Ecos 37 (1) whole edition

www.banc.org.uk

2016 issue 37(1)

Rewilding gets real Revitalising conservation - the verdict Nature’s own rights - exploring ecodemocracy

ECOS

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

www.banc.org.uk

ECOS 37(1) 2016

ecos@easynet.co.uk Editorial

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

Blob on the landscape

Assistant Editor: Martin Spray Hillside, Aston Bridge Road, Pludds, Ruardean, Glos. GL17 9TZ 01594-861404

So what’s the verdict? What, if anything, can revive our flagging spirits and put wildlife back in the political reckoning? After a year of discussing conservation in the doldrums, through ECOS and BANC, is there a ready fix to revitalise conservation?

Acknowledgements This issue was edited by Rick Minter.

Cover photo: Hawkcombe Woods, Exmoor, Photo: Exmoor National Park Authority.

The opinions expressed in ECOS are not necessarily those of BANC Council or of the Editors.

ECOS may not be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, in English or other languages, without the prior written consent of the publisher, BANC.

Subscriptions/BANC membership Subscriptions for ECOS are £25 for individuals, £15 for students, and £80 for the corporate institutional rate.

To order pdfs of specific articles or complete editions check www.banc.org.uk

President: John Bowers

Chair: Gavin Saunders

Vice-Presidents: Marion Shoard Adrian Phillips

Secretary: Alison Parfitt Treasurer: Ruth Boogert

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

The problem is we’re up against the ‘growth goal’, as Peter Shirley’s article suggests.

More than ever, nature gets sidelined or trampled by a government hell-bent on prioritising the economy, and taking a narrow view of what people’s wellbeing is all about. Not only that, environmental voices are being stigmatised as the green blob by some on the political right. A tactical response to government’s philistine approach is to frame the environment in its functional sense, explaining the goods and services provided by the natural world. But it’s a game many are not happy to play. Joe Gray and Patrick Curry illustrate some of the rebellion against ecosystem services in this issue. They argue for nature’s intrinsic values to get higher profile, and be brought back centre-stage into decision making.

In his overview on ‘revitalising’ Alistair Crowle highlights education. Despite a host of schemes helping schools embrace nature, Alistair points out these are optional not obligatory. Should we push for wildlife to get into the curriculum at primary level, fully and formally, however it is labelled? Alistair suggests this is the only route to guarantee a systematic approach, and the possibility of some lasting impact on young minds. So, if there is one action guaranteed to gear up the status of nature conservation and the demand for advice, locations to visit, and projects for schools to tackle, perhaps primary level education is the game changer?

Beyond primary schools we must keep our sense of wonder, at whatever age, wherever we encounter nature in our lives and our work. Cartoonist Neil Bennett highlights a thread from Peter Shirley, where he urges us to be passionate as well as professional and clinical. Whether we’re watching out for hedgehogs in our gardens, or surveying wildlife in our day job, we must recognise it is everyday nature that gladdens the heart. Revitalising can start with ourselves, within, before we try to engage others. And with more humility we might avoid getting shrugged aside as the green blob.

Finally, we dabble again in rewilding in this issue. ECOS has sparked much early debate, and highlighted pioneers of the subject. But now rewilding’s profile is high, it is prone to scrutiny, prejudice and interpretation. In this edition, to be continued in the next, we begin our look into the challenges facing rewilding and those who pursue it, as well as its challenges for mainstream nature conservation.

Geoffrey Wain

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ECOS 37(1) 2016

Mind the gap – reflections on revitalising conservation We need different groups of people to act in a variety of ways to help achieve successful nature conservation. What counts as success will always be the subject of debate, and will remain a moving target, an aspiration rather than a destination.

PETER SHIRLEY Reading recent ECOS issues it seems that there is much disquiet amongst nature conservationists. It’s not necessarily that we do not know what we are doing, after all we have more data, experience and, at least in some areas, successes than we have ever had before. The contributions show an extraordinarily eclectic approach to the natural world, from guiding people through local woodlands, to debating natural capital and green infrastructure, and on to discussing the role of rewilding.

No, the problems seem to be a combination of doubt about why we do certain things and frustration that the rest of the world is ignoring us, cutting both our policy and resources support and, most irritating of all, just not seeing that which we think is self-evident.

There’s the rub, and to a certain extent it always has been; what is so blindingly obvious to us does not appear to be so to many others. Those ‘many others’ include the policy-makers and purse-holders in the public and funding sectors. Those in the public sector of course have their hands full with just surviving in an age, not only of austerity, but of the systematic and dogmatic destruction of their world. We seem to be in the position of knowing more but only being able to do less, hence ‘mind the gap’: it might grow bigger yet.

Another way of looking at this is that we are now very good at outputs but are dissatisfied with our outcomes. We can count everything – numbers of farmland birds, hectares of semi-natural habitat under favourable, or unfavourable, management, numbers of visitors to our reserves and centres. Doing so shows many successes, from red kites to otters and increases in broad-leaved woodland, and from memberships measured in tens of thousands to x number of forest school sessions. Outcomes though are more troublesome. We are told that, amongst other things, biodiversity is declining, exotic species are destroying ‘native’ species, and that harmful diffuse pollution from, for example, nitrates, neonicotinoids and carbon dioxide is increasing.

Fighting the growth goal

In ECOS 36 (1) Steve Head questioned our traditional but increasingly bureaucratic emphasis on maintaining habitats left over from past failed economic systems, and on priority habitats and species and designated sites. He says: “Too late has British 2

ECOS 37(1) 2016 conservation woken up from its stamp collecting days, when a species or habitat was valued in inverse ratio to its abundance”. More positively in the same issue Mathew Frith points out that: “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... 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”. Many people are responding to nature and its needs, but in ways entirely different to those which the conservation sector has developed and, perish the thought, without our input.

There are though very large forces at work in the world which act against nature and wildlife. We tend to point to insufficient resources as preventing us from effectively tackling these. In ECOS 36 (3/4) Lisa Schneidau points out that, for all their successes, our 12 Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs) have “often shaky and alarmingly short-term” funding and staffing foundations. It happens that the one I am involved with, the only urban NIA, in Birmingham and the Black Country, has secured three years continuation funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, but perhaps that is the exception. The shakiness Lisa refers to equally well applies to agencies like Natural England and the Environment Agency. One of the unpleasant realities of life is that, whilst we may wish, as Emily Adams says, to leave behind “The growth goal: The idea that continual growth is either realistic or desirable in a world of finite resources”, one of the reasons some think we are short of money now is the slow-down in global growth. Beware what you wish for!

Whilst NIAs inevitably have to deal with the nitty-gritty of what nature conservation means to a variety of people and interest groups Lisa emphasises the need for vision and values. This is reflected in Peter Taylor’s idea that in rewilding ‘biodiversity’ is of less importance than the “values attached to scale, naturalness and iconic reintroduced species”. As vision and values are about the ‘big picture’ perhaps our disquiet arises from our current dissatisfaction with outcomes.

As we have the knowledge and technical skills, and treasure our values and visions, is the problem effectively communicating these? Hendrikus Van Hensbergen and Kate Huggett wonder if there is too much emphasis on ecosystem services, and talk about successful work exploring other themes with teenagers, a famously difficult group with which to communicate. Except of course, that the commercial sector has no such difficulty in prising millions of pounds from the pockets of the teenagers and their put-upon parents.

Packaging nature for a big sell Finding and communicating the right messages is the heart of the matter for me. Emily Adams, reviewing our Plotting in the Woods discussions, urges us to leave behind “negative and doom-laden language”. As a once marketing and sales person I have always thought that the nature conservation sector is far too introverted, evangelical and self-righteous. We need different groups of people to act in a variety of different ways to help us to deliver successful and sustainable nature conservation. What that entails will always be the subject of debate, and will 3

remain a moving target, an aspiration rather than a destination. It is important that we tailor our approaches according to the group with whom we are communicating and what it is we want them to do, how we want them to change their behaviour and why it is to their benefit to do so.

Mind you, engagement and subtle messaging does not always work. For all of my time in conservation we have majored on environmental education, both formally in schools and informally with our out-of-school play schemes and activities. The rationale is that we are working with the next generation of adults and want them to be ecologically literate. From the Young Ornithologists’ Club to Wildlife Watch and the plethora of bug clubs, through Earth Education to forest schools, we have striven to inculcate love, respect and knowledge for and about nature. I see no signs however that todays’ 20 to 40 year olds collectively care any more about nature than did previous generations. If they did so providing for it would figure much more highly in political and media debate. This, by the way, does not mean that I think we have wasted, or are wasting, our time. Just as nature has intrinsic value so does providing a variety of experiences to children and young people.

ECOS 37(1) 2016 distractions”. Being people-centred and culturally aware is not a distraction, it is a necessary adjustment to our thinking and culture. We just have to remember that ‘people’ is not a singular entity. An old marketing saying is ‘different strokes for different folks’. Keep the science, do the counting, but stop tidily constraining nature and deal a bit more in awe and wonder. Don’t criticise people for liking grey squirrels and Himalayan balsam, or harp on about what has been lost. Capture hearts and minds by sharing our visions for what might be, for nature, and for all those inconveniently various groups of people.

Peter Shirley is Chair of the Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country, a Trustee of Landlife - the National Wildflower Centre and a Fellow of the UK-MAB Urban Forum. The views expressed here are entirely his own. petershirley047@gmail.com

NEIL BENNETT

ECOS 37(1) 2016

The intrinsic worth of something, whether it’s the natural world or a vacuum cleaner, is rarely enough in itself to trigger the change sought. Neither is mere exhortation.

So for the economic development and agricultural sectors ecosystem services are important. For example, no pollinators mean problems and reduced incomes for a whole chain of growers, packers and retailers. Investment in protecting pollinators and providing their habitats should lead to increased profits. This is what they all seek, so there is nothing wrong in ‘selling’ nature in this way. This is not a denial of our lofty ideals, in this context it is the key to achieving them. Saying how good something is, is nowhere near as effective as demonstrating its benefits to your audience.

One area in which we do particularly well and seem to have no compunction in using the marketing approach is health and wellbeing. Whether it's horticultural therapy or health walks, or a host of other activities, we increasingly engage with health professionals. The benefits flow to the participants, to wildlife and to our organisations through the funding involved. This is a good example of not worrying about what we feel or think but exploiting what others feel and think. Here, as elsewhere, we have to use the most appropriate language and context for the particular audience. Using hard science does not deny the intangibles of aesthetics and spirituality, or vice-versa. Neither does intrinsic value deny utilitarian value.

There is no right or wrong here, no reason for angst.

A sense of humanity Revitalising conservation should perhaps be about continuing to move on from the reductionist, scientific and somewhat elitist approach, which once served us so well.

Not that this should be discarded altogether, it needs to run in the background to inform effective action. The guiding principle seemed to be ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’. We have become increasingly aware that nature is not like this, it is chaotic, unpredictable, endlessly opportunistic. What is needed now is more of what Gavin Saunders says some describe as “woolly, people-centred 4

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ECOS 37(1) 2016

ECOS 37(1) 2016

Nature Conservation in Britain – turning the tide?

This article follows up recent debate in ECOS over revitalising conservation. It argues that both science and emotion are now rightly recognised as key influences on conservation policies, but much more is required to engage people with nature, to achieve wider understanding of the natural world and support for wildlife.

ALISTAIR CROWLE The last edition of ECOS (36 [3/4]), focused on revitalisation of nature, captured well the conflicting views prevalent within the nature conservation movement. There are those that look back wistfully to an earlier time where a seemingly more caring and rounded view of the natural world existed. Others think that the reliance on science has gone too far and that the emotional connection between people and nature has been hijacked by a social and intellectual elite that like to use unintelligible terms like ‘ecosystem approach’ that leave the public bewildered and confused. Meanwhile, our children fail to understand the environment around them on account of schools no longer making time for wildlife studies. It all looks pretty bleak and it is hard not to agree with the sentiments at least.

Reflections on some founding fathers of nature conservation It seems little known that the first steps towards what would one day become the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act began as early as 1940.

In this year, the phoney war came to an end, a disaster was averted at Dunkirk, the Blitz commenced and Germany stood poised to invade England. Britain and its empire was suffering repeated military reverses and the turning of the tide at first Alamein was nearly two years away. Despite all this, some people, who also had political influence to match their vision, were able to take what at the time must have seemed an extraordinary view of how a better future would look. I have always thought that this was our finest hour in more ways than one.

The charge that post-war conservation was hijacked by an intellectual elite fails to take account of the times. When the Nature Conservancy (NC) was formed, rationing was still in place and whilst there was full employment, much of the effort was focused on rebuilding bomb damaged cities and creating new homes. This was the time when Development Corporations were springing up around the country and into this came the NC. In the early days, the NC was vulnerable to hostile government departments such as Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food who felt that the fledgling organisation should have been within its control. The early work from 1949 was led by Captain Cyril Diver as the first chief executive of the NC but in 1952 he stepped down and the remarkable Max Nicholson was appointed his successor. Nicholson, along with Sir Arthur Tansley, the first chairman of NC 6

The late Norman Moore by his dragonfly pond.

Photo: Alistair Crowle

and Professor W H Pearsall, the chairman of NC’s science committee, were right to push the importance of science in establishing credibility with other organisations and government.

A few years before his recent death, I was able to spend a morning talking to the late Norman Moore about this period, when pesticides were starting to be seen to cause problems. He emphasized the point that despite dead birds literally dropping out of the sky, they had no data with which to argue their case that there was a problem.

Norman Moore was one of the finest naturalists and conservationists this country has ever produced but it was very nearly not the case. In late September 1944, Norman found himself sitting in a glider on an airfield in southern England, with the rest of First Mountain Artillery Regiment. Their destination was Arnhem. As we know, the operation was halted but a few months later, Norman was badly wounded in action and spent the last few months as a prisoner of war where he nearly died from dysentery. I asked him how his wartime experiences shaped his post-war career. He looked at me and said “I felt as if I had been given a second chance”.

Two years before the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Norman Moore established the eco-toxicology unit of the NC. Derek Ratcliffe had a desk within the unit and with Norman, published the first paper suggesting that it may have been pesticides that were having a negative impact upon reproduction in birds of prey.

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 It was more than 10 years from the early reports of large numbers of all types of birds being picked up dead on farmland before the evidence was marshalled that resulted in the withdrawal of the worst of the chemicals being used. It is worrying to think that we may be facing a similar situation with neonicotinoids. It is easy to imagine that things could have been better if a more imaginative approach to how we protected the environment had been adopted. The reality is that people at the time did the best they could.

Passion and commitment is not enough Passion and intrinsic value are important of course. Most of us became interested in nature conservation as a result of an emotional response to something we encountered, but this connection within ourselves is not enough to persuade others that our views should prevail. Reasonable people will recognise intrinsic value but the world is not full of reasonable people. Ways must be found to convince those who view the environment as merely an open space waiting to be developed that there is greater value in maintaining that open space – the ecosystem approach is one way of doing this although few would disagree that it is a cold and clunky term but then, not that long ago, people used to ask what this strange new phrase ‘biodiversity’ was all about. Today, there is general understanding from all walks as to the meaning of the word ‘biodiversity’ even if there is not a unified approach to protecting it.

The increasing evidence base that the environment plays an important role in maintaining health and assisting in the recovery from illness may yet turn out to be a turning point. If this is the case, it will be the rigorous approach of science that provides the grounds for an important story but it will be down to the storytellers supported by the scientists, to get the appropriate messages across so positive action in protecting the environment is the end result.

Hopefully, those reading this journal have some form of commitment to the natural world and many of us assume that most other people just lack for an opportunity to engage with natural world as we do. A few years ago, at a conference run by the Moors for the Future Project (http://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/) a researcher reported back on his work carried out on schools around the Peak District. He reported that a significant number of children had the opportunity to go out into the countryside but actively chose not to. We know that huge numbers of people watch David Attenborough documentaries or even BBC’s Countryfile programme but go no further in terms of physically engaging with the environment in some way.

It seems their interest is met just by watching wildlife programmes and I suspect, but cannot prove, that they are quite happy leaving it at that. Do these people merely require a trigger before acting? In amongst them will we find the masses that forced the Government to drop its plans to selling off the forestry estate? One way or another, it is important that we find out.

ECOS 37(1) 2016 processes, but many just think of this as being about increasing the number of trees in a given place. The English uplands, where I work, are often identified as being a good place for rewilding (within England at least) but what would be the consequences of this approach to the management of the land? If you want to keep the northern hay-meadows and flower-rich pastures and grasslands, then you will need to manage them. Large expanses of upland are blanket bog, which is a climax habitat. You would need to wait a very long time to see any significant change, if indeed a significant change under natural conditions would actually occur. It really would illustrate just how far we have lost our way if the rewilding advocates were to call for the planting of trees on this globally rare habitat. There would be considerable benefits from altering the current management of the uplands to deliver improvements in the form of raw water quality, reducing flooding events downstream, capturing carbon and restoring rare habitats and bird of prey populations but none of these require rewilding as such. The land can continue to be managed, it just needs the damaging aspects to stop. Rewilding, in England at least, may be better applied to lowland areas but here land is expensive and assuming that an area could be purchased that was ecologically coherent, would agreement between nature conservation organisations ever be reached on how to proceed?

Engaging new generations There seems little doubt to me that (re-)connecting with people and helping future generations have an interest in the environment are perhaps the greatest challenge that we face. My wife is a primary teacher and says that her children really enjoyed the Forest Schools, but in her 23 years of teaching they were only able to get two afternoons for one class. The only way to get schools to take the natural world seriously is for it to be put onto the curriculum, nationally assessed and compared with other schools in things such as league tables so that energy, time and funding are allocated (it should not have to be so formulaic of course). At secondary level, there needs to be an exam. Whether this is called ecology, wildlife or the natural world matters less than it being available and rigorous enough to be worthwhile doing. How could this be achieved? Is there a shared vision between all the conservation bodies, both statutory and non-governmental so that a unified message is given to Government? I suspect not.

Until an individual or organisation achieves a unified approach between all the conservation organisations, for an approach that can utilise science and emotion, then our legacy will be a pile of dusty atlases that tell a story of nature’s lost riches of the past and of our failure to leave the environment in a better place than we found it.

Alistair Crowle is a professional ecologist who specialises in the management of protected wildlife sites in the English uplands. alistair@crowle01.plus.com

Rewilding – a distraction or a new challenge?

Rewilding has grabbed much attention as a possible new direction in conservation.

The rationale for rewilding is in large part the desire to see restoration of natural 8

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What would Brexit mean for nature?

Very little of the debate around the EU referendum has considered the impacts on policy towards wildlife and the natural environment. Yet this is a critical area of EU competency with the potential for wide-ranging consequences. Much of our wildlife and environmental legislation enacts EU Directives and this link would be broken by a UK exit from Europe. However, regardless of whether we stay in or leave, does the fact of the referendum and the debate about the degree of influence of the EU in UK policy represent a turning point? Might there be a weakening of environmental protection regardless of the outcome? And in any event, can we say that current policies are fit for purpose whether in or out?

ECOS 37(1) 2016 Current EU environmental legislation Compiled by Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management3 Nature Conservation

• Air Quality Framework Directive

• Habitats Directive

• Environmental Liability Directive

• Wild Birds Directive • Invasive Species Regulations

• Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive

Planning

• Assessment and Management of Ambient Noise Directive

• Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive

• Industrial Emissions Directive

• Environmental Impact Assessment Directive

• Urban Waste Water Directive

• INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) Directive

• Sewage Sludge Directive • Mining Waste Directive • Waste Framework Directive

Freshwater and Marine

• Carbon Capture and Storage Directive

• Water Framework Directive

• Landfill Directive

The consequences for wildlife and the natural environment of an exit from the EU are uncertain. It is unquestionably the case that much of the wildlife and environmental policy in the UK emanates from legislation which enacts a range of European Directives. Exit from the EU would break this connection and, depending on whether you are pro-EU or anti-EU, this is either a good thing or a bad thing.

• Freshwater Fish Directive • Revised Bathing Waters Directive

• Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive

• Floods Directive

• Large Combustion Plant Directive

• Marine Strategy Framework Directive

Fisheries and Agriculture

Environmental legislation was established at an early stage in the establishment of the EU in order to facilitate trade within a single market, and later became an area of legal EU competence. Central to EU environmental law and thus woven into UK legislation is the aim: “to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment; to contribute towards protecting human health; and to ensure a prudent and rational utilization of natural resources”. As is the ‘polluter pays principle’ and the need for environmental protection to be part of other EU policies.1

• Maritime Spatial Planning Directive

• Common Agricultural Policy

• Shellfish Waters Directive

• Common Fisheries Policy

MIKE TOWNSEND

Once dubbed the ‘dirty man of Europe’, membership of the EU has resulted in the UK adopting environmental legislation which could be said to have benefitted both the people of the UK and the economy. Encouraged by the more environmentally forward thinking European nations such as Germany and Scandinavian countries we have cleaned our beaches and bathing water, gone some way (though not far enough) in improving air quality and improved aspects of protection for wildlife.2 A workshop run by the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management in July 2015 identified 32 different EU Directives and policies aimed at nature conservation, improving environmental protection and the protection of natural resources3 (listed opposite).

It is uncertain that we would have taken these steps without the encouragement of other EU members and the framework of a powerful body of environmental law, which the UK has been able to help shape.

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• Groundwater Directive

• Nitrates Directive Pollution • National Emission Ceilings Directive • Renewable Energy Directive

Whilst an exit from the EU would mean that EU Directives would no longer directly dictate UK policy, the UK government or national governments within the UK could choose to retain the legislation more or less unchanged. Of course they might choose otherwise. They may select to amend it, which could be good if it strengthens measures…or bad if it weakens them. Or they might scrap legislation and start again…or just scrap it.

Exit options Whether, following a vote to exit, we became part of the European Economic Area (EEA) in a similar way to Norway, or went for complete separation would also affect the degree to which EU environmental legislation continued to apply to the UK. Inside the EEA we would be bound by some EU environmental legislation, while having very little influence over its shape. Importantly, even under an EEA option, the Birds and 11

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Habitats Directives would no longer apply, nor would the CAP.4 While some international environmental law would remain in place, the UK Government would not be required to offer the same level of protection as the Birds and Habitats Directives.

It is also unclear what would happen to agricultural support, including the need to meet environmental standards and direct payments for environmental work.

However, it seems unlikely that government would remove support for farmers, and the dislike of CAP red tape (particularly around greening measures) and the suspension of the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides during 20155 suggests agricultural policy might not favour the environment.

Outside both the EU and the EEA the UK would not be bound by current agreements, although exporters might find themselves having to match EU environmental standards in order to trade in Europe. In any event exit would leave a significant gap in environmental law, the danger of weakened environmental protection and at the very least a high degree of uncertainty.

Given the other issues that would face a government following a decision to exit, it may be that reform or redrafting of current arrangements for the natural environment would take a back seat to the lengthy negotiations over trade agreements; the dismantling and redrafting of legislation on migration within Europe, including for British citizens working in Europe; the battle to secure human rights protection; a desperate clamour to ensure that farmers and landowners are protected from a loss of the CAP payments; and of course the uproar, from Scotland at least, of national populations denied their democratic conclusion.

Hardening attitudes to Europe At some point however, the opportunity to weaken environmental legislation and regulation and counter the tendencies of the ‘environmental Taliban’6, as George Osborne would have it, would seem like a temptation to which the current Government is bound to succumb; particularly as the vote for an exit would shift the power to those even more sceptical about environmental regulation and its impact on big business.

Even under the coalition administration there were plenty within government who felt that EU legislation imposed unnecessarily harsh restrictions on business, and that the “green blob” (those organisations representing millions of concerned citizens) supported green policies that were a burden7 on business and economic progress.

These views are likely to have hardened in a government unfettered by the need to compromise. In some areas, such as air pollution where, although there have been improvements the UK remains in breach of EU targets, there would be room to relax standards, reschedule deadlines and avoid penalties for non-compliance.

There are so many issues related to the wildlife and the natural environment for which a national view alone is insufficient. A ‘Little England’ approach, safe within our boundaries and making British decisions for British people falls woefully short of what is needed in relation to climate change, biodiversity, migratory species, fisheries, air quality, or water quality.

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Veteran hornbeam pollards in Great Crabbles Wood, Kent, an ancient wood that’s under threat from one of the possible routes from the Lower Thames crossing. Brexit could dilute the level of protection for this threatened location.

Photo: WTML/Clive Steward

Cross border issues Since many environmental issues are cross border, we would be obliged to enter into negotiations and agreements, whilst having no influence (or very little) over the shape of EU policy on things such as air quality, water quality, carbon emission and plant and animal diseases. A paranoia over environmental 'burdens' on trade and a loss of competitiveness might assert pressure to lower national standards and reduce the costs to businesses.

A withdrawal from Europe feels like a pulling back from cooperation, a snub to European neighbours, but also a more general withdrawal from cooperation more widely. The rhetoric of ‘standing on our own two feet’, ‘managing our own affairs’, ‘not being dictated to’ and ‘making decisions in the interests of British people’ hints at a belligerent belief that compromising for the good of people everywhere is seen as appeasement.

However, I wonder whether even a vote to stay in will lead to a turning point for UK attitudes to EU involvement in national affairs. Regardless of a vote to stay in, 13

ECOS 37(1) 2016 a significant proportion of the population will have registered a desire to leave.

Most peoples’ response to the question posed by the referendum is likely to be based on some visceral response to being part of the EU or being out of it; views on immigration and ‘control of our own borders’, beliefs about how our economy might perform outside the EU or about making Britain great again.

Everything European suddenly becomes unquestionably in the British interest or unquestionably a violation of our national sovereignty. The consequences for the natural environment in this debate have not been prominent, which is perhaps not entirely a surprise. Nonetheless, the environment is one of the most influential areas of EU competency affecting UK policy. A post referendum UK government will be conscious of the substantial vote of discontent and would seem liable to take a more belligerent attitude to EU ‘interference’ in UK policy, including in relation to the environment.

No better in or out?

Whilst drawn towards the view that the natural environment is better served by the UK within the EU than out, it seems to me not well served by either option.

In or out, the current methods and models for protecting and improving the environment, and particularly wildlife, are failing by most measures. According to the EU, of the 500 wild bird species in Europe at least 32% are currently not in a good conservation status.8 Pressures from built development and infrastructure, intensive and ultimately unsustainable agricultural practice, logging of old growth forests and poorly regulated hunting are affecting not just birds but many other species.

A report to government from Wildlife and Countryside Link on the implementation of the Nature Directives9 in England in 2008 identified 18 out of 42 priority habitats and 120 of the 390 priority species were in decline. Then of the species listed under the Habitats Directive only 26% were in favourable conservation status, and just 5% of habitats were in favourable condition.

As a society we seem likely to continue to pay agricultural subsidies with very little demonstrable environmental or other public benefits; we have a designation system for protecting wildlife which is failing on its own measures; we remain in thrall to the need for economic growth over environmental protection; we talk of the need to protect ‘natural capital’, while acquiescing to the commodification of the natural environment in order to facilitate its absorption into an economy based on the false optimism of financial markets to solve all problems.

Whatever the outcome of the referendum, we will remain woefully short of the measures, not simply to protect wildlife and the natural environment from harm, but ensure it thrives for its own value and the values it provides us.

Mike Townsend is a Principal Advisor at the Woodland Trust. The views expressed in this article are those of the author. miketownsend@woodlandtrust.org.uk

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References 1. House of Commons Library. Briefing paper No. 07213, 12th February 2016. Exiting the EU: Impacts in key UK policy areas. Available at: http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7213/CBP-7213. pdf. [accessed 14 March 2016] 2. Environmentalists for Europe E4E. Online. Available at: http://environmentalistsforeurope.org/articles/. [accessed 16 March 2016] 3. Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (2015). Implications of the UK leaving the EU on the sector and the environment. Report of workshop held on 31 July 2015 at Atkins, Birmingham.

Available at: http://www.cieem.net/data/files/Resource_Library/Policy/Policy_work/CIEEM_EU_Ref_ Workshop_Notes_31July2015_rev.pdf. [accessed 16 March 2016] 4. Baldock, D., Buckwell, A., Colsa-Perez, A., Farmer, A., Nesbit, M. and Pantzar, M. (2016). The potential policy and environmental consequences for the UK of a departure from the European Union. Institute for European Environmental Policy 5. Carrington, D. (2015) UK suspends ban on pesticides linked to serious harm in bees. Guardian online 23 July 2015. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/23/uk-suspends-ban-pesticideslinked-serious-harm-bees. [accessed 15 March 2016] 6. Hannah Furness (2012) Environment groups challenge George Osborne over ‘deeply offensive’ Taliban slur claims. The Telegraph online, 18 Oct 2012. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/ greenpolitics/9617946/Environment-groups-challenge-George-Osborne-over-deeply-offensive-Taliban-slurclaims.html. [accessed 14th March 2016] 7. Louise Gray (2012) Are climate change policies a burden? Ed Davey Vs George Osborne. The Telegraph online, 25 April 2012. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/9226185/Areclimate-change-policies-a-burden-Ed-Davey-Vs-George-Osborne.html [accessed 14 March 2016] 8. European Commission online. Birds Directive. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/ legislation/birdsdirective/index_en.htm. [accessed 15 March 2016] 9. Wildlife and Countryside Link (2012) Submission to the Defra Review of the implementation of the Habitats and Wild Birds Directives. Available at: http://www.wcl.org.uk/docs/Link_response_to_Nature_ Directives_060212.pdf. [accessed 15 March 2016]

ECOS recruitment drive!

Please help us bring ECOS to the attention of new readers As part of a drive to bring ECOS to the attention of a new swathe of readers and potential BANC members, we are running a recruitment drive.

In order for potential members to get sight of the range and quality of commentary and opinion in the pages of the online ECOS, we are currently offering free access to the previous issue, ECOS 36(3/4). The individual articles and the whole issue are now available on the BANC website at www.banc.org.uk/open-access-articles. We are cascading news of this availability to as wide a range of people as we can, to tempt them into joining us - and you!

Do you have friends, colleagues or other contacts who would enjoy and benefit from a subscription to ECOS? Please help us with this promotion by forwarding them the link above, so they can discover the delights of ECOS for themselves. If every member could recruit just one more subscriber, we would hugely strengthen our ability to maintain ECOS as the independent and challenging voice it has always been, into the future.

Thank you, BANC Council 15

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Flight of the swans Flying with Bewick’s swans through the wetlands of Europe The Flight of the Swans expedition will be the first ever attempt to follow the migration of the Bewick’s swan from the air. Setting off this September, Sacha Dench of the UK’s Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) will fly a paramotor from the Bewick’s swans’ breeding grounds in arctic Russia 7,500km across 11 countries.

During her journey Sacha will stop at nine Wetlands of International Importance, Ramsar Sites which are internationally important breeding, wintering and passage sites for Bewick’s swan and thousands of others migratory birds. Public educational events, festivals and celebrations will take place at these Sites: Biebrza National Park Ramsar Site (Poland); Matsalu Nature Reserve Ramsar Site (Estonia); Lubana Wetland Complex Ramsar Site (Latvia); Nemunas Delta Regional Park Ramsar Site (Lithuania); Vadehavet (Wadden Sea) Ramsar Site (Denmark); Lauwersmeer Ramsar Site (Netherlands); Zwin Ramsar Site (Belgium); Welney, which is part of Ouze Washes Ramsar Site (United Kingdom); Slimbridge, part of the Severn Estuary Ramsar Site (United Kingdom).

The paramotor is a fabric wing, from which Sacha will dangle with a propeller strapped to her back. Flying at the same speed and height as the swans, she will experience storms, sea crossings and extreme cold along with the swans. She will share their view in real time using cameras and satellite communication, and highlight the importance of Ramsar Sites and the need to help maintain these stepping-stone locations for the Bewick’s swan and their wealth of wildlife. (Main photograph to right is a composite picture).

More about the expedition at www.flightoftheswans.org

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Ecodemocracy: helping wildlife’s right to survive Concepts such as ecosystem services and natural capital illustrate the benefits that people gain from preserving ecosystems, but they overlook wildlife’s ethical right to thrive independent of any benefit to humans. Many nature conservation bodies have changed their mission to give more emphasis to human benefits. The intrinsic value of non-human nature has all but disappeared from their arguments for conservation. This article examines the pitfalls of the shift to this anthropocentric mindset. It argues that non-human nature’s right to survive can be accounted for in decision-making, namely “ecodemocracy”.

JOE GRAY & PATRICK CURRY Talk of the need to save the blood sport of bullfighting will, to animal-loving conservationists, be like a red rag. However, part of an argument for its preservation in Spain is that “bull-breeding estates are valuable reservoirs of biodiversity in intensively farmed landscapes, and without the bulls there would be nothing to sustain them”.1 This alignment of wildlife protection with animal cruelty is an apt coal-mine canary, warning of an impending crisis of neoliberally driven conservation compromises that will be destructive to non-human nature. Addressing this crisis is one of two main themes of our article.

We introduce the second theme with another example that links blood sports and conservation in Britain. The practice of fox hunting, as Oliver Rackham taught us, has had a conservation benefit, helping to prevent some ancient semi-natural woodland from being grubbed out or coniferised.2 But this is an incidental influence, not a justification. The second theme of our article, then, is that, in order to revitalise conservation, we must restore the full underlying rationale for protecting wildlife and habitats.

Anthropocentric drivers of conservation The concept of ecosystem services gained traction in conservation circles from its prominence in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005,3 and it has since received mainstream attention in the UK following, among other events, the recent major floods. In the press, the need to reduce the risk of flooding has been presented as a reason for reintroducing the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber). We do not contest the validity or importance of this. However, we have been saddened to read many reports linking the beaver to flood prevention and economic gain without mentioning its right as a species, independent of its benefits to humans, to thrive once more in this corner of its native range. The beaver seems to have been reduced to a mere tool for human convenience, as it was when it was hunted to extinction here. This illustrates why the ecosystem services approach is far from being a complete answer. We owe it to the species with whom we share the 18

ECOS 37(1) 2016 land, water, and air to critically question this and other contemporary drivers of conservation, including the associated market-driven concepts of natural capital and biodiversity offsetting. And we are not alone in our concern.

In a recent comment piece in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Jonathan Silvertown, a Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Edinburgh, sums up the evolution of the ecosystem services concept as follows: “[It] has become the dominant paradigm framing research and policy making in biodiversity, ecology and conservation biology… . [It] draws power by chiming with dominant neoliberal ideology. Scientific paradigms such as this have an inherent tendency to stop adherents from recognizing alternative approaches. It is high time to examine whether the concept is being oversold with potentially damaging consequences”.3 A particular danger associated with using metaphors such as “natural capital” is that they narrow the terms of environmental debate,4 stripping away any notion of intrinsic value. An even stronger criticism of the current trend comes from Clive Spash, a Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business: “Many conservationists have become enamoured with mainstream economic concepts and approaches, described as pragmatic replacements for appeals to ethics and direct regulation. Trading biodiversity using offsets is rapidly becoming part of the resulting push for market governance that is promoted as a more efficient means of Nature conservation… I argue that offsets, along with biodiversity and ecosystem valuation, use economic logic to legitimise, rather than prevent, ongoing habitat destruction”.5 This viewpoint backs up the call made by Peter Shirley (former BANC Chair), in a recent issue of ECOS, to free up non-human nature from market forces.6 It also supports an insightful body of writing on the topic from Sian Sullivan, who, for instance, has cautioned: “When nature’s health becomes converted into a dollar sign, it is the dollar not the nature that is valued”.7 Another argument that complements this view has been presented by Douglas McCauley, Assistant Professor at the University of California: “Market-based conservation strategies, as currently articulated, offer little guidance on how we are to protect the chunks of nature that conflict with our interests or preserve the perhaps far more numerous pieces of nature that neither help nor harm us… When we employ the aid of ecosystem services to help pay the bills of conservation, we must make it abundantly clear that our overall mission is to protect nature, not to make it turn a profit”.8 This, in turn, echoes a prescient comment made in the 1940s by conservation pioneer Aldo Leopold in his ground-breaking Land Ethic: “One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Wildflowers and songbirds are examples.

Of the 22,000 higher plants and animals native to Wisconsin, it is doubtful whether more than 5 per cent can be sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use. Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if (as I believe) its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance”.9 19

ECOS 37(1) 2016 While the current ecosystem services concept broadens the valuation of nature to cover much more than the basic tradable worth that Leopold questioned, it remains human-centred in stopping short of intrinsic value. This anthropocentric mind-set dominates conservation in the UK today, as is discussed below.

Anthropocentrism as the dominant mind-set in UK conservation The current mind-set of key UK conservation bodies is illustrated in the Green Paper from the RPSB and Wildlife Trusts calling for a Nature and Wellbeing Act.10 The crucial chapter, on valuing nature, starts promisingly, its opening line stating: “Nature has immeasurable intrinsic value.” Yet, incredibly, the 16 paragraphs that follow do not reference this once, instead discussing market and non-market benefits for humans. The last 10 paragraphs talk simply about natural capital.

Further insight can be gleaned from the Response for Nature documents that were published for each of the four UK nations in October 2015, with signatures from 34 conservation organisations in all.11 Again, there is an overwhelming focus on the benefits for humans. The small mention of the ethical case for nature conservation goes no further than observing how it is wrong to be “leaving less for ourselves and future generations.” Next to this observation, the report cites the following finding from a June 2013 survey by the European Commission: “94% agree we have a moral obligation to halt biodiversity loss”.12 But no attempt to split that moral obligation into anthropocentric and ecocentric components is made by the Response for Nature document, or the survey that is cited, and there is thus not one explicit statement that non-human nature has intrinsic value.

More recently, the Green Alliance think tank has published a document titled Natural partners: Why nature conservation and natural capital approaches should work together.13 It calls for a strategic combination of nature conservation and natural capital approaches as a “more effective route to managing environmental challenges” than either in isolation. But this broader approach remains anthropocentrically framed, focusing on “assets such as clean air and biodiversity, where the benefits principally accrue to society at large.” The paper does observe that “intrinsic value” motivates nature conservation and is something that can be “safeguarded” by nature conservation approaches, but intrinsic value is far from being the document’s dominant thrust.

The evidence described above clearly reinforces Jonathan Silvertown’s troubling contention that “major nature conservation organizations have refocused their missions towards the needs of humans”.3 But why is this so? Why has the ethical argument of intrinsic worth become so overshadowed in UK conservation?

Maybe good sense has been consumed by capitalism and overwhelmed by corporate meddling. Or maybe the authors and signatories on documents like these believe that ecocentrically framed conservation strategies are doomed to failure in a neoliberal, growth-obsessed political system and are thus making a tactical appeal to market-driven anthropocentrism. We hold out hope for it being the latter rather than the former and thus argue that what is needed are political systems that can properly account for intrinsic value and ecocentric arguments.

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 In retaining some faith in decisionmaking systems, we are hoping that it is possible to defy the wisdom of Canadian naturalist John Livingston.

Wearied by conservation having been transmuted into resource development, he wrote in 1981: “Political process and nature conservation are fundamentally antithetical”.14

Introducing ecodemocracy “Ecodemocracy” (ecocentric democracy) was defined by Jan Lundberg in 1992 as the “restructuring of our society for maximum conservation and equal rights for all species,”15 which has parallels with Vandana Shiva’s How can we ensure non-human nature has a say in the concept of “Earth democracy”.16 democratic process?

In such a society, as one of us Photo: Joe Gray (Patrick) wrote back in 2000, the natural world would “provide the context of human political, social and ethical deliberation”.17 And nature conservation – borrowing the words of Paul Evans, a former Conservation Director at Plantlife – would be “what we do as members of a community of life to maintain and encourage the continued diversity of plants, animals and their habitats that make up that community. This means everywhere, the whole space we occupy with nature”.18 The key question that this vision raises is, of course, how we get there. To provide a framework to answer this, we offer an expanded, more practical definition of ecodemocracy: Groups and communities using decision-making systems that respect the principles of human democracy while explicitly extending valuation to include the intrinsic value of non-human nature, with the ultimate goal of evaluating human wants equally to those of other species and the living systems that make up the Ecosphere.

Under this expanded definition, Lundberg’s formulation is an end point of the process of conversion to fully ecodemocratic societies. In order to get there (without the collapse and re-birth of society) it will require large-scale culture change.

This could be achieved through a positive feedback loop between a responsive, democratic state and a body of conservationists and other citizens who are informed, concerned, and empowered. And it would be facilitated, as Patrick wrote more recently, by “building and strengthening local communities, civil associations and citizens’ movements with a shared understanding that without ecological integrity, no other kind is possible”.19 These groups could be informed by the Manifesto for Earth and the principles of Earth jurisprudence.20,21 The principle of ecodemocracy applies to decisions directly affecting conservation, as well as those indirectly impacting it through their effects on habitats and the 21

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Table 1. Examples of proposed socio-political systems, and how they differ from ecodemocracy (ecocentric democracy)

Socio-political system

Achieved through higher level of state control

Achieved through lower level of state control

Eco-authoritarianism25

Main premise/ motivation An authoritarian, technocratic central government guided by an “eco-elite”. Motivated by the viewpoint that freedom, justice, and public participation are luxuries that might not be affordable for societies facing ecological disaster

How it differs from ecodemocracy

We now discuss examples of how ecodemocracy could be implemented in practice.

(Table 1 describes how ecodemocracy differs from some other “greener” sociopolitical systems that have been proposed.23-25)

Not explicitly ecocentric (i.e. focused on improving human lives rather than justice for non-human nature)

Deliberative ecodemocracy

Undermines human democracy

Ecodemocracy by human proxies with voting rights

Environmental deliberative democracy23,25

Emphasises the role of discursive processes, as opposed to just majority votes, in a democracy

Not explicitly ecocentric

Ecological democracy (sensu Hester24)

Democracy that applies ecological thinking to the design of habitation and communities

Not explicitly ecocentric

Ecological citizenship independent of an ecological state25

Motivated by the viewpoint that ecological states cannot avoid the “problems arising from the nexus between liberal democracy and capitalism”25

Eco-anarchism (sensu Carter25)

Self-governing communities with ecological goals

Not explicitly ecocentric Operates independently of political systems

Not explicitly ecocentric Anti-state

environment in general. And it can operate at any geographic scale, from a local stakeholder group to an international alliance of governments, although it aligns itself particularly well with the thinking behind bioregionalism – the geographical organisation of socio-political systems by ecologically defined boundaries, such as watersheds, instead of socially constructed boundaries such as nations.

A crucial part of our argument is that small-scale ecodemocratic decision-making systems, and partially ecodemocratic societies, can, we believe, still offer significant benefits for nature conservation. In this light, we see conservationists who share our ethical standpoint about the intrinsic value of non-human nature – including various contributors to Keeping the Wild 22 and Protecting the Wild 8 , two recent anthologies from Island Press – as being among the people pushing hardest to advance ecodemocracy.

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How ecodemocratic decision-making would work

Intrinsic values of non-human nature should be incorporated, with allocated time, in decision-making processes. This could be achieved, for instance, through a “Council of All Beings”, which is a process in which participants step aside from their human identity and speak on behalf of another life-form.26 A way to extend the benefits of the discursive process in deliberative ecodemocracy would be to assign stakeholder status and voting rights to non-humans, which would be achieved through human proxies (they would need a good grasp of both ecological and ethical principles). This suggestion has been made previously in the literature,27 but in a rebuttal it was branded “stakeholder identity run amok” on the basis that non-human nature cannot sensibly accept the moral obligations associated with the fairness-based underpinning of stakeholder processes.28 We counter this rebuttal by arguing that entitlement for stakeholder status should come not from the capacity to understand fairness, something which is already covered by having proxies, but rather the potential to be subject to unfair outcomes – such as going extinct. (A darker corollary of insisting on capacity to accept moral obligations is that it excludes humans with senility or severe learning difficulties, for instance, from consideration.29) In our view, stakeholder status could be assigned to species, ecological communities, or non-living components of ecosystems such as water and soil.

In the early days of adopting the ecodemocratic principle, it might be wise that these human proxies should not dominate the group of stakeholders, but as communities expand their ethical sphere to become fully ecocentric the proxies grow to form the dominant part.

Ecodemocracy by juries of citizens Instead of having a number of individual proxies, a group of experts in ecology, environmental science, and ethics could be assembled to produce recommendations on decisions that would be preferable from the perspective of the community of life. A second panel, formed of elected politicians, would similarly create a proposal, but one that considers the desires of humans in the traditional way (this would not exclude nature conservation). Where there were important differences between the recommendations of the two panels, a jury of citizens would be tasked with deciding whether, within an ecocentric worldview, the human desires were sufficiently important to outweigh the needs of the community of life as a whole.

Ecodemocracy by statute The three mechanisms described above could all be operated locally, nationally, or globally. A fourth and complementary option, but one specifically relevant for 23

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Table 2. Articles describing the rights of nature in Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution30

Article #

Overview

71

Nature has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes.

72

Nature has the right to be restored. This restoration shall be apart from the obligation of the State and natural persons or legal entities to compensate individuals and communities that depend on affected natural systems.

73

The State shall apply preventive and restrictive measures on activities that might lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems and the permanent alteration of natural cycles.

74

Persons, communities, peoples, and nations shall have the right to benefit from the environment and the natural wealth, enabling them to enjoy a good way of living.

the level of the state, would be for the need to act in accordance with the intrinsic rights of non-human nature to be written into a statute. Ideally, this statute would be written in such a way that it cascaded through every layer of political decisionmaking. Maybe, in the UK, pressure to introduce such a statute could come from the royal family, who have a vision beyond five year terms.

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to grant constitutional rights to nonhuman nature (see Table 2). This complements a strong emphasis on human democracy in that country’s constitution: “The participation of citizens in all matters of public interest is a right, which shall be exercised by means of mechanisms of representative, direct and community democracy”.30 Since then, Bolivia has passed a statute that gives non-human nature rights, while the Whanganui River in New Zealand is also now recognised as a right-bearing entity (the latter development reinforces our contention about the applicability of stakeholder status).31 Pressure for such statutes in other countries could be generated through recognising “extensive damage to, destruction of, or loss of ecosystems” as an international crime, as is currently being pushed for under the name of the “law of Ecocide”.32 This would demand constitutional amendments and call for ecodemocratic mechanisms to be put in place for decision-making processes. Some countries already have specific means for handling such a law. In Guatemala, for instance, an environmental crimes court opened in July 2015.33 It is no coincidence that all these cases relate to nations with remaining indigenous culture and thus a greater attachment to the natural world than exists in fully Westernised countries such as the UK. The prevailing view in fully Westernised countries might be that the rest of the world needs to learn from us; but is it not the West that needs to be learning from the countries which have remaining indigenous 24

Table 3. A few examples illustrating how conservation-driven outcomes might differ between ecodemocracy (ecocentric democracy) and democracy (as carried out in the UK today)

Issue

Outcome under democracy

Outcome under ecodemocracy

CONSERVATION ISSUES Excessive pressure placed on natural areas by recreation (e.g. mountain biking)

Pressure may be tolerated as public use of nature’s instrumental value is seen as being essential in the argument to protect it

Pressure is limited by capping use and restricting certain areas, because nature’s intrinsic value is considered in the decision-making process

Rewilding

Might tend towards a situation as favourable as possible for tourism interests (with a bias towards iconic species) or resource extraction (such as timber harvesting)

Focused on restoring a richness of life-forms and processes, based on our best ecological knowledge and driven by moral obligations

Timescale of planning

Significance of ecological timescales might be trumped by pressing human priorities, and thus short-termism may prevail

Created with a longer-term view (e.g. through planning “conservation exit strategies”36)

Human overpopulation

Gains minimal political attention and resource

Would gain major political attention and commensurate resource (such as increased funding for family planning clinics)

Subsidies for livestock farming

Continue despite potential downside for non-human nature (relating, for instance, to the relative inefficiency of land use for livestock farming)

Would be more strongly challenged as the downside for non-human nature (such as the reduced availability of non-farmed land) would be given more weight in decision-making

Non-essential goods

Proliferate in the throwawayand-replace culture of neoliberalism

Would come under increased scrutiny, with measures such as advertising restrictions being enacted

BROADER ISSUES

cultures, for it is they who have preserved more of their spiritual connection with non-human nature?

Subversive ecodemocracy Our final suggestion is to use the “mask” of an economic rationale to “subversively pursue a more radical ethic”.34 It is inspired by the potential offered by ecotourism; however, there are examples where tourism-based economic arguments run counter 25

ECOS 37(1) 2016 to conservation goals.35 This flaw reinforces the advice presented earlier against over-reliance on economic arguments. Furthermore, the subversive approach, by its nature, nixes any potential for inspiring culture change in broader society. We must, therefore, label this option a last resort: it is preferable to doing nothing, if everything else fails. (In “everything else” we could include an ecocentrically aligned version of eco-authoritarianism [Table 1].)

Examples of possible outputs from ecodemocratic decision-making In Table 3 we present examples to illustrate how different decisions might be reached through ecodemocracy, as contrasted with the current neoliberally driven socio-political system.

Revitalising conservation for people and nature Our argument for the ecodemocratic principle, coupled with the suggested mechanisms for implementation, represent our contribution to the debate on revitalising conservation. Ecodemocracy would restore conservation’s powerful ethical basis and enable conservationists to talk about intrinsic value once more. We need to be lobbying for ecodemocracy to be implemented in high-level decisionmaking while also taking any opportunity to employ the philosophy more locally.

Contact us to have your say or learn more. This article is hopefully just the beginning.

Further reading For a more in-depth discussion of green citizenship, as well as the ongoing monetisation of nature, and the significance of non-human nature’s intrinsic value, see chapters 12 and 13 of Ecological Ethics: An Introduction.29

References and notes 1. http://ow.ly/YhDkN Accessed 13/02/2016 2. Rackham, O. (1975) Hayley Wood: Its History and Ecology. Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely Naturalists’ Trust, Cambridge.

3. Silvertown, J. (2015) Have ecosystem services been oversold? Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 30, 641-648.

4. Coffey, B. (2016) Unpacking the politics of natural capital and economic metaphors in environmental policy discourse. Environmental Politics, 25, 203-222.

5. Spash, C.L. (2015) Bulldozing biodiversity: The economics of offsets and trading-in Nature. Biological Conservation, 192, 541-551.

6. Shirley, P. (2015) Freeing up nature – from ourselves and from market forces. ECOS, 36, 2-7.

7. Sullivan, S. (2010) Ecosystem services commodities – a new imperial ecology? New Formations, 69, 111-28.

8. Wuerthner, G., Crist, E. and Butler, T., editors. (2015) Protecting the Wild: Parks and Wilderness, the Foundation for Conservation. Island Press, Washington, DC, USA. 9. Leopold, A. (1968) A Sand County Almanac – and Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. 10. http://ow.ly/Yj23W Accessed 13/02/2016 11. http://ow.ly/YhICD Accessed 13/02/2016 12. http://ow.ly/YhIR2 Accessed 13/02/2016 13. Armstrong Brown, S., Tipper, W.A. and Wheeler, N. (2016) Natural partners: Why nature conservation and natural capital approaches should work together. Green Alliance, London.

14. Livingston, J. (1981) The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, ON, Canada.

15. Lundberg, J. (1992) America needs restructuring. Population and Environment 13, 225-228.

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 16. http://ow.ly/YhDm3 Accessed 13/02/2016 17. Curry, P. (2000) Redefining community: towards an ecological republicanism. Biodiversity and Conservation, 9, 1059-1071.

18. Evans, P. (1992) What is this thing called life? The Guardian, 21 August.

19. Curry, P. (2011) No, Greens must not cosy up to capitalism. They must resist it. The Guardian, 21 July.

20. Mosquin, T. and Rowe, S. (2002) A Manifesto for Earth. Biodiversity 5, 3-9.

21. http://ow.ly/YhSGZ Accessed 13/02/2016 22. Wuerthner, G., Crist, E. and Butler, T., editors. (2014) Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth. Island Press, Washington, DC, USA. 23. Ott, K. (2012) Variants of de-growth and deliberative democracy: A Habermasian proposal. Futures, 44, 571-581.

24. Hester, R.T. (2010) Design for Ecological Democracy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. 25. Melo-Escrihuela, C. (2015) Should ecological citizenship advocates praise the green state? Environmental Values, 24, 321-344.

26. http://ow.ly/YhOXd Accessed 13/02/2016 27. Starik, M. (1995) Should trees have managerial standing? Toward stakeholder status for non-human nature. Journal of Business Ethics, 14, 207-217.

28. Phillips, R.A. and Reichart, J. (2000) The environment as a stakeholder? A fairness-based approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 23, 185-197.

29. Curry, P. (2011) Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (2nd edition). Polity Press, Cambridge.

30. http://ow.ly/YhDih Accessed 13/02/2016 31. Tanasescu, M. (2015) Nature advocacy and the indigenous symbol. Environmental Values, 24, 105-122.

32. http://ow.ly/YkYyp Accessed 13/02/2016 33. http://ow.ly/YhRDO Accessed 13/02/2016 34. Holden, A. (2003) In need of new environmental ethics for tourism? Annals of Tourism Research, 30, 94-108.

35. Prati, G., Albanesia, C., Pietrantoni, L. and Airoldi, L. (2016) Public perceptions of beach nourishment and conflict management strategies: A case study of Portonovo Bay in the Adriatic Italian Coast. Land Use Policy, 50, 422-428.

36. Gray, J., and Curry, P. (2015) Does conservation need an exit strategy? The case for minimal management.

ECOS, 36, 28-32.

Joe Gray is an MSc Forestry student at Bangor University with an undergraduate degree in Zoology from the University of Cambridge. joe@ecoforestry.uk Patrick Curry is the author of Ecological Ethics: An Introduction (Polity Press, 2011). pmc@patrickcurry.co.uk Both Joe and Patrick are members of the Ecocentric Alliance, a global advocacy network for ecocentrism (www.ecocentricalliance.org and @ecospherics [Twitter]).

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ECOS 37(1) 2016

Population growth – a taboo topic for nature conservation?

In the latest of our Revitalising Conservation series of BANC Twitter debates we put the focus on population growth. Here we summarise the key issues facing conservationists on the topic of population and take a look at the issue as a whole.

HOLLY ALSOP & NICOLA MATTHEWS Starting in the summer of 2015, BANC took on the task of engaging its members and the wider world of conservation around how we can ‘revitalise conservation’, using the hashtag #revitalisecons to start the discussion. Through vigorous and sometimes heated Twitter debates, we’ve heard from conservationists on hot topics in the sector. To kick off 2016 we looked at population growth, considering how this impacts both locally and globally and posing the question ‘have nature conservationists noticed this subject?’

A sense of perspective on population growth There’s no denying that the world’s population is increasing; there are currently more people living on our planet today than at any one time in history. However, there are a number of conflicting theories about when numbers will peak and ultimately begin to reduce and how this affects our natural environment.

Many believe nature finds its own balance and ways of controlling population growth, while others suggest man-made influences such as conflicts, pollution and poor hygiene are the determinants of population control.

WHO’s data on population growth in rural and urban communities highlights just how extreme the shift has been over the past 50 years. Urban communities alone account for 54% of the global population, up from 34% in 1960, and are expected to grow by 1.84% per year for the next 5 years. Forecasts for subsequent 5-year periods show downward trends in urban population growth.1

ECOS 37(1) 2016 who was leading the debate, stated it is “a thorny but non-negotiable part of a fairer deal for non-human nature, yet taboo”. Many were also worried about how little attention the subject receives, from grassroots to the higher echelons of government; Margaret Nelson (@Flashmaggie) described it as “the elephant in the room” and that “it’s impossible to ignore; it’s relevant to our own and other species’ survival”.

How do we approach an issue like population, and make it relevant to conservationists in different sectors?

As BANC development officer Emily Adams (@EmCrayon) explained during our Twitter debate: “The name ‘conservationist’ covers such a breadth of expertise (from microbial ecology through to psychology/social anthropology) that it is unlikely everyone will engage with all debates”. Engaging with conservationists across the entire sector is a nigh impossible challenge, and while there are a plethora of opinions regarding population growth it is unclear who is engaging with the issue in a meaningful way.

Joe Gray even asked whether conservationists should be involved and whether they should try to push population growth up the political agenda? Chair of BANC Gavin Saunders (@GavinBlackdowns) replied: “Yes, conservationists should be involved, but in an intelligent capacity, recognising it’s really about development and equity”.

Our Twitter discussion focused on who might be responsible for leading the change and by which means. @ginbat said: “I advocate mainstream ecoliteracy in education – government and society together” while others suggested that for the conservation sector to effectively engage with population issues, new and possibly previously unheard of connections are necessary. But who in the conservation sector would spearhead this movement? Many feel that the big conservation charities that arguably have the most potential are unlikely to be leaders in advocacy on this topic.

And if it is left to education we end up with campaigns that are often hindered by government interference. However, as Gavin Saunders pointed out: “Education should not be about telling people how to live. Education equals empowerment and the ability to make choices”.

It’s not just about stats and graphs; the issue of population growth impacts so much more. It’s about wildlife, natural environments, consumption of food, services, land and housing, with priorities differing between urban and rural environments, and low and high income countries.

Discussions around the big UK charities and their involvement in the issue often falls short of how influential they really are to government and policy-making streams, and many also agree their members do little to advocate for change. What’s more, anyone pushing for population control often does so at their own risk; as Margaret Nelson stated: “It’s political dynamite. There would be resistance to ‘being told what to do’, and hence it is avoided”. This was clearly highlighted in our debate with some of the bigger names in conservation coming under fire. When asked if Greenpeace engage with rising human population in every campaign Joe Gray was quick to reply: “No, they actively avoid the issue” and he questioned whether it’s “too scary a message for bodies that have adopted a ‘big business’ mentality for membership numbers and fees”.

In our recent Twitter debate on population growth it was clear those in the conversation sector recognise over-population as an issue. Joe Gray (@EcoforestryUK),

That being said, some experts remain positive, stating many advocacy groups do make population growth a priority but they prove to be subtle about their activity.

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 Many see the population issue as not winnable in the short term, potentially a single lifetime, and this is surely an influential factor on government, charity and conservation agendas, irrespective of their resources. While this stays a serious conundrum, the population issue will remain the elephant in the room.

How can conservationists keep the discussion going?

Keep tweeting BANC on the subject using the hashtag #revitalisecons. Discussions can continue after the formal Twitter debate. And one debate doesn’t solve the issue; how do we educate? How do we involve governments around the world?

And how do we ensure conservationists both for and against the issue have an opportunity to share their views?

Next BANC Twitter debates Is there a topic within conservation you would like to see debated? Please get in touch with suggestions at enquiries@banc.org.uk or tweet us @UKconservation.

NEIL BENNETT

References

While the following was not discussed at our debate, their unwillingness to shout about it suggests financial implications for charities might weigh heavily on what they choose to make conservation priorities, potentially turning the issue into an ethically recalcitrant topic.

Looking for leadership While we seem to agree there is no clear leader on population issues, we remain stumped as to how populations should be managed, let alone the reasons for fluctuations in population. Some suggested happier communities and better quality of life is contributing to the rise, while others suggested threatened communities are the biggest factors. Some believe changing attitudes towards large families by making them socially unacceptable could have significant benefits in the long term, but how is this achievable in the short term and on a social level? One practical solution is to make children expensive to raise, something that will require government engagement with population. John Bacon (@JohnBacon19) said: “Just providing all women with the choice and by providing birth control is step one”. If we start incorporating some of these philosophies into our education programs do we start to toe the line of other more extreme political policies on family planning and risk the devastating effects it could have on human lives? However, Population Matters’ recently published paper2 on family planning and carbon emissions suggests investing in education and contraceptive methods is far cheaper than compensating for population growth with renewable energy sources. The savings made could be used to bolster public services, such as education, empowering women and improving agriculture and healthcare.

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1. World Health Organization, World Urbanization Prospects, 2014. (http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/ situation_trends/urban_population_growth/en/) 2. Population Matters (http://www.populationmatters.org/population-matters-calls-for-crisis-family-planning/)

Recommended reading The following books, articles and websites were suggested during our Twitter debate: Cafaro, P and Crist, E (eds) (2012), Life on the Brink, http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/life_on_the_brink/ Bookchin, M (1987) Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement, http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/socecovdeepeco.html Big Ideas Change The World, Friends of the Earth, https://www.foe.co.uk/page/big-ideas-change-world Endangered Species Condoms, a project of the Centre for Biological Diversity http://www.endangeredspeciescondoms.com/ Population Growth Rate, Index Mundi http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=24

Holly Alsop is an editor with experience in the conservation and medical sectors; she is currently an editor at the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence and a Trustee with BANC. She tweets @ziggytalks.

Nicola Matthews has worked in the charity sector for the last 9 years, responsible for all things marketing and social media, and is currently a Marketing Manager at the British Red Cross and a Trustee with BANC. She tweets @NicolaJayne515.

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Flood management and nature – can rewilding help?

Can fewer sheep, more trees, restoring rivers to their floodplains and reintroducing beavers help reduce flood risk? This article looks at the baggage in policy making when planning for flood-resilience and considering the rewilding options.

STEVE CARVER If like me you were listening to BBC Radio 4 on 7 January then you too may have nearly choked on your morning coffee. Prof Alan Jenkins, Deputy Director of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) was on the Today programme about flooding. Interviewer John Humphrys opened with a provocative question: “The idea of rewilding, take all the sheep off the uplands etc., there’s no evidence it will work, is there?” To which Prof Jenkins replied “That’s absolutely correct. There is no compelling evidence that a link can be made.” He then went on to say “With these huge rainfall events one has to look more towards concrete infrastructure, if you like, flood defences.” The context was clearly whether more trees and fewer sheep in the uplands of Britain could somehow have prevented the disastrous flooding seen over the Christmas period. To be fair, what he said was strictly true. That is to say that the scientific evidence on the benefits of rewilding is sparse largely because rewilding is relatively new and so no long-term studies have been carried out specifically on this question. What we do have, however, is a growing body of data that relates to how human activities and land management impact on natural processes. It also depends on what your definition of rewilding is, but surely more trees and fewer sheep in our uplands would form part of the wider picture?

Fewer sheep, more trees… lessons in hydrology I was surprised by the surety with which Prof Jenkins rounded on rewilding. I’m no hydrologist, but having studied as an undergraduate at Huddersfield back in the early 1980s I have a pretty good working knowledge. On a field class to Slapton Ley in Devon during the Easter of 1984 we learnt that sheep grazing compacts the soil and reduces infiltration capacity so increasing surface runoff in rainfall events.

Woodland on the same soils has the opposite effect – so much so that even a first year undergrad with rudimentary equipment can see the difference.1 More recent long-term experimental work by CEH and Imperial College at Pontbren in Wales has reinforced these results showing that removing sheep grazing and planting trees can increase infiltration capacities by as much as 67 times and reduce surface runoff by as much as 78%.2 So not only does reducing sheep numbers and planting more trees reduce soil compaction and increase infiltration capacity, it also increases surface roughness, thereby slowing runoff, reducing soil erosion and trapping sediment. This must help alleviate downstream flooding pressures to some degree, surely?

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 So I emailed Prof Jenkins shortly afterwards explaining my interest and asking for clarification. I got a terse reply simply directing me to materials available on the CEH web pages including a transcript of the interview wherein his statement on rewilding had mysteriously disappeared.3 Curious. Nevertheless, the long list of points made by CEH scientists on flooding and the need for integrated catchment management make for interesting reading, containing as they do much in the way of good common sense backed up by CEH’s long history of work in the field.4 These echo very much my own reading of the situation, with the exception of the potential benefits of rewilding and the need for a better appreciation of the social thalweg.5 Rewilding aside, we need to look carefully at the whole catchment, not just at the biophysical landscape (terrain, climate, soils, vegetation, etc.) and the hydrological processes that determine river flows and flood events, but also at the complex interplay of social, cultural, political and economic factors that govern land use, management, ownership, revenue and people. In particular we need to concern ourselves with the politics of power and responsibility. There are deep-rooted and powerful vested interests in maintaining the status quo in the British uplands and keeping them just the way they are. While these people are very happy to accept agricultural and environmental subsidies, they remain almost wholly focused on the production of food and fibre and management of the land for ‘sporting’ activities, often at a financial loss if it wasn’t for subsidies.6 Much of this management takes place with very little regard for what goes on downstream as regards flood protection.

In most instances, land owners are just happy to get water off their land as quickly as possible, and from there into the local water course and away downstream at which point it becomes an SEP.7 Almost all environmental service delivery is based on a ‘What’s in it for us?’ or ‘What little can we get away with?’ attitude. Aldo Leopold sums it up perfectly thus: “When the private landowner is asked to perform some unprofitable act for the good of the community, he today assents only with outstretched palm. If the act costs him cash this is fair and proper, but when it costs only forethought, open-mindedness, or time, the issue is at least debatable”.8 Climate change and increasing intensity of rainfall means that the return periods of large flood events are getting shorter.9 As yesterday’s “unprecedented” becomes tomorrow’s “normal” we are likely to see more floods like those that hit northern Britain over the 2015 Christmas period and the flooding of the Somerset Levels in 2014. The personal misery and costs to the individual are hard to calculate and, I am sure, even harder to bear, but what is clear is that as flood frequencies and levels increase, some quite radical measures will need to be taken to alleviate the problem. This doesn’t simply mean pouring more concrete and building ever higher flood defences to protect beleaguered downstream communities as Prof Jenkins might suggest. Nor does it imply having to dredge channels to increase flood water throughput. Instead, we must take a long hard look at upstream land use and management practices.

The causes of flooding Heavy and prolonged rainfall, especially onto ground that is already saturated, is the principal cause of flooding, but how we manage the land upstream of flood prone 33

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 image on Google maps of the Pennines and other peat moorlands and you’ll often see a dense herring-bone pattern of linear ditches or “grips” criss-crossing the hills.

These have, as intended, lowered the water table, drying out the peat, changing heather to grass and increased the drainage density. This has the combined effect of significantly increasing the speed at which rain can runoff the land and into our rivers, reducing lag times and potentially increasing the “flashiness” of the river and thus, as an unintended consequence, its propensity to flood.10 While there is contradictory evidence as to the exact effects of grips on floods it seems likely that overall they can only make matters worse. In a peculiar turn of fortune, grants are now available for blocking the very grips the same land owners dug, but now with the aim of reducing drainage densities and rewetting the moors.11

Can grouse moor management increase flood downstream?

NEIL BENNETT

Grouse moor management and especially “muirburn”12 is detrimental to water quality, wildlife and dissolved organic carbon13, but can muirburn really increase runoff? When done badly and especially when adjacent to drainage channels/ streams, the answer is almost certainly a qualified yes because it increases the amount of bare peat leading to increased surface runoff, although there is a lack of detailed evidence to prove this conclusively. Nevertheless, Hebden Bridge which was hit hard by flooding on Boxing Day 2015 is downstream of the Walshaw Moor Estate. This is the grouse moor at the centre of a prosecution case brought by Natural England against the moor’s owner Richard Bannister for allegedly digging unauthorised drainage channels and excessive burning of heather on blanket bog.14 Certainly, grouse moor management is not beneficial to flooding even if shooting interest groups try to make out otherwise. Only recently have the Moorland Association and the Heather Trust realised that they need to do something to mitigate the worst effects of their activities and improve their public image with events such as “bogathon” aimed at improving the water retention capacity of their members’ moors.15 Many of these moors would have been mixed woodland in the past and would revert to woodland again if not managed specifically to maximise the surplus population of grouse for shooting.

areas can have a significant effect. Land drainage, deforestation, overgrazing, bare ground, and channelisation of rivers together with increasing urbanisation and associated impervious surfaces have combined to exacerbate the flood problem.

Even flood defences can make flooding worse in unprotected areas immediately up and downstream of the farms and communities they are designed to protect through backing up in front of constrictions that hard flood defences create or rushing flood waters on downstream.

Grants made available for upland drainage in the 60s and 70s aimed at improving grazing were taken up with enthusiasm by many land owners. Look at an aerial 34

Aside from driven grouse shooting and deer stalking in Scotland, sheep grazing is the dominant activity in most of upland Britain. Intensive grazing with domestic livestock has two effects on hydrology: reducing and simplifying vegetation cover to a close-cropped grass sward by grazing, and compacting thin mineral soils through trampling. The former reduces interception storage and surface roughness, as well as reducing biodiversity, while the latter reduces infiltration capacity through compaction and increases surface runoff.16 During prolonged periods of heavy rainfall, there is precious little to hold the water in the hills, resulting in increased downstream flood risk.17 The flooding of the Somerset Levels during early 2014 resulted from heavy and prolonged rainfall, made worse by questionable land management practices.

Farming maize and potato crops in the catchment increases the area of bare soil in the winter months which, because it is compacted by mechanisation, reduces infiltration capacity. Increased surface runoff and soil erosion are the result. This 35

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The River Liza in Ennerdale, which is unconstrained and free to shift its course.

is especially true on steeper slopes near to water courses where the eroded soils end up being deposited in Rivers Parrett and Tone, reducing their capacity and further exacerbating the flooding problem.18 Nutrients leaching directly from bare fields into river courses also encourage in-channel weed growth which reduces flow velocities and traps more sediment, further reducing cross-sectional area, leading to calls to dredge the affected rivers.19

Engineered solutions Engineering solutions rarely treat the cause; rather they attempt to address the effects. Demands from flooded farmers and residents to dredge rivers to help maintain their capacity and transfer flood waters downstream are a knee-jerk reaction to the threat of flooding. For dredging to be effective it needs to be carried out along the whole length of the main river which is costly in terms of both money and riverine habitats and ecology. While local dredging may be effective in reducing 36

flooding in the immediate vicinity, and is desirable in a few instances, it only speeds the flood waters on to multiply the flooding downstream.20 In addition, sediment in the river channel comes from erosion of soils, hillsides and river banks upstream, but why so much that it causes problems from choked river channels downstream?

Clearly, we wouldn’t have to dredge if the sediment supply was reduced by ensuring better vegetation cover (again, more trees) protecting vulnerable soils, hillsides and river banks from overgrazing (yet again, fewer sheep).

Similarly there is a limit to just how high we can build flood defences to protect farmland and urban areas on the flood plain. Like dredging, pouring concrete is also expensive and, while a very visible form of flood defence to local residents whose homes and businesses are at risk, it is not the answer. Money thrown at building extra flood defences after high profile flooding is just a response aimed at saving political face. Ultimately, engineered flood defences will always fail in the face of 37

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increased rainfall intensity and shortening return periods as we cannot afford to keep on building them higher and higher.

Natural flood management While many flood defence projects focus on reducing local impacts by protecting flood-prone areas with walls, barriers, gates and wash lands, a few recent projects have begun to address the problem at source with natural flood management (NFM) techniques. “Slowing-the-flow”21 and other similar demonstration projects show how changes to upstream land use, insertion of large woody debris (LWD) dams in streams, increased surface storage, etc. can slow down runoff by increasing lag times and attenuating flow peaks and so reduce soil erosion, increase sediment trapping. All of which can reduce downstream flooding and benefit habitats and wildlife, and be achieved without costly and intrusive engineering works.22 River restoration projects can also have benefits by allowing flood plains to store flood waters and increasing the length and roughness of the thalweg, so reducing its overall gradient, slowing flows and increasing flood response times.23 River restoration employs NFM approaches together with “soft engineering” such as reinstating meanders, re-profiling banks, increasing floodplain woodland/scrub, creating floodplain mires, etc.24 In essence, rivers flood periodically and overflowing onto wooded floodplains is nature’s way of coping with flood waters. Giving back a river’s freedom on its floodplain through river restoration might mean allowing farmland to flood, but surely this is better than the alternative of flooded homes and businesses?

Free-ranging rivers in unconstrained flood plains have shown how we can increase resilience of catchments to flood events. A good example here is the River Liza in Ennerdale, Cumbria. In both the 2009 and 2015 floods the river responded to the heavy rainfall by escaping the confines of its banks and onto its floodplain. This is what natural floodplains are for, but while the river overflowed, the floodplain absorbed the extra water and energy but also effectively “filtered” the flood waters of its sediment load before discharging into Ennerdale Water. This had the effect of both attenuating the flood peak and reducing its sediment load. Whereas other rivers in adjacent valleys all flooded and lakes in the region all witnessed massive increases in turbidity, Ennerdale remained clear and flooding downstream was minimal. The difference is reasonably attributable to differences between Ennerdale and other Lake District rivers. Not only is the River Liza in Ennerdale free to move around its floodplain, the fell sides in the valley are subject to less grazing and have considerably more trees than their neighbours wherein bare, sheep-grazed hillsides and channelised rivers are more the norm.25

Beavers doing it for free At the recent Upland Hydrology conference in Leeds I sat through a whole day of talks and discussions about NFM projects. All were about human-engineered NFM approaches which try to mimic the effects of natural in-stream LWD dams and wetlands in limiting downstream flooding. Not once did any of these presentations mention beavers until I brought it up in the final Q&A session, much to the chagrin of the CLA and Moorland Association representatives on the panel.

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The History Wall in Cockermouth, itself acts as a flood barrier and depicts some of the recent flood history of the Cumbrian town, where the rivers Cocker and Derwent converge.

We are facing an establishment (land owners, farmers, politicians) who hold it in their power to do something positive to address the flooding problem (e.g. reintroduce beavers and restore rivers to their floodplains) and yet the desire to remain in control prevents a simple measure that could do much of what is needed essentially for free.26 This has led to calls for beaver reintroductions in order to realise the benefits for flooding, water quality, habitats and biodiversity.27 While there are some local dis-benefits associated with localised flooding, experience from abroad shows that this can be safely managed and land owners appropriately compensated.

The social thalweg Flooding is a good example of what we might call a “wicked” problem characterised by the interplay between the physical causes and effects layered on top of a complex mix of social, cultural, political, economic and behavioural factors. It is also intensely geographical, not just in the patterns of weather, climate, soil, and land use, but in how people respond to and view the problem. The social thalweg shows how this changes as you travel upstream from point of impact to the source of the problem.

It also varies as to who you are and where you live relative to the flood risk.

To home owners and businesses with property on lowland floodplains in towns and cities like Taunton, Cockermouth and York, the risk of periodic flooding is a way of life. Flood insurance can be difficult to find or extremely expensive, meaning that those least able to afford it are also those least resilient to the effects of flooding.

Flooding is perhaps seen as being an immediate problem associated only with bad weather and one to be addressed by bigger and better flood defences, with costs justified in terms of how many individual properties (and voters) are protected.

There is in many ways a disconnection in people’s minds between the causes of flooding and its immediate effects.

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 Meanwhile further upstream at the problem’s source, the opposite is true. People are more likely to be connected to the land through employment in agriculture, forestry or other forms of land management or by association through tourism and service industries. However, the disconnection is now likely to be between the effects of land management and flooding downstream through an unwillingness to recognise that their own activities might be making life difficult for those people further downstream.28

Is rewilding really the answer?

If fewer sheep, more trees, restoring rivers to their floodplains and reintroducing beavers can be considered to be rewilding, then the answer to the above question is yes! The evidence for some or all of these approaches applied in combination along a river point to rewilding reducing risk at flood prone points. A fully coordinated and integrated policy through the full course of the river can ensure maximum benefits at minimum cost and risk. This includes mapping of the spatial configuration of contributing areas and flood alleviation measures, since slowing the flow at one point may exacerbate the problem by delaying its flood peak to coincide with a flood peak coming downstream from higher in the catchment.

Just as hard-engineered flood defences alone don’t cut it, then neither will softengineered or NFM techniques when used in isolation. We still need hard flood defences to protect flood-prone towns and cities at critical points on the floodplain.

Integrated catchment management is the way forward, and distributed rewilding to address the problem at source and intercept and slow flood waters along the river thalweg must be part of this mix. The flood-response-review cycle needs to be broken and the sticking plaster approach highlighted by Dieter Helm29 replaced with a radical overhaul of how we plan for, manage and minimise the impacts of flooding. While Helm maintains this can be addressed by proper economics (what flood defences we need, what we can afford and how to manage it within a proper institutional setting) and while he talks a lot about natural capital, he fails to address the issues of how combined NFM and rewilding approaches may be far cheaper in the long run than traditional hard-engineered approaches.

Who pays?

This will be foremost in the minds of land owners who are being asked to modify their activities in the uplands and the farmers whose most productive floodplain fields might be flooded to save homes and businesses in downstream urban areas.

Where the costs are borne by the few in areas remote from the many who benefit, it is likely that land owners and farmers in rural areas and especially those in the uplands will bear the brunt of any land use and policy changes. Paying land owners up and down the catchment to do the right thing might be one way forward.

This should be through public funding for grip blocking, rewetting, cutting heather instead of burning, woodland regeneration, reduced grazing pressure, insertion of LWD dams (or better still beaver reintroductions so they can do it for us), river restoration, creating wash lands and wetlands, allowing farmland to flood, and other measures. As the NFU representative and county advisor at the Upland Hydrology conference said “We’ll do anything you like… as long as you pay us for 40

ECOS 37(1) 2016 it”. Being an economist, Helm attacks this question head on and calls for a small flood levy, paid either through our water bills or insurance which when multiplied across the whole UK population represents a huge sum of cash.

How this is actually spent is open for debate, but it should not be used to pay land owners for flood-sensitive land use management practices while they continuing to receive monies for practices that exacerbate the flood problem. The other radical change required is to bring all the communities involved together in a catchmentwide participatory planning exercise to plan and decide how to address the flooding problem, how to adapt existing policies, and how to increase resilience and accountability throughout the social thalweg.

References 1. Burt, T. P., et al. (1983) “The natural history of Slapton Ley Nature Reserve XV: hydrological processes in the Slapton Wood catchment.” Field Studies 5.5: 731-732.

2. Marshall, M. R., et al. (2014) “The impact of rural land management changes on soil hydraulic properties and runoff processes: results from experimental plots in upland UK.” Hydrological Processes 28.4: 2617-2629.

3. http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/natural-flood-management-and-rewilding-bbc-radio-4-today-programme 4. http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/what-difference-could-natural-flood-managementtechniques-make and http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/science-behind-flooding 5. A thalweg is a geographical term describing the long profile of a river from its source to its mouth. It is derived from the German “tal” (valley) and “weg” (way).

6. Mark Fisher and George Monbiot have written at length about this topic. See http://www.self-willed-land. org.uk/articles/corrupt_hls.htm and http://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/01/farmsubsidies-blatant-transfer-of-cash-to-rich 7. “Somebody else’s problem” or in economics, a negative externality.

8. Aldo Leopold (1949) A Sand County Almanac. OUP, p.250.

9. Chan, S. C., et al. “Projected increases in summer and winter UK sub-daily precipitation extremes from high-resolution regional climate models.” Environmental Research Letters 9.8 (2014): 084019.

10. Holden, J. et al. (2004) “Artificial drainage of peatlands: hydrological and hydrochemical process and wetland restoration.” Progress in Physical Geography 28.1: 95-123 and Lane, S. et al. (2013) “Impacts of upland open drains upon runoff generation: a numerical assessment of catchment scale impacts.”

Hydrological Processes 27.12: 1701-1726.

11. This has not been without controversy. For example, re-wetting has increased the prevalence of bog asphodel leading to cases of poisoning among sheep daft enough to eat it. No doubt calls for compensation will follow. See http://sustainableuplands.org/2015/06/17/what-are-the-social-and-culturalcosts-and-benefits-of-peatland-restoration/ 12. Burning of heather to create a patchwork mosaic of different ages for the benefit of grouse.

13. Brown, L. et al. (2014) “Effects of moorland burning on the ecohydrology of river basins.” Key findings from the EMBER project. University of Leeds (2014). http://www.wateratleeds.org/fileadmin/documents/ water_at_leeds/Ember_report.pdf 14. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/countryside/9061388/Legal-battle-threatens-Englands-grousemoors.html and http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/29/deluge-farmers-flood-grousemoor-drain-land 15. http://heathertrust.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/burning-on-deep-peat.html 16. Marshall, M. R., et al. (2014) "The impact of rural land management changes on soil hydraulic properties and runoff processes: results from experimental plots in upland UK." Hydrological Processes 28.4: 2617-2629.

17. See this video by the Wild Trout Trust https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00tcTY_UEk4&app=desktop 18. Palmer, R. and Smith, R. (2013) "Soil structural degradation in SW England and its impact on surface water runoff generation." Soil Use and Management 29.4: 567-575.

19. Clarke, Stewart J. (2002) "Vegetation growth in rivers: influences upon sediment and nutrient dynamics."

Progress in Physical Geography 26.2: 159-172.

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20. http://www.ciwem.org/media/1035043/floods_and_dredging_-_a_reality_check.pdf 21. http://www.forestry.gov.uk/fr/slowingtheflow 22. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-flooding-how-a-yorkshire-flood-blackspot-workedwith-nature-to-stay-dry-a6794286.html and http://geoffreylean.tumblr.com/post/137167095886/despitethe-critics-pickerings-natural-flood 23. There are hundreds of river restoration projects in the UK. See http://www.therrc.co.uk/ 24. See River Restoration good practice guide http://www.therrc.co.uk/manual-river-restoration-techniques 25. Why Wild Ennerdale is then increasing cattle grazing on the floodplain is open for debate. Perhaps it is to “farm” the HLS payments for the extra headage, or perhaps it can be seen as a sop to local farming interests who see the rewilding of Ennerdale as a threat to farming in the Lake District? Whatever the reason, there is surely a conflict between flood protection afforded by a wild river and floodplain woodland and the suppression of woodland regeneration and bank erosion that may result from the extra cattle.

26. http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/natural-ally-fight-floods-beaver/story-28692607-detail/story.html 27. http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/beavers and Law, F. et al. (2016), Habitat engineering by beaver benefits aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem processes in agricultural streams. Freshw Biol. doi:10.1111/fwb.12721 28. Even BBC’s Countryfile, that great bastion of unquestioningly pro-agriculture broadcasting has recently admitted that farming may have a case to answer for in regard to making the flooding problem worse though they stopped short of considering beaver reintroductions.

29. http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/node/1414

Steve Carver is a Geographer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds. S.J.Carver@leeds.ac.uk

Rewilding National Parks: moor than meets the eye Wildlife conservation in England’s National Parks comes under scrutiny from many different camps. The most recent challenge is from advocates of rewilding, but are the landscapes and ecosystems across the National Parks actually lacking what prominent voices in the rewilding lobby claim?

MERIEL HARRISON The journalist George Monbiot is a welcome provocateur, often challenging longheld assumptions about conservation practice. Dartmoor National Park Authority was well aware of this when it invited him to speak at the UK National Parks Conference in 2015. A conference should be about debate, after all – and George provided it in spades, both during his speaking slot1 and a subsequent panel discussion.2 However, his recent Guardian article3 slamming moorland management and sheep grazing in Dartmoor and Exmoor National Parks presents an argument that on closer examination, like an old woolly jumper, reveals a number of holes.

Nothing but heather?

In describing the moorland as “miles and miles of bugger all” Monbiot echoes the fool in Hugh MacDiarmid’s poem Scotland Small? 4 who views the hillside and cries “Nothing but heather!” because he has not looked closely enough to see the bog asphodel, cotton grasses, bilberry, tormentil, mosses, sundews and butterflies brimming with colour and life. How incomplete, indeed. One could add a litany of moorland birds: cuckoo, whinchat, stonechat, skylark, meadow pipit, wheatear, dunlin and snipe. The heathland and moorland habitats of upland Exmoor and Dartmoor are the basis for two large Special Areas of Conservation, designated under the European Commission Habitats Directive. The UK has around 75% of all the heather moorland in the world, and SAC status recognises the international importance of these south-western wet and dry heath and blanket bog areas.

Of course, these National Parks are not solely devoted to upland moorland; Dartmoor and Exmoor National Parks also encompass many other valuable and protected habitats including extensive and rare coastal oak woodlands. The assemblage of different wildlife-rich habitats within what are relatively small areas is no small part of the Parks’ outstanding value for wildlife conservation. The tapestry of moorland, woodland, farmland, stream and river valleys, coast and cliffs are not only attractive to human visitors, but allow a wide range of species to make their homes there.

It does seem a strange time to be agitating for reduced grazing of England’s uplands, when we know this is already happening. The trend in recent decades has been towards a decreasing intensity of grazing and a resultant increase in areas of scrub 42

River Barle moorland valley, Exmoor.

Photo: Exmoor National Park Authority

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ECOS 37(1) 2016

and dominance of species such as purple moor grass, considered detrimental in nature conservation terms. A recent independent report5 found that since the turn of the 21st Century the number of grazing livestock on Dartmoor has declined by a quarter, with a 31% reduction in the sheep flock. Where it is considered desirable, ‘rewilding’ and the regeneration of woodland in National Parks is encouraged; but this should not be at the expense of other priority habitats, and the rare species that depend on them. This is the context within which NPAs are supportive of responsible grazing and burning – these are management techniques that are necessary for the maintenance of open moorland habitats and landscapes which the National Park Authorities (NPAs) are tasked with conserving. Both practices are subject to strict controls, developed in order to provide conservation safeguards.

A rich cultural heritage England’s National Parks are not solely designated for their wildlife. As George Monbiot points out, they fall under Category V of the IUCN’s classification system6: “a protected area where the interaction of people and nature over time has produced an area of distinct character with significant ecological, biological, cultural and scenic value: and where safeguarding the integrity of this interaction is vital to protecting and sustaining the area and its associated nature conservation and other values”. He is wrong to present the IUCN system as a league table where Category I and II wilderness preserves are somehow ‘better’ National Parks. The different categories reflect different circumstances within a global system. It is both impossible and undesirable in the UK context to designate National Parks by throwing people off the land in order to turn it over to nature. This hasn’t always worked out well in countries where ‘wilderness’ Parks have been adopted. Humans are part of the ecosystem too, and to seek to separate their influence can be disingenuous as well as deeply damaging in cases where traditional rights and ways of life are destroyed. England’s National Parks are home to some 320,000 people and welcome 90 million visitors a year. The NPAs that look after them are charged with conserving their natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage while helping people to enjoy and understand these special qualities. This is a delicate balancing act, especially across land that is mainly in private hands.

The grazing of sheep, cattle and ponies on the moorlands is perhaps the most deeply-ingrained expression of the cultural heritage of Exmoor and Dartmoor.

Sheep grazing has been widespread in Britain since the Bronze Age, and by the time of the Domesday survey sheep were the dominant farm animal. Today’s hill farmers are the latest of a long line, hefted (or leared, to use the local Dartmoor term) to the land like their flocks, and they hold deep stores of knowledge about the land and its management. Evidence suggests many people value traditional livestock farming as part of the matrix of the uplands; Lake District native James Rebanks’ recent book The Shepherd’s Life celebrated 600 years of farming heritage, winning not only literary plaudits but many thousands of readers and Twitter followers.

Upland grazing is also vital in looking after sensitive archaeology. The archaeological heritage of Dartmoor, in particular, is breathtaking: over 1,200 scheduled sites are dispersed across the moor, including 60% of all the stone rows in England.

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Mires monitoring in Exmoor.

Photo: Exmoor National Park, creative commons license

Cairns, standing stones, hut circles and the remains of medieval longhouses are testament to the occupation of the moor by people through the centuries, and the long existence of the open landscape that can be seen today. Without grazing animals to manage the surrounding vegetation, much of this rich, irreplaceable and internationally-important evidence of our history would be lost or obscured.

The moorland landscapes have also provided inspiration for some of England’s best-known literary figures and tales; the bloody romance of R.D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, the foreboding Grimpen Mire of Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Tarka splashing through moorland streams in Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter.

What needs to change?

Change in landscapes is a fact of life, and something that National Park Authorities embrace and plan for. A reasoned debate about what that change seeks to achieve is important. Monbiot is right, technically, to say that the uplands were once wooded, but we know that there is a history of woodland clearance in these areas stretching back around 6,000 years. He has argued that just because we have a history of a particular management (i.e. grazing and burning) in recent times, we should not assume that that is the best way to manage and thus blindly perpetuate it. By the same logic, the fact that another type of vegetation cover existed at a certain point in the past is not sufficient reason to assume that re-creating this is automatically desirable and beneficial. Rewilding – seeking to restore ecosystem functions 45

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through species reintroductions and more passive land management – may have the potential to achieve wildlife benefits, but looking at local circumstances on a case-by-case basis is essential. A key question is how and where change can achieve multiple benefits.

Water is a topic on everyone’s minds, with flooding events that used to be labelled as ‘once in a hundred years’ now occurring with alarming regularity. In this context the management of our uplands is under timely scrutiny because of the influence on communities downstream. Hydrology is a complicated beast, though, and Monbiot’s simple equation of more trees equals fewer floods is not the only answer to the problem. In National Parks, schemes such as the Holnicote Estate project7 in Exmoor have been contributing to understanding of what can be achieved through a range of natural flood management measures. Blanket bogs on the moors, currently being restored through the efforts of Dartmoor and Exmoor NPAs in partnership with South West Water8, provide enormous capacity to hold water at the top end of catchments while also sequestering carbon and providing wildlife benefits. Restoration on Dartmoor resulted in a 37% increase in numbers of dunlin9 from 2010 to 2014, while testing by the University of Exeter has shown that Exmoor bogs that have been restored release one third less water during storms.

And there are other ways in which National Parks Authorities and their partners are restoring ecological processes and encouraging more natural ecosystem functions, which fit much of the rewilding agenda. Restoring features such as meanders in rivers and streams enables a more natural relationship with surrounding wetland habitats, while also reducing bank erosion and cutting flood risk. Planted Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS), given over to non-native species in decades gone by, are being restored to native broadleaved woodland by encouraging regeneration of the surviving seedbank. Facilitating grazing of an appropriate type and intensity can be a form of rewilding, beneficial to species-rich grasslands, hay meadows and rush pastures; after all, large grazing animals have been part of the UK’s ecosystems for thousands of years.

Finding the balance Monbiot uses sweeping criticisms to open a broad space, intending that others can occupy this with more nuanced and diplomatic debate. Whether this is, in fact, the most effective way to achieve the changes that he seeks is questionable. There is much common ground between Monbiot’s views and the National Parks’ objectives; both want to see more people enjoying a rich connection with environments where wildlife is thriving. Achieving this is an incremental process, and one that depends on building constructive relationships and partnerships working towards shared aims. Presenting artificially polarised arguments, especially when predicated on criticism and negativity, is unlikely to help this process.

National Parks – the clue is in the name - are for everyone; those who live and work in them, those who visit them, and those who just value their existence. The job of National Park Authorities is to balance the competing demands and interests of all those who have a stake in them. Locally, NPAs can come under fire when farming 46

Typical English blanket bog - a habitat with an absence of trees.

Photo Alistair Crowle

interests are perceived to be squeezed out in favour of conservation – and now George Monbiot says the reverse is happening. When National Park Authorities are criticised from all sides for getting the balance wrong, it usually means that in fact they are getting it just about right.

References 1. Time to go wild, George Monbiot, UK National Parks Conference 2015 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=SYdm6k1tg3Y 2. National Parks – Any Questions? Debate, UK National Parks Conference 2015 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Y-ahDREXwyQ 3. Meet the conservationists who believe that burning is good for wildlife George Monbiot, The Guardian, 14 Jan 2016 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2016/jan/14/swaling-is-causing-anenvironmental-disaster-on-britains-moors 4. ‘Scotland Small?’, Hugh MacDiarmid, http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/scotland-small 5. Dartmoor in 2041 – A New Vision, EBLEX / Land Use Consultants 2011, http://www.dartmoorpreservation.com/the-uplands7/land-management/160-another-future-landscape 6. Protected Areas Category V, IUCN, https://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/gpap_home/gpap_ quality/gpap_pacategories/gpap_category5/ 7. Holnicote Project, Ecosystems Knowledge Network http://ecosystemsknowledge.net/resources/examples/holnicote 8. Upstream Thinking, South West Water, http://www.upstreamthinking.org/ 9. Boost for rare Dartmoor bird, RSBP, 16 September 2014, http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details aspx?id=382542

Meriel Harrison is currently on maternity leave from her post as Policy and Research Officer at National Parks England, where she has worked for 8 years. This article is written in a personal capacity and the views expressed here are her own rather than those of National Parks England.

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Devon Wildlife Trust’s Meeth Quarry nature reserve a location where nature emerges from a former extractive industry.

Photo: Devon Wildlife Trust

Nature conservation - a nudge towards rewilding As nature conservation looks for renewed purpose it may be time to consider rewilding in the mix. This article considers the issues facing wildlife bodies as they consider embracing aspects of rewilding.

HARRY BARTON It is 70 years since the post-war nature conservation movement began in earnest, and wildlife is still firmly on the retreat. It’s no surprise that new and radical propositions are being put forward. Rewilding is the example of our time, and whatever one’s views on it, it is undeniably an exciting and thrilling challenge. And with the greatest losses and pressures on wildlife being in the lowlands, it is just as inevitable that the focus of movements like rewilding is in the uplands.

Rewilding is as much a philosophical term as a practical one. While other landscapescale approaches to conservation – Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services come to mind – try to work within our political and economic system, rewilding defines the system itself as the problem. It has been promoted by the journalist George Monbiot and others with emphasis on upland areas, National Parks including Dartmoor, and also the release of formerly native species. At its heart is the seductively simple idea of giving the reins back to nature and letting it take control across whole landscapes and river catchments.

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Rewilding’s resonance There are at least three ways why rewilding appeals, at least to me, as discussed below.

Mental liberation: we live in a highly controlled and organised world, when our impact on the planet is so intense that scientists are debating whether we should be recognising a new epoch called the Anthropocene. Rewilding offers an opening into a different reality, where humans have little apparent influence. It frees our minds to imagine a world of what could be, without knowing exactly what we might find there or even whether we would like it if we did. It tempts us into the magical realm of Tolkein’s Middle Earth or C.S. Lewis’s Wood between the Worlds – places that run according to their own rules, which we may never fully understand.

The natural aesthetic: there is a striking beauty in the extraordinary self-organising properties of nature. You can see this if you watch the intricate canals and dams that beavers build and their ability to regulate water flows – although I don’t believe our beaver project qualifies as rewilding in the strict sense of the word. You can see it in the tendency of rivers to form incredibly ornate and energy efficient systems of meanders if they are allowed to flow freely in their floodplains. You can see it in the way forests develop complex, layered structures and mosaics, and in the way that reefs utilise every possible nook and cranny with a dizzying array of multi-coloured, interconnected life forms.

Healing, renewal and a light touch: it is often said that our modern fascination with wild flowers grew out of the stunning displays of plants in the battlefields and bombed out cities of the late 1940s. For a more modern example you only need to look at a quarry like Meeth in Devon. If we leave land alone and don’t interfere, we end up with something beautiful and rich in life, even if it isn’t always what we might have planned. No more striving for a meagre return, no more tortuous 49

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compromises between competing land uses. We simply walk away. Perhaps if we did a little less, waited a little longer and prescribed with a lighter touch, we would all be a lot happier with the end result?

gardens, around farmland and out of the windows of schools, hospitals and care homes. If we want nature in these places, we are sometimes going to have to garden for it. And we must resist the temptation to view nature as either benign or perverse. It obeys its own rules, which sometimes play to our benefit and sometimes don’t. In a small and crowded island, there will always be places where nature and natural processes will need managing if we are to live happily side by side.

Wild nature – some polarised perceptions?

Rewilding has the potential to divide as well as inspire though, and it certainly carries its own baggage. Some key examples of wildlife-rich landscapes have a historical stigma: the Highland Clearances, as well as the social injustices that accompanied the creation of the New Forest and, in more recent centuries, the creation of some of Africa’s wildlife reserves, are all lessons that we risk forgetting at our peril. Rewilding probably appeals most to those who love the untamed, the sense of risk, and who relish the thought that there is always somewhere out there yet to be discovered. It is less likely to appeal to people whose livelihood is based on the land and who feel they are part of the landscape that shapes our wildlife.

Depending on your perspective, the wild, or wildness, can imply an abundance of wildlife or an absence of people.

Traditional wildlife conservation is practical and pragmatic. It has grown up around the realities of how we manage the land – farming, gardens, urban development and protected landscapes. While it hasn’t stemmed the tide of loss of wildlife, it has been successful in finding ways for wildlife to co-exist with the activities that human society has deemed, rightly or wrongly, to be more important: house-building, food production and economic growth. This approach has laid the conservation movement open to criticisms of being part of the system that has created our wildlife losses, and therefore part of the problem. To some degree that’s hard to argue with. But then its flexibility and adaptability has helped it survive and create opportunities for wildlife in the most unlikely places, such as in our densest urban areas.

Conditions for rewilding There are some fantastic landscapes and great examples of conservation in our uplands. But too many areas are an unhappy compromise between low productivity and economically marginal farming on the one hand and denuded soils and impoverished wildlife on the other. We need a new approach, and I believe rewilding has a great deal to offer. But there are at least three things we need to bear in mind if rewilding is to unite and take us forward rather than divide and take us backwards.

First, we have to be honest about purpose. Are we managing for a species, maintaining a traditional landscape or encouraging a specific human activity, such as grouse shooting? Are we trying to create wildlife, a sense of the wild, or wilderness? These things may not be mutually exclusive, but it would be wrong to assume they always overlap and reinforce each other. Some of our most valuable habitat will need managing if we want it to stay wildlife rich. And sometimes we’ll need to intervene to get the result we want, as some landscapes are just too altered or degraded to recover significantly in any meaningful human timeframe.

The Devon Wildlite Trust trial beaver enclosure monitoring effects such as vegetation change and water flow.

Photo: Ben Lee

Finally, and most importantly, people must be part of the solution, not just part of the problem. Like it or not, most of the UK is lived in and worked in and the sense of a managed landscape is deeply rooted in our culture. We can and sometimes should challenge this of course. But we have to bring people with us. We are very capable of wreaking destruction but, when we put our minds to it, we are also pretty good at clearing our mess back up again.

Rewilding is a thrilling challenge and one that I believe we should look on positively.

I am convinced there is an important place for it in Britain, including in Devon. And it doesn’t need to be restricted to the high and open spaces like Dartmoor. It could be equally effective in our lower hills, valleys and coasts. But what sounds easy when applied generally and at a large scale is never anything like so straightforward when it comes to specifics. Rewilding isn’t necessarily right everywhere, it shouldn’t be interpreted as an enemy of more traditional nature conservation and it should never push people away. Ultimately every successful wildlife conservation strategy has both people and wildlife at its heart.

Harry Barton is Chief Executive of Devon Wildlife Trust. hbarton@devonwildlifetrust.org The following issue of ECOS is a theme edition on ‘rewilding’s growing pains’, discussing the challenges facing rewilding as it becomes under closer scrutiny and as more lessons are learnt from rewilding in practice.

Second, we have to think about geography and scale. A few people access truly wild places, but the majority of us will experience wildlife in cities, in our 50

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Book Reviews

ECOS 37(1) 2016 The book only covers coastal, not marine or estuarine areas. It has entries on artificial habitats, such as arable, orchard, brownfield and coniferous plantation - which are open-minded in noting some conservation value but arguably understate the interest of exotic plantations (on current evidence Britain’s most diverse terrestrial habitat per square metre!). It provides a useful overview of linkages and correspondence between the various subjective habitat classification schemes.

type, and this is revealing in identifying knowledge gaps: for example, how can it be that in the age of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the extent of ‘Lowland mixed oak and ash wood’ in Northern Ireland is not known! This tells us something about the extent to which conservation resources have been squandered in the UK. This book is very highly recommended to all who enjoy or work on Britain’s habitats.

Clive Hambler

BRITAIN’S HABITATS A guide to the wildlife habitats of Britain and Ireland Sophie Lake, Durwyn Liley, Robert Still, Andy Swash Princeton University Press, 2015, 276 pages Hbk £29.95 ISBN 9780691158556 The first thing I did on receipt of this book was use it - and it proved very helpful. I expect many other professional ecologists will find it useful, perhaps particularly so since it is written by consultant ecologists who will understand better than most the practicalities of conservation in Britain. It’s a beautiful book, which I imagine practitioners of all types, and amateurs as well as professionals, will enjoy and value.

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The target audience is broad, and the technical level and style is intermediate between natural history and ecology - being professional, concise and clear. It has a large number of fine and useful photographs, and whilst I would quibble at the disproportionate use of a predominantly non-forest taxon (butterflies) to illustrate forest wildlife, photos of mosses, lichens, and a few vertebrates provide variety. The bulk of the photos are botanical or of landscapes. A longer index would have helped make the most of the text.

The book does a good job of clarifying the semi-natural nature of many habitats, and explains why it’s worth representing them in the conservation network. The cultural origin of many habitats is still surprising to many of the public who have been brought up on conservation propaganda from Britain’s NGOs and agencies.

Inevitably the ecology is sometimes debatable: not everyone would agree that ravine woodlands” are perhaps amongst the most natural of our habitats”, given the numerous extinctions from such sites; credit to the authors for acknowledging the uncertainty.

There are maps showing the location and approximate scope of each habitat

the familiar ‘mewing’ as they wheeled above us. At that time they were more or less restricted to Wales, Scotland and the west of England. Despite this, in these areas they were relatively common and a regularly seen raptor at a time when many of our birds of prey were at a low ebb.

It is surprising therefore that this is the first monograph that I am aware of since Colin Tubbs’ study of the New Forest population published in 1974. It has been well worth waiting for. As the book’s cover notes claim, it is “a much needed and authoritative account” of the species. It is based on the author’s 60 plus years of experience studying the buzzard first in Dartmoor, then in North and mid Wales, and finally monitoring its re-colonisation of the east of England in north-east Suffolk. The author also draws widely on published and unpublished literature and contacts with fellow naturalists and enthusiasts over a wide geographical range and time scale.

THE LIFE OF BUZZARDS Peter Dare Whittles Publishing, 2015, 320 pages Pbk, £22.99, ISBN 978-184995-130-2

The first section of the book charts the buzzard’s year, looking at the annual cycle of feeding, breeding, communal behaviour and the like. It starts in winter, taking us through spring and the breeding cycle, over summer and finally full cycle into autumn. The second section provides details of key aspects of the bird’s ecology through territory and food habitats through to population dynamics. The final chapter looks at its population changes over the years and brings us up to date on the buzzard’s triumphant return to most of the British Isles.

Buzzards were part of my holiday birdwatching as a child. As soon as we crossed the border into Wales they could be seen over hills and woods.

Walks were regularly accompanied by

The book is detailed and scholarly but most importantly a joy to read in the best traditions of natural history writing. The author’s knowledge and passion for the subject comes through 53

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 son without the transfer of a legal estate, which would trigger first registration”.

without detracting from the detail of the work. Graphs and figures are used where needed with extra data given in a series of appendices and an extensive bibliography. One complaint is that I couldn’t find some of the references from the main text in the bibliography.

Although the author originally undertook his PhD into buzzard ecology in Devon he subsequently went on to become a fisheries scientist and conducted much of the work presented in this volume as an ‘amateur’ in his spare time.

I would disagree with the author when he states that it is not a “comprehensive monograph” as it seems to be just that.

However, I would agree that he has achieved his aim in providing “an upto-date summary of our knowledge of common buzzards in Britain that may not only interest raptor ecologists and enthusiast but will also inform local conservation bodies and other land managers, especially those landowners with game bird rearing interests”.

At a time when those interests are trying to legalise a new wave of persecution, purely it seems for the buzzard’s temerity in winning the fight back from previous human impacts, I hope the book is widely read and the buzzard’s wide-ranging and adaptive ecology is fully understood.

Mick Green WHOSE LAND IS OUR LAND? The Use and Abuse of Britain’s Forgotten Acres Peter Hetherington Policy Press, 2015, 72 pages Pbk, £7.99 ISBN: 9781447325321 Despite the debate about where to put new houses and whether we 54

But the division between those who own and those who do not is made starker today by the great increase in land values in recent times. In the 10 years to 2014, the average selling price of arable land in Britain increased by 277%. Owners of working farmland are exempt from all or half of the inheritance tax that might otherwise be due on their death.

should build lots more, nobody really acknowledges the difficulty of raising these issues in a country in which the land is not controlled by the people but by a tiny minority, many of whom wield enormous power over our environment simply because of an accident of birth.

Peter Hetherington, former regional affairs editor of The Guardian, has produced the latest in a long line of books drawing attention to this odd state of affairs. Our ignorance is especially strange since Britain is probably the best mapped country in the world.

Hetherington points out that the most recent accurate picture of who owns what dates from the 1870s. The Land Registry requires information when land changes hands, but much rural land never does. Its head of corporate legal services tells Hetherington, “We cannot force them [landowners] to register ... there is no law that says you can. ...

Property can ... be passed from father to

On the other hand, inheritance tax remains due on homes, and stamp duty has been increased to extract yet more of the value accumulating in them. Hetherington points out that the favourable tax treatment of farmland further ratchets up its value and provides an effective subsidy to landowners on top of the largesse of the Common Agricultural Policy. At the same time, the high price of land adds to the problems facing house-buyers, with first-time purchasers now having to find in real terms 10 times the deposit that was required in the early 1980s.

This slim volume in the Policy Press’ Shorts series usefully encapsulates some of the key issues. What we now need are some ideas about what should be done.

Marion Shoard, author of This Land is Our Land (Gaia Books, 1997). www.marionshoard.co.uk THE ONCE AND FUTURE WORLD J B MacKinnon Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013, 232pages Pbk, £17.24 ISBN 978 - 0- 544 – 10305 – 4 How did I, like many of us, miss this excellent book? It was published in

2013. Perhaps the title is too cryptic, perhaps people mistakenly thought it was just about North America. The book’s section headings give the gist of what is to come: the nature of the problem, the nature of nature and finally, human nature.

The nature of the problem is how we misunderstand, how we don’t see and the illusions we live with. MacKinnon tells stories and summarises other people’s wide ranging research to show us what he means. “Denial is the last line of defence against memory”. Denial fulfils … “our need to be innocent of a troubling recognition”. So he talks about the remembering of the great bison (buffalo) hunts but the forgetting of the near extermination of deer in North America. “…try raising this around a kitchen table in the US or Canada … you will meet with flat disbelief. Deer? … eat tulips in suburban gardens.

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 Deer show up in online videos goring people’s dogs within city limits…” The huge trade in buckskins before the age of denim is forgotten. Then to illustrate how we can often not notice, be blind even, he tells how in a park near home a bald eagle swooped to take a duck from the pond, but mums and toddlers feeding the ducks never saw the eagle; this did not happen.

Most people involved in nature conservation are probably familiar with shifting baseline syndrome. MacKinnon helped me to feel and stretch out (or stretch back through millennia) my understanding: “When it comes to nature, normal is in the eye of the beholder”. MacKinnon also talks about Ray Rogers’ … ‘double disappearance’ concept which was published in 1994, a year before Daniel Pauly’s ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ and Peter Kahn and Batya Friedman’s ‘environmental amnesia’. In fact the idea that we forget the natural world of the past appears to be regularly rediscovered… but note that ‘double disappearance’ is described as “going beyond mere memory to hollow out our sense of community with the rest of the living planet”.

This is not a big book, only 200 plus pages but it is rich and full of insight. Many of the stories are about other species but he is telling us about ourselves. “History has left behind thousands of traces of a former attentiveness to the living world that can only seem alien to us now”.

Here he goes on to talk about the living energy of animals depicted in cave art: “it is hyper real … convey(ing) the most subtle and fleeting of animal facial expressions: moments of contentment, apprehension and uncertainty… it would have required a human being to be just another species on the landscape, 56

ECOS 37(1) 2016 in the same way that, in moments of truce, lions and their prey are often seen resting nearly side by side”. He then traces this attentiveness through more recent history, so we should not think of it wistfully as a quality only of the Stone Age or hunter gatherers’ life. A Beautiful World is the title of that chapter and when I read it I had a spark of realisation about how being alive with more of that living energy could unfold for me – but as yet the nuance of that is still emerging, connection and awareness as well as beauty come into it.

The following chapter, Ghost Acres features us in Britain. “Of all the regions on earth, Britain, … may tell us the most about how we accommodate the diminishment of the living world.

The British countryside is deeply loved, globally influential – and almost entirely unnatural”. Read on about Blake’s ‘heaven in a wildflower’ signalling Romanticism, the price of cod, our struggles with beavers, and more, although the author is at fault for not referencing all his sources. Yes, “Britain’s environmental history can approach the tragicomic…” After a mere hint at our wholesale slaughter of various species through centuries, we get “… the deep love of nature that many associate with the people of Britain, and which has so greatly influenced the rest of the world …” Well yes, but what a funny mixed up lot we are. How is it that we Brits love our landscapes, and distinguish between one characteristic and another and yet don’t give enough recognition to the parts all other species contribute to those qualities and joys? And in similar vein, we don’t seem to relish enough the flow of life, the vitality of nature. Too often we manage for nature conservation’s contrived goals against nature herself, against natural

processes. What does this say about our love and awareness of nature, about us?

MacKinnon deftly interweaves several accounts of the complexity of natural processes and relationships. The idea of trophic cascades has become more appreciated but Mackinnon’s discussion of ecological cascades extended my understanding to take in a wider compass of natural processes and consequences, temporal and spatial. Again I have been stretched at the same time as enjoying fine writing... “imagine African elephants moving across a savannah dotted with trees…the herd seeming to move … with the rhythm of clouds…”

A main message of the book is that “we are nature, it is us” and we are members of communities of life, other relatives of which are beyond our total comprehension. For instance MacKinnon gives us examples of how so many creatures have qualities and capacities beyond our imagination. For example “the duck billed platypus, … can apparently ‘smell’ the electricity generated by the movements of prey while it feeds blindly in muddy water”.

And then “The planet’s other life forms reveal so many ways of being that we could never imagine them if they didn’t already exist in reality. In this sense, other species don’t only have the capacity to inspire our imaginations; they are a form of imagination. They are the genius of life arrayed against an always uncertain future, and to allow that brilliance to wane out of negligence is to passively embrace the death of our own minds”.

In like vane, after writing of Michael Soulé’s life and work , Mackinnon says: “Soulé’s warning is the same: when we choose the kind of nature we will live with, we are also choosing the kind of human beings we will be”.

“But the history of nature is not always and only a lament. It is also an invitation to envision another world.” This is not a polemic; Mackinnon is not telling us what we should do. He is helping us to see for ourselves how it is and our part within it. He does say “Conservation is not dead. … But conservation is not and has never been enough”… “ours will be an age of rewilding”.

Mackinnon is asking what is the wildest world we can live in? He is both asking us and prompting us to be in our world with more conscious awareness. “… we have been attempting to make an impossible world, in which humans are separate from the rest of life. Our greatest experiment is still pending: the making of a world in which humanity can express all of its genius, and so, too, can nature”. Is this a wilder and more honest way, of being human within a culture inclusive of all life and its everyday and exceptional wildness?

I hope so.

Alison Parfitt THE GARDEN AWAKENING Designs to Nurture our Land and Ourselves Mary Reynolds Green Books, 2016, 271 pages Pbk £19.99, ISBN 9780857843135 Mary Reynolds is a young Irish garden and landscape designer with a strong ethos and passion for life and the natural world. The Garden Awakening is as much a work of poetry and philosophy as it is a design manual, and is really at least three books in one.

“Restoring wellness” explains her philosophy of life, nature and gardens.

The land is alive, we have misused it for 57

ECOS 37(1) 2016

ECOS 37(1) 2016 designs for small to large gardens. All are unconventional, embrace natural forms and powerful shapes, and frequently involve changes of level.

What I personally find less helpful is the advice on using protection prayers, crystals and pagan symbols, where I use simple observation, contemplation and painting mental pictures. Nevertheless, many of the designs based on a poem or spiritual message work, and the practical examples of nature–inspired shapes are excellent.

years, but we need gardening to link us to nature, although gardeners generally work against nature. Mary’s approach is to invite Nature to assert her true self, and then work to heal and rebalance the land, interacting with us at energetic, emotional and physical levels. We must recognise the bubbling energy of creation, and our gardens become our personal churches, places of safety and peace. Mary illustrates this with parables from traditional Irish life, her dreams and childhood experiences. People who seek metaphors for their spiritual link to managed nature will enjoy these parts of the book. Active steps to take include spiritual acts like beating the bounds of your plot while singing or beating the bodrhán, listening and meditating, and the very practical process of restoring soil fungi and bacteria.

The core of the book is 80 pages on her practice of garden design. Mary Reynolds has won gold at Chelsea, and she includes some exciting exemplary 58

some of the advice is. But for anyone wanting to be dragged out of their gardening rut, and for people who relish the spiritual side of land management – challenge yourself and read it.

Stephen Head

The fanatical amassing of empty eggshells by some collectors is several times discussed, most horrendously in the ‘Epilogue’. Rich and clearly eccentric Vivian Hewitt gathered hoards of them (and many other things). At his death he had accumulated about half a million eggs. Four large removal lorries took them to their new home, where their new owners, the British Trust for Ornithology, must have felt sorely daunted. The image is obscene.

The next part could be a separate 90 page book on the nature of and creation of a Forest Garden. This is aimed at the inspired, long-term gardener with a very sizable plot, and in contrast with the design section, is full of practical advice and detailed planting information.

There are some great ideas that ordinary gardeners could use, like Hügelkultur raised beds and mounds founded on heaps for dead wood, but on balance this isn’t going to be helpful for the average Brit gardener.

Finally, the book has a section on alternative management. Some advice such as mulches is fairly mainstream.

Some puzzles me, like the mechanical cultivation of soil is bad, but getting pigs to do the same is good. Holy water can eliminate leatherjackets if you really believe in its power. There are descriptions of alternative ways of eliminating pests, including the rather dangerous use of “Silver water” which has been dropped because of the risk of argyria in humans.

I’m a sceptical but spiritual scientist, and I found the book in turn exhilarating and exasperating – and with never the slightest touch of self-doubt, which worries me given how unconventional

Birds’ eggs have long fascinated some people, most of them doubtless not scientists. The focus of their interest is on the aesthetics of the individual eggs and of neatly arranged collections of them – that, and the near-craving to have the biggest, most numerous collection of something.

THE MOST PERFECT THING Inside (and outside) a bird’s egg Tim Birkhead Bloomsbury, 2016, xvi+288 pages Hbk £16.99 ISBN 978-1-4088-5125-8 In my experience, this is an unusual book. My experience, that is, of bird books. It is probably the only one I’ve read from top to bottom. Ornithology is not my thing; and oology – the study of eggs – something I’d not thought about. Tim Birkhead’s book has bridged a gap in my biological understanding, and I suspect it will do the same for other people who happen on it.

It is the more so because the documentation of the ‘collection’ is minimal and chaotic.

Nonetheless, Birkhead shows that some science can be winnowed from such death-piles – and, indeed, he emphasises the shift of endeavour from collecting to investigation, or to wanting to protect, that enthusiasts for birds’ eggs – or butterflies, or flowers – frequently undergo. He gives as examples Mark Cocker, Bill Oddie, and David Attenborough.

But this is not the meat of the book.

That is the search for an understanding of what a bird is about when it is a developing knot of cells atop a depot of food (yolk) within a water reserve and antimicrobial barrier (albumen), which its mother has just enveloped in intricate coats of calcium carbonate, and then perhaps coloured and marked (the ‘shell’).

The book’s central chapters deal with ‘Making shells’, ‘The shape of eggs’, 59

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ECOS 37(1) 2016 ‘Colouring eggs’, albumen and ‘the Microbe war’, ‘Yolk, ovaries and fertilisation’, and the chore of ‘Laying, incubation and hatching’. The author’s main interest is guillemots, but his knowledge is far wider and deeper than just these.

He draws many species into his story: blue tits and blackbirds, woodpeckers and wrens, Spix’s macaws and zebra finches included. And he provides a raft of references from the long history of ornithology.

The reader learns not only about bird biology. The rigorous caution and skepticism that Birkhead shows throughout his text is a good example of the way some biological science advances. Many times he has revisited an earlier, accepted, understanding, reinvestigated, and drawn fresh, different, conclusions. It is good to see a scientist conclude that he is wrong; even better to see him admit a simple - but for so many of us a painful and shameful - “I don’t know!”... And it seems we don’t know, for instance, why some birds lay eggs that are nearly spherical, others that are distinctly pointed; why some have plain eggs, some others have colourful or elaborately marked ones, and some lay different-looking eggs at different times.

This is not a textbook or treatise. It is lucid, written in an enthusiastic, non-scientific, sometimes colloquial, prose, although perhaps let down by some of its few line drawings being rather uninformative, and by a somewhat limited range of colour photos. However, for me an important aspect is largely lacking. What we call ‘eggs’ are fundamental to animal life.

Reptiles, including dinosaurs, have a few mentions, as do amphibians, but there is almost nothing to remind the reader of eggs of other creatures.

There is little to demonstrate how the eggs of birds are like or unlike those of other animals, how the egg-phase of animals has evolved, and indeed how one might define the avian egg to show how it is unique. Fish, slugs, moths, and earthworms have eggs, and it may be (to us) that except aesthetically they too are the most perfect things.

This latest book joins such titles as The magpies, The wisdom of birds, and Sperm competition in birds. I may be tempted to read some of them.

Martin Spray

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Editorial 1. Blob on the landscape Geoffrey Wain

Feature articles 2016 issue 37(1) www.banc.org.uk

2. Mind the Gap – reflections on revitalising conservation Peter Shirley 6. Nature Conservation in Britain – turning the tide?

Alistair Crowle 12. What would Brexit mean for nature? Mike Townsend 18. Ecodemocracy: Helping wildlife’s right to survive Joe Gray & Patrick Curry 28. Population growth – a taboo topic for nature conservation?

Holly Alsop and Nicola Matthews 32. Flood management and nature – can rewilding help?

Steve Carver 43. Rewilding National Parks: moor than meets the eye Meriel Harrison 48. Nature conservation – a nudge towards rewilding Harry Barton 52. Book Reviews Britain’s Habitats The Life of Buzzards Whose Land is Our Land?

The Once and Future World The Garden Awakening The Most Perfect Thing

2016 British Association of Nature Conservationists.

ISSN 0143-9073.

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