four distinct community groups, including one social enterprise, each pursuing different aspects of the conservation agenda in this part of the South West. The continuing evolution of these groups illustrates the complexity and dividends of trying to embed conservation into civil society, rather than tacking it on from the outside.

GAVIN SAUNDERS Growing up

I wrote a chapter for Peter Taylor’s excellent 2011 compendium of ECOS writings, Rewilding, in which I described the passage of the Neroche Scheme, a Landscape Partnership Scheme on the Somerset/Devon border, from 2006 onwards through what with hindsight I realise was its childhood and adolescence.1 Now, nearly four years after writing that piece, this is an attempt to bring it up to date. Everything that has happened at Neroche has been a communal effort, involving a diverse mix of people, but I’m purposefully writing this piece in the first person – despite the importance of working and sharing collectively, sometimes it is more honest to talk as ‘me’ rather than ‘we’.

Looking back at the Neroche Scheme at that time, the creature I described sounds like a rather gangly but sometimes over-confident youth, fresh out on the exciting journey of life, with an endearing certainty about things, which adulthood would inevitably challenge. And I described its doings from the position of a comfortably employed Forestry Commission (FC) project manager, heady with the opportunities around me. Now, for me at least, the over-confidence has certainly gone, but it has been replaced by a more realistic and level-headed sense of what communal conservation means in practice.

Neroche’s rather foreshortened youth was crammed into just seven years, made up of five years as a Lottery-funded Landscape Partnership Scheme (LPS) and a further two of FC-supported ‘legacy projects’ to extend and embed some of the LPS’s achievements.2 But in 2013 the funded period of the Neroche Scheme came to an end: the Forestry Commission, given the strictures of austerity, changed management personnel and political vicissitudes, preferred to ‘close the file’ on what it regarded as a time-limited project which no longer fitted its agenda. For my part, I was faced with the option of remaining with FC and moving to project 26

ECOS 36(1) 2015 management work elsewhere in the Commission, or leaving employment and going it alone. I chose to leave.

I had no choice really. For years I had worn on my sleeve the notion of communitybased conservation as a ‘truer’ approach to working with and for the natural world.

I knew how long it really took to build social capital, let alone invest that capital to generate real benefit for nature and people, and I cared more for the success of that work in the Neroche landscape than anywhere else I could think of. So I needed to see it through, outside of the agency that had hosted those early years.

When I had come to the Blackdown Hills in 2006, I was in fact returning to the land of my own lost youth, after an absence of 20 years. I had spent most of those two decades in the conservation profession, but when I returned I was questioning much of what I had previously done. The biodiverisity-proselytising, professionalised conservation sector felt increasingly uncomfortable to me, distanced from everyday life, occupying a quasi-scientific moral high ground. The Blackdown Hills made me confront my misgivings, and I dimly began to see the direction I needed to take, inspired by a special group of people in a special landscape.

I realised that I wanted to try and democratise and localise the practice of conservation and landscape management, and to bridge some of the gaps between nature conservation and other aspects of landscape, heritage and social concern. Much as I was benefitting from a project initiated and hosted by a government agency, I didn’t want initiatives like Neroche to go on being owned and run by remote agencies and NGOs, offered paternalistically to local people with an expectation that they would appreciate and flock to the opportunities they offered. More deeply, I realised I didn’t believe in a conservation cause expressed in numbers of declining species and utilitarian values. Instead I saw Nature as being primarily a soulful thing, the progenitor of human community, self-expression, healing and wholeness. The place I loved was a place in which people could find personal fulfilment and common interests. It could be a crucible of social justice, nurturing fairer, more truly shared lives.

From top down to bottom up The Neroche LPS comprised a suite of initiatives, some finite ones brought to a relatively straightforward conclusion within the life of the Lottery-funded programme, and others which would need, somehow, to have a life beyond that period, if they were to deliver their true potential. The most significant of these have featured in the on-going community story of the area: • Use of the public forest for Forest School, therapeutic, learning and families work – initially a part of the Neroche LPS, and then taken forward through the creation of a social enterprise, Neroche Woodlanders Ltd. • The restoration of 220 hectares of open habitat on former conifer plantations in the public forest, involving conservation grazing and vegetation management – initially led by FC as part of the Neroche LPS, then shared with a newly created charity, the Blackdown Hills Trust.

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• Provision for practical conservation volunteering in the Blackdown Hills – initiated as part of the Neroche LPS, but latterly becoming the semi-independent Neroche Conservation Volunteers.

• Conservation advice to wildlife site owners across the northern Blackdown Hills AONB – developed through an LPS legacy project, which led to the creation of a landowner-led local association, the Blackdown Hills Rough Grazing Association.

When we set out, there was little clear sense of how the legacy of the LPS might be sustained after the initial shot of Lottery cash had worked its way through the system, let alone a clear strategy for embedding that legacy within community groups. Indeed, compared with many areas of the UK, there was little infrastructure of relevant existing community groups which could seize the baton. But what began as a rather grand, well-funded, centrally managed scheme, gradually distilled out into a series of newly-founded community groups, of different shapes and sizes, with differing styles and effects, and with no puppet master behind the scenes.

I had no grand plan for how these worked out, though I had an initial vision for how they might look – and I can paint it as a virtue that these groups have evolved disparately in response to personalities and circumstances, rather than in an artificially predetermined pattern. That organic process makes the results more real, and hopefully more lasting, than an engineered approach, but it also makes for an apparently complicate, slow, sometimes inefficient process. Habitats never turn out quite as the management plan predicted, and nor do community groups.

Neroche Woodlanders The most powerful lesson for me from our early work at Neroche was that the combination of a wild setting, a people-focused approach to well-being and learning, and a collective approach to conservation management, could be a genuinely transformational recipe. But it needed stability and continuity to really fulfil its potential. Having spent the years of the LPS spreading the Forest School approach by training teachers in their own local schools, and cutting our teeth delivering ‘family bushcraft’ days for public audiences in the FC forest, by 2011 we had identified an area of about 100 acres of public forest within the wider 2500 acre Neroche estate, which offered a potential permanent setting for this type of work. Young Wood contained a mixture of ancient and recent woodland which had suffered neglect and had little public access, yet had a welcoming, wild feel, despite being only three miles from Taunton. Soon we had a little camp there, it felt inhabited, and our volunteers and practitioners began to develop an affection for the place. How, then, to make a lasting virtue of people’s attachment to Young Wood, to build capacity to do therapeutic and learning programmes there, to enhance the wildlife value of the woodland, and do all that in a financially sustainable way?

Our early work at Young Wood coincided with the debacle over the Government’s plans to sell off the public forest estate. The black and white arguments over public versus private ownership seemed to me to overlook the important issue of local community involvement in ‘their’ local public land. Much lip service was paid to ‘the community issue’ during the Forestry Panel’s deliberations and the Government 28

Volunteers and learners help build a roundhouse at Young Wood.

Photo: Gavin Saunders

Response to the Panel’s Report, but there seemed no real process for exploring the issue in practice, and no appetite for doing so. I began to float the idea internally within FC of piloting a community/public sector partnership approach, based on FC ‘hosting’ a supported but self-reliant community body on public forest land, using a social enterprise model.

Thus the idea of Neroche Woodlanders was born.3,4 The notion initially met with enthusiastic support from some senior policy staff and operational managers within FC, and a succession of them came and discussed the idea around our campfire at Young Wood. But the enthusiasm was tempered by a nervousness about setting precedents in the politically sensitive post-Panel Report period: would sub-leasing public land to a community enterprise send out the wrong messages about public sector commitment to public land, or would it show FC to be innovative and flexible about local solutions fit for their settings? My regional manager took the proposal to FC England Management Board in 2013 and gained approval in principle – fortunately, only just in time, as from then on (it seemed to me), FC’s appetite for risk and innovation began to shrink in favour of a ‘core business as usual’ attitude to its role. But as ever, the devil was to be in the detail. Two years later, we have not yet signed a lease, although we are set to do so on 1 July this year, having occupied Young Wood until now on a succession of 6 month licences. That lease will not cover the 100 acres of actual forest – FC’s view is that the 1967 Forestry Act precludes such sub-leasing. Instead, the lease will cover just the footprints of the structures 29

ECOS 36(1) 2015 we have built or intend to build to run our operation, and will be accompanied by a permit to operate across the 100 acres. We will pay for the privilege, with a belowmarket but still substantial rent, and we will be obliged to buy the standing timber we need to operate. Nevertheless this still represents, to our knowledge, the first such leasehold arrangement between FC and a community enterprise in England (there are a number of such arrangements in Scotland and Wales).

We chose the Community Benefit Society (or BenCom) structure for Woodlanders, which evolved out of the old Industrial & Provident Society legislation, now regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The BenCom structure allows us to trade, but also to access charitable funding sources. We are a non-profit enterprise, reinvesting any surplus into our work, and we have a one member, one vote structure, with an asset lock. We currently have a small board of three directors who have developed the organisation and take the day-to-day executive decisions, and we are now open for Shareholder Members to invest in the Society, and become part of its governance.

The directors take no salary from the business, but all three of us are contracted in on a freelance basis to run our grant-funded and charged-for activities.

Woodlanders’ main focus to date has been a programme called Wild Learning, developed by my fellow director Jenny Archard and funded through the Health Lottery and Adult Learning in Somerset. Wild Learning uses the John Muir Award as a structure for informal training in practical and social skills in a natural setting, and is targeted at adults and families in the most deprived estates in central Taunton, and residents in shelters run by Taunton Association for the Homeless. As our tenure becomes more secure, we intend to expand our operations into small-scale woodland management, craft making activities, public courses, team building and commissioned work. In all this work, we are supported by a committed network of volunteers and local practitioners, who alongside our beneficiaries, are forming a community of interest based in Young Wood.

ECOS 36(1) 2015

The Blackdown Hills Trust The original Neroche LPS created a Local Stakeholders Group to enable community governance as part of the partnership of funding organisations. The group was brought into being by FC, rather than initiated from the community itself, but the experience of that period for the members of the Local Stakeholders Group was a positive one, not least because the group was given real influence rather than just a shallow consultative role. As a result, as the LPS drew to a close, the group elected to formalise themselves into an independent charity, which they chose to call the Blackdown Hills Trust (BHT).5 Made up of only half a dozen trustees, all of them either retired or fully employed in their own careers, BHT did not see themselves as an active, executive group, but instead their intention was to become a vehicle for enabling continuing conservation and community projects in the Neroche area. Quite quickly they acted as applicant for a volunteering project submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund as a legacy of the Neroche LPS, but my own team continued to provide the administrative function for them in running that grant. Later they became involved with some projects run by the Blackdown Hills AONB, and they acted as host for an investment from FC to enable a number of woodland and other local projects, and they agreed to hold maintenance funds from the LPS beyond the end of FC’s contract with HLF. Longhorn cattle grazing restored open habitats in the Neroche forest.

Photo: Gavin Saunders

What, exactly, is the benefit to nature conservation from all this? I remember one prominent conservation commentator at the time of the forest sell-off row, expressing the view that it did not matter who owned or managed the public forest, so long as wildlife conservation had proper prominence. I didn’t agree with him then, and I don’t now. Ownership (in the widest sense) and involvement are central to effective conservation.

‘Social enterprise’ has become a fashionable phrase of late, but it isn’t easy. Just calling yourself a social enterprise doesn’t get you any favours, and the word ‘enterprise’ has to carry as much weight as ‘social’ if you are to succeed. However, over-emphasise the enterprise element and you risk losing core supporters, who suspect you of becoming profit-driven. Meanwhile, doing public good on public land won’t necessarily cut much ice with agencies charged with managing that public land, especially if the word ‘community’ is involved – for many senior managers, community involvement spells messiness and confusion, dodgy health and safety, and taking far too long to achieve anything at all.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 The formation of the BHT coincided with FC looking for longer-term solutions for the grazing management of open habitats in the Neroche public forest. 220 hectares of such new habitat had been created by felling conifer plantation on former open land, much of it SSSI, between 2006 and 2010, and these were being grazed by a herd of Longhorn cattle acquired as part of the LPS, and managed by a local grazier.

In 2012 the opportunity was created for these areas to be entered into Higher Level Stewardship, to finance this conservation grazing for a further decade. This required a third party to take a tenancy on the land and receive the HLS payments (because FC could not), and the BHT was prevailed upon to take on this role. They entered into a 10-year HLS agreement in 2012, by taking a tenancy on the land from FC, while the Commission in turn leased the cattle directly to the graziers.

Complicated - yes, and created out of expediency as much as principled community empowerment - perhaps. But this had the makings of truly embedded, instrumental community conservation. Yet the last couple of years have been hard work. Although several of the BHT’s trustees are farmers with plenty of knowledge of the mechanics of grazing management, they do not have the time or wherewithal to run the HLS process themselves, and I have remained involved as their facilitator. Meanwhile FC’s own attitude to the open habitat management they themselves initiated has shifted, as staffing has changed and conservation grazing has become distanced from the current staff’s view of the Commission’s priorities. So the tough challenge which BHT had taken on was marred for them by a sense, rightly or wrongly, that they had been landed with something FC no longer wanted to carry. As my own employment with FC came to an end, I helped BHT negotiate three more years of modest funding support to allow it to carry on delivering its commitments, and I arranged for Neroche Woodlanders to take on a contract from BHT to provide on-going facilitation of the grazing management on its behalf. As I write, BHT is negotiating with FC to take ownership of the Longhorn cattle herd in order to use the capital value of the herd to generate longer term revenues. Meanwhile Natural England have been supportively flexible in helping BHT explore options for mechanical management of scrub in the forest grazing units, which continues to grow rampantly as the new habitats gradually settle into their newly open state.

ECOS 36(1) 2015 jurisdiction over task planning and management, most members were content to continue ‘turning up’ to tasks rather than taking responsibility for organising them too. As a result some members became more closely involved, but all wished to continue to be supported by an umbrella organisation, just as the Neroche Scheme had previously provided. In due course Neroche Woodlanders took on the role of coordinating volunteer action on behalf of the NCV, and recently we have returned to the Lottery for some modest new funding to run a skills-sharing programme amongst the volunteers called A Sharing Season, designed to build capacity within the group, forge stronger links between members, and allow new leaders to emerge.

The Blackdown Hills Rough Grazing Association A legacy project evolved in 2012/13 out of the main Neroche LPS, called Beef & Butterflies. It offered advice to local owners and managers of species-rich marginal wetland and heath across the Blackdown Hills AONB, to promote good management and also to encourage connections between owners. The deliberate emphasis of the project was on forging those connections, rather than on habitat management outcomes per se. Those connections were, it seemed to me, the most serious missing component in pursuing wildlife site conservation across the AONB landscape. Landowners received advice from outside bodies, but learned to appreciate their habitats - or not - in relative isolation from their neighbours across the next valley who were going through the same experiences. Meanwhile incoming smallholders had enthusiasm for wildlife but little practical knowledge of Landowners visiting herb-rich pasture of a member of the Rough Grazing Association Photo: Gavin Saunders

The Neroche Conservation Volunteers The Neroche LPS began running practical conservation tasks in 2007, inviting local people to volunteer on midweek sessions in the forest and on local nature reserves.

At first the response was slow but by the second year a band of regulars was beginning to form. The group soon established real momentum, propelled not just by the enjoyment of the working sites and tasks, but by the good humour and ‘crack’ amongst members. There was a pool of over fifty regular volunteers, with each task attracting 12 or 15. Most were early-retirees, self-employed people, shift workers and a few students and unemployed.6 As the LPS drew to a close we secured follow-up HLF grant support to further develop the group, and over time the question arose whether and to what extent the group should become self-organising. We duly facilitated a process of discussing the options, but the conclusion was that while some members wanted more direct 32

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 farming, while long standing farming families had the knowledge but often lacked much apparent interest in what they had.

I convinced an initially sceptical steering group that we should work to establish a community body to bring together and represent the owners and managers of rough grassland, heathland and wetland sites. Through Beef & Butterflies we appointed two advisors, one to make overtures to landowners and gauge their interest in the idea of an association, and one to follow up with conservation management advice. It was a slow process, but late in 2013 a group of owners came together and formed the Blackdown Hills Rough Grazing Association (BHRGA), as a landownerled incorporated association.7 Not a conservation body as such, but a way for local people to regain a sense of ownership of the issues, values and opportunities around this special feature of their landscape.

The BHRGA has subsequently run a number of farm-hosted open days and evening talks, but momentum is still sluggish and the committee hasn’t yet found the ‘hunger’ to really drive the organisation forward. I remain on the committee, but at arms length, and I console myself that similar local groups like the Blackdown Hills & East Devon Woodland Association took several years to really become established.

The seeds are sown, and I can only hope that they grow strong in time.

The common and the rare This excursion into the evolution of community conservation at Neroche focuses on the mechanics, but what about the response of those who take part? Some of that response is hard to gauge, but for individual volunteers and beneficiaries the signs are positive. For volunteers, the proof of the pudding has been in the repeated, frequent participation by a wide range of people. They get something from taking part, and they keep coming back. The natural settings, the healthy exercise and the good company are important ingredients, but so are the terms of engagement. One of the volunteers said of the coordinator employed to run the Neroche volunteering programme: “We won’t let [her] down, she has involved us, we can ask questions, she’s brought us together and brought out the best – it’s not about being professional but being one of us”.8

ECOS 36(1) 2015 For me, the notion of ‘21st Century Commons’ remains a powerful driving force: public land managed for public benefit, directly by the people who live and work in and around that land. Similarly, locally-run, independent groups within civil society which empower owners and managers of wildlife-rich land to take the initiative for local conservation, rather than being passively spoon-fed by outside bodies, seem to me a healthier, albeit often difficult, route for conservation to follow. Through these initiatives, I believe, lies a true connecting thread between social, economic and environmental health, building natural and social capital, and encouraging a fairer society nourished by its links to the land.

The circumstances and ingredients at Neroche are unique, just as they are anywhere, and finding pattern to apply elsewhere and ‘lessons’ for other places is always elusive. Part of the reason for that is that descriptions like these don’t mention the less tangible, more personal ingredients that make things work in particular ways at particular times. The extra ingredient in my case, at Neroche, was that in the early stages of forming my ideas about community conservation I met someone whose perspective challenged and broadened my own. That person was Jenny Archard.

Jenny had a background in community facilitation and Forest School, and a deep connection with the land, and the effect her perspectives had on my own journey was profound. We founded Neroche Woodlanders together, and she has become my work and life partner. Let’s never forget that conservation is a human story.

References 1.

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Peter Taylor (Ed) (2011) Rewilding BANC/Ethos Forest Research’s 2011 evaluation of the Neroche LPS: http://www.forestry.gov.uk/fr/INFD-8H8DFS Neroche Woodlanders social enterprise: http://www.youngwood.org.uk Case study of Woodlanders in 2013 by Mark Walton at Shared Assets: http://www.sharedassets.org.uk/ inspiration/case-study-neroche-woodlanders/ The Blackdown Hills Trust: http://www.theblackdownhillstrust.org.uk The Neroche Conservation Volunteers: http://www.ncvolunteers.org The Blackdown Hills Rough Grazing Association: http://www.blackdownsroughgrazers.co.uk Jenny Archard (2011) ‘Leading communities into their woods’ ECOS 32(3/4)

Gavin Saunders is co-director of Neroche Woodlanders www.youngwood.org.uk and a freelance consultant. gavinsaunders@btinternet.com.

For beneficiaries of Neroche Woodlanders’ Wild Learning programme, the impact can be profound. A recent homeless ex-services man who spent several months coming to regular sessions at Young Wood in the depths of his personal depressive illness, has since moved into his own flat, and become engaged, and when interviewed by the Homeless Association about his experience, highlighted those weeks in the woods, walking, whittling and sharing food round the fire, as having been the turning point for him, when he began to see a future for himself. Another more recent 18 year old, who was thrown out of his adopted parents’ home onto the streets and came under the influence of the insidious rise of ‘legal highs’, began coming to sessions at Young Wood, sometimes with a glazed expression, often shivering from withdrawal symptoms, usually distant and sarcastic, but he kept on turning up. He has now started actually eating the stews we cook for everyone, has been ‘clean’ for a month, and has an interview with Sainsbury’s this week.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015

Wildlife and conservation in community woods: Business as usual?

Our examination of the second question about the business models being applied by social and community enterprises revealed a typology that moved our analysis forward. Understanding more about business models involved investigating enterprise objectives, woodland management objectives, the mix of products and services produced, and how these linked to social and ecological outputs and impacts. We identified five different business models.6 Of these, three were very much place-based and linked to specific woodland sites that social and community enterprises owned, leased or contributed to the management of. They were:

Social and community enterprise projects in woodland management are on the rise in Britain. In this article scientists from Forest Research reflect upon the conservation and wildlife impacts of such ventures, looking at a range of business models.

• Subsistence Trading: Community woodland groups raising funds, usually small in size, to cover the cost of conservation, habitat restoration or recreation focused activities on woodland that is often owned by third parties (e.g. local authorities, charities, Forestry Commission).

ALEXANDER VAN DER JAGT, BIANCA AMBROSE-OJI & ANNA LAWRENCE Over the last decade there has been a substantial growth in the numbers of community groups and social enterprises involved in woodland management.1, 2 For example, it has been estimated that the number of Scottish community woodlands increased from 122 to 204 since 2007.3 A survey of the number of woodland-based social enterprises in England found that there were at least 60, of which 68% had been established since 2010.4 As the numbers of groups and organisations in this arena has increased, so too has policy and research interest. Some of the fundamental questions being addressed are: • What is a social enterprise and are social enterprises and community-based initiatives one and the same thing?

• Community Woodland Trading: Community woodland groups and enterprises trading woodland-based products (e.g. timber, firewood, charcoal) or services (e.g. education) through the open market or through competitive tender. For the most part, this is done from woodland owned or leased by the enterprises.

• Collaboration with Business: Woodland-owning or leasing social/community enterprises which gain an income through partnership working with local businesses or investors.

The remaining two business models were: i.Contracted Services (e.g. forestry contracting or management planning consultancy) including enterprises generating an income by activities on third party woodland, and ii.Forestry Enterprises or valuechain propositions (e.g. sawmilling businesses, firewood processing businesses), which are difficult to attribute to specific woodland sites.

• What kinds of business models do social and community enterprises operate?

Social and community enterprises and conservation: Are they complementary?

• What are the outputs and impacts, including the impacts on woodland wildlife and conservation, brought about by social and community enterprises?

The first three models would be expected to have the most direct impact on woodland management and condition, so are probably most instructive in terms of understanding the impact of social and community enterprises on conservation. The remainder of this article uses our case study research to look at the links between enterprise and woodland wildlife in greater detail. Some of our more recent case studies in Scotland provide innovative examples, including forests up to 671 ha in size, commercial plantations of species such as Sitka spruce, as well as stands of native broadleaves. These characteristics of social enterprise and community forestry in Scotland have in part been brought about by land tenure reform supported by public forestry programmes that have linked land management with livelihoods through community empowerment and socio-economic regeneration.2

Here we reflect on a new body of evidence built up from nearly 40 case studies using a standardised structure, which helps us to compare very diverse groups.5

Different models of social and community enterprise Our recent paper6 examining the above three questions gave a detailed analysis of the history, activities, financial records and benefits produced by a number of social and community forest enterprises across England, Scotland and Wales.

Answering the first question, we emphasised the confusion surrounding definitions of what social enterprises are, beyond businesses generating income invested to produce social and environmental benefits. When we took into account the role of communities within woodland social enterprises, a range of different definitions emerged (e.g. community benefit enterprises), that varied according to levels of asset ownership and community involvement in governance and benefit sharing.

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Although many community woodland groups include conservation in their objectives, most evaluations focus on more easily counted outputs such as numbers of trees planted or volunteer days contributed, rather than measuring the outcomes that follow from these activities.1 Drawing on new evidence from the case studies, we 37

ECOS 36(1) 2015 make a distinction between activities that provide direct and indirect conservation benefits. Direct benefits are brought about by actions carried out with the intention of protecting or promoting habitat quality. In contrast, if activities such as environmental educationa, generating renewable energy on woodland sites, and involving people in wildlife monitoring have conservation benefits, these are considered to be indirect.

Subsistence trading: Voluntary action for wildlife conservation The subsistence group trading model makes up the majority of our case study sample throughout Great Britain. The objectives and actions of groups applying this model are less about active woodland management for profit, and more about helping to conserve woodland from development, habitat regeneration, and providing better access.

Income generation for these groups is pursued through fundraising activities, which are used to cover group costs such as insurance. External funding is sought to carry out projects such as creating paths, digging ponds, setting up nesting boxes, re-establishing coppice, purchasing trees and equipment, educational activities and constructing visitor facilities. Activities tend to be relatively low scale and woodland-oriented.

Enterprises following this kind of subsistence model only very rarely use external contractors or have paid members of staff; work is carried out by volunteers from the local area. Whilst many groups, particularly those in England, contribute to conservation management on land owned by a third party, others, including many of our Scottish examples, operate to this model on their own land. Some of the community enterprises in this category become less active as the objective to ‘save and secure’ the woodland they love has been realised, habitat quality is improved, or the need to continue intensive volunteering diminishes. There are some cases where these kinds of community groups feel minimal intervention rather than active management is the best conservation approach.

ECOS 36(1) 2015 This is funded through tree gifting by schools and local people, and by donations.

The group does not engage in trading goods nor has it applied for any external funding since the grants for woodland purchase and tree planting were obtained. Since that time, woodland management is funded by donations in return for attending courses and events, and through membership subscriptions.

In addition, the group receives occasional pledges and donations from other charities in return for organizing events.

One of the ponds dug by SWCWT as part of their wetland development activities.

Many of the group’s actions are directly aimed at improving wildlife and conservation, as summarised below.

SWCWT involvement has ended livestock grazing on the woodland site to encourage natural regeneration. In addition, about 2,000 native trees have been planted.

SWCWT has also developed a wetland area with a few ponds. These measures have resulted in wide scale natural regeneration of trees, shrubs and wildflowers.

In addition, the woodland is home to a broad range of fauna including damselflies and dragonflies, butterflies, moths, beetles, amphibians and birds.

Case study: South West Community Woodland Trust (SWCWT) SWCWT is a Scottish grassroots woodland group that owns and manages a 12 ha site with young native woodland trees (mostly planted). At present it is run without support from grant funding or timber product trading. Taliesin woodland is located close to the small village of Gelston, not far from Castle Douglas (Dumfries & Galloway), and has been owned by the community since 2008. In addition to overseeing their own woodland, the group also partners with Forest Enterprise in managing the adjoining Potterland Hill forest in public ownership.

SWCWT is partnering with FCS in the management of the FCS-owned predominantly broadleaf woodland at Potterland Hill, which has been classified as a Plantation on Ancient Woodland Site (PAWS). The site is now managed for wildlife through felling non-native trees, replanting with a variety of native trees, protecting trees with high habitat value, restoring the hazel coppice, encouraging a shrub layer, leaving deadwood piles, encouraging structural diversity and installing nest boxes. SWCWT aims to use wood from the re-established hazel coppice rotation at Potterland Hill for some of the crafting activities organized at Taliesin.

The key aim of the group is to educate children and adults to respect, understand and enjoy the countryside and their natural heritage. This is done through providing woodland-based courses (e.g. wood carving, foraging, shelter building, rug making, grafting, coppicing, dry stone dyke maintenance, basket making, Bushcraft) and events, all in the spirit of living at one with the natural environment.

In addition, SWCWT has paid for the training of Forest School teachers to educate at local schools. The group also aspires to restore native woodland and improve its wildlife value. One of the group members is engaged in a spin-off initiative managed by SWCWT – The Orchard and Wild Harvest Project – aimed at planting fruit and nut trees with community groups and schools throughout the region.

The group also promotes conservation indirectly:

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• SWCWT engages and educates the community about the natural environment through a wide variety of events and workshops.

• SWCWT covered the training of Forest School teachers educating local school children about the natural environment.

• Fruit and nut trees planted as part of the Orchard and Wild Harvest Project provide local food and pollinator habitat, and reduce the carbon footprint.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015

Community woodland trading: A diversity of products, services and conservation outcomes Enterprises fitting within this category all have a strong focus on trading and the re-investment of profits into the enterprise and socio-economic regeneration of the community. Nearly all our examples of this business model involve community groups which own woodland. In many of the Welsh and English examples, conservation has been the starting point. As groups have developed, trading has become a more prominent part of the business model. In contrast, most of the Scottish examples in this category, of which North West Mull Community Woodland Company (NWMCWC) is the most experienced, have seen product trading as a crucial component of their business model from the outset. In several of these cases, some of the conservation promoting activities (e.g. planting native woodland trees) will be carried out as a result of timber harvesting and the opportunities this provides for groups to restructure their forests.

In some of the more urban community woodland trading case studies, operating in often very small woodlands, human pressure on woodland was apparent. For some of the enterprises trading services, such as Forest School, or educational activities, the pressure of significantly more forest users was recognised as being a potential conservation challenge.

Case study: Kilfinan Community Forest Company (KCFC) KCFC is a large (127ha), mostly commercially productive, conifer plantation that was acquired by a remote community in Argyll, Scotland, in 2010. Community acquisition of the forest strives to revitalize the community by supporting tourism, housing needs, local employment and skills development. Promoting wildlife and conservation is viewed as integral to the attractiveness of the place for visitors and therefore given high priority.

The community enterprise generates part of its income from the sale of standing timber, firewood and timber milled at the communityowned sawmill. These products are sold mainly to local farmers.

Additional income is gained through a composting facility that is run on behalf of the local authority and a retail building selling local produce and wood-related hardware. In the future, KCFC intends to become A polytunnel for local food growing created as part of the allotment project by KCFC self-sustaining (independent of grant support), and is currently investing to expand its trading opportunities, for example: selling land for (affordable, timber-framed) housing plots, leasing forest crofts, installing a micro hydro scheme, purchasing additional woodland stands, creating a woodland burial site, developing a training centre and providing bunkhouse accommodation.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 Three out of seven objectives in KCFCs forest management plan can either be directly or indirectly linked to conservation. The activities of the group likely to bring environmental benefits are: • Undertaking wildlife surveys for monitoring and educational purposes.

• Clearing invasive Rhododendron ponticum and replanting some of the former commercial forest compartments with native species.

• Reducing the carbon footprint by providing timber and retail products locally and providing sustainable energy through a micro hydro scheme.

• Providing allotments with a cabin, composting toilet and polytunnel for local food growing, which are leased out, at a peppercorn rent, to a local group.

• Supporting pro-environmental attitudes through educating young people about the forest, its wildlife and sustainable management as well as facilitating safe, local access to the forest through path creation and improvement.

Collaboration with business: Balancing enterprise profit with conservation objectives Social and community enterprises sometimes rely on collaborations with businesses in order to generate a profit or to raise funds through lease agreements. For example, NWMCWC partners with a forestry contractor to achieve the harvesting of 120,000 tonnes of timber and this business partner also prepared a forest management plan.

For enterprises in this category, conservation outcomes are likely to be influenced by the level of control the community group exerts on operations by the contracted business. In our example below, Colintraive and Glendaruel Development Trust (CGDT) is looking for commercial outcomes with the help of a contractor, but balances this with their own interest in conservation and sustainable land management.

Case study: Colintraive and Glendaruel Development Trust CGDT is a community development trust owning a large (615 ha) commercial forest in Argyll, Scotland. It was acquired in 2013 to facilitate community regeneration. The main aim of the group’s enterprise is to generate income and activity that can halt the socio-economic decline of the community. At present, the community faces an increasingly aging population and decreasing availability of local employment and public services. The enterprise hopes to maintain and improve local amenities such as the hotel, make the open spaces more accessible and develop the recreational infrastructure, all of which could provide opportunities for skills development amongst local people.

Approximately 110 ha of the forest with the highest conservation, amenity, and recreation value is retained under CGDT management. This area mainly comprises broadleaf stands and open spaces. The remaining 510 ha of the most commercially viable Stronafian Forest land was leased out to a third party forestry business paying £1.3m upfront for a 99-year lease.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015

The income acquired through the collaboration with business has funded forest purchase. In addition, working capital was secured which, together with grant funding, helped CGDT to: cover staff cost, deliver non-forestry community regeneration projects, prepare a Stronafian Forest Business Plan. Some control of the business operation has been extended through a requirement in the lease agreement to apply sustainable management of the forest to Woodland Assurance Scheme (UKWAS) standards. In this way CGDT has found an income source that can help the community to realise a variety of planned interventions in an area of woodland they are able to manage themselves, as well as ensure more sustainable practice by business in the more commercial forest.

carbon emissions associated with harvesting activities, and market leakage as a result of forestry operators reacting to community forestry by simply moving their unsustainable practices elsewhere. However, such criticism is likely to overlook some of the indirect and non-quantifiable benefits community forestry provides for conservation and wildlife. Our case studies included many examples of activities with indirect benefits such as: providing environmental education, stimulating the use of local, sustainable forest products, promoting sustainable living and improving access. In some cases, these types of activity might have some of the most lasting impacts on sustainable practice through changing the perceptions, attitudes and livelihoods of people.

CGCT actions are likely to benefit conservation and wildlife directly and indirectly: • Sustainable management of own and leased forest to UKWAS standard • Restructuring of the community-owned forest, management of watercourses and installing bird and bat boxes to promote a variety of species.

• Reducing the community’s carbon footprint by setting up a wood fuel business supplying local firewood, and installing a wind turbine within the forest.

• Carrying out a number of environmental surveys (mammal, bat and bird).

• Engaging in a variety of projects aimed at improving the sustainability of the community. Activities include: improving energy efficiency of buildings, establishing a food growing group and providing polytunnels, creating of community composting facilities and training on how to use invasive Rhodondendron ponticum as wood fuel through air-drying.

Social and community forestry enterprises: Pioneering new approaches to conservation and sustainability?

In this article, we relied on our typology of business models of social and community enterprises6 to study the extent to which conservation-friendly practices feature in community woodland groups with different types of business ethos. Although the degree of conservation focus, and therefore the level of direct investment of time and resources into pursuing conservation objectives, varied between enterprises, we did not find any clear indications that a greater degree of woodland trading or Clearing of Rhododendron Ponticum by CGDT more business-minded approach led to fewer conservation outcomes. All of the social and community woodland enterprises that we studied put sustainable working practices at the core of their operations.

In all, we believe that considering the outcomes of community woodland groups beyond easy to quantify outputs can improve our understanding of their social, economic and environmental outcomes. It has only been by taking such an anti-reductionist approach that we have been able to illustrate that economic activity in community forestry, even in large trading enterprises, is placed on a sustainable footing.

References 1. Lawrence, A. and Ambrose-Oji, B. (2014) Beauty, friends, power, money: navigating the impacts of community woodlands. Geographical Journal, 1-12.

2. Lawrence, A., Anglezarke, B., Frost, B., Nolan, P. and Owen, R. (2009). What does community forestry mean in a devolved Great Britain? International Forestry Review 11(2), 281-297.

3. Stewart, A. and Edwards, D. (2013) Number of community groups involved in owning or managing woodland: Scottish Forestry Strategy community development progress indicator. Forest Research report to Forestry Commission Scotland, Roslin, West Lothian.

4. Shared Assets and Co-op Culture. (2013) Woodland Social Enterprise In England: Data Baseline. Forestry Commission England, Bristol.

5. Lawrence, A. and Ambrose-Oji, B. (2013) A framework for sharing experiences of community woodland groups Forestry Commission Research Note. Forestry Commission. Edinburgh, p. 16.

6. Ambrose- Oji, B., Lawrence, A. and Stewart, A. (2014) Community based forest enterprises in Britain: Two organising typologies. Forest Policy and Economics.

7. Kollmuss, A., & Agyeman, J. (2002) Mind the gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environmental education research, 8(3), 239-260. a. Environmental education is likely to increase environmental awareness, which has been shown to predict pro-environmental behaviour7.

Alexander van der Jagt is a researcher at Forest Research with a background in environmental psychology. He has studied a range of Scottish community woodland groups and is also a Trustee of Duddingston Field Group. alexander.vanderjagt@forestry.gsi.gov.uk Bianca Ambrose-Oji is a social forester and researcher with more than twenty years of experience working with community woodland groups and small-scale woodland enterprises in Europe, Africa and Asia; she also owns an axe and a chainsaw. Bianca.Ambrose-Oji@forestry.gsi.gov.uk Anna Lawrence is an independent researcher, who until recently led the social science team at Forest Research. She has worked in community forestry in more than 20 countries since 1990, and now enjoys being involved in community woodlands closer to home.

Questions could be posed around the degree to which such sustainable practices are offset by overexploitation, 42

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Community management of public land Keeping green assets viable At a time of austerity and a shrinking state we need to create new approaches to managing public land that can deliver shared public benefits. We need new relationships between public landowners and communities, based on creativity, openness and innovation rather then exclusion and control, if we are to continue to manage public land for the common good.

ECOS 36(1) 2015 of the context in which this work is developing and some of the challenges and opportunities associated with enabling these types of initiatives to flourish.

Woodlands and forests As demonstrated by the public outcry over the government’s ill-fated proposals to sell off the public forest estate, changing the way we manage our forests and woodlands is a subject that raises passions. However in addition to the long-standing tradition of, largely volunteer-led and conservation focused, community woodland management groups, we are seeing the development of a relatively new social enterprise woodland sector. These are organisations that are: • mainly or entirely ‘woodland based’; • have primarily social or environmental objectives; and

MARK WALTON

• are not entirely reliant on grants and donations, i.e. they derive some trading income.

Like other services and assets, the management and ownership of public land in the UK has undergone significant changes since the 1980s. Large amounts have been sold off for development, and much of the management of the remaining public estate has been contracted out to private maintenance companies. We have also seen examples of large-scale transfers of public environmental assets into new civil society organisations, such as the creation of the Canal and River Trust to take on the ownership and management of over 2000 miles of canals and waterways.

A survey undertaken by Shared Assets for the Forestry Commission in England in 20131 received responses from 60 woodland social enterprises that met these criteria. 68% of these had been formed since 2010 indicating a new and vigorous interest in managing woodlands productively for local benefit. These are primarily small organisations with fewer than 5 staff, managing less than 250 hectares of woodland each and with a turnover of less than £65,000.

More recently we are seeing an increase in community management of land, and the transfer of land assets into community ownership. This trend is supported and enabled by a range of new ‘community rights’. These rights, created in the Localism Act of 2011, enable local people to register land as an asset of community value, bid for it when it comes onto the market, and challenge public authorities to bring unproductive land into use. Austerity, localism and devolution at the local level mean that the changes we have already seen in land ownership and management are likely to accelerate, with the public sector seeking new approaches to the ownership and governance of land, from parks and open spaces to woodlands and public commons.

Shared Assets is working with communities and landowners at the forefront of these changes. We are seeing increasing demand from communities for access to land in order to deliver a wide range of activities such as woodland management, food growing, and green space management, all of which deliver a wide range of environmental, social and economic benefits. The public sector also increasingly recognises the wide range of benefits that nature and well managed environmental assets can deliver, whilst at the same time looking to reduce the costs associated with owning and managing land.

Below we set out some examples that illustrate the wide range of enterprising and productive activities that communities are developing on public land, some 44

Only 17 respondents owned the woodland they work whilst over 50% only had an informal agreement with the landowner. In 24 cases the landowner was the local authority whilst only 8 were operating on land owned by central government or one of its agencies such as the Forestry Commission.

It is notable that local authorities, which own about 61,000 hectares of woodland in England, are actively seeking new forms of ownership or management for their woodlands. Examples include High Wycombe where the woodland service has been spun out to create a new mutual, Chiltern Rangers CIC which manages 14 areas of local authority woodland, and Scarborough where the local council is transferring 220 hectares of woodland into the ownership and management of Raincliffe Wood Community Enterprise, a social enterprise owned and run by members of the local community.

The Forestry Commission, which owns a much more substantial 210,000 hectares in England is proving less open to providing leases to social enterprises to undertake management of the public forest estate.

Even in local authorities the approach to social enterprise management, and woodland management is highly variable. A further study undertaken by Shared Assets on the management of local authority woodlands in England on behalf of Forest Research2 found that: 45

ECOS 36(1) 2015 • the types and depth of information that local authorities keep on their woodlands is highly variable; • there is no consistent approach to woodland management by local authorities in England with many undertaking only basic, reactive maintenance; • where the local community are engaged in woodland management this is done on a consultative basis rather than the community organisation being empowered i.e. having delegated responsibility for managing a designated area of woodland; and

ECOS 36(1) 2015 The increasing interest in the role that enterprising community-led organisations could play in managing woodlands has led to the establishment of a Woodland Social Enterprise Network, supported by the Forestry Commission, the Woodland Trust, the National Association of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and a range of social enterprise support organisations. The network aims to provide opportunities for woodland social enterprises to meet and share knowledge, as well to secure resources to provide training and business support for this growing sector.

Public parks and open spaces

• where social enterprises were operating in local authority woodland e.g. coppicing or charcoal making, they were often doing so under very informal agreements and did not have secure leases or management agreements which would enable them to develop their activities.

Like woodlands, local public parks are much-loved amenities that have the potential to deliver a wide range of social and economic benefits as well being valuable havens for wildlife. The recent State of UK Parks report3 noted that cuts to public spending mean that 86% of park managers have seen their budgets reduced since 2010 and expect this trend to continue. 45% of local authorities are considering selling off their parks and green spaces or transferring their management to others.

Elvaston Country Park in Derbyshire is a multi-use countryside site, hosting local and regional visitors and major events. A new governing body is being established to oversee the range of activities, manage the land and 46 properties, and keep the enterprise viable.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 The recognition of the need for new approaches to the management of public open space has led to investment into the development of new ways of working. NESTA is currently funding 11 pilot projects through its Rethinking Parks programme, and Kirklees Council are being funded by the Cabinet Office’s Delivering Differently programme to develop new models for managing open spaces arising from new developments.

Shared Assets has been involved in both of these programmes. We have been working with London Borough of Camden as part of the Rethinking Parks programme, to create a business model for the UK’s first Parks Improvement District. This new area wide body would bring together residents and businesses to manage nine historic squares and gardens in Bloomsbury, central London. The proposal includes the option for raising significant new income for the squares from a small, time limited levy on local businesses that benefit from the high quality green space on their doorsteps. Money from the levy would be spent improving the squares and developing new facilities that could improve their potential to generate ongoing revenue from leases and concessions. The new management body for the squares would also be responsible for curating events and activities that would enhance the contribution of the squares to the character and amenity of the area. In Kirklees we have been working with Locality and the local council to explore the potential for greater community involvement in the ownership and management of their local green spaces through the development of resident led social enterprises.

Income, skills and governance Unlike woodlands where there is the potential for income from stewardship grants and the sale of timber and wood products, public parks and open green spaces are often seen only as liabilities in need of public subsidy. A challenge for any social enterprise with an interest in managing these spaces is in the development of sufficient revenue streams whilst maintaining free public access. In the cases outlined above income from a levy on businesses or a ground rent paid by residents forms part of the business model. This may be seen as the beginnings of a move to put a value on the benefits that good quality open spaces provide for those who live and work near them, however it also harks back to historic precedents, with many of our local green spaces having originally been funded by a levy on local residents, by industrial philanthropy or by public subscription.

The new models of management being developed for woodlands and parks are also characterised by the wide range of different activities and income streams which socially enterprising approaches develop. These include, providing training and education opportunities, services for those experiencing poor physical or mental health, or the income generated by an associated building, all of which add to the value that the space is delivering for local people and generate revenue for the enterprise. This in turn can be spent improving the quality of the asset and the public benefit it generates. A key challenge for any community enterprise developing new models of management for these kinds of assets is the wide range of business, environmental and people skills required to successfully manage these multi purpose enterprises.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 We have also found that establishing the management and governance structures that bring those skills together, and which have appropriate levels of accountability and control is of critical importance. We are currently working with the National Trust to support Derbyshire County Council in the development of a new management and governance body for Elvaston Country Park. Enabling a smooth transition to a new management body will require the creation of a management team with the skills and entrepreneurialism to manage a unique collection of assets including formal gardens and a castle as well as the park, and a Board with the ability to support the strategic development of the new organisation. It must also strike the right balance between providing the new organisation with freedom to operate whilst ensuring that sufficient control and accountability lies with the Council as the custodians of this important public asset.

Public value and public policy Whilst the public sector is increasingly looking to withdraw from the management of land there is also an increasing awareness of the benefits and services that our environmental assets provide. Landscape architects, urban planners and developers increasingly talk in term ‘green infrastructure’ providing value for wildlife, reducing flood risk and delivering a wide range of economic, health and community benefits.

The recent final report of the Natural Capital Committee4, established to advise government on the sustainable use of England’s natural capital, sets out a strong economic case for investing in nature. It calculates that planting 250,00 hectares of woodland near towns and cities could generate net societal benefits of £500m per year, and that good quality urban green spaces have the potential to reduce health treatment costs by £2.1bn.

If the state continues to withdraw from the ownership and management of land and natural resources then community organisations and social enterprises, already developing rapidly in some land-based sectors such as food and energy, may be best placed to step in to fill the gap. Social enterprises are fundamentally concerned with delivering social and environmental, as well as economic, benefits. They are also often able to use this multifunctional approach to their advantage, generating income from a wide range of activities that can be brought together to turn an economically marginal activity into a viable one.

Despite this looming gap between the value we place on land and nature and our willingness to invest public money in its management, there is little in the way of political debate about the issue or public policy being developed that might help address it. Shared Assets is looking to generate debate and ideas by undertaking a two year programme of research and policy work, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. We will be bringing together practitioners, landowners and policy makers to look at how public policy can better support land based social enterprise.

New relationships and new perspectives Changes in policy, new structures and new business models are all very well, but what we really need right now is a public debate about the role of land, and in particular public open spaces like parks and woodlands.

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 These are common goods, shared assets, which many different people draw many different benefits from, over and above the intrinsic value of biodiversity and a well functioning ecosystem. We know that people’s passions are raised when public land is threatened, but if we can no longer manage our public estate in the way that we have before then we need to develop new models that are enriching for both people and the environment. They also need to create livelihoods and help to support sustainable local economies. Just relying on volunteers and ‘community spirit’ is not going to be enough.

Changes such as those outlined here may bring conflicts between conservation and productive use, and we need to be clear where productive management enhances environmental quality and where it does not. There are other conflicts too. Public land has the capacity to provide different benefits to different people and communities, and we need good governance structures that use both representative and participative approaches to enable fair management and a fair sharing of benefits and resources and allow all members of the community are able to get involved in their local spaces. Perhaps most fundamentally we need new relationships between land owners, public bodies, technical experts, businesses and residents. These relationships in local areas can have long histories, often characterised by previous conflicts and unequal power relationships. New activities, new users and new funders bring new influences, and ways of working.

ECOS 36(1) 2015 lease that they will offer, making it difficult for a new social enterprise to be sure it will be able to recoup the investment it might make on a site.

In supporting the development of new approaches to public land management we have found it useful to consider separately the different components of ‘ownership’, ‘governance’, ‘management’, and ‘operations’. In many cases we find that both the public body and the social enterprise are happy for the land to remain in public ownership. Such an arrangement means that the public body is able to exercise a degree of control and accountability through the terms of the lease, whilst the local community have control over the strategic aspects of the management of the site through the governance body of the social enterprise.

Day to day management may be undertaken by the paid staff within the social enterprise or by external technical specialists.

By considering these different aspects of ownership, governance, management and operations, it is often possible to establish where skills and capacity exist and where there are gaps. It also allows for a clear exploration of issues such as the landowner’s need for accountability and control, and where these conflict with the need of the social enterprise for freedom to operate. Such discussions also enable more practical issues to be taken into consideration such as who will be responsible for specific liabilities associated with a site or what type of in-kind resources could be provided by the landowner to establish or develop the social enterprise.

Making it work

New ways forward

Currently the public sector takes a transactional approach to management or disposal of its assets and to the commissioning of services. Private or community sector organisations are often expected to simply substitute for the in-house delivery of a service, but to undertake the work more cheaply. When it comes to land or buildings they are often expected to take on the ownership of the asset outright.

Furthermore the only aspects of a service that are contracted out are those seen as a burden or a cost to the landowner: grass cutting, tree management, repairs to fences and paths etc.

Despite growing recognition of the wide range of public benefits and ‘ecosystem services’ provided by the natural environment the public sector is reducing the amount it spends on managing land. In many cases it is selling or transferring the ownership of public land to the private or community sectors, but we have seen little debate about changes in land ownership or the purpose of public, private or community land management. Land-based social and community enterprises have the potential to provide good quality environmental management whilst delivering wider social and economic benefits to local communities. However at the moment these organisations struggle to secure long leases and often operate on an informal basis that prevents them developing their businesses. Creating new models for managing public land will require new perspectives, new actors and new relationships.

Social enterprise approaches to land management rarely fit with these expectations, indeed they often turn them on their heads. Rather than seeing the improvement and maintenance of the site as a burden and a liability, it is seen as opportunity to provide jobs and training, to educate and inform, or to provide exercise or improved wellbeing. Communities and social enterprises often have no or little interest in the ownership of the land or in the delivery of a straightforward green space maintenance service. They see the potential ‘use value’ of the asset.

From the landowner’s perspective, handing over the management or ownership of public land to a social enterprise can bring concerns about the risks associated with third party management, and loss of control over their future. This can lead to contradictory pressures; the pressure to get the new social enterprise to accept significant liabilities whilst at the same time retaining a high degree of control over what can be done on the site. It can also result in restrictions on the length of the 50

References 1.

2.

3.

4.

Woodland Social Enterprise in England: Data Baseline ( 2013) Forestry Commission Community Management of Local Authority Woodlands in England ( 2013) Forest Research State of U.K. Public Parks (2014) Heritage Lottery Fund The State of Natural Capital: Protecting and Improving Natural Capital for Prosperity and Wellbeing (2015) Natural Capital Committee

Mark Walton is Executive Director of Shared Assets, a not-for-profit company he founded in 2011 to support community groups and social enterprises in taking on the management of public land and buildings. Its vision is the creation of a 21st century commons. mark@sharedassets.org.uk

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ECOS 36(1) 2015

Consultancy collectives – a broader approach to wildlife research and survey This article reviews the trends in non-for profit consultancy and in the ecological consultancy sector’s role in applied research and survey. How are these strands of consultancy work evolving and what are the issues for the practitioners involved?

Over the last twenty years, alongside the growth of environmental consultancy as an international business, a growing number of consultancies are not aimed at outright profit but at scientific research, survey, monitoring and conservation alongside their core business. With the almost total loss of funds for such vital ecological work from the statutory nature conservation organisations the not-forprofit consultancy sector is becoming of increasing importance in providing the vital data and funding for conservation in the UK. Environmental consultancy is a term which covers a multitude of sins and consultants are often viewed with suspicion from within the conservation sector. Whilst the term tended to cover ecological consultancy work, mainly to advise developers, it has come to cover a very wide gamut including protected species, hydrology, landscaping, planning, energy issues and so on. Most international engineering and planning consultancies now include an environmental division covering an enormous range of work. Although, whilst many of these include ecological consultancy, much of the ground work is still sub-contracted out to smaller specialist companies or even sole traders.

NEIL BENNETT

MICK GREEN

members with the potential to produce high quality work and generate significant funds for their parent organisation. Some of these have thrived, such as Middlemarch Environmental which began as a subsidiary of the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and has become a highly respected player in the market with offices across the UK and still generating funds for conservation. Other Trusts have used different models, perhaps only taking on some small contracts rather than setting up full-blown separate companies, whilst other attempts failed. These were partly due to lack of business experience or capital funding, whilst others were restricted by reluctance to get involved with schemes such as wind turbine developments, which can be a major source of employment income, but are controversial with the membership.

Alongside the growth of the commercial sector a lesser known but increasingly important consultancy sector has emerged – that of companies that devote any profits to research, survey, monitoring or other conservation activities. With declining funds for this work the non-profit model is becoming increasingly important at filling this widening gap. For example, Natural Resources Wales Grant Scheme specifically excludes any funding for research, survey or monitoring and yet they claim to be an ’evidence based’ organisation.

In order to promote their services there is an umbrella body, the Association of Wildlife Trusts. Other conservation bodies have also dabbled with the idea, and the latest to become involved is the British Trust for Ornithology. Whilst BTO has undertaken consultancy projects in the past it has now set up a commercial subsidiary. There are always some tensions in such commercial work in that it often uses data collected by volunteers and ownership of data can be a thorny problem – not all volunteers would agree with their data being used to support a development proposal, even if is used in an impartial assessment.

Consultancy arms of wildlife conservation

A new collective approach

As consultancy started growing in the late 1980s and 1990s some of the first organisations to realise the potential for the conservation sector were the Wildlife Trusts. Several Trusts started consultancies where profits passed straight to the Trust.

The organisations were ideally placed to tap into the expertise of their staff and

In the 1990s another type of consultancy emerged. This originally grew out of a gathering on the island of Mull, organised by the late Dr Mike Madders. Mike and his colleagues (myself included), who had been working on conservation research, found that funding for good ecological research to inform conservation and land-

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 use strategies, was getting hard to come by. The gathering on Mull included some of the UK’s foremost ornithologists and a selection of academics and field workers all of whom had an interest and considerable expertise in research and survey.

The eventual result of that gathering was the formation of ‘Natural Research’ – a limited company that would provide ecological consultancy services at the market rate and staffed by senior and experienced researchers. In addition a charity was established to undertake ecological research that would receive the profits of the limited company.

ECOS 36(1) 2015 part of the organisation has established a reputation for providing high quality research, much of it published in peer reviewed journals. Reflecting the interests of the founders most of this work has been on raptors.

• PAT (Predicting Aquila Territories) modelling

Following on from the meeting on Mull, and the formation of Natural Research, I was involved in using a similar model to set up Ecology Matters in Wales. This company was set up as a not-for-profit co-operative with funds being given to an associated charity – the Ecology Matters Trust. The focus of the charity and its research differed from Natural Research in that it was more applied to conservation ecology. Purely by co-incidence (reflecting the market at the time) the main income came from wind turbine development assessments, although Ecology Matters covered all aspects of ecology, not just birds.

• Curlews and windfarms (UK)

Ecology Matters – Recent Trust Projects

• White-tailed eagle monitoring using DNA (Scotland)

• Honey buzzard movements (Satellite tracking)

• White-tailed eagle health monitoring (Scotland)

• Land use change in upland Wales (PhD project)

• Golden eagle satellite tracking (Scotland)

• Ring ouzels – habitat association on Moroccan wintering grounds

• Diver ecology (Scotland)

• Ring ouzel migration tracking using geolocators

• Golden eagle DNA (Scotland)

• Wintering golden plover movements and habitat use

• Goshawk DNA (Scotland)

• Nightjar activity and habitat use

• Capercaillie Disturbance (Scotland)

• Declines of ravens in upland Wales

• Black Kite movement ecology (Spain)

Wider and applied research

Natural Research - Recent Research Projects

• Booted eagles and Black kites (Spain) • Martial Eagle (South Africa) • Bearded Vulture (South Africa) • Goshawks as superpredators (UK) • Giant Armadillo (Brazil) The company has been a major success and is one of the premier consultancies providing survey and assessment to the wind energy industry, mainly in Scotland but also in other parts of the UK and abroad. The company has helped develop much of the guidance used across the UK and employs a large number of ornithologists.

Natural Research has also been involved in other consultancy projects, but the emphasis is on wind turbine developments. At the same time the research (charity) 54

Ecology Matters has also been successful and has recently become part of another company, Environment Systems Ltd, also based in Mid Wales which provides complementary technical services. The Trust has also successfully funded a wide range of conservation based ecological research, much of which has also been published in Journals or our own reports. Work has included a collaborative project with Aberystwyth University, funding a PhD project looking at long-term vegetation change in Wales and relating that to known bird declines and further Masters projects on ring ouzels, curlew and nightjar. Our own research includes a long-term project in Morocco on the wintering grounds of the ring ouzel, studying the migration of this species using Geolocators, colour ringing and satellite and radio tracking of golden plover to study wintering habitat and interactions between wintering and breeding areas and we are just starting work on curlew which have declined seriously in Mid Wales.

The ethos behind both firms is the same – we knew that the research was needed but very difficult to fund, we knew we were capable of doing (and wanted to carry out) the research and that in the growing market we could apply our knowledge 55

ECOS 36(1) 2015 to commercial work as well. We were also happy that ‘profits’ from the commercial work should be applied to the research and finally that the research should be published to ensure the results can be used to aid conservation.

With the downsizing of the statutory agencies a number of former agency staff now work in consultancy in a range of roles. There are also a number of sole-trader consultants who use the freedom of self employment to follow their own research.

Some fully commercial consultancies are also involved in applied research. This is often to solve a problem associated with a development or to improve the effectiveness of survey techniques. The bulletin of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) contains many articles sharing the results of such work and ensuring that new ideas can be used to improve environmental assessment work. Much experimental work has also been undertaken on habitat restoration techniques, again which can be applied on nature reserves as well as development sites.

While there are still too many consultancies that see their role as enabling their clients’ developments to go ahead whatever the ecological cost, there are also a lot of ‘good guys’ out there and work done on the back of commercial projects is helping to fill some of the gaps left by the loss of government funding. The future is more of a challenge. As the commercial sector consolidates (and companies are being bought up by the ‘big boys’ across the board) the commercial pressures on the not-for-profits and the more ethical consultancies will grow. There needs to be more recognition of the benefits to industry of employing the not-for-profits in that they can be more easily seen to be neutral and giving an accurate picture of actual impacts with proper mitigation and avoidance and hopefully positive benefits from developments. There is also a place for the governing bodies. Bodies like CIEEM already require members to put the environment first but this needs to be clearly demonstrated and it can be quite difficult for members who are employees of some of the more commercial companies.

I have found the sector more and more challenging. As the statutory bodies get pared back they resort much more to ‘tick box’ regulation which is less and less driven by actual ecological outcomes and more by simple checking of whether consultants have followed ‘guidelines’. Consultancies with experienced ecologists who have an interest in the best ecological outcomes can force the pace with developers, but it is too easy for less ethical companies to tick the boxes on behalf of developers to gain consents with minimal ecological survey and assessment and little or no gain from developments.

Despite these challenges I believe (and hope) there is a future for the not-for-profit sector to benefit from commercial income. Indeed, in the short term it seems to only way we are going to fund much of the research and survey that is desperately needed.

Mick Green is an independent ecologist and campaigner and a former Director of Ecology Matters ltd. mick@gn.apc.org

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Hearts and minds – stakeholder management in the Cairngorms Conservation can emerge from collaborative management processes. This story focuses on CRAGG – an informal partnership of community members and stakeholders in Scotland’s Cairngorms. CRAGG‘s collaborative process helped reduce decades of environmental conflict and create a balanced land management approach in its area.

NICHOLAS MOREAU Conservation is a value decision Biological conservation is defined as a philosophy of managing the environment that does not despoil, exhaust or extinguish. It is a common term, but what exactly do you manage for? Biodiversity? Ecological resilience? Preservation of threatened species? In highly anthropogenic landscapes, what is used as a baseline for such conditions? The state of the environment currently? 50 years ago? 100? And who should make these management decisions? Scientists, policy makers and advocacy groups are surely informed parties that have traditionally spearheaded such agendas. But what about peopled landscapes where human livelihoods, history and culture are also coupled to management? How are community needs balanced against these goals?

The purpose of these questions is to highlight the fact that conservation is not an objective agenda. Inherent in any conversations about conservation are value decisions: what to manage for, what information or ethical viewpoint to use, and how to carry it out. A historic failure of conservation sites was to carry out national policy while alienating locals from management and land-use. The drawbacks of this method were that local populations were seen as a detriment to conservation rather than a potential partner in delivery. It was not until 2001 that local economic gains were even included in ecotourism guidelines. However, community buy-in is increasingly recognized as a key component of conservation initiatives.

What follows is a trend in land management policy away from top-down approaches towards more inclusive, collaborative management systems. Collaborative management includes any system in which multiple stakeholders are involved in the management process. They range from simple networks where information is collectively shared to legally-bound partnerships among multiple stakeholders. In theory, incorporating multiple perspectives allows for more robust and equitable management strategies because multiple perspectives are allowed to inform policy.

But is this just another jargon-laden concept? Can diverse and often conflicting stakeholders really co-create management strategies?

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A case study - The Cairngorms National Park Formed in 2003, the Cairngorms National Park [CNP] sustainability agenda recognizes social, economic, cultural and ecological needs while utilizing a partnership method of management delivery. This “four pillar” approach is a first for National Parks in the UK, and critics have raised questions regarding how multiple objectives will be balanced in practice. Can local stakeholders really be trusted to inform management decisions in an area of national, and even international, conservation significance?

Nowhere has this paradox of agendas been clearer than the area of the CNP consisting of the town of Aviemore and the adjacent corridor leading to and including CairnGorm Mountain. Known as the “gateway to the Cairngorms,” it is

ECOS 36(1) 2015 the most heavily visited area of the park with over a million tourists flowing to the region every year. This corridor is also a uniquely diverse and significant habitat for species preservation and conservation, with 95 percent of the area under at least one special conservation designation. Meanwhile, the socioeconomic status of the area’s residents reflect that of the rest of the highlands, with sub-average wages as well as housing and employment shortages. The situation in this corridor parallels many areas that face conservation challenges: local development needs alongside national conservation pressures. The sum total of these pressures has created a history of conflict between these camps.

Some of the Designations in the CRAGG area.

In an effort to address local conflict and provide an alternative to traditional topdown approaches to management, an informal stakeholder partnership called the Cairngorms Rotheimercus and Glenmore Group (CRAGG) formed in 2000. CRAGG was composed of representatives from community groups, landowners, government agencies, recreation organizations and conservation groups. In 2012, I worked with founding and current members of CRAGG to carry out a ten-year review of the group. This helped members reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of their approach to management and inform the CNP’s new partnership delivery policy. The rest of this story will follow CRAGG’s development to show how their collaborative system evolved, what members of the group had to say about the process, and what these lessons might mean for future efforts in other communities. Quotes from many of these interviews are used throughout the story and attributed as CRAGG member.

The Conflicts – a paradigm of development versus conservation Management conflict in the CRAGG area came to a boiling point in 1981 over the proposed expansion of ski facilities on CairnGorm Mountain in what was known as the Lurcher’s Gully case: “At the original public enquiry… if you crossed the floor and talked to the other side, people hissed traitor at you it was completely divisive… That was the first real local conflict which split the community… There was a lack of understanding … it seemed to be development versus conservation – very crude”. CRAGG member The matter was eventually brought to trial, where the courts ruled against the expansion. But in the mid-90s a proposal for a funicular on CairnGorm reignited the debates. Those in favor of the recreational and community-rejuvenating effects of the funicular fought against those who believed the funicular would represent irreversible damage to the fragile mountain habitat: “Then we had this huge never-ending debate over the funicular and another big court case. It was like a civil war as even families were split, you were either on one side or the other and it was about winners and losers”. CRAGG member Another member commented: “It was quite an aggressive time; there was quite an anti-funicular campaign. It got very vocal, sometimes physical… somebody sprayed in the snow on the Head wall of the 58

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CRAGG Representatives

Cas "ban the funicular." It was sometimes known as the, "f-ing funicular." It was quite a political hot potato and the issues became very polarized; the environmental camp on the one hand and the economic benefit camp on the other”. CRAGG member

Stakeholder Group

Current and Past Representatives

Positions were so entrenched that direct communication between warring camps was non-existent. Rather, controversy played out in the national stage through regular headlines:

Landowner

Cairngorm Mountain ltd; Rothiemurchus Estate; Forestry Commission Scotland; Scottish Natural Heritage; Highlands and Islands Enterprises

“The campaigning culture established was that ends justified means and anything was acceptable… people learnt that trading insults in the media was the only way they could be heard — ”I don't need to waste time coming to a meeting I can ring the Daily Mail and the BBC and they’ll print what I want” … it was not possible to have a constructive discussion to agree win-win solutions and the economy of Aviemore was in a very bad way as investors did not want to commit to an area where there was so much destructive public conflict”. CRAGG member

Community Organization

Aviemore and Vicinity Community Council; Rothiemurchus and Glenmore Community Association

Government Organization

Cairngorms National Park Authority; Forestry Commission Scotland; Highlands Council; Highlands and Islands Enterprises

Local Conservation Group

Banadoch and Strathspey Conservation Group

Local Business Organization

Cairngorms Business Partnership; Speyside Wildlife

At one point, Prince Charles even got involved by calling a special meeting of all the warring interests. As an indicator of the lack of direct communication between stakeholders in the community, this was the first time many representatives had met face-to-face. While the community fought, the proposal for the funicular was granted planning approval by the Highland Council. At this point many stakeholders started to realize that a new approach was necessary. Projects were being put forward without sufficient agreement between stakeholders beforehand. And with the national park in the process of being created (which would add another layer of planning authority), there was the danger that if these disparate stakeholders could not find a way to cooperate, the power to influence the area in which they were most concerned would be taken out of their hands: “The basis of CRAGG was: we’ve been to the bottom, we’ve seen the bottom, we can’t get any further, we had to find a way to find solutions ourselves, otherwise the decisions would be made in Edinburgh, the courts or in Europe by judges or ministers, and we had to take responsibility for finding solutions here”. CRAGG member

Conflict Reduction – creating a shared vision

“Conflicts may form a constructive role in society, in that groups are motivated to institute a new order which embodies their aspirations” Roger Sidaway, Environmental Conflict Mediator “So you know, that, I think it’s a very strong change, and you needed a catalyst to do that, and this battle ground was that catalyst” CRAGG member CRAGG’s development can be understood in the context of environmental conflict resolution. Previous working groups realized that without input from the local communities and interested stakeholder organizations, management plans simply generated too much conflict. They were thus expanded from landowners and the planning authority into CRAGG, which included one representative from all stakeholders who had an interest in the area as well as multiple community members.

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National Conservation Group RSPB; Scottish Natural Heritage; Scottish Wildlife Trust National Recreation Organization Glenmore Lodge (part of Sport Scotland);

Scottish Ramblers CRAGG convened in order to create a shared management strategy for the area. But the first major hurdle was building a level of trust between historically entrenched stakeholders. These difficulties were dealt with in a number of ways. A neutral mediator facilitated early meetings and activities, such as an overnight trip to build camaraderie between members. A set of ground rules was agreed upon, three of which in particular came up in interviews as being significant for creating a collaborative atmosphere. Members agreed to keep meeting conversations out of the press. While minutes from meetings were published, they were attributed to CRAGG rather than an individual or organization. This helped slowly build an atmosphere where members felt comfortable enough to open up to each other. Finally, having a clear agenda for meetings was significant as it kept discussions focused on particular issues and helped reduce the tendency towards generalized arguments. In this sense, although arguments were still frequent, centering them on particular topics prevented them from becoming personal disputes or ideological clashes: “There was some interesting culture at that stage, but the way we got through that, the only way we got through that, was to manage the meetings in a very constitutional way, you know – your turn next, okay, we’ve covered that, that’s not on the agenda, we’re not gonna discuss that…” CRAGG member The first major task of the group was gaining a shared understanding of the CRAGG area. Audits on all aspects of area were carried out. Ostensibly they served as a 61

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Through joint fact-finding and production of a CRAGG body of knowledge, these different members were for the first time working from the same body of information. This co-production of new knowledge in the CRAGG area allowed for the establishment of a new reality in which all members were able to contribute.

Each audit was carried out by a sub-group of CRAGG. Members were intentionally shuffled into each audit group, forcing them to get outside their comfort zone and challenge previously held beliefs about the area. Stakeholders with a conservation background might be working alongside community members creating an audit of Recreation and Access:

forum existed, other members were made aware of the problem and were able to carry out more detailed environmental impact assessments. As it turned out, the threatened species of wood ants actually uses the bikeway and seems content to do so. Another obstacle was that a portion of the cycle route needed to pass through a section of highland bog designated a Site of Scientific Special Interest (SSSI). Still cognizant of the pre-CRAGG days of lawsuits, there was a hesitation on the part of Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) to sign off on the project for fear of being taken to court over site disruption. However, another member had been involved in setting the designation boundaries in the 1970s and was able to provide assurance that the cycle path would not disrupt the SSSI. A final compromise was made with SNH that disturbed habitats would be compensated for by the conversion of several back-woods parking areas into nature sites. This overall coordination between stakeholders allowed concerns to be addressed as they arose and prevent what may have previously turned into another high-conflict situation.

“CRAGG deliberately tried to have… a variety of different interest groups compiling each audit... By doing so it produced, what was hoped for, a slightly more rounded audit, and it also served as a learning experience — for members to learn about a topic that maybe wasn't their area of expertise”. CRAGG member

Beyond conflict prevention, different member organizations were able to offer different expertise at various stages in the development. SNH was equipped to address environmental assessment and the Forestry Commission of Scotland (FCS), as an agency with construction capacity was able to coordinate the logistics of implementation:

And at the same time that members were learning about the CRAGG area, they were learning about each other and how to work together. Where conflict was previously framed as a series of faceless institutions pitted against one another, this collaboration allowed faces to be put to each organization and stakeholder:

“And that all involved people doing different things – and [the FCS] ended up personally project managing that from the point of view of making sure our engineers – FCS civil engineers led the construction contract and made sure it was built – because FCS had the skills to do that. FCS were not involved in funding the work but we made a contribution in kind, by providing the people to do it. So that was very much a kind of collaborative effort and we brought our skills to that and the benefit to FCS was that it linked parts of a path that we had already built back to the main centre of population [Aviemore] which was certainly something we wanted to do”. CRAGG member

means of filling in gaps of knowledge about the area. But even agreeing that audits needed to be carried out implied that there was more to learn about the CRAGG area. Acknowledging that more information was needed meant there was also room for adjusting stakeholder perspectives as new information came out.

“So again, breaking down barriers… you get two people face to face, nine times out of ten, my experience – those barriers are broken because you’re dealing with a human being, you’re not dealing with a faceless bureaucrat”. CRAGG member By engaging in the joint reporting of these findings with a shared voice, CRAGG transitioned from a set of disparate stakeholders to its own institution with a political voice. This foundation was built upon in the ensuing years with continued collaboration on a number of projects involving CRAGG’s members.

Balancing conservation and development CRAGG’s process of carrying out audits had the ancillary benefit of creating a network of stakeholders who were able to cooperate on management delivery. Developing trust and understanding allowed members to compromise individual positions for long-term mutual benefit, including conservation initiatives. As one member commented, they were “going beyond the slice of cake, to make the cake bigger.”

This coordination is best exemplified in CRAGG’s development of the Old Logging Way cycle route from Glenmore through Rothiemurhus and into Aviemore. CRAGG allowed a forum for direct input from stakeholders during each stage of planning and implementation in order to address concerns and head off conflict. For instance, conservation opposition arose when it was found that a species of wood ants would be potentially displaced by the cycle path. But because the CRAGG 62

In the context of the CRAGG Area, spanning multiple properties, all of which were under multiple conservation designations, the significance of the achievement becomes clearer. CRAGG was able to complete this project with no official capacity or resources of its own using only the disparate skills that each representative group brought to the table. This was an instance in which conservation did not preclude development. Through stakeholder cooperation, the project was able to balance multiple objectives: conservation goals, recreation opportunities and economic growth. More fundamentally, it represented an ideological shift away from management as development versus conservation. CRAGG’s process shifted the paradigm in this community to one of balanced land use in which the two were not mutually exclusive.

This is not to say that cooperation was absolute. One local conservation organization left CRAGG a few years into the process. It took a hard line against any development in the area and after working with CRAGG they found collaboration was actually not beneficial to their goals. They then decided to end participation in favor of continued advocacy. CRAGG’s process was – and remains – voluntary and non63

ECOS 36(1) 2015 binding. Almost every member interviewed identified this as a crucial factor of CRAGG’s success. It allowed each CRAGG member to coordinate with the rest of the group while still being able to represent his or her parent organization’s interests.

In the large, this allowed members to understand each stakeholder position enough to find that previously elusive middle ground. But when one is trying to drastically change the status quo, the middle ground is probably not enough.

As conditions in the area have continued to evolved over the last 15 years, so has CRAGG’s role: “CRAGG started when there was – to some extent what I would call a stakeholder – possibly planning is the right word – vacuum in that it pre-dated the national park…

And now that the national park body is in place, the role for CRAGG is certainly up for debate… and equally.. CRAGG was developed before the Land Reform Act… and there was no Outdoor Access Forum. [These] were all things that we were dealing with in CRAGG and I think you’ve certainly got to ask the question that if CRAGG is going to continue, then what is its role and function?” CRAGG Member CRAGG has indeed changed its focus over the last several years. With the increasing role of the Cairngorms National Park Authority and many years free of drastic conflict, CRAGG has evolved into what is primarily an information-sharing network. Rather than a focus on project implementation, it has become a forum for stakeholders to remain up to date on each other’s projects, offer support, and head off future conflict. And while meetings are not as frequent, members continue to build on the relationships that were forged out of many years of conflict and then finally, collaboration.

The argument for community inclusion

“Some would say that you can manage the Cairgorms with rules; people visit the Cairngorms to get away from that. You can pass a law but how can you enforce your law over the Cairngorms anyway? It’s not possible, after two minutes you’d be hidden in the trees and nobody knows what you’re doing anyway — so progress can only be achieved through hearts and minds: and that’s what CRAGG does; it is hard work but the only way to be effective, and CRAGG has in the main shown how it can be done.” CRAGG member

ECOS 36(1) 2015 of an overall land management agenda. The case study of CRAGG highlighted a system of collaboration that sustains this argument in practice.

These ideals become more complicated, however, when we try to assess transferability. If each community is unique, it follows that their approaches to management, including conservation, will be equally unique, with no guarantees for success. Is that a risk that we are willing to assume in ecologically crucial locales such as the CRAGG area? And if not to dictate management policy, what then, is the role of government and advocacy groups in regards to conservation? At least partial inspiration can again be drawn from CRAGG, which included representatives from those types of organizations. They acted as valued sources of management insight and supplied support to carry out management policy. Finally, and perhaps most critically, planning authorities (in this case the CNP) can provide the capacity to support the creation and sustenance of such collaborative groups.

Rather than a separate process, conservation is a symptom of a healthy community and balanced land management policy. Communities in possession of adequate knowledge, with adequate stability, and with support, rather than enforcement, from government and outside can adopt policies to support such systems. If we really want sustained conservation, it becomes the job of interested parties to support that process rather than force conservation on others.

Nicholas Moreau works in New York City for a government-NGO partnership that supports community involvement in local parks. Special thanks are due to Roger Sidaway for his advice and supervision in this work. nmoreau9@gmail.com

The stakeholder communication system for CRAGG

Considering the pressure on Earth’s resources today, the imperative to conserve ecologically significant lands can seem to justify any means to do so. But what about when these lands are also your backyard? Would you really want outsiders dictating management policies? The essence of CRAGG is an answer to that question. It is a community of stakeholders who all love their backyard – for different and seemingly conflicting reasons — coming together to make decisions as a family rather than having that power taken away. And rather than a development disaster, CRAGG‘s work has helped achieve a balanced management policy in which conservation is a product of collaborative processes rather than enforced government policy. In the introduction, an ideological argument was forwarded that communities and local stakeholders have a right to be included in – if not leading — conservation as part 64

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Book Reviews

ECO-HISTORY: An Introduction to Biodiversity and Conservation Ian D. Rotherham The White Horse Press, 2014, 268 pages Pbk, £25, ISBN 978-1-874267-81-2 Ian Rotherham is one of Britain’s most productive and distinguished ecological and environmental geographers, and this very personal book contains a great deal to interest and dismay a thoughtful British conservationist.

Ian’s central tenet is that of “cultural severance”. Until essentially the end of the middle ages, people managed the land and its resources in a consistent and relatively low-impact manner, creating a mosaic of different high biodiversity habitats which, while not being “natural”, were related to the early post-glacial “natural habitats” they replaced. To do so, successive generations of people built an affinity 66

ECOS 36(1) 2015 and detailed knowledge of their area, and refined the management techniques used to exploit them for food and resources.

The habitats they created sustained a great number of species, including the many stress-tolerant specialists that are lost in a more homogeneous landscape.

With changes in land tenure, population growth, division of society into rural and urban communities, and more recently coal and petroleum based economies, this close relation to nature has been lost. Overwhelmingly, we are now city and suburb dwellers. We might join the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts, but we know little about our local ecology, and are disenfranchised from any say in land management. We are culturally severed from nature.

This is bad enough, but Ian contends that this simple fact is ignored or misunderstood by government agencies and theme-based NGOs, with potentially dangerous results.

Instead there is central focus on climate change issues, and the new concept of “re-wilding”.

Unfortunately the latter tends to be taken to mean the withdrawal of management from an area of land, so “letting nature take its course”. The problem is the prefix “re-”. Abandonment of management does not take a site back to where it was before human meddling. It doesn’t even take it back to the medieval human-adapted landscape. It merely initiates a succession process which after a transient biodiversity gain may lead to a lower biodiversity outcome.

This is a deeply pessimistic book that catalogues the decline and collapse of biodiversity and habitats in Britain, while pointing out the inadequacy of even the most ambitious restoration projects currently taking place. There really is

no attempt to suggest ways forward, and indeed I suspect there may be little possibility of major improvement.

Ian notes in the last chapter that the pessimistic tone reflects top-down changes in the last 10 years in Britain that have effectively emasculated conservation agencies, environmental planning laws, and broken the ethos of conservation for future generations in favour of short term economic gain. Had he written the book 10 years ago, at the end of the “golden age of British Conservation”, the tone would have been different.

The book’s 17 chapters provide brief, but sometimes jumbled and repetitive summaries of a number of important aspects of conservation ecology. Why does the important (but throw-away) line on alien species’ spread being favoured by ecological disruption and gross eutrophication appear in the middle of a chapter on Democracy, Accountability and Environmentalism, and not where it belongs in the chapter on Alien and Invasive Species? These chapters also rely very heavily on Ian’s own work, and have little input of ideas from outside Britain, except of course Frans Vera’s work on post-glacial environments. In fact the book should really have had the words “in Britain” appended to the title. It is arguably of little relevance, other than a pointer to potential disaster, outside this country.

For British conservationists its best feature is the 40 page 1000AD to 2000AD timeline, which summarises major changes in the factors relating to UK biodiversity. This is a genuinely useful summary, and I personally would have considered structuring the book around it. I would also have started the timeline at the Younger Dryas, so summarising the whole post-glacial,

and also would have liked the disastrous years from 2000 to 2014 to be included.

The rest of the book is an interesting and provocative read, but isn’t a definitive account. Some comments, such as the Little Ice Age being perhaps related to human population decrease should be balanced by new knowledge of the Maunder Minimum and the role of sunspot inactivity.1 That this book is a bit polemical is actually a point in its favour. While some phrases like “A cursory look at history shows recent centuries humankind has been rushing headlong towards urbanisation and industrialisation” and “water courses spewed their load [of silt] across the vast open floodplains” made me wince, others like “The body odour of urbanisation” and the “Disneyfication of ecology and landscape” [tending to a uniform lowest common denominator] were enlivening. It’s a good read.

Finally, I would suggest two topics that should have had more airing, if only because they are positive. The British National Parks were set up precisely to foster the cultural landscapes whose loss Ian regrets, and despite massive recent cuts they still focus on supporting traditional management methods and the communities needed to maintain them. Then there is the exploding evidence of the wildlife significance of gardens and urban greenspace, not just for the benefit of people’s health and happiness, but for biodiversity support.2

References 1. M. Lockwood, R. G. Harrison, T. Woollings and S. K. Solanki. 2010. Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity? Environ. Res. Lett. 5 024001 pp 1-7 2. http://www.wlgf.org/wlgf_website_019.htm

Steve Head

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 as much as lexicography and, also, to be honest, old fashioned guesswork.

The Sea Eagle was, by this reckoning, far and away the greater in numbers, surprisingly. However, in visits stretching back over 30 years I can attest to the massive expansion of the Sea Eagle in a stretch of coastline of Finnmark, Norway. In barely 10 years numbers have increased to make these huge ‘flying carpets’ a regular sight along that bleak shore in the High Arctic; the population was obviously constrained merely by human persecution, now ended. It flops about heedless of uninvited visitors – “this upheaval of a bird” as Crumley describes its take off.

THE EAGLE’S WAY Jim Crumley Colour plates by Laurie Campbell Saraband, 2014, 216 pages Pbk £12.99, ISBN 9781908643476 This book lends credence to an idea I once heard as conjecture 30 years ago; that the Sea Eagle was ‘the’ eagle of Scotland, out numbering the Golden Eagle by a large factor. Speculation had it that interpretations of Iolaire in place names were references to the former haunts of this huge bird, then extinct in the British Isles, rather than the Golden cousin. Some sites seemed very speculative indeed, since they are a long way from sea coasts, which had been the bird’s last known haunt.1 Jim Crumley’s The Eagle’s Way reproduces a chart, taken from Bird Study, that gives comparative numbers for the two species spanning 5,000 years, presumably based upon archeology 68

The Sea Eagle, unlike the Golden, shrugs at human presence; that was its undoing. One that Sir Peter Maxwell Davies flushed from his garden in Orkney, inspired a piece from the composer.2 I cannot imagine a Golden Eagle on Orkney and certainly not one perched on a garden fence. In the 20th century British and Irish writers excelled at travel writing by surpassing accounts given by the gentry of advice on tickets and transport, hotels and ‘facilities’ when in ‘foreign parts’, to something much deeper, richer and rewarding. Literature, in other words. This ‘genius’ has now migrated to nature writing making it in turn something of an art form. Jim Crumley’s work is firmly placed within this genre.

Reading Henry Seebohm’s The Bird’s of Siberia (1901) in the 70s was an introduction for me, a Victorian’s journal as much about incident and encounters (“Under no circumstance discuss politics, especially Liberal politics …”) as ornithological study.3 Afterwards, I read Desmond Nethersole Thompson (190889) who wrote books that straddled

both the monograph’s purpose to inform and superb evocations of experience and place, in his books on The Greenshank (1951) and The Snow Bunting (1966).4 Gradually more scientific demands were placed on such writing and the anecdotal lost its place. However, the desire for writing that connected readers (who might just also be scientists) with the expression of reflections and feelings never went away.

In recent years a new generation of authors have written for this receptive audience, including the prolific Jim Crumley. He writes like someone you have met; maybe, luckily, sat opposite you at a bothy fire and swapped stories composed with a poetic gift for imagery long into the night.

In The Eagle’s Way he begins with a sort of extended preface, that ruminates on ‘the eagle’ as a metaphor for wildness and spiritual identity, touched upon in his earlier books. This leads to the central and longest section of The Eagles Way, a kind of diary of his quest to plot the birds’ transits across Scotland east to west; following the re-introduced Sea Eagles and watching how these cope with the Scotland into which they have been transplanted from Norway. He examines many other things in passing – he got me well onside with some pithy remarks about the somewhat inappropriate passion for ‘naming’ birds on personalised web sites: The Glenelg Sea Eagles are called Victor and Orla …

That and coloured tags and rings galore.

Mr Crumley rightly gives an unsentimental, modern view of his country and its wildlife. Previously, he has written on Scottish native pinewoods (the fabled Great Wood of Caledon); his thoughts on the relationship of

true wildness to the human psyche; but he does not live in some imaginary ‘shortbread tin lid’ world of fantasy Highlands. The hard bits – forestry, tourism, increasing public exposure – are there together with the poetics. The Eagle’s Way is a good read and not just for the Eagles he describes so well, but the reason why they are there and why that matters. The book is more than just text, with renowned photographer Laurie Campbell providing superb colour photographic studies.

References and notes 1. In other parts of the Sea Eagle’s range it is a bird of forests and lakes. Today re-introductions at inland sites across northern Europe are in progress.

2. Sea Eagle, for horn solo, J. 183. Sea Eagle dates from 1982. (www.maxopus.com) 3. Seebohm (1832-95) travelled to the Yeniesy tundra in Siberia together with the great Scottish ornithologist John Alexander Harvie-Brown (1844-1916) in 1875; an epic journey.

4. Both highly collectable should you find one in an attic or charity shop.

Barry Larking

THE MOOR Lives, Landscape, Literature William Atkins Faber and Faber, 2014, 400 pages Hbk £18.99, ISBN: 9780571290048 Moorlands are a routine topic of debate in UK conservation and this book is an interesting contribution to an already rich subject. Atkins approaches moorlands from a social rather than ecological perspective, exploring aspects of this diverse habitat through the characters that lived on, or interacted with moors.

Famous names appear such as literary giants like the Bröntes and Ted Hughes, but so do the less well-known: farmers, land owners, grouse managers, military 69

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ECOS 36(1) 2015 Overall, the book provides an intriguing literary and social perspective on a set of locations and habitats loved by many because of their wildness and isolation.

Emily Adams

STORYTELLING FOR A GREENER WORLD Environment, Community and Story-Based Learning Alida Gersie, Anthony Nanson and Edward Schieffelin (eds) Hawthorn Press, 2014, 367 pages £20 Pbk, ISBN 9781907359354

personnel, miners and local residents from the present and the past. With their stories, and through his own experiences of walking in some of the most remote areas in England, Atkins explains moorland ecology and discusses how human activities shape landscapes. He describes a grouse shoot and the specific management practices associated with ground shooting; and he explores the MOD land in the Pennines to give a fascinating glimpse of how military land use can benefit nature conservation.

The book, which starts in the southwest of Cornwall and Devon and works its way to the Scottish borders, would have greatly benefited from an accurate map depicting the many detailed and fascinating corners of these welltrodden areas that readers might wish to visit, such as the hidden CelticRoman shrine along the Pennine Way. 70

Environment and storytelling, as I have explored in these pages on a couple of occasions, is a coupling that can sometimes be the worse for over-analysis.

Once you get beyond the time-honoured kids‘ storytelling spot at environmental events, storytelling certainly offers exciting, personal and inspiring options for exploring our connections with the natural world. Yet from experience, forcing an (often overwhelming) environmental message onto an existing traditional story can sometimes make it extremely worthy and dull. Stories are strange beasts, full of unexpected turns, and like all art forms they should not be safe. So I approached this book with a deal of nervousness.

I was pleasantly surprised. The book contains 21 chapters from different authors, exploring various ways in which story can be used to useful ends for the environment.

The chapters vary widely. Martin Shaw discusses more spiritual rites of passage and wilderness; David Metcalfe explores how a story circle can make a difference: and Chris Holland reveals his glorious blobster-building workshops. There is a

great deal to learn here from the handson experience of the writers. Even more generously, all contribute stories which can be used and developed by the reader, making this a very practical contribution to the subject.

This is not an easy book to read, but it is a real treasury, and I mean that in a storyteller’s way. It is a book with rooms tucked away that you’ve never discovered before, familiar pathways that suddenly lead to unexpected places, and the occasional hero. I would recommend it to anyone who would like to give a different edge to the job of explaining and inspiring environmental action.

Lisa Schneidau

ECOCULTURES Blueprints for Sustainable Communities Edited by Steffen Bohm, Zareen Pervez and Jules Pretty Routledge, 2015, 295 pages Pbk, £34.99, ISBN 978-0-415-81285-6 Hbk, £95.00, ISBN 978-0-415-81282-5 This book arises from a conference on Ecocultures organised at Essex University and its Sustainability Institute. Its editors argue that it “demonstrates how communities in both developed and developing countries are already taking action to maintain or build resilient and sustainable lifestyles diversely organised around an ethic of care for nature, a respect for community, high ecological knowledge, and a desire to maintain and improve personal and social wellbeing”.

Case studies from countries including Australia, Brazil, Finland, Greenland, India, Indonesia, South Africa, UK and USA, show how, based on these principles, communities have been

able to increase social, ecological and personal wellbeing and resilience.

They also address how other more mainstream communities are beginning to transition to more sustainable, resilient alternatives.

Theoretical chapters examine the barriers and bridges to wider application of these examples. The authors conclude that these examples can provide the global community with important lessons for a wider transition to sustainability and will show how we can redefine our personal and collective futures around these principles.

‘The book of the conference’ approach is usually a tricky read of mixed style and quality, but this one is worth the effort in places. I gain some kind of sustenance from knowing that academics are capable of effective involvement in these real world issues and this team do not get lost in over-theorising – there is a good mix of project managers and practitioners. In their summary, my heart was particular gladdened to read: “connection to the unseen is a vital part of local ecological knowledge”. This team knows the indigenous mind.

The final and crucial element of ‘scaling up and learning the lessons for a transition’ in the unsustainable developed world, merits a few pages toward the end and really needs another book. It is one thing to protect ecocultures from economic and cultural imperialisms – and in that, the philosophy and case studies are on solid ground, but ‘scaling up’? That needs another conference!

Peter Taylor

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BACK COPIES OF ECOS

ECOS 36(1) 2015

BANC 2015

mini-conference & AGM Revitalising conservation: Redefining our relationship with nature Saturday 26 September 2015 Young Wood, near Taunton, Somerset This year’s AGM will be combined with an important mini-conference, exploring the future for the nature conservation movement in Britain. BANC is about to begin a dialogue amongst conservation practitioners and supporters across the country, and this event will be the first opportunity to share the early results.

The event will take place outdoors, in the beautiful woodland setting of Young Wood, a community woodland on the public forest estate, run by Neroche Woodlanders, a social enterprise which combines therapeutic well-being work, practical training, social action and nature conservation. The venue is a small roundhouse in the middle of the forest. If the weather is fine we will hold sessions outdoors, but there will be shelter and an open fire. Hot drinks and food will be provided.

Given the setting, places for this event will be limited. Fuller details will be posted on the BANC website during the summer. All members are welcome. To reserve a place please email enquiries@banc.org.uk. If you are interested in helping BANC by joining Council, nominations are welcome before this event.

The following back copies are available for purchase. Costs range from £8.30 (inc p&p) for issues from the current and previous year’s volume, to £5.30 for older issues.

Up to date prices and order forms for back copies are available at www.banc org.uk.

o 35 (3/4) Wilder by Design conference special o 35 (2) Engaging with nature o 35 (1) Flooding and drainage politics o 34(3/4) Biodiversity Offsets, Local

Nature Partnerships

o 34(2)

State of Nature; Rewilding; disease and culling

o 34(1)

Conservation & enterprise, Welsh agency change

o 33 (2)

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

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 (2)

White Paper review, Ecosystem Assessment verdicts, Red Tape rebuff

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Editorial 1. Bob, badgers and business.

Feature Articles

2015 issue 36(1) www.banc.org.uk

2. Refreshing Conservation – cries from the heart.

9. The expensive education of the nature conservation sector.

Alistair Crowle 20. A Forest Charter Answers for the future from lessons of the past. Frances Winder 26. Community conservation at Neroche – surviving adolescence.

Gavin Saunders 36. Wildlife and conservation in community woods: Business as usual?

Alexander Van Der Jagt et al 44. Community management of public land Keeping green assets viable. Mark Walton 52. Consultancy collectives – a broader approach to wildlife research and survey. Mick Green 57. Hearts and minds in managing the Cairngorms. Nick Moreau 66. Book Reviews Eco-history The Eagle’s Way The Moor Storytelling for a Greener World Ecocultures

2015 British Association of Nature Conservationists.

ISSN 0143-9073.

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