Ecos vol 29 no 1 whole issue

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Volume 29

Issue No 1

ecos a review of conservation

Walking the talk in conservation

ecos a review

www.banc.org.uk

ecos@easynet.co.uk

of conservation

Managing Editor: Rick Minter Tel: 01452-739142 e-mail: ecos@easynet.co.uk

ECOS is the quarterly journal of the British Association of Nature Conservationists

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

cos

Acknowledgements This issue was edited by Rick Minter and Martin Spray.

Main cover photo: Poppies bloom on the fringes of the Clapton Park estate in Hackney Courtesy of John Little.

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

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ECOS is printed by Severnprint on Evolution Paper and Board which has a 75% recycled content (and 50% post consumer waste). The electricity used during printing is sourced from Ecotricity which is electricity generated from renewable sources. The magazine is printed under the SylvaPack environmental print route using a waste reducing production system, reusable boxes for delivery and a donation is made to Tree Aid to support tree planting schemes in sub-Saharan Africa.

ECOS 29(1) 2008 Editorial

The missionary position A missionary carries the word to the world. However good a person the missionary, and however good the word, the mission is a failure if nobody gets the message, or understands it and accepts it. In several ways, conservation writers are missionaries. As we illuminate the stony paths conservationists plod along, perhaps ECOS itself is a prime example of the conservation world’s struggling missionaries.

Could it be that ECOS is like a mission amongst believers – its writers influencing only a close circle of sympathetic readers? In this issue we also ask that same question of the blogs and email forums now rife in conservation – are they having much influence, or are they just keeping people’s spirits up? Whilst mutual support, the odd argument, and some intellectual entertainment are important, the effort will only be ultimately worthwhile if the words reach new eyes and ears – and only if then made use of. Conservationist readers, too, are needed as missionaries. The talk must up and walk.

While print still keeps its place – evidenced by recent deluges of nature writing – much of the world is probably going to be reached – if at all – through new media. Although sometimes incomprehensible, because they tend to be in the first person, blogs especially, like Speakers' Corner without hecklers, allow insights into how their authors feel about their subjects. Notwithstanding the problems, email, webs and blogs have speeded the escape from the elitist conventions and constraints of ‘getting into print’.

What about the words and the language itself, regardless of the media? To make ourselves clear and to take people with us, Matthew Oates asks us to discard conservation’s stuffy corporate-speak. He urges us to be true to ourselves, and less bothered by our guarded conventions. James Robertson looks at related matters, gauging our mood as conservation workers, in a survey commissioned by BANC. He finds those outside the agencies are buoyant, finding inspiration and purpose in their work. But in the government sector the picture is bleak: staff are dispirited and feel their agencies are leaden-footed. Can the situation ever be turned round, especially while corporate-minded mangers cement their positions? The dead hand of government is snuffing out any enterprise we might expect from its agencies, from which, meanwhile, issue streams of bland ‘communications’.

All this could reinforce the value of the blogs and email networks. We look at London’s Beeridiversional and at VINE in this issue, asking what makes them tick.

Given the depressed state of the workforce, the chance for vibrant discussion is a key role of these email groups – we should not overlook their role as therapy. From them new ideas can emerge, for people to run with, cutting through the baggage elsewhere in conservation. Joe Bloggs has waited a long time for his moment.

Martin Spray and Geoffrey Wain 1

ECOS 29(1) 2008

The force of nature – a BANC investigation It is now more than 25 years since the Wildlife and Countryside Act came into operation, giving nature conservation a legal framework. Since then there have been huge changes to the statutory nature conservation agencies, membership of nature conservation organisations has grown rapidly, and with these changes and the growth of public interest in nature has come much greater political involvement. This article reports on a BANC project to take the temperature of nature conservation and find out how effective and satisfied those working in conservation are feeling.

JAMES ROBERTSON Feeling depressed, agitated, unsettled? You may be working for Natural England (NE).

That, at least, is the impression I have got from talking to a number of NE staff. The misery of that organisation is partly the inevitable consequence of being reorganised, but much of it is self-inflicted. It is also the result of swingeing budget cuts.

But low morale is not unique to Natural England. I have to conclude that working in the statutory conservation agencies is not much fun these days. This follows interviews with leading conservation practitioners throughout Great Britain (this did not include Northern Ireland, which would have been particularly fascinating as the Assembly starts to shape conservation practice there). The state of morale was one of six subjects which I discussed with fifteen interviewees. The others were: • whether the culture and direction of conservation activity is progressive or backward-looking; • how much influence does the nature conservation movement have; • attitudes to the business culture of plans and targets, sometimes referred to as ‘corporatism’; • important external influences; and • the main satisfactions and frustrations of working in conservation.

These are wide-ranging questions, providing a wealth of material to quarry. Although interviewees were promised anonymity, and I have not mentioned names, most would have been happy to go on the record. My analysis in this article is necessarily selective.

For a more detailed report, which includes a look at the different categories of interviewee and their responses, see www.banc.org.uk. I will start here with morale.

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A question of morale Those who were most satisfied with their jobs felt they could make a difference, and few of these worked in the statutory agencies. There were exceptions to this.

Morale is said to be good but patchy in the Environment Agency (EA). In Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) it is described as ‘bearing up remarkably well’. The hidden part of that phrase, ‘in the circumstances’, implies that morale might be expected to be rather low. In the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW), morale is apparently low, with constant change stopping staff getting on with the job, and a concentration on peripheral things like new budgeting procedures, diversity modules and ‘ticking boxes’. In NE, the focus of work is said to be narrow; systems are rigid, constipating; freedom of operation and creativity are thwarted. As a recent morale survey, reported in Farmer’s Guardian1 showed, morale is rock bottom, with staff talking of ‘soldiering on’ and commenting that ‘things can only get better’. Within my survey, one interviewee likened the situation to a ‘dead cat bounce’ – morale, having hit the floor, had nowhere else to go but up.

Budget cuts, management failures, departmental interference and a constant stream of political fashions alongside the loss of independence are all cited as causes for the poor state of the Agencies. In one view, Defra, described as ‘a failed agriculture department’, may have deliberately foisted a play-safe, ‘plans and processes’ culture, and swingeing budget cuts, on NE. The absence of champions for nature in Government is, for some, at the root of the problem. Politics is, of course, anthropocentric, and most politicians in Government see nature as a low-grade minority interest, with few costs or benefits attached to ignoring or supporting it. They just don’t get it. Opposition parties seem genuinely interested in green politics, so perhaps we can hope for a return of politicians like John Gummer and Michael Meacher, effective operators seized of the significance of living things and ecosystems, in the future.

Those working in NGOs are much more upbeat. One, for example, talked of the pleasure of working in a cohesive, highly motivated team with a brilliant manager.

The glass being half full, he was not alone in thinking that it is an exciting time to be working in conservation.

Conservation – a health check You can tell a certain amount from the state of a workforce. People working in statutory agencies are not, on the whole, filled with optimism and positive thoughts about what they can achieve in their jobs. As well as the obvious culprits of management, officialdom and government, could part of the problem come from within nature conservation itself? How relevant is current activity to the conservation of nature and the challenges facing most people?

There is a widely shared view that some aspects of nature conservation have become atrophied. Parts of the workforce have been looking the wrong way down their collective telescope. Their instinct is always to complicate. Their stance is 3

ECOS 29(1) 2008 defensive – as if still trying to win a war, when the game is about winning the peace, which means engaging with those people you once treated as the enemy.

One interviewee wondered whether nature conservationists were able to change, and where the new generation of luminaries was, to replace the Tansleys and Ratcliffes of the past.

The fact that the people I interviewed were so aware of the failings, for example, of the ‘features’ approach to protected sites, and the pursuit of ‘favourable condition’ without reference to a changing environment, suggests otherwise. Noone I spoke to had a good word to say about the profusion of Habitat and Species Action Plans. While some argued that underpinning legislation had been crucial in embedding conservation in land-use and planning, it is exciting, imaginative nature conservation schemes which attract funding. Legislation and inflexible regulation run the risk of stifling people and nature.

Looking forwards Interviewees had more to say about the culture of nature conservation – whether it was progressive or constipating – than any other topic. Many were enthusiastic and positive. One interviewee noted fantastic shifts in conservation thinking and operating in recent years. He saw nature conservation as a progressive force which had made huge strides, capturing public imagination and raising its sights with more creative, joined-up, large-scale restoration projects.

Although firmly in control of the nature conservation agenda, government seems to have little idea about what to do with it. Perhaps politicians have been ‘let off the hook’ by the success of NGOs like the RSPB. Cutting-edge conservation can be left to NGOs, while government and its functionaries serve the processes required to meet EU environmental legislation, rather than its purposes. Others point out that conservationists are asking a lot of politicians, since the actions needed to halt environmental degradation are on a huge scale and question the direction of economic development.

Most interviewees thought that the influence of the nature conservation movement was modest, although some pointed out that this has increased steadily over the years. As someone put it: “public perception is that the environment equals climate change, and such things as recycling, lighting, flood prevention and antisocial behaviour”. It seems that we are not getting the message across about the value of environmental goods and services to sustainable economies and the importance of functioning ecosystems in the face of climate change.

A changing climate?

Has climate change swamped out biodiversity issues, as a result of which, is it harder to get the message across about the importance of non-human life forms?

While concerns about carbon emissions may be eclipsing the equally crucial environmental challenge of biodiversity loss, nature reserves provide ecological 4

ECOS 29(1) 2008 services like carbon sinks and flood prevention, and may therefore win extra support on the back of climate fears. Indeed the whole land use debate is opening out, with organisations like the National Trust and Woodland Trust taking to heart what the new paradigm will mean for land use – a shift, perhaps, in woodland management, along with a switch from oil to burning wood.

Climate change could mean that nature conservation in its old guise, narrowly focussed on species and habitats, concentrating on a static, purist notion of ‘favourable condition’ on sites, is seen as irrelevant. It is in danger of becoming a side show, not part of the general debate about the way we live. The public has accepted that evidence-based science has got it right about climate change.

Environmentalists are no longer voices crying in the wilderness. It is time to go on the offensive, join the debate, to make connections and show why the decline of nature is as damaging to human interests as is the changing climate.

One reason why this may not be happening as it should, according to several observers, is because of the bureaucracy surrounding sites and species and inflexibility and prescriptive nature of site management, which ties up NGOs which own sites in endless permissions and paperwork.

The costly bureaucracy involved in conservation has to be put in context. As Lord Rooker admitted in Parliament earlier this year, the CAP costs the average family £716 p.a., but only £15 of this goes on targeted environmental programmes.

The money is spent on the wrong things. There is much more waste outside the sphere of nature conservation activity, some of which impinges on conservation.

The fear culture surrounding risk management and health and safety make it hard to get things done. Everywhere there is an increase in report-writing, in health assessments, in livestock movement licences and so on.

Troubles at Natural England Natural England has had a bad start, and much responsibility for this must rest with Defra. One commentator thought that NE was no longer a conservation organisation – conservation was just one of its functions – its priority being to distribute money to farmers. The budget cuts could mean it has to get rid of 10% of its staff, or 240 posts. At the latest count, 600 people or a quarter of the workforce had expressed interest in voluntary early retirement or redundancy, which tells its own story. However, as someone optimistically put it: “the position is not terminal”.

It is a bitter irony that the cuts are due to Defra’s incompetence, and the cost of recent animal health crises. Old school agricultural policy has contributed to animal health crises. Now the environment gets the payback. The fundamental problem with current farming systems is that they are so heavily dependent of fossil fuel inputs. There is much loose talk at the moment about food security, but ultimately this will depend on getting rid of oil. If you don’t believe this is possible, go to Cuba.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 There are serious failures of management and leadership at NE, but it is possible to have sympathy for the predicament of a new amalgamation of organisations, which is firmly under the thumb of a dull, grey department. NE naturally looks to please, so it pushes the safe ‘people’ part of its agenda. But if the conservation part is not properly integrated, there may be damaging consequences for nature from, for example, its coastal access work. This seems to be happening in Wales, where CCW’s coastal access staff have not listened to conservation advice, in the drive to achieve their targets. Locally, access can cause serious problems for biodiversity, for example if it leads to a cessation of grazing. It could also provide opportunities for restoration, improving coastal walks for people and wildlife. However none of CCW’s coastal access budget can be spent of associated conservation activities.

All at sea Impressive energy and commitment from NGOs and statutory conservation agencies has gone into advancing the cause of marine conservation. Organisations have worked together, there has been a huge rise in public awareness of the marine environment, as marine ecologists readily share their passion with the public, and much store has been set on the long-awaited Marine Bill. In spite of this, as one commentator put it, ‘marine conservation is struggling to get on the agenda, and needs a coalition of conservation bodies to push it higher. Marine protected areas could be built around consensus from the word go, all stakeholders identifying areas which could be set aside.’

There has been some progress in Scotland, where the Government can take credit for the first ‘no take’ zone. This historic Community Marine Conservation Area off Aran came about because the community were determined to make it happen, so it may be a ‘one-off’ which does not reflect political determination to set up more of these areas. However there are several sustainable fisheries management schemes, such as the one at Loch Torridon. The SNP is very reliant on votes from constituencies with a significant fishery industry. This may make the administration much more aware of the need for a sustainable approach to managing the marine environment, in the interests of jobs and communities.

Taking a lead in sustainable fisheries management would be fitting, as Scotland’s identity and economy are closely linked to its fisheries and fish farms, seals and sea birds, islands and oil. I will now look at the situation in Scotland in more detail.

Winds of change in Scotland The new Scottish Government has ushered in a period of uncertainty for nature conservation. Donald Trump’s huge golf-centred development on a sand dune SSSI is one of a number of large-scale proposals which will test the new populist administration’s commitment to Scotland’s natural heritage. When conservation gets an unfavourable wind from politics, morale suffers. There is talk that conservation has taken a step back, that some Ministers have a polarised view of conservation and development, and that nature conservation has become decoupled from sustainable development, and is not seen as a crucial part of the battle against climate change.

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SNH has to make itself relevant to the Government agenda, ‘Wealthier and Fairer, Smarter, Safer and Stronger, Greener’. As a complex organisation with a broad remit, but no very obvious economic or practical outputs, it will have its work cut out if it is to maintain and increase its influence. Its remit in relation to special sites will continue to bring it into conflict with development interests, but it may be able to balance this with a broader approach to biodiversity issues, and a shift from a preoccupation with the rare and the special, towards a celebration of the local and the common.

A perceptive account of the last twenty years of Scottish Environment Link2 shows how successful cooperation between NGOs has been, and how far conservation has travelled. It has become embedded in local government practice, and there are many exciting community and local government initiatives with people and nature at their heart.

Traditional, site-related conservation, which ignores people, is on the back foot. SNH, and campaigning bodies like RSPB run the risk of being labelled as trying to fossilise everything and lose nothing. Conservation needs to adapt, be pragmatic and recognise the changes that are going on, and particularly to seize hold of the climate change issue. Simon Pepper has put it like this: “It is time to encourage environmental bodies to think and act out of the box, be exciting, take risks, attract attention, challenge shibboleths, and loosen up the white-knuckle grip on precious old issues.” 2 SNH has had to cope with the upheaval of moving its main office from Edinburgh to Inverness and the loss of many of its experienced staff. A cut in its budget, combined with Government exhortations to find economies by working with 7

ECOS 29(1) 2008 similar agencies like SEPA, and a new, challenging way of organising Government departments thematically, have not helped, although the latter development could provide opportunities. On the other hand, the Inverness office has gone down well, new staff have settled in, and the pride taken in Scotland’s natural heritage is on the rise. These things combine to mean that, while morale could be better, working for Scotland’s environment has much going for it.

The gap between government rhetoric and reality A number of issues which came out strongly during twenty hours of interviews are summarised in the following comment: “I would not want to be working in conservation in the statutory sector now, with its subservience to Government targets, bureaucracy and process. There are no political champions in Government for wildlife, politicians are a very anthropocentric lot. They feel able to ignore their responsibility for wildlife because they see the voluntary sector, including organisations like the RSPB, which are better resourced than ever, fulfilling this role. Climate Change is the only environmental issue in town as far as most politicians are concerned.”

It is up to us to argue the case that disappearing species and degraded ecosystems are part of the problem which is giving rise to climate change; repairing these will safeguard the global systems which support life, including the climate. It is up to us to expose the gap between government rhetoric about living within our environmental means, and the reality. The way we live is unsustainable, and both climate change and biodiversity loss are symptoms of this problem. It is easy to say, but the same fundamental changes are needed to address both problems; we need to work with nature and within natural systems if we are to reclaim the planet from the effects of our own actions.

Of course, the challenge is in the doing. There is much that we can do – there has been a revolution in our ability to restore ecosystems, thereby improving the health and wellbeing of people, but greater public and political support are needed if this ability is to be deployed more widely. Nature conservation in its broadest sense, which is based on a proper understanding of how the natural world functions, is the best hope for finding solutions.

Limitations to influence Nature conservation in its narrowest form, defensive, myopic and self-regarding, could even prove an embarrassment. That is already true of the huge industry which has been built up around the production of Habitat and Species Action Plans. Interminable discussions about how many angels could fit on a pinhead, as one commentator described the UK BAP process, which has ditched almost all the big ideas and ‘fifty nine steps’ that came out of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. This, alongside Agenda 21 (about involving local communities to achieve sustainable development) and the Convention on Climate Change were 8

ECOS 29(1) 2008 the fruits of the UN Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. What actually happened was globalisation and an acceleration in the exploitation of nature and natural resources. It’s a funny old world, which sometimes makes you wonder what influence politicians really have.

Constraints which limit the influence and effectiveness of nature conservation include the shortage of funding. There is also the fact that, as one commentator put it, ‘we have a Government with no conservation ethic’. No wonder there has been so little progress towards the official target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010.

The cost of land and the shift to cereal growing may make large-scale restoration schemes harder to achieve. If influence is limited, and perspectives are diverse, that does not reduce the importance of what conservationists are trying to do. Our different perspectives can be a strength, as long as we pull together and not apart.

Individually we should challenge our own aspirations for wealth and consumption. Organisations need to see themselves as part of the problem, change their own ways of operating, and look to engage with others on a broad front in what should by now be seen as a common human cause. Let’s be imaginative, resourceful, think and act locally, (devolution should be a help here), keep people in the picture and celebrate our achievements. And let’s not forget the joy we get from nature, and share this with others if we can.

Downbeat or upbeat?

I have been delighted by the eloquence and thoughtfulness of those who let me interview them, and have opened up so fully. I hope I have accurately reflected their opinions, but the emphasis and conclusions are mine. Those working in Country Agencies expressed a good deal of frustration, while those outside were generally more optimistic and excited by the current debate about nature. There were many different views, but much consensus about the state of the Agencies (I include the Environment Agency in this), and the importance of climate change. The task could have left me confused and depressed, but it has had quite the opposite effect. I have to agree with those who believe that it is a crucial time to be working out new ways of living which protect the environment we love and on which we depend.

References 1.

Farmer’s Guardian, 9 November 2007

2.

Scottish Environment Link (2007) Scotland 2011: Scottish Environment LINK’s Challenge to the New Scottish Government.

James Robertson is an environmental writer and consultant who edits the wildlife journal Natur Cymru – The Nature of Wales. naturcymru@gmail.com See www.banc.org.uk for a longer digest of the interviews discussed in this article.

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Obfuscation and the language of nature conservation What is the language of nature conservation actually saying and achieving?

MATTHEW OATES ‘For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the soul within’ Alfred, Lord Tennyson In Memoriam V Nature conservation can seriously damage your mental health, for working within today’s wildlife and environmental movement can sever personal relationships with the world of Nature. This is because we now deal primarily with financial and bureaucratic systems that are far removed from the engagement that originally inspired us as individuals. Moreover, professional adherence to the conventions of the system forces us to deny, and helps us forget, the unrealised spiritual pilgrimage that meant so much. It is easy to become bewildered – if not downright confunded, to use JK Rowling’s pertinent term – by the burgeoning convolutions of our conservation movement. Many of us now have no effective relationship with The Real World in work time, and are in danger of becoming seriously alienated from it; so much so that it becomes our holiday land, when family affairs permit, our escape valve. All this goes some way towards explaining why I have crossed some personal rubicon, for I am now in rebellion against what the nature conservation movement is becoming, particularly the language it uses.

Professionalism and scientific grounding dictate that nature conservationists cannot speak of things such as love, beauty and wonder, let alone use the poetic language of passion for Nature, apart from during informal one-to-one conversations with close confidants, usually late at night in some bar. Certainly, such thinking can never be conveyed within the meetings culture within which so much nature conservation ‘work’ takes place, and wherein the evolving conventions are closely honoured. Nonetheless, poetic language – as either verse or prose, in written or spoken form - is the language of the real naturalist in me, the language I wish to use and believe may well express most. But the way is barred, within a profession that should understand deeply, as such language does not fulfil targets or attract funding, or confine itself to the parameters of science: we have to speak the languages of politics and money, and of ecology and environmental systems, and of targets.

The true self is therefore buried beneath the customs, expectations and processes 10

ECOS 29(1) 2008 of the profession; at formal meetings and events the appropriate image is duly presented and represented, perceived and accepted, not least because the customary language is used – and the language of the true self lies buried. Let it be known, then, that this true self is screaming increasingly loud at this dual sublimation.

The following poetic doodle was drafted during a lengthy debate over an item, irrelevant to the organisation I was representing, at a meeting at Natural England’s headquarters in Northminster House, Peterborough (where the shadows lie), on a sublime day in April 2007, the greatest April in documented history. It is not wholly necessary to read it, but if you do, then please do so slowly: Oh to be in April now that April’s truly here!

To move beyond the shuttered glass That binds spring to a window’s vacant stare – A presence far removed from its true being -.

To be there, in and with the azure sky, Beyond the stagnant stillness of the frame, Amongst and part of engaged vibrancy: To join with and in the elemental beings, The spirits of the spring.

But love moves unhindered beyond mere glass And leaps to join the promise that is spring.

Thus I am there, with and in the April sun, As much a part of it as it is all of me.

Then let the blackbird’s song come softly through And be here with me, as I am there with him.

It matters not whether this piece stands up to literary criticism; what counts here are the senses of longing, removal and love that it seeks to convey – feelings we should all recognise. There is also a sense of alienation that has to be overcome, and of necessary escapism. Above all, it uses a language that expresses such emotions – the suppressed language of repressed self.

Sub-languages and idiolects The ghastly truth is that our lives are riddled with professional sub-languages, of which the UK nature conservation movement has several e.g. animal and plant taxonomy, BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan), NVC (National Vegetation Classification), legal, political, bureaucratic, grant aid, and the like. This is scarcely surprising as each profession has its own sub-language and peer group idiolects – to complement the 4500 or so natural languages in the world. We have to master these sub-languages and group idiolects, and know the contexts in which they should and should not be used – and we must never use them inappropriately. Of course, we regularly succumb to that failing, which is one major reason why nature conservation is so poorly understood by the general public.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 We can worsen external communication difficulties by hiding within our own group idiolects, often to mask the absence of demonstrable facts or, worse, inability or downright refusal to see either the other side of the coin or the big picture. The potential for obfuscation here is enormous, not least because it can be used to cover up what we do not actually know. We should all take 1000 lines: ‘I must take care over obfuscation.’

The miasma of language Essentially, language is a rule-governed activity that seeks to convey concepts that are not necessarily formed or received clearly, or fixed. Philosophers have been philosophising on language since the days of Plato, whose Cratylus emanates from c. 390BC. Far more recently, Wittgenstein1 coined the phrase ‘The Language-game’, explored the limitations of language and argued that there is a distinction between the literal meaning of a word and the concept it actually represents. In effect, there are tiers of meaning, with much depending on the contextual setting and the subject matter, together with the placing of the sentence within the stream of life.

He went on to demonstrate that words do not need to have sharp, ostensive definition and, more interestingly, that vagueness is not necessarily a defect. The latter is understood and exploited well by poets, and goes some way towards explaining why scholars are able to extract new meanings from ageing texts.

Wittgenstein went still further, suggesting that concepts are neither correct nor incorrect, only more or less useful, depending on purpose.

The subsequent deconstructionist approach to language, led by Jacques Derrida, is by nature impossible to summarise, nonetheless its study is highly desirable.

The approach partly refers to the way in which accidental (or incidental) “features of a text can be seen as betraying, subverting, its purportedly ‘essential’ message”.2 Much depends on assumptions and absences made within and outside of a piece of text, written or spoken. The chief philosophical question, then, is the extent to which sameness of language masks difference of meaning within diverse contexts.

A key difficulty is the obvious distinction between meaning and interpretation.

Firstly, concepts are often misrepresented, being only partially formed in the conveyor’s mind. Then, even if formed fully and articulated clearly, they may not be received and understood in the intended manner. Moreover, a single sentence may actually involve both problems – assuming the words come out properly in the first place (the unfortunate Reverend Spooner once informed a chapel full of Oxford undergraduates that, “We each have within our hearts a half warmed fish”!).

All this goes some way towards explaining the frequency and extent to which interpretations of an event, such as a business meeting, may vary fundamentally.

It is eternally amazing how often one’s interpretation of key parts of a nature conservation meeting varies from those of others, even the (many) meetings during which one has paid full attention and wherein Poetry has not struck.

The problem is further exacerbated by the issue of concepts not being fixed, or stable, but ever in a state of flux. Indeed, it is not just nature that is in a state of 12

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 constant, episodic change, but language also – together with the concepts it seeks to encapsulate, convey or even confuse. Language and meaning are intrinsically bound up in what TS Eliot labelled, “The intolerable wrestle with words and meaning” (East Coker), and, in his essay on the metaphysical poets, the obligation “to dislocate if necessary, language into meaning”. Eliot summarised the evolutionary nature of language usefully: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice.” (Little Gidding) Better known are the following lines from Burnt Norton: ‘Words strain,Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with impression, will not stay in place,’ These quotations indicate how one hugely articulate poet-philosopher wrestled with language. Above all, these issues are key elements of the context within which the expression of nature conservation thinking and practice takes place.

The deplorable word It is likely that the most frequently used word in nature conservation in the UK today is ‘biodiversity’, but what does it actually mean and how well is it understood? Originally it was a celebratory term embracing the variety of life, but it is seldom used in that sense today, a mere 20 years on from its inception. The 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio adopted the word strongly, defining it as: “The variability of living organisms from all sources, including inter alia, terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.” Yawn… A second definition refers to diversity of organisms within an ecosystem, both species-rich and species-poor.

Within the UK nature conservation movement, which seemingly has little to celebrate, the term was quickly hijacked to cover rare, declining and valued species and habitats; i.e. what we were already doing. This meaning of the word is still very much alive, in the land of Biodiversity Action Planning. However, biodiversity is increasingly becoming a political word, used cleverly for political aims. In particular, it has become a term by which nature conservation is regulated: forced to conform by binding it to the culture of funding streams and targets – monitoring – reporting that is so prevalent. But it is also open to obfuscation, political and otherwise, and has gloriously succumbed to deconstructionalism: the word has indeed turned against itself. The net result is widespread, if not total, confusion, both inside and outside of the nature conservation movement, plus exploitation and delusion. The word has obfuscated.

Today, just about anything can be shown to benefit biodiversity: doubtless even Donald Trump’s proposed golf emporium on the sand dunes of Balmedie, 14

ECOS 29(1) 2008 Aberdeenshire, will demonstrate benefits to biodiversity. The word is becoming a term of derision, and will never appear in poetic language as anything other than that. It needs to be used consistently, and wisely, or not at all.

In 2007 Defra (Whom God Preserve) commissioned a qualitative research report on public understanding of the concepts and language around ecosystems services and the natural environment3. This £37,300 study found low levels of understanding of these two ‘industry’ terms, and recommends that they are not used publicly! The sample was also questioned on understanding of the word ‘biodiversity’. The report states: “While some were familiar with the term, nearly all respondents struggled to correctly define it”. Furthermore, “Their definitions also suggested that it is not a term which is strongly connected with nature”, and “Many related it variously to ‘bio’ washing powder, alternative energy or features of a green lifestyle”. The report concludes: “Biodiversity was not understood, and even when explained it was still not engaging”. A comparable exercise by CCW in 2004 obtained similar results, including the washing powder analogy.4 Surely it is time we flushed this silly little word into oblivion before it does any more damage?

The challenge, though, is how this could be done without ditching the whole BAP process – baby, bathwater, political buy-in, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. A temporary compromise would be to use it only within the context of the UK BAP process, but that would mean defying its international usage.

Of course, there are other words and terms in use within nature conservation which have, or have been, obfuscated; some, such as ‘ecosystems services’, for the obvious reason that they are complex concepts. Even the sacred term ‘species’ has been obfuscated, largely by taxonomists. A few terms have survived, being consistently understandable within different contextual settings; ‘brownfield site’ is a clear winner here, which is interesting as brownfield is a poetic word.

The blinkered language of science The peer-reviewed scientific paper, and the spoken paper equivalent, uses a language bereft of modifiers and strongly hybridized with the language of statistics.

Those of us with poetic leanings find it a catachresis of the English language. But the key question is, how many of us actually - and truly – understand these papers?

Hands on hearts, how many of us do any more than scan the abstract, conclusion and discussion? More important, are the messages compromised, hidden or even castrated by an unnecessarily strict language, into which they are shoe-horned, and could they be more clearly conveyed?

Even more crucially, does the language, together with the rigid structure, hinder scientists from expressing what they strongly feel to be true but cannot fully demonstrate mathematically? If so, in addition to being prevented from expressing their beliefs, are scientists being hindered from expressing their true knowledge and is nature conservation therefore being short-changed by science? If so, a Journal of Scientific Perception may actually be more useful than many of the existing hard science journals – but, of course, academics would not accrue 15

ECOS 29(1) 2008 Brownie points for publishing there, rather the reverse. Finally, how many of us actually relish writing in this language, and how many have struggled with essays, dissertations, theses and papers simply because of the language constraints?

Perhaps the scientific journals are primarily concerned with playing a narrow language game?

The front line troops of nature conservation – the wardens, rangers and the likes – struggle to understand much of the hard empirical science that should underpin their activities, whilst the Centre of Evidence-based Conservation is demonstrating the paucity of thoroughly demonstrable science, and is grappling with the fact that the bulk of nature conservation ‘knowledge’ lies within the field of grey literature, with which empiricism struggles to get to grips. Science seems to distance itself from meaning: a matter of Eliot’s “We had the experience but missed the meaning” (The Dry Salvages).

The buried life The poem of this title by the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold heavily influenced some subsequent poets, notably Eliot. It explores the extent to which the business of living in society supplants the existence of the inner life: we are suppressed by conventions, expectations and, especially, the power of assumption that governs action and language, and which effectively leads to inadequate communication and a suppressed existence. No wonder there is so much debate over whether we are alienated from Nature! Arnold writes: “But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course” Towards the poem’s end he rejoices in the rare moments when: ‘The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.”

Since Arnold’s day our society has suffered the near-extinction of the poetic approach. Poetic language is a Spiritual language, but the S word and its variants have been squeezed out of the English language, which has been overtaken by the sub-languages of technology, modernism, policy, politics, sophistry, news and, especially, bureaucracy. These ‘industry’ languages have led to a crisis in communication at all levels and in all directions, inter and intra, which Arnold would recognise instantly. We in the nature conservation movement are at times reduced to playing ‘corporate bollocks bingo’, usually in the name of grant aid application. Is management aware of all this, and of the value of manipulation through covert obfuscation?

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The Directorate of Cerebral Obfuscation In England, at least, poetic language – both as verse and in prose form – has been forced into deep quiescence. An unperceived analogue of Philip Pullman’s Magisterium5 exists, with an all-powerful Board of Logical Positivist Objectivity and a fearsome Directorate of Sophistry & Cerebral Obfuscation.

Poetic language, in verse or prose, is the language of the intuition and the experiential, as well as having a descriptive element, and is therefore central to our being. Its necessity emanates primarily from the fact that things felt intuitively cannot be placed easily within words, but only pointed towards: poetic language enables us to stand outside and point inwards, towards the hidden inside. But even here there are limitations of language: as Jonathan Bate6 puts it, “We will never answer the central question of environmental ethics – whether Homo sapiens is part of Nature or apart – through language, but through experiential being”. The issue, then, is the extent to which language can relate to the intuitive and to the experiential.

One key difficulty is that, within modern British culture and certainly within nature conservation, we speak too much – often obtusely and confusedly – and do not actually think enough (thinking is confined, or rather fragmented, to journeys to and from meetings). There is no time allocated for thinking, and obfuscation flourishes in the absence of adequate thought. This problem is particularly prevalent at meetings, where we are expected to follow the discussion, take notes and think ahead – simultaneously! Moreover, we go to meetings with baggage – preconceptions and prejudices – and so hear what we expect to hear, serving the power of assumption. But industry and government cannot afford to listen; they speak – and one of their greatest weapons is obfuscation.

Our meetings culture is nothing short of appalling, due mainly to the filibustering out of thinking time, which means that our meetings are effectively non-cognitive and anaerobic. We need to designate thinking time within our lives and, especially, within meetings. I must confess to being meetings-sick, simply because the culture is preposterous. At a minimum, a modern equivalent of the primary school nature table needs to be introduced to nature conservation meeting rooms – a simple 10 minute round the table session wherein attendees can summarise recent positive experiences or considerations, or view a display case of snail-killing flies or whatever. There also needs to be pauses designated in meetings so that people can actually think ahead. And let us have some flowers on the table… Are our meetings deliberately set up to obfuscate?

I do not speak Welsh but am informed that it is a more poetic language than English. Central to Welsh culture, especially in the north, is the concept of cynefin, for which there is no simple English translation. The concept concerns people belonging to a place – a farm or a valley, or whatever – and the importance of poetic language in that relationship. There seems to be a Scots Gaelic equivalent, duthchas. The nearest word we have in English is ecopoetry, a modern term derived from the Greek Oikos – home – and poesis – making (the origins of this term lie in Heidegger, and the interpretation differs greatly from Robert Hall 17

ECOS 29(1) 2008 Haynes’s terraformation definition of ecopoesis). The nineteenth century poet John Clare had immense cynefin within his native parish of Helpston, Northamptonshire, only it was shattered by the destruction of his beloved landscape through the inclosures acts and, curiously, his success as a poet which lured him into the slough of London. The combination turned his mind.

I suspect that we have paid so much attention to the (rapid) development of the scientific, ecological idiolect, and to making it politically acceptable and systems functional, that we have lost contact with our core language - the poetic language of passion for, of, with and within Nature. This may well be an aspect of a wider cultural abscission. It is pertinent that the culmination of Heidegger’s thinking is a line from a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin that reads, ‘poetically man dwells upon this earth’7: this is cynefin, duthchas, the language of the relationship between man and nature, the living language that now lies buried, Living Poetry. The fate of John Clare illustrates what happens to an individual when poetic living within nature is shattered. A similar fate could befall us. This begs the question of precisely what we have buried, even sacrificed, in the name of what we take to be ‘nature conservation’, and what the essence of nature conservation actually is? As for a cause behind this apparent fall from grace, I would point towards a line of staggering depth by TS Eliot: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality” (Burnt Norton).

References 1.

Baker, G.P. & Hacker, P.M.S. (2005). Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, 2nd edition. OUP. Oxford.

2.

Rorty, R. (1995): From Formalism to Poststructuralism in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 8. CUP, Cambridge.

3.

Defra (2007). Public Understanding of the Concepts and Language around Ecosystem Services and the Natural Environment. Research Project Final Report ref NR0115 (J278742).

4.

See Oates, M.R. (2006). The Dying of the Light. British Wildlife 18: 2: 88-95.

5.

Pullman, P. 1995 – 2001. His Dark Materials series. Scholastic Children’s Books. London.

6.

Bate, J. 2000. The Song of the Earth. Picador. London.

7.

See Bate, J. above: the chapter, What Are Poets For?

Matthew Oates works for the National Trust at its head office in Swindon, as Advisor on Nature Conservation - whatever that may mean. He is a founding member of VINE (Values in Nature & Environment) and suffers from poetry and butterflies. The above views are very much his own and are not necessarily those of the National Trust. matthew.oates@nationaltrust.org.uk

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Nature by proxy Thoughts on nature writing The past two years has seen nature writing in Britain come of age, with a deluge of books published in this vogue. What are the characteristics of these books and what main messages do they convey?

MARIN SPRAY I have been lastingly influenced by various things I read when a child. One was a book I still have: Alfred Rees’s Creatures of the night is stories about animals in the English countryside. Here is a small incident in the life of one of them he called Lutra: The otter remembered her experience with the dabchick, and believed that to capture a full-grown duck would tax her utmost strength and cause a general alarm. ... However, she slipped quietly from the mound, dived deep, and from the river-bed shot up in the midst of the birds just as they had congregated to settle a point of difference in a recent event, and to discuss a second part of their sports’ programme for the night.1 This is doubtless, as they say, based on actual events involving real characters, but it is still a piece of fiction. It seems a nice example of one strand of what I think of as the English tradition of nature writing, and which intends to convey an understanding of our fellow beings.

Celebrating the natural world The art of ‘nature writing’ has been considered the art of telling what it is like to live as something other than your human self. Introducing his collection The Oxford book of nature writing,2 Richard Mabey characterizes the genre as a special case of the “celebration of the natural world”, explaining that he uses the term “in a sense which excludes bald biological recording at one extreme and fictional accounts at the other”.

As Mabey points out, the attempt to use words to bring living things to life for readers calls for the impossible skill of writing about “a world about whose inner states and meanings we can know virtually nothing”.3 His book is a crop of extracts from the likes of Aesop and Linnaeus, Gruffydd ap Addaf ap Dafydd and Orwell, Oliver Rackham and Wordsworth: a pick-and-mix bunch, mostly anglophone. A general impression of this literature is of fine writing mostly about mid-sized living things and land- and seascapes – though microbes and fossils occasionally feature.4 Mabey is almost certainly our best-known contemporary ‘nature writer’, but there are plenty of others. Indeed, that old-fashioned term is applied to an expanding band of authors of books and essays, implying that they are contributing 19

ECOS 29(1) 2008 to a distinct genre. But how distinct is it; what is its commonality? What, one might ask, is it? And what is it doing? I admit, I’m not convinced there is a strong commonality; the term ‘nature writing’ often looks ill-fitting, trying to hold too much; yet it can also seem contrived, and arbitrarily limited. It seems also, over time and space, to have drifted and evolved.

In the last couple of decades, nature writing – whatever it is – has become a subject for detailed study. This amalgam of words from three American academics may help clarify what the genre is about:5 Nature writing is born out of love, respect, and awe [... and] close observation of the natural world. The focus always returns to the personal observations of the writer, [who] is part of the natural world. Traditionally, [it] is a nonfiction work that is lyrical, informational, and apolitical. [It] avoids sentimentality, personalification [sic], and imputation of conscious purpose to natural events; avoids imposing on other species any human-being system for aesthetics, morality, economics, comfort, or danger; is a personal statement. Nature writing also must be positive. [It] is about the writer as well as about nature. The nature writer probes deep within and discovers how nature affects personal life [and] seeks to learn from nature. [It] reminds us of our essential, animal nature, the simple capacity of being here and experiencing. This reminding is revolutionary, because it opens up the wild again.

Its purpose is considered to be an offering of (1) natural history information, (2) personal responses to nature, or (3) philosophical interpretation of nature.6 Straightforward... however, we should note that it has a wide embrace, and includes animal narratives, garden and farming essays, ecofeminist works, articles on environmental justice – as well as works advocating environmental preservation, sustainability and biological diversity.7 What one might have thought was easily labelled and delimited looks to be quite complicated.

Thinking about this makes me want to add a fourth purpose: to offer entertainment. In fact, so far as I’m concerned, that was its main purpose when I was enjoying Creatures of the Night, and I suspect it is what is expected by today’s readers of today’s version of nature writing.

A hungry little lizard creeps over the dry leaves [where] three beetles are grouped – two in jet armour, one in iridescent bronze. To the eye of the lizard, all are alike – all are edible. [...] First one, then the second black beetle is seized, crunched and swallowed.

The third [...] is stalked, but at the last moment its hind quarters are reared high, some invisible trigger is pulled, and with a very audible pfffft!! an explosion takes place close to the face of the lizard. The effect is instantaneous and decided.

William Beebe is enthusing about the denizens of Venezuelan forest leaf-litter, in the 1940s. The lizard has met a bombardier beetle.8 Such writing is about the fine grain of nature. Mabey (amongst others) picks up the beginning of this strong thread through English literature in the late eighteenth century, in Gilbert White’s Natural history of Selborne. 9 20

ECOS 29(1) 2008 This natural history writing is an accumulating of details, anecdotes, and interpretations, of nature. It is not really story-telling; but neither is it cold scientific prose: the reader sees nature partly ‘objectively’, partly through a filter of poetic imagery. (Call it fiction if you will. I think the academic dismisses fiction too readily.) If only in small amounts, it has something for all four purposes of nature writing noted above. It is not likely to lead to its readers rushing out to save the world.

Political literature Stories and poetic descriptions can encourage natural history or scientific interests, but their ‘philosophical interpretation of nature’ is slight, and they don’t bring much enlightenment – or much spurring-into-action. The importance of offering a philosophical interpretation increases as our ecological problems deepen – and the need for the philosophical musings actually to have influence sharpens. For some nature writers, and especially in North America, this purpose has always been significant. It has been directed to influencing policy – and some influence is obvious. “Few, if any, literary genres have been as closely tied with political reform as has nature writing”.10 In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which period sentimental and story-telling ‘nature’ books, but also natural history works, sold in “astonishing” numbers, a few major campaignerwriters, John Muir and John Burroughs foremost, as well as the prime mover of ecosympathy amongst Euro-Americans, Thoreau, had significant impact on changing American attitudes and policies. They remain influential – at least amongst conservationists and academics. Their words still encourage ‘nature writers’ to be “actively involved in the politics of environmental reform”. Although as our problems compound, and globalise, the role of writers is less easily defined, on both shores of The Pond their numbers are growing. They also have to bridge wider gaps between politicians and populace. In 1903, U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt visited Muir, and “for three days and nights [they] camped alone [...] discussing the fate of Yosemite and the surrounding forests.” 11 – as unlikely a scenario a century on as with contemporary Edward VII! Nonetheless, several routes to influence are claimed for various categories of nature writing today. At its mildest, it has little overt political content, and only indirect effects. A more robust approach to influencing policy directly addresses specific issues.

Increasingly, as both problems and policy become more complex, “the nature writer takes on the role of educator. The final category, which is the most difficult to define and assess, includes those writers and works that advocate what is often seen as a ‘radical’ environmental agenda”.10 All this seems a long way from Lutra diving in the pool.

A more distant horizon There is still plenty of writing that is distinctly non-academic natural history that provides (1) information and (2) personal responses to nature, often demonstrating (3) philosophical – especially ethical – points of view, and which is also (4) 21

ECOS 29(1) 2008 superbly – perhaps dangerously – entertaining. Styles of language have moved on, but the gentle influences continue through such celebrations of relative minutiae of nature. Sometimes, the reader does indeed feel that the words lead into worlds we can know virtually nothing about – though none I have read lead as awefully as John Baker’s mimesis of the peregrine in which “wherever he goes [...] I will follow him. […] till my […] human shape no longer darkens in terror […] his brilliant eye [... and I can] return to the town as a stranger”. The peregrine is about the bird. The besotted author features as little more than a moving part of the bird’s habitat. That is wild.12 Mark Cocker’s recent ‘meditation on birds, landscapes and nature’ is largely about rooks – to which he is definitely addicted.13 I don’t think he mentions Baker.

“I freely confess”, he confesses, “[t]hat on the unforgettable occasions when I see 40,000 corvids [members of the crow family] take flight in one oceanic roar of dark shapes and dark sounds, a part of my sense of joy is the frisson of danger the spectacle excites. Quite simply, I am at the limits of what my mind can comprehend or my imagination can articulate. [...] and one special pleasure is now showing it to others and watching their reaction. [...] This book is about that moment, about the ritual and the elements of the natural world.”

It is also about Cocker & Family, with bright gems of natural history strung on his many rook-seeking journeys. It oozes love, respect and awe, and is sanely positive. Embedded in a human, domestically-anchored, context, it is a celebration of wild nature, in fairly close focus.

Is nature writing in Britain catching up with the genre in North America? There does seem to be a rush of words about wilderness and the wild. 'Wild' is not a simple word or a single idea, and it is useful to remember its affinity with (self- or free-) willed. Recent books have dealt with the gamut from wildly wild to mildly wild, from the ‘last wild’ on the planet to the ‘lost’ wild of the psyche.

Although (I suspect) most environmentalists are embarrassed by any whiff of self-will attributed to the land, or parts of it such as mountains, let alone such nebulosities as habitats and ecosystems, we are usually happy to think of them as – or wish them to be – wild. Wilderness is extra wild. It is ‘wild’ at these coarser grains that an increasing number of writers are bringing us news and their views of. Land and landscape that has wild-ness (which is, please note, not necessarily or indeed often wilderness), and human nature that is offered some rewilding: these are what their news is about. This is what Thoreau was broadcasting, and other pioneers.14 Recent authors have drawn attention to – or screamed about – the shrivelling away of various Last Wildernesses, or humankind’s continuing shunning of uncooked nature. Some show concern both for land with its ‘natural’ inhabitants and for us; others seek protection for the former against our omnipotence; and others – with their own genre – seek to entice us back towards the wild for our sakes. There is, of course, a bit of each in all.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 In Roger Deakin’s Wildwood. A journey through trees, for example: After Waterlog, his swim over Britain in which he was “taking part in the existence of things”, and with a feeling that “to enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed”, he embarked on “a quest for the residual magic of trees”.15 Wildwood is as much about Roger, and people he meets, as about trees, woods, or wood – perhaps more so. The treeness of a place shares attention with its humanness – though one might say not as much as Mabey’s latest, Beechcombings.16 This is no censure: an intention is to point up the interrelatedness. There is little of the wild in it; the places he journeys to aren’t usually havens of it. It is otherwise with Deakin’s friend Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places.17 Not believing (or wishing to) the many “obituaries for the wild” in these islands, he journeyed, and gives us an evocative itinerary of Britain’s wilder relicts. He begins and ends in an English beechwood. He prefaces his search with the admission that, living and working in, and liking, Cambridge, “for as long as I stay there, I know I shall also have to get to the wild places”. Returning from many, he admits “Wildness was here, too, a short mile south of the town in which I lived”.

Wild Places is a fine recent example of denying the obituaries for the wild. It is primarily ‘about’ the wildness still clinging to parts of Britain, and it is also ‘about’ the journeys’ actions and actors. It is also, though (I think) less deliberately, ‘about’ the wild that manifests in Robert himself and others like him – and, I think, the wildin-waiting in the rest of us. “A lovely book” – the publishers have strapped a praisetag from a reviewer on the dust-wrapper – “by a sublimely civilized writer”. But, doesn’t ‘civilized’ imply un-wild.?... Maybe; but civil culture is seldom strong enough to fully subdue the so-called wildness that lingers in all of us. In many, it is dormant, or comatose; in some, it has spells of dreaming; in relatively few, it is becoming alert – or is awake. In Roger, and Robert, and Richard, it is, as it were, waking.

Because it is there Scotland’s wilder bits have enticed many a visitor, and many visitors have written to tell us of their (their inner wild’s) experiences. Mike Cawthorne’s Wilderness dreams is a stimulating example of a response to ‘the call of Scotland’s last wild places’. It is about another journey: Cawthorne’s comprehensive collection of munros.18 They were climbed for challenge, a bit of adventure, and because they are there: this is the usual reason for journeys to the wild. Although it is commonly excused differently, it does seem that merely knowing there is a challenge makes – in some people – rising to it inevitable. The inevitability is so strong that some humankind seems always to have journeyed to The Unknown in case it had adventures that might make their finders higher, further, drier, colder, lonelier, than anyone else. Some of us are content (and others obliged) to have these adventures by proxy. Whether I would be more content or less if the adventurers didn’t go in the first place, or went but didn’t tell me they had been or what was there, I haven’t fathomed....

“We travelled for science”, wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard after his tramp through the sunless Antarctic winter in 1912 to gather Emperor Penguin eggs for scientists back 23

ECOS 29(1) 2008 home researching the evolutionary origin of birds.19 “Because it is there... and nobody has yet been!” must in many such cases be the more honest answer. There are still extreme challenges (some of the best are of our own making); however, pure wild is in short supply, and more than half a truth is that many of our concerns for the preservation of wild(er)ness or with its return are our selfinterests: concerns for us to have the chance of enjoying (or of denying ourselves) its pleasures – and especially if they are virginal.

Cherry-Garrard’s book is not what I would call ‘nature writing’. It is usually a relatively weaker nature, or a stronger – better equipped – adventurer, that engenders lyrical celebrations in which the writer takes the minor role. (Maybe poets can write more freely about very strong nature – but it is the scientist who writes about it in detail. Has anyone risked Antarctica for art?)

Words, wild and tame Nowadays, when the picture (preferably moving) has such widespread impact, and the image is so commonly conflated with the thing, written words still have massive clout. Though we tend to forget that words by themselves are not sufficient for saving the planet (and plenty of people still act as if they think that writing the report equates with saving the bird / tree / forest), they are a necessary weapon for the conservationist.

By themselves, well-aimed eco-words may save little, but they have been formally noticed. We can study ‘environmental criticism’, and join the Association for the Study of Literature & Environment.20 This is potentially a good way of increasing the readership of ‘green’ literature of all ‘grains’ – but it is likely to be the wider, wilder thread, such as Edward Abbey’s Desert solitaire, Thoreau’s Walden, Leopold’s Sand County almanac, and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, that are pursued. How much hope the conservation movement(s) ought to place here is unclear, though one might predict the biggest effect on the converted. There is also, I feel, a problem of distraction, manifest in some of the books noted here, with the writers’ attention being foremost on the writers and their achievements.

The journal or travel-log format fosters this.

Meanwhile, the Gilbert White natural-history writing tradition continues healthily. Some is still made with White’s original ambition in mind – that “stationary men would pay more attention to the districts on which they reside, and would publish their thoughts on the objects that surround them”, and so contribute to “parochial history”. Like White, its writers would like to add a few more bricks to the rising tower of knowledge, and so extend the horizon as seen from its top, perhaps encouraging a few more people to climb up and enjoy the view. It is so much easier now: our technology makes climbing the real tower unnecessary: we can enjoy the view from a virtual one.

Our enjoyment is increasingly of a proxy nature seen from a proxy viewpoint.

We can even feel we have contributed to saving the bird / tree / forest we think 24

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Photo: © John MacPherson: www.john-macpherson-photography.com

we have seen – conveniently forgetting that it’s not actually there any more. Not surprisingly, there are some who say “This will not do!”

Our enjoyment is increasingly of a poxy nature: if we want to savour something better, we must be higher, further, drier, colder, lonelier, than we used to be. Isn’t there a dilemma or two in this? A loving and encouraging story is told by John Lister-Kaye.[21] With his young daughter, he shares the wonders of nature from Chesil Beach to the Kalahari to Svalbard in winter. A wonder-full childhood (and fatherhood)... but we couldn’t – we mustn’t – all do this. Though they might want to, many parents (one hopes...) will not (to put it crudely) mortgage their children to such a ‘footprint’. We do things for the Best of Possible Reasons. Ever-growing numbers of environmentalists are going (because they can) into Last Wildernesses; and many return not only with private memories but journals, stories, pictures and artworks, as well as scientific discoveries, to share with us. The sharing is important: it may not only entertain, but recruit more to environmentalism. Terry Gifford comments of American nature writers, but I think it applies increasingly here, that they have “not got beyond the expression of awe”, and that the accumulating “revered body of work is actually in an escapist pastoral tradition that too easily produces simply a feel-good factor for the reader” – not action Out There, where meanwhile the adventurers’ real and metaphorical footprints remain.22 25

ECOS 29(1) 2008 Totus floreo It is reasonable, of course, to help build the tower, and promote awareness.... One senses that, though many conservationists enjoy the view and do their best to protect it, not a few feel like screaming.

Bitterness and anger are not conducive to lyrical pastoral prose; feelings of despair tend not to make for writing that is ‘positive’; and – unfortunately –screaming at them seldom converts your ‘enemies’ into friends. There is plenty of screaming environmental writing (and a frightening amount that is despairing); but it surely isn’t what is meant by ‘nature writing’! It is, however, important to let others know when you feel so passionate in your philosophic interpretation. Perhaps if you can temper your feelings, a little hotness amongst your lyrical and informational words, spiced with some non-apolitical ones, can release some of the tension, and get a message into someone else’s head. This must be what the mild disgruntlement in Jim Crumley’s Brother Nature 23 is about, when a red kite watch is frustrated by the hubbub of would-be kite-spectators. “This new phenomenon of conservation to turn the red kite into a source of mass entertainment”, including crowds around the radiotracking device, leads him to make a promise to himself “and to all nature. Never again would I report sightings and discoveries [...] to members of the conservation establishment [...].” Later, he has a more positive tone: It is not enough to complain of the wrongheadedness of those charged with the care of the wildness of our land. The care of the wildness of our land is in the hands of all of us.

But I feel he is still too annoyed to engage in conversation about it!

Nature’s celebrants are inclined to be saddened by (ongoing) history; nonetheless, some retain a positive attitude, of ready love, not impending hate....

That helps avoid misliking oneself. The wider Nature we experience as it were by proxy includes, of course, our own: our personal, human natures. That experience comes not so comfortably as reading the latest Mabey book or watching a David Attenborough documentary. Seeing oneself requires some technical assistance.

Fortunately, there are some good-quality ‘what if?’ mirrors available, in which – even if through a glasse darkly – we see what we might/could be like.

Wild. An elemental journey is one of the best.24 Jay Griffiths is offering us ‘nature writing’ of a sort. It matches much of the formal prescription for the genre (notwithstanding its ‘political’ nature), but it is about us, about human nature – and primarily ‘about’ Jay. It is ‘about’ our latent inner wild – at a glance, looking like someone called Jay experiencing various wilds; but after more careful looking, what you see is you. There is much entertainment; much information; much sad history ; but much, much more, encouragement. The book is almost scarily positive at times:, and again and again o! o! totus floreo! – I am all a-flower! 25 Besides having a female author, Wild is distinct for being on (or beyond) the wilder edge of the genre looked at from a natural-history tradition, but it is (for me) 26

ECOS 29(1) 2008 part of the skein of nature writing of the broader tradition. This has been called a conversation: one initiated by Thoreau, and helped along still by his words’ influence. The conversation Frank Stewart 12 hears is amongst naturalists and scientists, farmers, explorers, novelists and critics, and is a broad and inclusive conversation. It is characterised by a combination of rhapsody with science. I’m somewhat skeptical about the ‘broad and inclusive’ bit. It sounds like there is much talking over each-other – or, more likely, there are several separate conversations ongoing in the same place. From time to time one voice or another rises over the others and I think the volume is gradually increasing. This is causing a small but growing straggle of passers-by to pause and listen – though most are rather engrossed in their gismos, and don’t notice.

Meanwhile, the books keep coming. What happens to them all? May I be proved wrong... but I see a parallel with a similar situation, when a diversity of writings about wilderness, a majority of them adventure and travel narratives, were avidly consumed by a public with a heightening interest in wild things. This was nineteenth century America – and it was in trains not planes that this awakened urban public was “shuttling to and from wilderness areas and seaside resorts”.26 Just as it is now, wilderness was thought of as “a mysterious redemptive domain to be enjoyed and celebrated” because of the recharging it afforded jaded citizens. Some of the current flow of books are certainly finding readers: a snapshot of Amazon’s sales rankings shows Macfarlane at 237, Deakin at 665, Mabey’s Beechcombings at 3,161, and one (1995) edition of Thoreau’s Walden at 3,699. (Number 1 that day was Eat yourself thin.)27 A crude marker, but it suggests a lot of people keen to gain insights into the wild, and to reorient their attitudes to Nature. Or maybe these excellently written books, with their modern user-friendliness and distinct air of confidence, are just darned good entertainment.... Maybe, too, there is a fashion factor. I think it shows in a book with the catchy title How to be wild, whose author Simon Barnes shares “danger, diversity, companionship, a nice drink”, as “a good way to celebrate all that is grand and mysterious and wonderful about life”..28 I don’t mean such writings are trite – there are some nice insights in Barnes’s book – but overpositive, and over-important: “There are many books that claim they will change your life: but this one will not only do that, but will save the planet as well.”

No: I think not. But they could well be effective channels – for the minority who read books - through which the would-be adventurer, wannabefree spirit, and armchair ecowarrier can do it all by proxy. Better that than that we all rush out to be first in the last Mysterious Redemptive Domain.

Tired of all who come with words, words but no language I went to the snow-covered island.

The wild does not have words.

The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!

I come across the marks of roe-deer’s hooves in the snow.

Language but no words.29 27

ECOS 29(1) 2008

References and notes 1

A.W. Rees (1905) Creatures of the night, London.

2

Richard Mabey (ed.) (1995) The Oxford book of nature writing, Oxford: OUP.

3

Or, rather, of writing prose about it: the Oxford book does not cover ‘poetry’, which somewhat narrows the horizon – and probably outcasts humankind’s more successful attempts to portray unknown worlds in words. The recent Bloodaxe ecopoetry anthology, Earth shattering, is reviewed elsewhere in this issue.

4

E.g. some of Lynn Margulis, and Stephen Jay Gould.

5

[a] Lee Schweninger (1993) Writing nature: Silko and Native Americans as nature writers, Melus June. [b] Ron Harton (acc. Jan. 2008) www.naturewriting.com/whatis.htm; Richard A. Lillard (1985) in Teaching environmental literature, ed. Frederick O. Waage; Thomas J. Lyon This Incomparable Land: A Guide to American Nature Writing, quoted by Wikipedia, ‘Environmental journalism’ (acc. Jan. 2008).

6

Lyon, as above

7

Thus in R. Finch & J. Elder, ed. (1990). The Norton book of nature writing, NY: Norton.

8

William Beebe (1950) High jungle, London: Bodley Head.

9

Gilbert White (1789) The natural history and antiquities of Selborne. There are many subsequent editions.

10 D.G. Payne (1999) 'Talking Freely Around the Campfire’': The Influence of Nature Writing on American Environmental Policy, Society and Natural Resources Society and Natural Resources 12(1) 39-48. (Abstract.)

11 Frank Stewart (1995) A natural history of nature writing, Washington: Island Press.

12 John Alec Baker ((1967) 2005) The peregrine, (London) New York Review Books. See ECOS 26(3-4).

13 Mark Cocker (2007) Crow country. A meditation on birds, landscape & nature, London: Cape. See ECOS 28(3-4).

14 Henry David Thoreau (1854) Walden, or life in the woods is the classic. “Its high message, the oldest in literature”, says the editor of a later issue, “is that we waste too much on the mere plant of living – houses, lands, luxuries, the shows of things.” See Stewart’s ‘natural history’ of a succession of Thoreau and later writers’ works.

15 Roger Deakin (2007) Wildwood. A journey through trees, London: Hamish Hamilton. Roger Deakin (1999). Waterlog: A swimmer's journey through Britain. London: Chatto & Windus.

16 Riichard Mabey (2007) Beechcombings. T he narratives of trees, London: Chatto & Windus. See Ecos 28(3-4). For his Nature cure (C&W, 2005), see ECOS 26 (2).

17 Robert Macfarlane (2007) The wild places, London: Granta. See ECOS 28(3-4).

18 Mike Cawthorne (2007) Wilderness dreams, Glasgow: The In Pinn. See ECOS 28(3-4).

19 Apsley Cherry-Garrard ((1922) 1970) The worst journey in the world, Antarctic 1910-1913, Penguin edn. {!}. Three eggs reached Science: in 1913 their collector took them to the British Museum – where “The Chief Custodian takes them into custody without a word of thanks, and turns to [a] Person of Importance to discuss them.... “You needn’t wait.” “I should like to have a receipt for the eggs, if you please.” “It is not necessary... You needn’t wait.”... He doesn’t.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 20 Lawrence Bluell (2005) The future of environmental criticism. Oxford: Blackwell. The ASLE journal Green letters is reviewed elsewhere in this issue.

21 John Lister-Kaye (2004) Nature’s child. Encounters with wonders of the natural world, London: Abacus. See Ecos 28(3-4).

22 Terry Gifford (2006) What is ecocriticism for? Some personal responses to two recent critiques, Green Letters nr. 7: 6-13. His answer: “Changing our behaviours [...] so that we can live in sustainable harmony [...] or at least do better.”

23 Jim Crumley (2007) Brother Nature, Dunbeath: Whittles. See ECOS 28(2) page 1.

24 Jay Griffiths (2007) Wild. An elemental journey, London: Hamish Hamilton. See ECOS 28(2).

25 ‘Tempus est iocundum’, Carmina burana.

26 Bradley P. Dean (2007) Natural history, romanticism, and Thoreau, in Michael Lewis, ed., American wilderness. A new history, Oxford: O.U.P..

27 The snapshot was taken at 1700h, 16 January 2008. For comparison: Dawkins The god delusion 10, Baker Peregrine NYRB ed. (2005) 20,281, Griffiths 23,393, White’s Selborne, Mabey’s Penguin ed.

(1977) 207,295.

28 Simon Barnes (2007) How to be wild, London: short Books. Reviewed elsewhere in this issue.

29 Tomas Tranströmer, ‘From March 79’, tr. John F. Deane, in S. Dunn & A. Scholefield eds. (1991) Beneath the wide wide heaven, London: Virago.

Martin Spray is an ECOS editor. spraypludds@hotmail.com ‘The otherness of nature’ or just a flock of starlings?

Photo: Jules Pretty

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ECOS 29(1) 2008

Conservation at the key board Can we blog a better environment?

Does the blogosphere influence what happens in the real world of conservation, and does it affect the way we work? ECOS asked a blogger, a blog reader and an email forum-group to relay their experience in the following three articles…

Bio-blogging on my own web site MARK FISHER I am usually amused rather than annoyed when a journalist in the ‘quality’ press embarks on another attack against blogging, accusing bloggers of poor grammar, factual inaccuracy and the tendency to howl at the moon. It smacks of professional protectionism. Bloggers write because they have something to say, have a need to say it pretty much now, and don’t need a financial reward to do it. The open access of the internet means that bloggers are their own proprietor, editor, publisher etc., the test of their altruistic worth being the entirely voluntary readership that has to seek out their blog, rather than stumbling over a journalist’s article in yesterday’s discarded chip paper.

DIY journalism I started out on email forums (and got kicked off one) but I blog now using my own website. Some will say that I am just a frustrated journalist, given that I inveterately write for forums, newsletters, and the occasional news-stand magazine. But my setting up of a personal website in 2003 was emblematic of a much more serious purpose. In practical terms, I needed a platform for the position paper I had written after coming home from an extended journey in the National Parks and wilderness of North America. I had such a profound reaction to this wild nature that it had to be given expression, and be put into an achievable context for the UK. I hawked this “manifesto” around to every suitable organisation that I could find an email address for.

Fortunately, I also sent it to ECOS because, apart from a very few acknowledgements (thanks, guys, in the natura 2000 team, Defra) it was this journal that gave space to an abridged version and, crucially, a first published link to the website address.

Early on, I filled the website with the email diary sent to friends during the trip, plus a few companion articles that I had written for forums when I got home. A back catalogue of articles on Permaculture, and on food and farming, also crept on, as well as examples of my work as a Permaculture Designer, but the key role of the website is to enunciate my views on landscape. It is more than therapy – I do have 30

ECOS 29(1) 2008 an occasional feature that takes a poke at poor journalism on nature conservation, and I get great delight in pointing out the absurdities in professional nature conservation, but the periodic articles (I aim for monthly) are a continuum of my developing thesis, and there is a substantial wildland information resource posted on the website as well. For my articles, I walk landscapes and I learn, I read books and material on the internet and go to meetings and I learn – and what I have seen and learnt is explored in the articles.

Seeing often only the disregard that truly wild nature is held in here, and constantly witnessing the flipside to nature conservation, can be soul destroying. I am self-aware enough to realise that the traditional stereotyping of bloggers as sceptics, pessimists or ranters is a pitfall that I should avoid, and which calls for balance and some reason for optimism. However, inspiration for any one article does not always follow a course of achieving overall balance - I have to write about what moves me at that moment, as do other bloggers. Thus three articles in succession in 2007 found me in a very black mood and it would not surprise me if their content was more than a little challenging. They did not provoke much abusive response, but then there were few plaudits either.

Stirring up the mainstream A proportion of my articles are collaborative in the sense that they result from encouragement from readers to explore particular issues, or they are in support of beleaguered communities who contact me because they feel their voice is lost when the juggernaut of nature conservation moves in. I am blunt by nature, and a website is not the place to hide criticism away, especially if it relates to an individual. From experience, I know that it only takes a few weeks after posting before word gets back to the someone I have traduced. The deal is that they get their say, posted up on my website and without comment from me (an exception was a response from the director of one Wildlife Trust who was too boringly long and self-serving).

Who knows what influence a blog like mine has? I don’t have the reach of a Mabey or a Marren, but offered the chance I could give most of the rest a run for their journalistic money. Instead I do what is open to me, and I don’t believe I have done enough yet. The statistics of my website readership can only give raw numbers - it doesn’t explain why some articles are more popular than others, or if I am just feeding the prejudices of a minority. I do know, because readers have so responded, that I fill a niche in outlook on landscapes that is under-represented in the mainstream.

Social networking?

Email forums are another way of reaching into a section of that mainstream, provided of course that you sign up to forums with a membership that can be a challenge to your ideas. The coldly calculating will recognise that pushing the button on a submission ensures that it reaches all of the self-selected audience of the forum, so that key messages can be strategically placed in front of particular people. I am sure that the members of 31

ECOS 29(1) 2008 the VINE forum have never looked at in that way, and instead the small-world environment of nature conservation can sometimes make the exchanges seem like social networking. But the VINE forum is a personal favourite. A discussion thread can take off wildly, with submissions coming in thick and fast. Often my considered (slow) response is rapidly overtaken by new postings (the at-work, on-broadband syndrome). I wouldn’t have it any other way, and the generally robust and confident tone makes for some good exchanges that I doubt would be reproduced with the same vibrancy were they to take place at an organised meeting. Not all VINE forum members though have appreciated having their mail boxes stuffed. In which case why did they join?

Finding your constituents In looking at other forms of blogging around, I would want to point out a couple of examples that seem to exemplify the frequency and focus of true blogspots. Both mine the electronic ether in the hope of gathering support, but their aims could not be any more different.

The Blacka Moor Site is a blog by a frequent walker on the 445 acres of publicly owned moorland to the west of Sheffield.1 The land is highly valued by those who walk there, but it has become mired in controversy in recent years because of “differences between those who have always liked it for what it is, and the professional conservationists and land managers who think it is 'out of condition' and want to interfere”. The blog has entries only days apart, with photographs and a commentary that documents the wild values of the moorland landscape, and how this is being destroyed through the management by a Wildlife Trust.

The other blogspot was pointed out to me as an example of a public relations charm offensive. The Sheep Blog on the Ashdown Forest website2 has cute pictures of working dogs and Hebridean sheep, and records the days of a close-herding shepherd and her flock as they reinstate grazing pressures on the heathland commons of the publicly owned Forest. Not everyone is happy about the new management regime of the Forest and I suspect they feel this blog is an attempt to assuage public opinion with its blatant appeal to school children and the more whimsical.

So, it is the case with blogspots, that you don’t have to pay your money, but there is enough variety around that you do get to have your choice.

References 1.

The Blacka Moor Site http://theblackamoorsite.blogspot.com

2.

Sheep Blog of the Close-herded Shepherding Project, Ashdown Forest www.ashdownforest.org/blog.html

Mark Fisher www.self-willed-land.org.uk

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ECOS 29(1) 2008

Too many notes Mr Mozart Thoughts from a reluctant blogger but addictive communicator.

ALISON PARFITT I don’t blog, in the sense of contributing to email discussion groups – well not much anyway. I can’t think how people find the time for so much reading, especially off screen, never mind the replying. It clearly meets a need though; what need is a question that I would like to understand better.

I have often quipped about lots of communication: ‘its therapy’ … ‘they need to be heard’, especially when people take too much airtime at meetings. Maybe some blogging is personal therapy but in cases such as the bloggers from Baghdad and Burma it becomes therapy for everyone as well as world news. Hearing real voices telling us real experience makes me feel a bit better, but this does not mean that I am endorsing blogging as a political campaign aid eg. Cameron’s blog.

I do scan some blogs, though cheerfully skipping lots. It’s like email newsletters that arrive just when a diversion is welcome. Or they clearly signal that this has something I want to know about. But often they arrive when I am not wanting to be diverted or feel that I have enough on my plate just now, thank you.

Nosing around My nosey habit of trying to scan passing traffic comes from wanting to see what people are thinking and saying, and I guess I’m not unusual here. As friends and colleagues well know, I am no naturalist. But within a broad notion of the natural and rural world, I often help to develop ideas and support others who do. So I want to know what is in the air, even if it is still confused. I am a typical Gemini, I like to see things from several points of view, go round it a bit, before I arrive at a view of my own.

Shifting language It is not just the ideas but how they are being expressed that I also want to understand. The language shifts continually. What sustainability means now is diluted and dull compared with what it meant 15 years ago as we rallied behind that banner to save the world. Now I am interested in ideas currently expressed as connectivity and wild. As a broad canvas sort of person I usually want to hang on to the inclusive or integrated definitions of these ideas. But the usual pattern is for these initial broad ideas to reduce, to be more defined. It’s important for me to be aware of this shifting as it happens. It can prevent misunderstanding (even disappointment), especially in abbreviated e-communication.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008

Networking crazy I am a natural networker and have long since ceased to be surprised at how people and things just appear, often at precisely the right time. There is the odd happy foraging encounter but I trust serendipity. It has been suggested that I ought to be more ‘out there’ and blog about ‘bees in my bonnet’ such as the need to support the women who were, in turn, holding together distressed partners and families after foot and mouth disease, about the desperate need to get rid of the outdated attitudes and legislation for Green Belt, and think anew about what we want from land around settlements; about being much more clever at getting the innovation that comes from on-the-ground experience understood by policy makers; about the limits of the academic approach to support human endeavour; about the potential of community land trusts; about what do we really mean by ‘wild’ and so on. But while I might be a networking junky, somehow blogging does not feel quite the same, a bit more like shouting at the moon perhaps. Maybe I will come to it.

Gender stereo-typing Is it a gender thing? Is blogging more a male way of going about making change and trying to influence people? A cliché question no doubt. And while you might be reading this on April 1st and laughing up your sleeve, I just observe that in a group of ‘pioneering activists’ I’m involved in, it is the women who ring me as the coordinator. We talk through the latest twist and turns, the perfidy of the powers that be, and then come to a view (not necessarily the same view). Meanwhile there is no such dialogue and reflection from the men – they just fire off their views through email.

We need the bloggers I might groan when people start saying I should read this blog and that blog and feel overwhelmed (and somehow isolated at the same time) with things I ought to read and do, but I don’t want the bloggers to go away (as if they would!). Please blog on, getting past the ‘official and sanctioned’ communication to be out on the edges. We need to be able to hear the voices of the independently minded, those who question what is assumed every bit as much as ever.

Does anyone have an understanding of how influential blogs are? That must be as difficult to gauge as the effectiveness of any communication. We need to ask the bloggers and their readers (bloggees?). Surely, for many of the ‘soap box bloggers’, they are only wanting to get the attention of a few particular people. And they don’t know who they are, yet. It might be you.

Alison Parfitt does lots of things including working as Nature with Attitude, and working for Gloucestershire Land for People. alisonparfitt@phonecoop.coop

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ECOS 29(1) 2008

The Beeridiversional – capital networking MATHEW FRITH The ‘Beeri’ is an e-forum that sprang from a loose network of nature conservation practitioners in London. The original network began in 1998 with a series of regular social drinks in central London pubs organised and developed partly in response to the evolution of the London Biodiversity Action Plan – hence its full name, the London Beeridiversional Partyship. I was the network’s originator in a previous post whilst at London Wildlife Trust. Moreover there was – and still is my belief that this social interaction away from the workplace could assist in strengthening and complementing the work of various individuals within their organisations. These drink events could also serve as informal forums for debate, discussion and argument over policies and practices, and opportunities to challenge these outside the normal parameters of corporate hours. The widening scope of activities, and the demand for partnership working necessitated getting to know people, which was rarely possible within the constraints of meetings. In addition there had been a growing number of people and organisations involved within the Capital, and the original caucus had already begun to atomise through people’s promotion, leaving London, retirement or burn-out.1

NEIL BENNETT

Whilst the ‘Beeri’ began at a similar time to when e-mail took root, it started as a series of drinks up to 6-7 times a year, each evening session often attracting upwards of 25 people. However, within a few years the growing dominance and influence of e-mail, suggested another means of communication. There were already suggestions that the Beeris were organised to favour a select few, with the emphasis on centrally located, fuggy pubs that served real ales, to accommodate the fastidious tastes of men of a certain age. In a sector with a rapidly increasing number of women, as well as newcomers under the age of 25, reliance on the occasional ‘beer’ would have led to eventual extinction.

Although accusations of it becoming something for a self-selected ‘elite’ were wrong, it was easy to see how long-held associations between some people could be perceived by those new to the sector in London, or those not fond of standing around in pubs.

Something else was required.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008

Beyond the green drinks In August 2002, the ‘Beeri’ established itself as an e-forum (on the free yahoogroups network), as a means for information exchange, seeking advice, debate, posting notices of events and recruitment in respect of biodiversity conservation within the Capital.2 This allows members, after a simple subscription, to post information to the network, all within generally understood and maintained parameters.

Loosely monitored by John Archer (Greater London Authority), Mandy Rudd (Greenspace Information for Greater London) and myself, the Beeri’s message etiquette requirements are those of standard ‘blogs’; no personal abuse, accusations, profundity and similar. In over 5 years there have been only three instances when intervention has been required or considered; the most difficult to determine being notices seeking support for potential threats to services and jobs within a named organisation.

At over 220 members, the ‘beeri’ generally now generates traffic of between 45 and 60 messages a month. The system is geared to avoid in-boxes being swamped, so that members responding to a message will direct their response to the originator by default (rather than all members, as happened in the Beeri’s first months). In five years it has generated over 3,000 messages on a variety of topics, including Chinese mitten-crabs, peregrines in docklands, green roofs, hedgehog and badger culls, frog spawn sightings, Jersey tiger-moth records, horse chestnut leaf-miner, Thames Gateway, biodiversity in parks, the Wapping otter, bumblebee identification, garden loss, ring-necked parakeets, pigeon control, escaped snakes, newt ‘song’, the Green Belt, habitat management, Defra indicators, harlequin ladybird, brownfield dilemmas, climate change, planning concerns, tree-planting, job adverts, conferences and events, rare bird sightings in the Capital (e.g. the Peckham American robin, the Erith squacco heron), and, err, the Tory party's new logo. Occasionally contentious, sometimes humourous, and probably a lot of 'yeah, so what?' and 'not him again', it has been hoped it's generally been of use and some lighter relief during the day.

Although we have no idea of how many people work in biodiversity conservation in London (both professionally and as volunteers), the Beeri’s membership appears to represent a good cross-section of the organisations active in the field, despite it being entirely self-selected. Its principal aim is still to be a comprehensive e-forum for posting information of relevance to London’s biodiversity, whether the latest policy initiative from Defra or the sighting of a rare beast in some park. It has not supplanted the drinks, which still take place. As for discussion and debate, the Beeri still provides a valid vehicle, although regular participants are generally confined to a few with the time, confidence and energy to generate the arguments.

Beeri members gave the following responses to questions from ECOS… Who gets involved and why?

“The beeri is a portal to a mine of information and opinion. If I want to find out something about a topical environmental issue, Beeri is one of the first places I go to. Some of the debates about critical issues, such as the value of urban trees, responses to climate change, and indigenous/non-indigenous species have helped to refine my thinking. As a result, my ability to influence policy has been enhanced.”

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 “As an environmental educator, beeri provides me with a range of facts which often debunk existing myths and orthodoxies. It must be deeply frustrating for some people when I say something like 'Well, actually, there's no evidence…that what you just stated as fact is true.”

“Largely those employed in the biodiversity field in London. It doesn’t appear to engage volunteers much at present. Whether online or in hostelries, 90% of the turnout is the same as ever. Would be interesting to know how this compares with ‘Green Drinks’ in London.”

“Those with something to say, wanting to be involved or seen to be involved, seeking advice, or (in my case) having a belief in the greater good of the collective.”

“What’s more interesting is the 80% of beeri members that don’t regularly respond, but receive messages and at least read a percentage of them. Is this level of active participation typical?”

What does it achieve?

“It helps to provide cohesion to those involved with the Bioverse in London (and offers those who’ve moved away, retired etc to stay in touch). It facilitates requests for help and provides a means for passing on information and advice and helps maintain the Biodiversity Community in London – which can be particularly important for those in outer London or whose roles don’t bring them into regular contact with their colleagues. And it adds a little bit to the profit margin of London’s drinkeries.”

“Some cohesion and identity of individuals which may better reflect the held values of the sector than the organisations they work for. Helps to keep things on the radar and provide opportunities for people to ‘remind’ others of the possibilities, etc.”

Does it have any influence?

“The beeri also provides an opportunity to promote the London Wildlife Trust. If Trust members and staff are seen to provide topical, accurate and considered information, it enhances the Trust's position.

Getting the balance right between staff input and trustee/member input has to be an issue though.”

“It does not directly influence anyone beyond the group but those who do engage are likely to be better informed and therefore likely to be more effective.”

“Of course, no such exercise can be evaluated, as the benefits are dispersed and some even intangible. One always wonders whether anyone reads all this stuff (85% that I receive go to the file without opening any links). However, that applies to most of what we may do.”

“Like to think it does; helps to offer other views (for example the native-aliens issue, where lines can quickly be drawn). I know of individuals going to events based on information posted on the beeri.”

Is it for the moment or does it have further use?

“No reason why it couldn’t continue to grow and become more useful. The originators and regular users might like to ponder how it might reach further in the future.”

“Quite likely that interest will continue for the next few years; will be partly dependent on whether it is deemed to be of value [membership growth suggests it is, at present), and whether the technology can meet the demands of members in terms of added value. However, there are

37

ECOS 29(1) 2008 other news-streams that have developed since the establishment of the beeri – these may suffice for many people. There will also be the interests and demands of younger entrants into the sector, where phone access maybe the new means of information exchange.”

What are the key distinctions of key blogging venues?

“For us, the Beeri is London, and the issues nature faces in the Capital and those that work to protect and enhance it. Only issues relevant to our work are posted; national and international items only feature if they are pertinent to our work.”

Where will this type of blogging go next?

“More use of the visual dimensions of the web - video-conferencing, simulations, etc.”

“To the pub. Onward and upward or just drift on doing what it currently does. As for the pubs. I have almost given up attending, as I cannot have a sensible conversation any more whilst standing in noisy surrounds. I need an old man's pub - one that is about to close from lack of custom!”

Shouldn’t we all just get back to work?

“It is work - and one could argue that staff should be encouraged to contribute more to the beeri.”

“Considering how much more effective an individual is when properly networked - this can be an important part of ‘work’ – which for many involved with the Beeri is a vocation rather than just a job.”

“I’d consider that posting/reading Beeri messages should be an element of our work in London.

The question, as always, is the amount of time it can take.”

Notes 1.

Biodiversity conservation as a politically motivated force in London began in the early 1980s and was, for its first decade or so, dominated by relatively few organisations: BTCV, London Ecology Unit, London Wildlife Trust, Nature Conservancy Council/English Nature, and a few local societies. From the advent of the 1990s, the growing importance and influence of the 33 local authorities, was further complemented and complicated by the interests of many more national agencies and NGOs (e.g.

Environment Agency, Woodland Trust, Wildfowl & Wetland Trust) and establishment of highly active regional and sub-regional organisations (e.g. Groundwork Trusts, Trees for London). By 2000 over 50 organisations had a direct interest in and input into nature conservation in London, making coordination of effort through a Biodiversity Action Plan a complex task.

2.

The introductory text to the e-group reads: Welcome to the London Beeridiversional Partyship; an informal social gathering of people working to conserve London’s wildlife and natural heritage. There are many of us battling against development pressures, bureaucracy, funding constraints, grant deadlines, and often, an anti-nature culture; is this what our work should always be about? Why did we get into it in the first place? Come and get it off your chest with like-minded people, share thoughts and concerns, and maybe find solutions, over a pint of beer, a glass of wine, or whatever you fancy.

Mathew Frith is Landscape Regeneration Manager with Peabody Trust (a social landlord). mathew.frith@peabody.org.uk Thanks to John Archer, Mandy Rudd and Peter Massini for comments and additional quotes.

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The nature of natural – a journey of discovery This extended article reproduces highlights from a discussion thread on ‘what is natural?’ amongst members of VINE (Values in Nature and the Environment) held over autumn 2007.

JOHN BARKHAM with MARTIN SPRAY VINE was established in 2006 as an email forum set up to facilitate discussion of all aspects of ‘values in nature and the environment’. This article is a sample of the first year’s conversation.

By the end of 2007 this particular discussion amounted to over 100,000 words. Rather than attempt to summarise the exchanges across the range of topics addressed, I chose just one theme and left most contributions more or less intact. This avoids reducing a rich and often profound dialogue into a much drier summary; and it allows both the depth and breadth of contributions to illustrate what seems to me to be the unique opportunity that such an electronic discussion group offers. I am still amazed that all these contributions were contained within a period of just two weeks! I have edited most of them only very lightly, and have added only minimal linking commentary. I have, however, attempted to draw out some issues and implications at the end. I think that, collectively, these contributions give an insight into the development of critical thinking among some practitioners of nature conservation in the UK. Of the 17 contributors, 13 have given permission to be named in what follows: Rowan Adams; Ian Brodie; Simon Fairlie; James Fenton; Mark Fisher; John Foster; Joyce Gilbert; Bill Grayson; Sophie Lake; John MacPherson; Patrick Roper; Martin Spray and Ruth Watkins.

The discussion Prompted by a BBC Radio 4 programme which debated the uses of nature and asked if it really is so good for us as we so often say, Sophie Lake seeded the conversation on Is Nature Good for Us?, on 8 November 2007.

Discussion began the next day with a question about the question: Is nature good for us?’ seems to be the fashionable question of the times; but does it make any sense? If humans are a product of evolution as most of us seem to assume, how can anything that we say or do be anything other than natural?

On the 11th, a second writer agreed. However, Simon Fairlie wrote: I don't agree. Obviously in one sense everything humans do is ‘natural’, in the same sense 39

ECOS 29(1) 2008 that everything that exists anywhere can be said to be ‘natural’. But if you use this meaning of the word, what point is there in having the word at all?

It is abundantly clear that there is a spectrum that runs between the natural on one hand and the artificial on the other. Trees are more natural than mobile ‘phone masts, bare feet are more natural than trainers or horseshoes, the sea is more natural than a swimming pool etc. We all recognise this, and to deny it seems to me to be unhelpfully pedantic.

John MacPherson (11th) made this point: ‘Is nature good for us?’ [...] might be fashionable, but it’s the wrong question, I'm afraid. It should read ‘Is nature good to us?’ In which case the answer is ’yes’, but only sometimes. Mostly nature just 'is'. And often it’s quite bad to us. And are we good to nature? Well - decide for yourself where your situation puts you... As an afterthought - does 'natural' actually refer to something that is untouched/undamaged/unaffected by humans?

That seems more likely from the ways the word is used.

On the 12th, one person wrote: The English word 'natural' has come to have more than one opposite - 'unnatural', obviously, but also 'artificial', 'synthetic'... so, as ever, it depends what one means by 'natural' or perhaps more appositely, what one doesn't.

To which responded: [...] I am not the first to ask the question - great philosophers from Heraclitus through John the Scot to Spinoza have taken it seriously.

Now to more questions. You make some universal statements in your reply: ‘It is abundantly clear’, ‘Trees are more natural than mobile phones’ and ‘We all recognise this’ - what is your basis and evidence for the truth of these statements?

The philosopher Spinoza justified his argument that '’nothing is unnatural’ with the use of the logical apparatus of geometry.

Later, (15th) Simon came back with: Most people know what I mean when I tell them that my hair colour is natural and not artificial? Most people understand the same distinction as I do between textiles made of natural fibres, and textiles made of synthetic fibres? I expect you do too.

John Foster wondered about viscose!... and Simon rejoined on the same day: I knew someone would come back with this. What about a wig made of undyed human hair for that matter? As I said, it's a spectrum. In respect of textiles, rayons made of spun cellulose probably stand somewhere nearer the middle of it rather than at one extremity, though in most people's language they are nearer the synthetic end than the natural end. In about 1860 rayon was at the synthetic extremity, but since then the synthetic end of the spectrum has been extended, while the natural end has, if anything, retreated.

The degree of interference by humans which any substance or thing has undergone is a real concept, and it needs some words to express it. Whether 40

NEIL BENNETT

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‘natural’, as opposed to ‘artificial/synthetic’, is the best word, I don't know, perhaps not because it can mean several other things. But it is the word most Englishspeaking people use most of the time for this particular meaning, and provided the context is reasonably clear, I'm happy to go along with it.

Finally, I consider that it is an important concept, which certain interests I don't like (for example manufacturers of test-tube meat culture) have an interest in muddying, and that's why I leap to defend it.

Another correspondent on the 15th added: The more obvious opposite in English of 'natural' - 'unnatural' has much more sinister connotations than either 'artificial' or 'synthetic'. Clearly there's something in (at least) the English-speaking psyche that has had a long-standing antipathy to the 'unnatural' and perhaps even requires humanity to be included within the 'natural'. Some ‘online’ definitions illustrate this: “contrary to the laws or course of nature; at variance with the character or nature of a person, animal, or plant [or] with what is normal or to be expected; lacking human qualities or sympathies; monstrous; inhuman; not genuine or spontaneous; lacking a valid or natural claim; illegitimate.”

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 So, whilst 'artificial' has humanity distinctly separated from nature, 'unnatural' seems to have us firmly within it - with, I suspect, a suggestion of social persecution of those humans whose actions are thought to go outside or beyond it - currently arising from time to time in public discussion around applied genetics; particularly genetic modification and stem cell research. Is this feeling wholly irrational, or - like disgust - is there some 'rational' evolutionary advantage to it? Do we suffer physically, socially or spiritually if we become divorced from "nature", or does that very distinction encourage us to think that we are apart from it? [...]

Back on the 12th, someone had written: I agree with you Simon in the sense that artificial is used to describe artefacts created or modified by humans and that distinction can be used to distinguish those from other parts of the environment.

However, I do not think this distinction should be used to separate us from other forms of life. Why should a block of flats be any less part of the natural world than a wasp’s nest? OK, the scale and maybe the complexity is different but they are essentially both built by a group of individuals of a particular animal species for a group of them to live in and raise their offspring. All this technology [...] is part of the specialisation of our species [...] It may also be our downfall - how many men does it take to know how to support the structures of our society and what proportion of the population needs to be lost before that collective knowledge goes out of the window? Anyway that's down to evolution and all that jazz, and evolution moves in mysterious ways (or is it network theory? The problem with not being a scientist!).

On the 13th, Rowan Adams agreed: I'm with Simon on this one. One thing that's definitely artificial is anything that's not biodegradable, like most of the plastics we've made in the last few generations. Presumably, bacteria and fungi will eventually evolve mechanisms that can break them down, but what waste products will they produce as a result? Just because human beings are living beings, it doesn't mean that we can't cause harm to other living beings.

It seems to me that the reason we've done daft things like destroy soil, put poisons in the soil, water and air, and are now doing our best to change the climate and so destroy human civilisation, is precisely because we forget that we're part of the natural world. Crucially we've forgotten that other species only need us not to destroy them and their habitats, but we cannot survive without other living things. So it's perfectly possible for us to do things that are incompatible with sustaining life. [...]

This is a moral issue. What we need to focus on is not whether something can be given a particular label or not, but whether it's helpful or harmful to the planet and all the richness of life on it.

To this, Bill Grayson added: All of which prompts me to observe that 'context is everything'. We usually know what we mean and are very good at assuming that our target audience does too - which is the case most of the time and for most of our intended meaning, but only as long as the context is shared and equally understood amongst the parties involved in the discussion.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 I listened to the radio programme and felt that it was a classic example of the participants not really meeting all the above assumptions.

Martin Spray joined in with an example: I wonder if this little domestic scene is of any interest. My wife recently asked me to pass her green coat to her. I looked around, and said: “I can’t see a green coat. Do you want this brown one?” “That’s the one I asked you to pass me”, she says. We have had this exchange a number of times. I don’t think it’s because we don’t see alike: Her understanding of ‘green’ overlaps my understanding of ‘brown’. Yet we get along well enough talking together using words that are mostly fuzzy, have multiple meanings, or are – in the ways we use them – effectively meaningless. This is okay, except when we don’t tell each other what we mean by the words we’re using. Which is not quite always. I use ‘quite’ to mean entirely; she uses it to mean what I mean by ‘not quite’. It’s a bloody nuisance when we forget this! This is all a bit sloppy, but it works.

Sometimes it doesn’t. [...] Whenever we hit the word ‘nature’, I’m stuck. I mean, whenever my wife uses it, I’m stuck. It’s the same with ‘environment’, ‘consciousness’, and ‘god’ [...].

“In one sense, [...] everything that exists anywhere can be said to be natural. But if you use the word in that meaning what point is there in having the word at all?”

A good question, and it taunts me every time I come to a standstill in our arguments. I think we’d be better off abandoning the word natural, and refusing to use it. But how? We have to say something, and there’s no point using words that your hearers don’t recognise, let alone understand. We’d have to abandon a lot of other words as well. Better, surely, to try to explain to each other what our particular usage is. If we can [...]

I can’t think how some people see ‘tree’ and ‘phone’ on opposite sides of a gulf.

They’re different, yes – because one is man-made (so it’s an artefact), the other (I’m seeing a wild one) isn’t. Chimps, caddisfly larvae, and many others make things, too. We ought to have a word to cover these, The word ‘nature’ – the idea ‘nature’ – doesn’t seem to have any place in the matter. Nature = what is. All that is = nature (my sense; yours may be quite – or nearly quite – different). I can’t see a gulf, because for me it isn’t there, but I do see that the tree and the phone are some distance apart. [...]

Simon (14th) sought to clarify: Martin — I didn't propose that there was a ‘gulf’ between a tree and a mobile phone mast , but a spectrum. In some ways I wish there was more of a gulf, because genetic manipulation, artificial intelligence, test-tube muscle culture, self-replicating machines and other ‘converging technologies’ could populate the middle of that spectrum in a most disturbing way.

With which Martin agreed... and James Fenton thought: 'Society' uses words while instinctively understanding what they mean - even if the meaning is not clearly articulated or hard to define. Take the word 'nature' or 'natural' for example: ‘natural science’, ‘human nature’, ‘love of nature’, ‘nature conservation’... I see the 43

ECOS 29(1) 2008 common thread as being 'given a priori' - what we have inherited from the universe (not ourselves) and which we cannot change...

Later on the 14th, Mark Fisher apologised for quoting ‘some largish chunks from a fascinating paper from the American experience on the public understandings of nature.’ He wrote: I think it supports the spectrum that Simon speaks of, and it absolutely supports the necessity of the dialogue of this thread so that we do have the ‘rhetorical resources’ to define key concepts!

Nature Is Socially Constructed - Social constructivists debate the extent to which nature can be known and shared independently of the social context that shapes the process and purpose of knowing…….Greider and Garkovich (1994) explained that “landscapes are symbolic environments used by people to define themselves; thus, the diversity of definitions of naturalness reflects the diversity of cultures, values, beliefs, and purposes of the people doing the defining……..Especially relevant to this study is evidence that people living near or in ‘natural’ areas tend to view evidence of human culture as appropriate, acceptable, and compatible features of the natural landscape. In contrast, seasonal tourists, visiting recreationists, and other people ‘from away’ tend to see the same place as a wild, green, natural spot on the map, a place where human presence degrades the valued natural qualities”. A further discussion of these concepts appears in: Public Understandings of Nature: A Case Study of Local Knowledge About "Natural" Forest Conditions, Hull et al, Society and Natural Resources, 14:325–340, 2001: ‘Naturalness is a powerful yet contested construct in contemporary society. One of the challenges facing stakeholders concerned about the environment is communicating with one another about intentions and values associated with the nature being managed and studied. Clearly there are many interpretations of terms associated with naturalness…People care deeply about environmental quality: Some assume nature is balanced and knows best, others believe that human intervention can improve environmental quality, and most admit they really don’t know how to assess it. Likewise, a range of natural conditions seems to exist, from the wild, dehumanized extreme through to conditions that clearly evidence the care and culture of humans. Society will be better able to engage in sophisticated discussion about which nature we want and why we want it if we have more explicit examples of the social constructions of nature, environmental quality, and desired future conditions.”

My impression Mark Fisher writes is that gauging public understandings of nature is an undeveloped process in the UK, as evidenced by the limited substance of a recent survey questionnaire on public perceptions of wild land in Scotland. Perhaps we should adopt the Duck Test, recounted in Eric Higgs book Nature by Design. [He describes] how endless divergence during [a conference discussion of] what ecological restoration [means] led to a proposal to use the test [...] that if something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, then it must be a duck!

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 Thus they discussed various land restoration projects ranging from the Curtis Prairie in 1930s Wisconsin, a project that requires regular and varied management to maintain required characteristics; the introduction of prescribed fire to a formerly wild, forested landscape in order to re-create what may have been a natural range of variation; the same wild forest patterns, but this time the forests had been converted to farmland that was subsequently retired after a few dozen years of use and where prairie restoration could take place even though the evidence was that the land once supported wild forest; a vegetation mosaic altered through grazing, cutting and agriculture, and in which the restoration was about recreating an earlier configuration of the mosaic but with a new economic system that concentrated on small scale harvesting of a more diverse range of products such as nuts, fungi, flowers and honey; and finally, considering a theoretical large-scale plan for Oregon and the adjoining Washington State, wild forest on a large scale.

You may not be surprised to hear that, presented with these potential ‘ducks’, the group came to no firm conclusion because the need to address specific examples opened up the complicated value judgements that came from each location. What they had done though was to become much clearer about what the issues were, how marked the ‘conceptual drift’ could be, and how it would always be a problem to contain the variety of restoration projects within one definition.

Next day, John MacPherson responded with: [...] The bit beginning, ‘Social constructivists…’ I found very interesting. [...]Many people base their perception of the 'natural' world on complete misunderstandings (not necessarily 'ignorance', I would stress). I gave a presentation to a group (on Scottish landscape and wildlife) where I touched briefly on the concept of 'wilderness' as being an internal construct, and all a matter of perspective. No-one really seemed prepared to enter into any discussion on this until later when I was collared by several people, one of whom waxed lyrical about the ’spiritual regeneration (she) experienced from being in wilderness, and referred to one of my recently presented images of Glencoe as being so evocative of that feeling of wildness.

I was intrigued, and so asked what it was about Glencoe that did it for her, and she said the big hills, the drama but, most importantly, the red deer, which were everywhere, and I quote: "They are all along the roadside, magnificent animals".

The reality, as I pointed out to her is that the deer are there because they are fed by the estate, and they often have a lick at the winter salt on the road, and they are habituated to significant human traffic - cars, walkers, climbers and mountain bikers, so their presence there is actually a direct consequence of significant human intervention. Puzzled look....

I added that, to have a proper 'wilderness' experience, she should travel another 10 miles beyond Glencoe, cross the ferry to Ardgour and go on the hills there which are so little used by humans that the deer are so skittish you won’t get within a mile of them. In fact in many areas you are unlikely to see any animals at all. She struggled to take on board the fact that an 'empty' landscape could be a more significant and genuinely 'wild' place than one in which semi-tame deer wandered around looking majestic.

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Enhancing the wild experience? Red deer stags running on the Alladale Estate in Scotland.

CJohn MacPherson: www.john-macpherson-photography.com?

This was echoed in comments from a guest on one of our photographic trips to Yellowstone National Park who'd just had a thrilling day watching elk, bison and hearing wolves howling, and who witnessed a lone woman cross-country skier entering the park and skiing along the snow-covered roads by head torch in the evening as our group departed and as the park gates were closing for the night. "Is that not dangerous?" asked our guest of our American driver. ”No”, he replied earnestly, “the gates are closed so no vehicles can get in in the evening so she wont get knocked down or assaulted.” "Vehicles?" exclaimed the guest, puzzled, "I meant the danger from the wolves and stuff like that". "Wolves?" exclaimed the driver completely puzzled, "what risk would they possibly pose?"

People see different things in 'nature' depending on many factors, and have different experiences as a consequence. But most perceptions are based on misunderstandings, or perhaps better described as 'limited understanding'... but a big part of me thinks "does it matter?"

I don’t think it does. If these two people's differing understandings have allowed them to experience some 'thrill' of the wild, gain some spiritual renewal, who am I (or we) to criticise them?

That said, I'll leave you to muse over some of the 19,000 comments left on a Youtube video showing a group of lions in Kruger Park tackling a herd of buffalo, grabbing a calf which is then grabbed by acrocodile (whilst still held by lions) but ultimately freed apparently unhurt by the intervention of the rest of the buffalo who mount an 46

ECOS 29(1) 2008 astonishing counter-attack and lob lions into the air. This video has received over 19,000,000 views on Youtube! Here are some quotes on it posted this week: “Lions are opportunistic suckers. Only humans think that lions are king. They're hairy stupid leeches that prey on weak animals. But the royal bank would never use an ox as its logo... haha.”

“You see...animals have wars with different species that their kind. Unlike us, we have war with our own species...human.”

aren't

of

“This is an awesome video. A rarity if I ever saw any. And most humans would have killed the lions if it was their child, but the buffalo didn't try to trample them or anything, even though they are three times bigger than them. They let them get away, almost like if they knew their importance to plains just as much as any animal there. It is a shame that we humans don't operate on the same wavelength.”

This brought to Sophie Lake’s mind a song by protest band Seize the Day: http://www.seizetheday.org/albums/itsYourLife/designerKidz.cfm Then on the 15th, on a new tack, Ruth Watkins, musing on natural succession and human impact on animal populations, observed: Of course, even thinking about nature is a very unnatural action, self reflection, consciousness, philosophy and word games being peculiar to the human species in the very great extent that they occur in us. We are set apart in a lonely place with great responsibility. Nature would manage better without us, as Gaia informs us through James Lovelock. Our great effect on the planet is not like animate nature but more like an asteroid or supervolcanic eruptions and the Deccan lava flows. Does our happiness arise from our closest integration with what is most natural in us?

The 16th was a busy day. One contributor wrote: [...] The differences in understanding communicated by words, especially words such as natural, wilderness, and biodiversity, can't be resolved by debating and agreeing 'definitive' definitions. The points and research raised about perceptions (understanding) of wilderness are very illuminating. One clear, agreed definition doesn't seem to exist and, in this debate, even between professionals more or less in the same field (I don't think we have any soldiers or nurses in the conversation?), the differences can be very significant.

There is at least one other way of looking at this debate, which is to treat each communication event as a unique creation dependent on the people involved and their contexts as well as the subject. The debate focused for a while on the subject and clear definitions of it, and then attracted contributions that show the importance of some of these other factors.

To my mind, every time we communicate, by whatever means, we are starting with a new (not blank!) canvas, or block of marble, or film or whatever. The 'artist' 47

ECOS 29(1) 2008 and the 'viewer' start a new creation together, and words, their definitions, and the background and desired (and possible undesired) outcomes of the communication are all vital factors that influence and change one another in a unique combination each time.

This sounds like hard work maybe? I'm not suggesting that we have to start everything from scratch, only that the particular combination for each communication event is unique. This doesn't mean I think that 'everything is relative'. The factors I mention are active factors, and to continue my artistic allusions, can be elements in communication like colour in an image, tools like brushes and palette knives, and techniques of application and combination.

What we risk doing by defining and trying to stick to an agreed definition for a particular word is losing much of its potential to communicate, (and perhaps having to define it each time we use it anyway). If we can think of words as colours, we can see a valuable degree of common sense 'truth' that blue is really blue, and natural is really natural; a brush is a brush not a spoon. But we can also see that blue next to yellow really looks different from the same blue next to red or green for example. There are also different blues, some of which might appear green for example to some people. Where do you draw the line? Using (both expressing and listening to) words in the way we use colours means we have to maintain an awareness of the other factors and how they modify each other and blend to create the unique communication event. We have to be aware of the limits of precision in words in the same way as in colours.

Communication is a very rich and demanding activity; I don't think we can make it easier by trying to find an agreed single definition of 'natural' any more than we can do so for 'blue'. We can enhance our communication by recognising that there are real and valuable meanings in the word natural as there are real characteristics of the colour blue, but also raising our awareness of how dynamic communication is, and understanding what happens when we use a particular word at one time in one place, with one group or person. Every time is different. And I think that's a good thing!

This invitation “to treat each communication event as a unique creation” struck a chord with John MacPherson: To my mind, every time we communicate, by whatever means, we are starting with a new (not blank!) canvas, or block of marble, or film or whatever. The 'artist' and the 'viewer' start a new creation together, and words, their definitions, and the background and desired (and possible undesired) outcomes of the communication are all vital factors that influence and change one another in a unique combination each time.’

As someone who instructs others in photography and ways of 'seeing', I'm often asked how I see/find the stuff I photograph, and I've always explained by saying "well it’s not so much knowing what to shoot, as knowing what to ignore. We are surrounded by ALL the stuff that can make good images, you just need to get rid of the stuff that gets in the way of doing that, and what’s left has to be what’s relevant.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 This brings to mind a lovely interchange I heard on the radio between a rather pompous interviewer and a rough and earthy country fellow who carved walking sticks. The relevance of this to my work I'll explain, but its relevance to the topic should be obvious: Interviewer in plummy voice described orgasmically the standard of work on one of the sticks..."I am holding an exquisite walking stick made by 'Charlie', it's yew and ash combined and the handle is a leaping fish and is an elegant and sensual evocation of a brook trout in mid leap - and you can just visualise the elegant arching trajectory it took when it grabbed the mayfly in the air above the brook's glassy surface. And I'm running my hand over it, the individual scales are perfectly formed and provide grip under your palm, the dorsal fin a raised lip under your fingers. It’s a wonderfully realised piece that encapsulates both the elegance of a wild thing and the astonishing skills of the artist, for this is true artistry.....to be able to take a piece of roughly hewn wood and through some almost alchemical process create this sinuous and exquisite wild creature......Tell me 'Charlie' how do you do it, how can you possibly create such life from something so inert?"

To which the master replied curtly but with a distinctly perplexed tone "......errr you want tae make a fish shape so ye just cut away all the bits that don’t look like a fish, and you'll be left with.....err....um.....a fish".

Now, when I'm asked how I can make such photographic compositions I just smile and say "I just cut away all the parts that don’t look like fish" .

Many true 'communicators' such as 'Charlie' don’t really need the words. Their work is eloquent enough. Over-intellectualising what they do and why, how, etc, often adds nothing to the debate. That a lump of wood in one skilled individual's hands can be made to speak more eloquently about the essence and vibrancy of nature than an RP-speaking, well-educated intellectual is something I think we all need to remember.

Joyce Gilbert, a few days later (19th) commented on this: [...] I really enjoyed John's wee anecdote! Our education system is science driven (although many people are unaware of this) which means people feel the need to analyse everything and then try to express it in words - often using pseudo-scientific terminology. John's story reminded me of a quote in a very thought-provoking and entertaining book by Ken Robinson Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative.

“The composer Gustav Mahler was sitting in his studio completing a new piano piece.

As he was playing, one of his students came into the room and listened quietly. At the end of the piece, the student said, 'That was wonderful. What was it about?' Mahler turned to him and said, 'It's about this.' And he played it again. If the ideas in music could be expressed in words, there would be no need for music in the first place.”

This on-going VINE discussion also serves to remind us that language alone can never be enough to represent people's experiences of nature which are deeply personal. And who are we to decide what that experience should be anyway?

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 Theologian Wendell Berry stated it this way [...]: “[W]e should not forget that the primary reductionism [of modern science] is in the assumption that human experience or human meaning can be adequately represented in any human language. This assumption is false. [...] My grandson, who is four years old, is now following his father and me over some of the same countryside that I followed my father and grandfather over. [...] So far all of us have been farmers. I know from my grandfather that when he was a child he too followed his father in this way, hearing and seeing, not knowing yet that the most essential part of his education had begun. And so in this familiar spectacle [...] we are part of a long procession, five generations of which I have seen, [...] going back, for all I know, across previous landscapes and the whole history of farming. Modern humans tend to believe that whatever is known can be recorded in books or on tapes or on computer discs and then again learned by those artificial means. But it is increasingly plain to me that the meaning, the cultural significance, even the practical value, of this sort of family procession across a landscape can be known but not told. These things, though they have a public value, do not have a public meaning; they are too specific to a particular small place and its history. This is exactly the tragedy in the modern displacement of people and cultures.”

Finally, when people used to say to my partner that they'd seen a golden eagle he would reply “It was probably a buzzard” but now he's more likely to say.

“That's brilliant!” and share their excitement. As a teacher I know which response is best.

And on the 20th., Rowan commented: Great Mahler story! See Oliver Postgate's autobiography 'Seeing Things' for some really good equivalent comments on art criticism. But this shouldn't be a disagreement between science and art. They look at different aspects of truth.

I think our education system, like everything else touched by the Tories since 1979 and the New Tories since 1997, is being driven by the religion of money and power. [...] But I'd disagree that 'Our education system is science driven'. If that were the case, we'd have a scientifically literate society, which the evidence suggests we do not. Most school biology now, as far as I can make out, has been swallowed up in some ludicrous notion of combined science. What biology there is focuses on reductionist aspects, such as starting with cells, biochemistry and genetics, rather than looking holistically at ecosystems or even individual organisms, which would be the obvious starting point for most people. School science doesn't seem to be taught as a method or approach to discovering truth, either, but seems to have gone back to the worst teaching methods - getting poeple to learn the formula for photosynthesis, for example, rather than understanding how people found out about this amazing process, or ways of studying what affects it in practice and how that affects all living things on the planet. [...]

Joyce agreed and disagreed: I agree..... and disagree with Rowan on the role of science within our education system. I absolutely agree that the way science is taught in most schools leaves a lot to be desired but I don't think it has been 50

ECOS 29(1) 2008 marginalized, even though it might not be so popular with students. I know many art and science teachers in secondary schools and they're in no doubt which subject is held in higher esteem. The influence of science in our lives is subtle and I would still maintain that our education system encourages a worldview that is almost exclusively scientifically and ... yes with 'western' science...almost exclusively resource driven.

With this worldview come unquestioned beliefs that environmental philosopher, Bob Jickling, has called 'the real authorities of a culture'. These unquestioned beliefs may be so transparent as to have become almost invisible. For example, Western culture assumes science can be kept separate from values and it also promotes the belief that new, experimental (scientific) knowledge should have more relevance in people's lives than other forms of knowledge that have evolved over generations. It stresses the necessity and inevitability of economic growth, implying that the Earth is without limits.

I think the problem lies in the fact that science used to be about philosophy and now it's about economics. So perhaps it's western reductionist science that I'm referring to [...]. Western (reductionist) science encourages us to view the natural world through an economic lens, as jobs and resources to be consumed. Even ecologists have 'sold themselves out' on this front and couch everything in scientific terms with the fear that they might be labled 'touchy, feely'. For example most management plans describe everything as a resource and are generally free of any language that might be interpreted as emotive. Environmental philosopher, Neil Everden, has pointed out that there are problems associated with viewing the world simply as a storehouse of materials: “Once adopted, resourcism transforms all relationships into a simple subject-object or user-used one. Even something as idiosyncratic as landscape beauty is being transformed into a resource and described quantitatively. Yet we know from historical records that tastes in landscapes are notoriously variable - we see in nature what we are prepared to look for�.

But...... hey.... that's why VINE has been set up isn't it?

Meanwhile... John Foster (16th) had written to say that he really liked some of the earlier contributions that day: They are really dealing with the nub of the communication issue. We shall never come to an accepted definition, even among ourselves and even if we did manage it, it would make our communication with non-specialists even more difficult. Yet I do feel that clarifying such things among ourselves is a really useful and necessary step. [...]

Even cases where two apparently opposite examples seem to fit two apparently opposite words (e.g. natural and artificial (non-natural) fibres) are usually parts of a whole spectrum. Also, common usage of many terms is hazy and fluid. We must also understand this, if we are to be able to communicate effectively. This is something that I really began to appreciate outside my day-job as an ecological 51

ECOS 29(1) 2008 academic. In doorstep local politics, you often have people who say that their main concern is their "environment". If you take it further, they are often talking about the colour that their neighbour has painted his/her door. When I was on the Council, I was on a focus group with people from villages near Hertford. Their idea of ‘natural’ countryside was an expanse of fields of winter cereals. Not just words are different there. We have to deal with perceptions and contexts.

Patrick Roper took up one of these strands later on the 16th: I am reminded [of] the Welsh word ‘glas’ meaning, among other things blue and green and white (also still there in Glasgow and Glastonbury). It is related to the English word ‘glaucous’.

Menna Elfyn has a whole web page on it http://www.mennaelfyn.co.uk/pages/Erthyglau/menna_elfyn.pdf] “Glas is packed with resonances, and has the ability to create different worlds. As a literary word it is a powerful double-edged sword that is brimming with meanings. To start with it can mean “blue”, but it can also mean “green”. It can mean raw, fresh as newly formed buds in spring, or “blue” as in “skimmed milk”.

It can also mean “white”. Confused? You should be! It can mean to gleam, to dazzle and sparkle. We say Yng nglas y dydd (in the blue of the day) to mean “early morning, just after dawn”. [...] In early Welsh poetry, glas meant youth [...] But it could also signify “death”, and paleness would be used to describe those lost in battle. [...] We also use glas for thoroughness. To do one’s very best would be gorau glas (blue best).

Long live the ambiguities of language. Are they not one of the very foundations of poetry? I hope the Welsh never try to pin down the meaning of glas. It reminds me too of a conversation I once had in London with a Japanese journalist. He had to write a review of the film called ‘The Blue Angel’ and pointed out that ‘blue’ in Japanese did not have the same connotations as in English and also in their culture they did not have the equivalent of angels!

Another writer on the 16th responded: Beat me to it, Patrick, though I was thinking of "Glas" in Gaelic; [...] I don't know if there are equivalent words to "natural" in either language? Perhaps our thoughts and feelings become "prisoners" of our societies' mother tongues and cultures?

In that context I'm also reminded of a line from George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, where Caesar excuses the reaction of his British slave to Egyptian marriage customs: "Pardon him ... he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."

This followed: I wonder if it is the very ambiguities of words and language, and their (at long-enough time-scales) ephemeral characteristics, that enable us to communicate in any depth. Perhaps the existence of words gives us an illusion of simplicity in the ideas that give rise to them.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 There is an expression I heard, American I think, that 'the map is not the territory'. In a similar way maybe, the word is not the idea. Words lie across ideas, and ideas lie within and beyond words. My earlier artistic allusions imply that communication, even about science, is as much an art as a science. There are many examples of how the more precise we try and be, the less we communicate; who remembers the famous 'ground nut' legal document?

Picking this up on the 17th, another correspondent wrote: Patrick, it seems that, in this, philosophy is about sixteen hundred years in advance of science.

Writing in the fourth century St Augustine states: ’Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.’

– ‘What then is time? If no one asks me I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.’ St Augustine's philosophy of time (nicked from Bertie Russell) can be summarised as: Only the present exists and that momentarily. The past is memory, the future expectation and both of these only occur in the present and, worse, both are subjective and subject to the will. Now this may seem to stray a long way from nature conservation but, given that there is a large body of people who seem to want to recreate the past in the future - to return to an imaginary (the subjective element of memory, perhaps) Golden Age where humanity lived in harmony with its environment - I think it important.

In his Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein extends St Augustine's concept to include language. In [...] Tractatus Logico Philosophicus he believed he had found a way to say logically all that could be said; to render language into a precise and singular form. Later he realised that he was mistaken and conceded that language was rightly something altogether more fluid. [...] It wish I understood [him] better: nonetheless it does seem to chime in with what has been appearing on this site elsewhere. Nature conservation is subjective and therefore there is no precise language to define it - and for that we should be grateful. It is of immense sadness to me that we despair of poetry. Poetry is possibly the only means within language that we can move towards these things, but of course it is difficult - because the world is difficult - and so we shy away and move to other art forms. But poetry, because it uses langauge and because we need language, can serve a twofold purpose being both a part of and at distance from language. [...]

Also on the 16th, James Fenton had returned to the word ‘natural’, pointing out that there are different scales of looking at nature: We live in a large universe, most of which at the macro-level is, I'm sure most would agree, natural (the earth, the sun, moon, stars, deep space); and also at the micro level (quarks, protons, neutrons, photons, cosmic rays). This is unequivocally 'nature'?

Presumably, before humans evolved, everything on this planet was natural (and there were observers of it, viz. animals). Hence, I would argue that, in this context, nature is an objective concept (except perhaps in certain aspects of quantum theory), as I argued recently, nature is that which we inherited from the universe; and, the 'laws of nature' at least, are immutable.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 It is the bit at the middle scale, the small bit on planet earth, and only the last 1.5 million years where we have difficulties with definitions. Of course, nowadays, some things are a mix of natural and artificial; sometimes the content natural, the process artificial; sometimes the process natural and the content artificial...

Other mailings appeared on the same day. John Foster mused: I have followed this exchange and I think that some excellent and interesting points have been made. I was particularly struck by the [reference to ‘mother tongues’, and the] very relevant quote from GBS. Perhaps our thoughts and feelings become ‘prisoners’ of our societies' mother tongues and cultures? I recall being told by a Russian colleague that Russians could only have really meaningful discussions about sustainability if they discussed it in English. The Russian word for sustainability can also be translated as stability similar, but not precisely the same! Come to think of it, I understand that the French use their word ‘robuste’, which would presumably also cause problems!

Bill Grayson responded with: Suddenly our quest for meaning brings us into the realms of what seems to me dangerously like poetry. Which I guess is a medium that has proved its value as a means of communicating powerful themes and issues (as recent Remembrance Day recollections remind us) .

The next writer noted Bill’s Interesting choice of words: There is value in considering poetry as a means of communicating as you say; but I think the main point these latter contributions make is that the inherent characteristics of words render them impossible to define precisely enough once and for all - even 'among ourselves'. Indeed this can be seen as a strength as well. Accepting this and using it might be a helpful approach in communicating complex ideas like natural, wilderness and biodiversity among others. In a sense, the quest for meaning is continuous, as words, people and contexts change. Debates and sharing of definitions and meanings (like this) is a crucial part of being able to communicate complex ideas. Using what common understanding of a word can be established this way is in my view the starting point, and communication is enhanced by recognising that the people and context on any particular occasion affects how the word is best used that time.

Following this, on the 17th Martin wrote: Interesting choice of words, indeed; and Patrick’s: ‘Long live the ambiguities of language’. Are they not one of the very foundations of poetry?’ Like Bill, I think we are exploring aspects of poetry.

Patrick reminded me of an essay Merfyn Williams wrote, taking its title from one of R.S. Thomas’s poems: The small window (ECOS 16(1) 36-41, 1995). [...] He ‘read’ his native Gwynedd landscape for me on many visits. I can never know the particular Welshness of this landscape as he and R.S. do/did. I’m English; I only understand English. I can’t know the particular ‘inter-infiltration of land and language’ that they feel. It really is rather like glimpsing only fragments of the view, through a small window.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 A talk Merfyn gave on Access, Recreation and Inspiration, [uses] the same cue from Thomas – see www.rcahmw.org.uk/uplands/merfyn_williams.shtml: “There is always a tendency to claim 'ownership' of landscape through some form of imaging, and in this case we are referring to 'language' not the pictorial image. The people with access to a particular language retain a commonality that will, of course, exclude those who do not possess that language or do not feel that that language is their own. Some would argue that with the advent of the Romantics and their powerful imagery the English 'stole' the landscape of Wales from the Welsh - the descriptive language was English, the perception was urban.”

Like many Welsh, the speaker is bilingual – and ‘of course, any inspiration is enriched by different languages and perspectives’. Thomas wrote: In Wales there are jewels To gather, but with the eye Only. A hill lights up Suddenly; a field trembles With colour and goes out In its turn; in one day You can witness the extent Of the spectrum and grow rich With looking. Have a care. This wealth is for the few And chosen. Those who crowd A small window dirty it With their breathing, though sublime And inexhaustible the view.”

This sums up so much of how I feel about Gwynedd, but I’m almost completely a stranger there. I ‘understand’ the landscape in much the same way I ‘understand’ the poem – with what I think Robert Graves meant by ‘poetic unreason’. I like it, it moves me - but maybe I haven't even begun to know what Thomas is saying. The poet has the skill to turn his vision into words: ‘the reader may create any interpretation that fits his own vision’. Different readers create different interpretations – and every one, if it fits the reader’s own vision, is both pleasing and valid.

I guess something similar happens with the agri-industrial ‘farmer’ looking out over a monocultural expanse of crops and saying, “This is beautiful. This is good!” Is it the same when someone looks out over a typical bit of chocolate-box English landscape and says how great it is to be surrounded by nature?

I suppose we’re all strangers when we go beyond the cultural boundaries we don’t usually recognise we have, and as it were look at a small bit of the world through a small window.

Another poet, Auden, wrote something [Amor loci] which shocked me when I read it because I saw myself in it: “I could draw its map by heart, showing its contours, strata and vegetation, name every height, small burn and lonely sheiling, but nameless to me, faceless as grouse or heather, are those who live there.”

Writing on the 18th, Mark Fisher returned to a specific issue of language: Could we be falling into a (linguistic) trap here? The wildflower in Yorkshire known as the ‘harebell’ is instead known as the ‘bluebell’ in Colorado. Fortunately, 55

ECOS 29(1) 2008 the botanically inclined on both continents recognise this flower as [one of] the bellflowers – because the flower looks like a bell (Campanula in Latin). Thus the commonality is [...] the visual experience of the flower’s shape – an empiricism.

The inclination of the sceptical Brit on seeing the ‘bluebell’ in Colorado would be to smell it to see if it had any scent, and to pull it up to see if it had a bulbous root.

Our ‘bluebell’ thus also has a bellflower, but it is not a ‘bellflower’ [...].. Thus we establish this by experiential empiricism (tautology, but I am making a point!).

A systematic approach to categorising wild nature has also gained some universality in the Guidelines for Protected Areas Management Categories of the IUCN [...]. So we struggle in the UK with words such as ‘wilderness’, one of the IUCN categories, when it is enshrined in national legislations around the world (such as in South Africa, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and four other nations), or used as an administrative zoning category (Tanzania, Philippines, Slovenia, Finland, and many other nations). The problem is that we lack empiricism in our observations of our landscapes. Is the wilderness that Alan Titchmarsh is going to portray on his next TV program The Nature of Britain comparable to the wilderness of other countries who take note of the IUCN system? Does it do us any favours if we have a cultural dimension to our use of that word?

We claim an importance for a cultural dimension to our landscapes that far exceeds the interactions of other ‘indigenous’ cultures, and somehow we take this as a reason to excuse ourselves from considering why we lack an aspiration for wildland in Britain – why we don’t set out to have protected areas across the whole range of IUCN categories.

Perhaps there is another way to view this. Observation is a key component of the methodology of Permaculture Design as it is the ability to absorb the reality of a location through the simple use of our primary senses to identify features and details as well as patterns and processes. We approach the task of observation in a number of ways, each having the potential to reveal different information.

But the one I want to stress here is a non-selective approach where we wander around, open-minded, noting anything that catches our eye in what is similar to a child-like approach. This approach is hard for some as it often needs the throwing off of the baggage of cultural conditioning, but it is worth it since it taps into what is perhaps another universal system. Thus children, when given the freedom to play, will always seek out the nearest wild place, be it a big tree, a pond, a watercourse or nearby woodland. If you are interested in this, then there is a gem of a factsheet on Wildplay ‘Children’s play in natural environments’, Martin Maudsley, Nov 2007, Factsheet of the Children’s Play Information Service, National Children’s Bureau www.ncb.org.uk/dotpdf/open_access_2/factsheets_naturalplay_141107.pdf [extracts omitted] The 19th brought several postings. John Barkham noted the wonderful new book he had just reviewed for ECOS: Robert MacFarlane The Wild Places, very 56

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Celebrating whales with graffiti at a community environment event.

Photo: ©John MacPherson: www.john-macpherson-photography.com

much about defining 'wild' in a British context – a recommendation Ian Brodie echoed, adding that for ‘a gritty read’ we should try Wild by Jay Griffiths. In a slight digression, several members picked up the bluebell theme, widening it to consider other names. Patrick Roper, for instance: [...] When I did the national survey of the wild service tree, Sorbus torminalis, I learnt to enquire about it using local names like ‘chequer’ and ‘surrey’. The Natural History Museum gives some interesting local names for the (English) bluebell on their web page on the plant and also shows that the scientific names are almost as various: Endymion non-scriptus, Hyacinthus nonscriptus, Scilla non-scripta, Scilla nutans are some. The NHM calls the species the ‘native bluebell’, Hyacinthoides non-scriptus. There is also an amazing site on bluebell etymology here: http://www.paghat.com/springbulbs2.html, John Foster bemoaned changes in scientific Latin names, and after further postings, the digression culminated with this enlightenment from Patrick: [...] There’s worse. The tiny, but common, black fungus gnat Lycoriella ingenua has had the following specific names (at least): agraria, bigoti, brevipila, celer, debilis, decliva, flammulinae, flaviventris, humilis, mali, mycorum, pauciseta, ramicola, segnis,, solani, velox and venusta.

Finally, from the sequence that began on the 8th. with ‘Is nature good for us?’, John MacPherson gave us this on the 21st: I am someone whose most thumbed and treasured book is a collection of environmental poetry (Beneath the wide wide heaven, Virago 1991) I came across decades ago and which has had a significant effect on the ways I've thought about landscape, environment and communication.

I've been writing poetry [...] very much as a 'closet poet' , usually in response to something that I've seen or experienced and which has had some profound effect 57

ECOS 29(1) 2008 on me (usually anger). [...] Recent threads here mentioning the communicative value of words/poetry have set me to rethink my dabbling [...]. So this is me popping my head out of the closet!

Perhaps VINE is a forum within which my 'angry poetry' can be considered. This one was prompted by listening to an apologist for whaling stating that whaling was being done scientifically, that all the whale parts were 'utilised' - all except for the brains and the blood.

Angry poem: THEY EVEN SING (some people say).

Some people say of dolphins....

'They must be just as smart as us' Of whales 'A few are even bigger than a bus' 'They even sing'.....some people say But still we kill them Often. In our nets Shoot them Harpoons ripping into flesh.

Pen them Try to make them pets.

'THAR SHE BLOWS' we cry with glee....

But will our children?

Or will they never see, Just weep, And say 'They even sang?'

Some people say To justify The barbarous things men do It's scientific!'

'The only whale bits we don’t use are brains... and all the bloody ooze'.

Brains and bloody ooze?

How apt I thought: Brains....

The only bit that we Don’t bloody use.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 There followed a rich development of the poetry theme. This is not recorded here only because of lack of space.

Issues and implications – final thoughts from John Barkham The discussion has widened and deepened my appreciation of differences among us. It is commonplace to recognise the problems of communicating with people in a different language. However, communicating in our own language, even with like-minded, like-educated people in the same field, deserves a lot of attention.

I think the discussion has really opened up the debate around wildness and wilderness, nature and naturalness. I rarely watch television, but I happened to see Alan Titchmarsh’s programme on mountains, moors and heaths. I was struck immediately by his use of the term ‘wilderness’ as he swept his arms across his tortop view of Dartmoor. Arguably, this is one of the areas of Britain most continuously and intensively used since the beginning of the Bronze Age. Yet, he is right. To many of us, it is a wilderness, even though it is far from conforming to the IUCN norm. It feels wild to a different degree from other nearby landscapes.

Perhaps we should start using terms like ‘relatively wild’, ‘relatively biodiverse’, ‘relatively natural’!

Linked to this in my mind is the quote from Wendell Berry that Joyce Gilbert brought to the discussion: “We should not forget that the primary reductionism is in the assumption that human experience or human meaning can be adequately represented in any human language.” How difficult that makes our endeavour! For me, this related to John Foster’s experience of a layman’s understanding of the environment represented by ‘the colour of his neighbour’s front door’. That provides a startling recognition of the infinite differences in perception among us.

Where - and in whom - can we find the common ground to make the kinds of bigpicture decisions about something as enormous as the global environment?

At the moment, if I am to believe one journalist, about 90% of voting-age people in this country are not prepared to make any significant sacrifice in trying to accommodate their lifestyles to safeguard against looming environmental catastrophe. However, I doubt whether this is primarily a reflection of environmental illiteracy. To me, it looks more like making hay while the sun shines – enjoy the good things in life while they last and the devil take the hindmost. It is not for me to make sacrifices. The children and grandchildren will have to look after themselves. I am sure this attitude became prevalent in our culture from 1979, when Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister, and shows absolutely no sign of changing.

And so, while we avidly discuss the things that matter to us, I rather fear that our language gets nowhere near influencing the big picture. I get utterly caught between a recognition that all we can do is our little bit and the increasingly high probability that what we are able to achieve in the environment will, before the end of the century, be swamped by a scale of environmental change over which we have no influence.

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Martin Spray adds a final reflection on the whole dialogue Joining in this discussion was a stimulating and frustrating experience: stimulating because I learnt from it, and saw some of my own opinions in a new light; frustrating because – and in this respect it was like a face-to-face discussion – some interesting points were left hanging, or seemed to be neglected. It was also like the ‘real thing’ in that some participants were ‘listeners’, and a handful posted most of the wordage.

The emails at times came thick and fast; several were from people who felt bombarded and wanted to unsubscribe. The conversation, which had moved to poetry and art, died out for the festive period. By mid February, it was resurrected, and busy with a new topic. I’m not sure what exactly happened to Sophie’s starter question – maybe what’s importance is that it started something interesting.

John Barkham is a Higher Education Consultant and lives in Ashburton, Devon. bark.person@virgin.net Vine and ECOS are proposing to reproduce edited highlights of one discussion thread a year from VINE email exchanges. Future selections might not be so long!

Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve, Wester Ross,. A ‘wild’ place? ‘Relatively wild’ or just ‘remote’?

See discussion on pages 44–46. ©John MacPherson: www.john-macpherson-photography.com.

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Wild walking on the East Coast Taking time to discover the wild elements of the East coast provides lessons about the chaos of nature, and raises questions about when to intervene to manage risks.

JULES PRETTY Once we humans walked everywhere. Then came the wheel, domestication of horses and caribou, and now the car. Today walking can be hard, as settlements and transport have become rearranged beyond our control. Many people still walk for pleasure, in urban parks or in the countryside. But few now walk far as part of our daily lives. And this has, I believe, partly helped to distort our perspectives on memory, place and time. Over the past year, I have been walking the coasts of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, completing so far some 260 miles on foot in 28 days, and another 65 miles by boat.

Wild time On one continuous 10 day summer walk, I found that the rhythm of walking and seeing the details of places changed my sense of time. Each day became much more than a few hours that might otherwise have passed with little of note. You begin with grand scope in your eyes, but soon come to focus on the graffiti on the river wall, a scuttling lizard, sunlight on the molten water, a piece of cork or a stone with a hole. The land shrinks as you walk. At the same time, you become more responsive to the rhythms of the tides, high on sea walls at certain times, far towards the horizon on mudflats at others.

Walking also becomes the thread that links places, some known, others mysterious, all eventually in-weaved to the same linear experience. Time warps, and so do places. You come to think it takes a day to get from one place to another, and then someone says, I’m just nipping over there in the car this evening, and your first thought is, how can that be possible? It has taken me a whole day. Such disjunctions become common, and this on a coastal route no more than an hour and a half’s drive at any point from my own home.

Lighting effects After those 10 days of walking, I carry with me an impression that the sun is holding position somewhere slightly behind my right eye. I was heading east, north, occasionally west inland, and east again, and so the light is almost always ahead or off to starboard. It leaves me with a sense of imbalance, and a feeling that this luminous shore is lit from only one side. When dark clouds are over the water, it turns slate grey and menacing. But when the sun comes out again, the water becomes a mix of shimmering silver and mercury, and you are lit from below as 61

ECOS 29(1) 2008 well as above. When the tide recedes across the wide mudflats, distant container ships elevate as mirages, or sink into perfect reflections. In every part of East Anglia, local people say their place is distinctive because of the huge skies. It is a special part of the region, bringing space and freedom and the sense of a land that is both near and far.

Sensing the way It is in these liminal landscapes that malaria was last a threat in these isles, where land and water daily intersect, and the marshes and saltings bring a distinctive character to the coastline. It is land full of food and potential tastes. Here are burbling calls of curlew, piping of redshank, clamour of geese, and whistling of wigeon. All these birds were once regularly eaten, but today only the wigeon is unprotected and can be quarry for the few remaining wildfowlers. In the creeks are oysters, once food for the masses but now exclusive, and migratory eels, swimming free, no loner on the menu as tastes have changed. On the mudflats and sea walls are sea beet and purslane, crisp and tangy in salads, and glasswort (marsh samphire), now resurgent in fish restaurants and “redolent of iodine and sea breezes�, as Richard Mabey notes. On reclaimed grasslands are wiry marsh sheep, and behind the borrow dykes, modern wheat and lucerne fields. These remote places are defined in part by their wildness, but also by their foods.

Perception also distinguishes this coast. You can feel wild and remote just around the corner from civilisation and domestication. Some take wildness to mean places untouched by humans, though in truth there are very few such places in the world.

Wildness, to me, means a place where nature and the elements are predominant for our senses. We see, hear and feel natural rather than man-made things. The wild, therefore, can be both near and far, large and small. You can find wildness in nearby nature, as well as in distant forests, plains or mountains. You can find it in sweeping landscapes as well as in the grain of a stone picked from a beach.

The wild on this walk brought many surprises. As I walked by the inner sea wall towards Shingle Street, I was accompanied by a kestrel. It hovered in the strong wind just ahead of me, and allowed me within 10 metres before it dipped a wing, accelerated away, and then took up station again 25 metres ahead. We danced this way along the wall from one Martello tower to the next, past the swaying reed beds to the west, and the banked shingle seaward. It never saw any prey, though I had seen lizards scuttling into the long grass earlier. After arriving at Shingle Street, I paused by a tamarisk bush, and a peregrine evanesced out of the foliage, and arrowed up behind a bungalow before making one circuit and fleeing off across the marshes.

All along the coast I was also accompanied by signs of the dead. On the high tide mark, skeletons of rabbits, remains of jellyfish, and once the long body of a mink and its monstrous gleaming pink jaws, swarming with maggots. Whenever cliffs were crumbling, trees could be found on the beach, bleached by the action of the water and wind, grainy and smooth. Many trees had died before falling. The thousand year old petrified forest of 25 beseeching oaks at Mundon is a kilometre 62

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Pink footed geese sweep across the North Norfolk marshes.

Photo: Jules Pretty

from the incomparable Blackwater, and remains a mystery. But on many cliffs by the brackish broads on the Suffolk coast can be seen white oaks in the woods, suffering from saltwater intrusions, and sentinel birches on the cliffs, again dead white, as if acknowledging their inevitable fate to fall.

Amassing in the heavens But of course it is for seasonal bird migrations that this coast is best known. The mudflats, saltings, marshes and shingle banks are on a flyway for migrating geese, ducks and waders, which come in their hundreds of thousands from Scandinavia, Siberia and Greenland as winter arrives there. One mid-winter day, I rise early, the sky vast and cold, and drive to Flitcham a few miles inland from the north Norfolk marshes. The roads are empty, save for ghostly barn owls and peering deer. At Abbey farm, we make our way to a pine thick on the hill top, where we settle by a hedge, and wait for the first signs of dawn. The farmer, Ed Cross, leaves sugar beet tops in his fields after harvest, and we are here to watch the arrival of his pinkfooted geese. Twenty years ago they never came this far south. Now there can be 100,000 each winter in Norfolk. They need safe night roosts out on the marshes, and wildlife organisations now provide that, mainly with rigorous predator control.

They also need a good source of food. These farmers receive little these days for sugar beet, and obtain no subsidies for it either. They forego income by encouraging the geese onto their farms. More than that – without their positive management, there would be no geese at all. They are pink-footed sugar beet farmers.

We face a bitter easterly wind, in the lee of the expected arrival route from the west. The geese are easily spooked, as they can be shot, and we take precautions to hide. The first few need to come in, and then vocalise to others – broadcasting that the field is good. The sky flares orange and red, and then another barn owl appears, softly quartering the field boundary. We hear the liquid silver song of 63

ECOS 29(1) 2008 blackbirds and robins, a woodcock beating a patrol around the wood, and partridges chittering at roost in another field of oil seed rape. Then the advance parties of geese appear, family chevrons in controlled discussion of mostly high pitched squeaks.

Suddenly, we cannot fail to be astounded by the sheer numbers filling the sky, as vast multi-family groups arrive, sweeping past then arrowing back towards the field. There is mystery here, as individuals split away and reform groups. The geese are communicating with a purpose now. They are not worried, it seems, just talking about the night roost and sharing memories of the correct food fields. The whiffling behaviour is charming. Some birds simply glide in and drop gently to the ground. Others flick their wings to lose air, and drop metres in a blink.

Then they all lift. Something spooks them, and ten to twelve thousand birds rise up in one great cacophony. It simply takes your breath away. The clamour of birds pours across the fields and hedges as one. No quiet chatter now, just kronking alarms and confusion. They flow around the hill, and then remarkably begin to reform into chevrons again, and their air traffic control system reasserts and brings them back in again. The green field turns blue-grey again, and after a while the flock emits a contented murmuring. When we are completely frozen, and our fingers barely bend, we retreat carefully, and head back to a warm farmhouse kitchen for breakfast of coffee and toast, and fresh Norfolk ham and mustard.

Nature’s knife edge One thing I have learnt during my walks is this: these remarkable land and seascapes and their wildnesses may not survive the raised sea levels that will come with even modest climate change. Those of a certain age on the coast remember the 1953 floods, where the sea walls were breached in several thousand places, and 307 people died in the dark, as severe gales brought roaring waters into houses with no warning. It could happen again. On November 9 2007, just a few weeks before I write this, high tides, north-easterlies and low pressure combined to raise the sea to levels not reached since that January night of 1953. The sea broke through at Walcott in north-east Norfolk, and came within a few centimetres along the whole coast of overtopping today’s much higher seawalls.

A few days after, I walk around the old Dutch island on the south Essex coast.

Canvey, as it later came to be known, took the brunt of the `53 floods. On this Sunday morning, I cross the marshes towards the flaming oil refineries, past kids playing football on parks surrounded by gasometers, clusters of parents on the half way line. This is Canvey. People and homes alongside industry and faded efforts at tourist glory. I set off from the famed Lobster Smack Inn, dwarfed now by the concrete seawall, level with the top storey. No warm fire to sit by in the pub for me. A nor-westerly gusting to gale force brings the rain horizontally along Hole Haven, and I have to bend into the wind to stay upright. In the neck of the creek, two tugs are riding the angry seas, and waves crash over great back buoys. I walk down a jetty by the old customs post, gingerly over slick wood, and look back to 64

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The imposing sea wall at Canvey Island – functional if not aesthetic.

Photo: Jules Pretty

the seawall. All around the perimeter of the island is a 4-6 metre concrete fortress, holding in the houses, keeping out the water. Later, though, as I walk along the inside of the wall, I realise I am passing deposits of bladder wrack and smashed portions of squid, brought over by waves on those recent massive tides. When you look inland from this wall you imagine the weight of water behind it when the sea is full. Then you appreciate the tenuousness of life below sea level, even in an estuary.

The savage tide I meet Derek and Valerie Lynch, Graham Stevens, and other members of the Canvey Rendezvous Club to walk around Canvey Heights, the new name for the capped and grassed rubbish tip overlooking Tewkes Creek on the north side of the island. We repair later for warm drinks at a small chalet opposite the Lynch’s in the Sunken Marsh, exactly where the water first came through in ‘53. They talk of that night. By that date, some 1760 hectares of marsh had been reclaimed over the years from the sea, and three-quarters of the 11,500 residents lived in bungalows and chalets of only one to four rooms. All were enclosed by 15 miles of sadly too feeble earthen seawalls.

The first person on Canvey itself to notice a problem was Derek’s father, a river board man who had gone up onto the walls overlooking Tewkes Creek just before midnight. In the hard moonlight, he sees a fleet of water where there should be islands across to mainland Leigh, and the sea is lapping over the wall. He rushes 65

ECOS 29(1) 2008 down into the streets of Sunken Marsh, and wakes up his wife and son, and with another river board man begins knocking up as many people as possible. “The tide is in”, they shout. The walls are a foot and a half lower than around on the south side of the island, and this is enough to consign the northern parts to six to eight feet of cold seawater. Derek himself wakes his grandmother next door, who only has a single storey chalet, and they come back to their two storey bungalow, just a few metres from the sea wall. They retreat to the loft, and so far, apart from the howling wind, all is normal. They then decide on a cup of tea, and Derek is standing by the gas hob when he hears the trickling of water. He turns, and sees water pouring through the key hole half way up the back door.

With a bang, the door crashes open, and the North Sea is inside. He just makes it to the stairs before the water fills the house to the picture rail. It is the speed that is shocking. We can imagine floodwaters, but usually only after we have known how far they came up, especially when aerial photos later show houses and water in the calm light of day. But at night, with the wind roaring, and bitterly cold sea inside the house, the lights off, and nothing to drink, life hangs by a thread.

Outside, Derek’s father is down the road when the water overtakes him, and he leaps onto an iron fence and grabs a tall post, and there he stays, up to his chest in winter water all night. Across the road, an elderly couple he has warned climb onto their wardrobe in the tiny bedroom, but later it gives way in the pitch dark, and the woman slips into the water and drowns. Like so many others, the husband is quite helpless, even though so close. All the clocks in Sunken Marsh houses stopped between 1.42 and 1.47 am as the water reached the mantelpieces.

Lessons about limits…

Other accounts recorded by the heroic county archivist, Hilda Grieve, in her remarkable book The Great Tide, are compelling. I don’t mean to suggest there is anything more particular about these tragedies than those experienced by residents of New Orleans or villagers in Bangladesh, but I do wish to make this point. In our walled-in fortresses of East Anglia, one thousand years of protection counts for little when finally nature takes the upper hand. Then there are but seconds and inches between terror and survival, and terror and death. Our coast is sinking, our sea is set to rise by up to a metre this century. We complacently sit here, hoping for less than the worst, for delivery. But now we know so much more, and yet appear to be doing so much less. No doubt we will be brave and stoical, but that may not be enough.

In all, some 235 yards of a 753 yard stretch of the seawall around Sunken Marsh was breached and dashed to ground level, and the neighbourhood came to be described as a ‘basin of death’. Many houses had outside stairs, so that residents could live in the loft in the summer, and rent out the rooms below. But as the water gushed in, people had to get outside in 3-4 feet of water, and climb up. For one 70 year old man, “the pressure water was so great that the lock wouldn’t turn. I had to break it off with a hammer. I shall never forget the shock as the door flew open and the icy cold water poured in with overwhelming force”.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 Between 1 and 2 am, the horror on Canvey’s Sunken Marsh was worst. Hilda Grieve says “the cool gallantry of one must speak for all”, as she recounts this story.

One young woman with husband, two girls of 11 and 5, and a baby of 8 months, lived in a bungalow beside the central wall. She wakes to the sound of rushing water, and sees the cot floating. They force the front door closed against the water, and the husband, who cannot see well as his glasses are lost, holds up the baby, and then climbs out onto a window sill. The youngest girl perches on the sewing machine table, whilst the other stands with water up to her shoulders. The mother then sets off to try to swim the 30 metres to the central wall for help. Half way, she realises the current is too strong and water too cold, and has to return to climb the outside stairs to the loft. She tears blankets and bedding into strips to make a rope, and leans out over her husband 8 feet below. First she pulls up the baby, then the 5 year old, who is almost too afraid to have the makeshift rope around her armpits.

Then the heavier older girl is pulled up and pushed from below, and finally the husband grasps his wife’s hands and manages to haul himself up to safety.

But some tragedies are almost too painful to bear. A few hundred metres away, a family with 9 children under 16 years of age waits rescue. When the water burst in, the father climbs on a table to break a hole in the ceiling, and lifts 7 of the children one by one into the roof space. Then the table collapses, and the mother is left standing in the water, holding onto the 2 youngest boys. During the endless night, both would die in her arms. At 8 o’clock in the morning, a third small boy falls through the ceiling, and an elder brother jumps in and stands in the five feet of water holding him up. Eventually, his legs go numb, and he has to let the small one go and drown. He hangs onto a door until the first boat comes. We can only imagine the darkness, the despair, the shouting and urging, and the clawing sense of failure as the smallest children died.

In all, 58 people would lose their lives on Canvey that night, 30 from Sunken Marsh alone. In the whole of World War II, 81,000 men, women and children were made homeless in Essex by enemy air attack. These floods made 21,000 homeless in one night. Derek and Graham remember the millions of earthworms, drifting and swaying in the water, killed by the salt. But one of the most famous images of Canvey is of a group in a rowing boat on one of the main streets. A sign hangs around the neck of a stuffed bear, and says, “Bear Up. Canvey will live again”. It did, but you have to wonder whether our quirky, wild and non-conformist coast will be able to survive the immediate and growing threats of climate change. For an island nation, this is not a trivial query.

Jules Pretty is author of The Earth Only Endures (Earthscan, 2007), and professor of environment and society at the University of Essex. He is currently walking all the coasts of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk. jpretty@essex.ac.uk

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Starting fires without matches For one life-long conservationist, witnessing the Forest School ethos in action on Devon’s Blackdown Hills has helped make sense of long-standing misgivings about the conservation industry, and has finally re-enlightened a childhood understanding, buried under 25 years of fairly fruitless biodiversity.

GAVIN SAUNDERS We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

T S Elliot, The Four Quartets

The smell of wood smoke is making my eyes run. It’s mid afternoon, we’ve been going since ten this morning, and I’m tiring rapidly. But the children’s enthusiasm seems boundless. Their parents too, betray wolfish grins of child-like enjoyment as they march up and down with armfuls of hazel rods and foliage, which their offspring will use to deck the makeshift shelters taking shape amongst the oaks.

Meanwhile around the fire, more parents and children huddle on rough-hewn benches, engrossed in whittling small blocks of willow into spoons. A few slightly blackened potatoes remain from lunchtime, still wrapped in foil like fossil dinosaur eggs in the embers of the fire, now re-stoked for the afternoon’s kettles. And on the edge of the clearing, a small group of six and eight year olds watch wide-eyed as Brian the instructor strikes showers of sparks from a magnesium rod, setting light to a delicately prepared pile of tinder.

It’s October, deep in the Neroche Forest on the Blackdown Hills in Somerset, and this is a family bushcraft day. Forty five people – children and parents – are experiencing the Forest School approach to a day in the woods. And it’s not just the punters who are being affected.

Different tools to reach people Now, there have been various articles in ECOS in recent years (not least ECOS 24 (3/4) 2003) extolling the virtues of ‘real experience’ of nature through outdoor education. Given the impressive erudition of what has gone before in these pages, I may be the last person left who hasn’t cottoned on, but I’ll take the risk and raise the subject again – to talk specifically about Forest School. I do so because I think the Forest School ethos deserves a higher profile in mainstream conservation – because of its inspirational approach and its impressive results, and also because I 68

ECOS 29(1) 2008 suggest it has much to teach us about how environmental professionals should interact with other people about nature.

I recently found myself reading the following sentence, possibly in an issue of ECOS: “There is an imperative to engage more fully with people over the re-wilding issue”. Quite unexpectedly I felt my teeth set on edge at the sight of this. There was nothing wrong with the logic of the statement. Re-wilding is an important concept, like many others in conservation. If it is to go anywhere people need to become engaged by it. But there was something about the combination of tortuously rigid language, and the patronising air of righteousness it betrayed towards the unenlightened herd, that made me rage.

Environmental education, as traditionally practised, has an element of this same didactic quality. The ‘look – isn’t it amazing’ school of nature study sometimes strikes me as awkward and forced. It separates its audience from nature, rather than connecting it, casting them as observers and not as participants. Plenty of environmental education practitioners have a more human-centred and engaging approach (though in my experience the best ones seldom work for conservation bodies). But for me, the true alchemy of hard-wiring nature into human psyches is to be found in another form of outdoor education – in Forest School.

Forest School – from Sweden to the Blackdown Hills I knew little of Forest School until 2005, when I was invited to visit the unprepossessing headquarters of the then Blackdown Hills Forest School at Burnworthy. I was introduced to Gordon Woodall, a BFG of a man, with a down to earth passion for his craft. His team exuded a quiet, unpretentious confidence in dealing with young people expressing the full gamut of behavioural problems.

Children excluded from school because they would not respond in a classroom environment, and other young people with a range of learning difficulties, visibly changed when placed in a natural setting and given practical things to do. But this was not an instructive process of ‘showing’ them nature. The focus was on them: giving them the opportunity to learn through practical activity rather than words on whiteboards; encouraging them to problem-solve and work as teams, and to build self-esteem in the process. Nature was the backdrop, not the focus: the subtle crucible of self discovery, rather than the object of study.

The Forest School ethos in the UK has evolved from a Scandinavian concept first developed in Sweden in the 1950s. The Danish use of Forest School as a core part of pre-school education was visited in the mid 1990s by early years professionals from the UK, who brought the approach back to this country. Since then it has spread to many parts of the country, sometimes run independently, sometimes within schools and colleges, and in some areas supported by the Forestry Commission and others. Yet it is far from ubiquitous, and it seems to me it often hides its light under a proverbial bushel of hazel foliage.

Forest School is formally defined as an inspirational process that offers children, young people and adults opportunities to develop confidence and self-esteem 69

ECOS 29(1) 2008 through regular, positive, hands-on learning experiences in an outdoor environment, often in woodland. Forest School practitioners use learning strategies which raise self-esteem, develop confidence and independence, and encourage language and communication skills in a natural environment.

Crucially, compared to other forms of environmental education, Forest School is focused on the learner – the child or adult taking part – rather than on the environment itself. Yet by making nature the context instead of the focus, I believe it provides its participants with a more powerful experience of the natural world than any conventional nature study approach can do.

There are a number of defining features of Forest Schools. For a start, sessions are run by qualified Forest School leaders, who have undergone a respected OCN training course, delivered by organisations such as the Forest School Training Company based in Devon, or Archimedes Training in Sheffield. Forest School works with higher than average staff to pupil ratios, entirely in an outdoor setting.

It offers regular, repeated participation in planned programmes, enabling participants to build on previous achievements and skills. There is a strong emphasis on observation of individual participants, especially with respect to preferred learning styles and development of confidence, self-esteem and interpersonal skills.

Forest School sessions are learner-led, designed around the needs of the group.

Sessions are often built around a curriculum-based theme, with many areas of the National Curriculum from Foundation to Key Stage 4 being covered. Whatever the subject however, the approach is always practical – involving physical hands-on tasks – and collective – encouraging teamwork through games and activities.

Tool use is central to Forest School, promoting trust and self-confidence amongst those taking part, and developing gross and fine motor skills. That means learning safely how to wield sharp knives, billhooks and bowsaws, and making fire.

Does Forest School work?

Not surprisingly, most children enjoy this sort of experience. But this is fun with a purpose. Research in Sweden has found that children attending forest school kindergartens are more balanced with greater socially capability, have fewer days off sick, are more able to concentrate and have better co-ordination than similar children not taking part. Kinaesthetic learners (learning by doing) respond particularly well to the Forest School environment.

On the Somerset/Devon border, the Neroche Scheme is running a Forest Schools programme, following the lead set here by Gordon Woodall. We are working with 10 local mainstream schools, mostly primary, with more on the waiting list. Led by Clare Neenan and Jenny Archard, more than a dozen teachers from these schools are following an intensive six month training course, delivered by Simon Shakespeare of the Forest School Training Company, towards the Level 3 qualification as Forest School Practitioners. With this training they will be able to 70

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Families finding quality time together at a Neroche bushcraft event.

Photo: Gavin Saunders/Forestry Commission

embed the Forest School ethos in their schools, as a core part of their curriculum.

We will also help the schools establish relationships with local woodland owners for use of their land as Forest School venues. Meanwhile outside of the schools, Neroche is running bushcraft days in the woods, bringing the same Forest School ethos to a family audience.

Relating to nature – removing conservation’s barriers And so, we applaud and nod our approval and agree what a very good thing Forest School is. But for me, it doesn’t end there. Forest School can do more than teach its participants. It can also impart some important lessons to the conservation movement as a whole. I look at mainstream nature conservation, and contrast it to Forest School practitioners out there in the woods. And I am left feeling that there is a deep moat which conservationists have dug around the fortress they occupy, which only a simple deference for human nature can bridge.

So what is it about Forest School that inspires me? It places no ecological intellectual barriers.

It does not say ‘we know best’. It does not seek to proselytise, cajole or even selfconsciously to educate in the pejorative sense displayed by much of what goes 71

ECOS 29(1) 2008 under the heading of conservation education. It does not focus on wildlife or even on ecology particularly explicitly. Instead it uses nature as a setting – an unspoken, enshrining home – and lets it seep, serendipitously, into children’s souls. And it is the fact that it lives in nature, but does not pronounce about it – uses nature as a set of tools, immersing its participants in the physicality of the forest, not the jungle of fear and fact and expert-led ‘awareness’ that so often passes for environmental education – that makes it work.

We set off – most of us – on the road into nature conservation because of personal, revealed experience of nature. Yet we somehow forget the ingredients of that personal revelation once we get drawn into the science and politics of nature.

Some people working in conservation were originally switched on to nature by a naturalist guru of some kind. But more, like me, caught the magic of nature not by being told about it, but simply by being immersed in it. I was fortunate in that respect, I know, especially growing up in an age when a child was free to roam and explore pretty well wherever they chose to go.

But without that exposure, informally at home or formally built into school life, it is difficult to develop the psychological language that will respond to messages from conservation bodies about wildlife and environmental issues later in life.

Without it, many people’s response – even if that response involves joining a Wildlife Trust or Friends of the Earth – will be built on fear of the doom-laden propaganda of conservation bodies, or guilt at feeling responsible for the earth’s woes. With that childhood connection, the response can be positive and creative, based on a deep sense of familiarity with the rest of nature. I still hold to the notion, however romantic, that if all of us spent at least part of our formative years in the woods, becoming as adept at bushcraft as we are expected to be at textbook maths and science, then we would share a common cultural language which would be reflected in our treatment of the land.

Only connect As I said at the start, none of this is going to be revelatory to the many in conservation and the wider education system who apply their energies to meeting ‘ordinary’ people, on their own ground, and helping them use nature as a means of discovering more about themselves. I salute them all. But for people like me, there is a lot to learn from Forest School and its ilk. Ironically for me, my own childhood inspiration from nature set me off on a path into a scientific training in environmental biology which taught me about impersonal biodiversity, but did not equip me with the sense to recognise the simple supremacy of human experience in nature, and the ability to share it. And I am confident there are plenty of people like me.

As a profession we often talk of the need to reconnect people with nature. I for one am coming to the view that too little of our time as conservationists is actually spent doing just that. And more than that, I am realising that making that reconnection matters more than anything else we might do. Yes – the extinction of experience is more serious than the extinction of species.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 Back in the wooded glade it is time to leave, as the daylight is fading fast. The family from the nearby town of Chard look crestfallen as their mother tries to round them up. This morning they were reluctant to come. Now they are reluctant to go. “I can’t shift them from in front of the TV usually” she says, looking unburdened compared to this morning. “I had to drag them here, because I really thought it would do them good. And look – now they don’t want to go!”

I write this as someone who has become disillusioned over the years by the industry that is nature conservation – my profession – and now I find myself groping towards something to replace the ardent certainty I once felt about my subject. I haven’t quite found it yet, but when I watch those children and their leaders scrape sparks off metal rods, gather wood to fuel their fires, and sit smugly in the doorways of leafy dens, under a benevolent canopy of green, I know that I’m getting closer.

The strange irony for me is that I grew up in the Blackdown Hills. The fields and mires and copses where I first experienced the epiphany of nature were barely a mile from where I first witnessed Forest School, some 35 years later. By luck or fate, the place has lured me back, to show me what I have spent so long seeming to forget.

Gavin Saunders is project manager for Neroche, a landscape partnership scheme supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, led by the Forestry Commission and based with the Blackdown Hills AONB. The views expressed here are his own. www.nerochescheme.org.

The Lake District National Park – should we celebrate it as much for its wildlife as its special landscape character? (See following article by Mark Robins) Photo: www.glendell.co.uk

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Protected Landscapes – sleeping giants of English biodiversity An RSPB study reported here, calls for a renaissance to ensure that England’s National Parks and AONBs become a dominant feature of England’s system for wildlife delivery.

MARK ROBINS England’s National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) together making up the Protected Landscapes ‘family’.1 They are obviously outstandingly rich in their landscape qualities, but in this study we establish their parallel biodiversity riches. There has been no recent or systematic review of the role of these area in England’s system for biodiversity conservation. In this article we report some work to characterise this significance, and assess the combined delivery effect of this system. We then explore just how far a ‘pro-biodiversity’ behaviour and approach seems to have got in our National Parks and AONBs, almost 60 years since legislation first created them.

Vital statistics – but no national intelligence system 45 individual Protected Landscapes make up 24% of England’s land surface, with a markedly southern and northern distribution, their vital characteristics are more lowland than upland2, more farmland than semi-natural3, with almost as much woodland and forest cover as other semi-natural habitats. Heavily grazingdependant for their special values, livestock systems are central to their future.

Vital statistics such as these begin to set the stage, but in the face of an evidencebased approaches to government and governance - no national intelligence system exists for these cherished landscapes. This article only begins the task.

Table 1. Protected Landscapes in England – their number and area.

Number Part of total Area (km2) National Parks 9 20% 10504 AONBs 36 80% 20433 Total 45 100% 30937

Part of total 34% 66% 100%

Note, in 2008, the creation of new (10th) National Park, the South Downs is expected, this will subsume two existing AONBs. http://www.countryside.gov.uk/LAR/Landscape/DL/index.asp

Parts of the England resource – some giant variables for biodiversity Occupying a territory bigger than the combined areas of our ten biggest cities 4, many of the key attributes that define their importance for biodiversity are found 74

ECOS 29(1) 2008 in proportions approaching double or more than their pro-rata share of the England resource. Figure 1 sets out some of these: note for instance that by area, more than half (52% by area) of all England’s SSSIs are found in these Protected Landscapes, almost equally divided between the National Parks (27%) and the AONBs (26%). With the RSPBs own estate biased towards these areas, what part of the National Trusts land, or other institutional owners estates, would we find focussed in this territory? The case is clear – these places are giants. And what proportion of our carbon-rich soils are located here?

Figure 1. The Protected Landscapes – their percentage share of some key variables for England’s biodiversity.

*

Key: 1. Common land, 2. Important Bird Areas, 3. Less Favoured Areas, 4. SACs, 5. SSSIs, 6. SPAs, 7. England Woodland Grant Scheme; 8. RSPB nature reserves, 9. National Nature Reserves, 10. Forestry Commission National Inventory of woods greater than 2Ha, 11. Woodland Grant Scheme, 12. MOD estate, 13.

RAMSAR, 14. Local Nature Reserves, 15. FC owned. *The horizontal bar is the 24% share of England’s land surface that the Protected Landscapes cover.

See note 26 for data sources.

The giant habitat cake The case gets even stronger as we explore where England’s semi-natural habitats fall. Against a typology of 18 habitats (Figure 2) just two are found in a proportion less than the pro-rata 24% of England’s resource, while 11 of the 18 types have an area twice or more greater than that share. If we want successful upland calcareous grassland conservation, we should do it in the Protected Landscapes. For a whole set of habitats, at least half their resource is found in the Parks and the AONBs. The share of the habitat cake is big!

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 Figure 2. Protected Landscapes – their share of England’s habitats.

*

Key: 1. Upland calcareous grassland, 2. Upland heath, 3. Blanket Bog, 4.Upland hay meadows, 5. Fens, 6. Lowland beech & yew woodland, 7. Lowland dry acid grassland, 8. Upland oak wood, 9. Lowland heath, 10. Lowland calc grassland, 11. Lowland mixed deciduous woodland, 12. Upland mixed ashwood, 13. Purple moor rush pastures, 14. Reedbeds, 15. Wet woodland, 16 Lowland meadows, 17. Lowland raised bog, 18. Coastal & Floodplain grazing marsh. *The horizontal bar is the 24% share of England’s land surface that the Protected Landscapes cover. See note 27 for data sources.

Figure 3. Proportion of ‘Red’ and ‘Amber’ Birds of Conservation Concern records found in England’s Protected Landscapes. *

*The Figure shows the proportion (%) of all records for each BoCC species found in BBS records (see notes 5 & 6).

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Birds of Conservation Concern Many birds provide a further test of protected landscapes as central to England’s system for conserving biodiversity. Species conservation priorities are described in the Birds of Conservation Concern5 (BoCC) approach. Figure 3 presents records of the red or amber listed BoCC species recorded in BBS6 records as found in the Protected Landscapes. It may be no surprise that the black grouse only finds its home in these places, but perhaps less obvious will be that three-quarters or more of the cirl bunting records are located here, along with a whole set of other species who find much more than that 24% pro-rata share in these places. If the National Park and AONB slice of the bird BoCC cake is a large one, just how big would the slice be for plants or bugs of equivalent status?

Aim - bird conservation. Target – National Parks and AONBs As conservation intelligence systems are refined as a prerequisite to effective delivery, the Protected Landscapes come into target, at least in this example for wild birds. The RSPB and partners in ‘The Bird Conservation Targeting Project’7 provide a system to focus on important sites for scarce and declining farmland and woodland birds. In Figure 4 we plot the distribution of 30 priority bird species (see legend for detail) and overlay Protected Landscapes boundaries. North and particularly in the south there is a powerful alignment, but less so for middle and eastern England. We have repeated the exercise for various species bundles with both woodland and then more farmland associated groupings displaying similar patterns of alignment. Clearly the midlands and the arable east are cold spots for Protected Landscapes themselves. Getting our bird conservation geography right then - for many (but not all) species (and not in all places) - the Protected Landscapes are crucial.

Oxymoron challenged If the case is made then that the Protected Landscapes are a clear and dominant part of an agenda for biodiversity conservation goals in England, just how good a job is being made of the delivery challenge? Using two well established measures: protected site ‘favourable condition’ and bird population trends based on indices derived from a national monitoring scheme, we can get some sense of performance in the Parks and the AONBs.

The condition of nationally important wildlife sites ‘Favourable condition’, an approach codifying, measuring, and directing the state of England’s nationally important wildlife sites (the SSSIs) is the focus of an “enormous and ongoing effort to restore these precious places back to health…”.8 Embedded since 1998 in Governments Public Service Agreements (PSAs) this approach provides high level publicly accountable goals for its agencies and others.

In its current form the PSA9 target for SSSIs is ‘bringing into favourable condition 95% of all SSSIs by 2010’. Natural England uses five categories10 to assess the condition of SSSIs: favourable, unfavourable recovering, unfavourable no change, 77

ECOS 29(1) 2008 Figure 4. Birds of Conservation Concern species distributions mapped against Protected Landscapes boundaries.

Records are extracted from BBS (see note 6) data and plotted cumulatively, with a score of 1 for each species, across England. There is some buffering and smoothing in the data analyses and presentation, which would caution any to-local an interpretation. Species for which information has been used are woodland species: Hawfinch, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Marsh Tit, Pied Flycatcher, Redstart, Tree Pipit, Willow Tit, Wood warbler, Woodcock, Grasshopper Warbler, Lesser Redpoll, Nightingale, Nightjar and Woodlark; and more farmland associated species: Curlew, Lapwing, Redshank, Snipe, Yellow wagtail, Cirl Bunting, Corn Bunting, Grey Partridge, Stone Curlew, Tree Sparrow, Turtle Dove, Black Grouse, Long-eared owl, Ring Ouzel, Twite and Whinchat.

unfavourable declining, and destroyed/partially destroyed. In Figure 5 we present the results of an analysis of SSSI land in target condition (the first two categories above) and land not in target condition (the last three categories above). On this headline measure, it is hard to see any difference in performance in the Protected Landscapes against England averages.

Figure 5. ‘Favourable condition’ of SSSIs, by area, in the Protected Landscapes against the England average.

English Nature SSSI unit data with Broad BAP habitat data attached, supplied April 2006; Natural England SSSI Unit (England-wide), Downloaded May 07 from http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 It is also possible to disaggregate the headline figures by broad habitat types and Figure 6 presents the difference between the areas in target condition, in the Protected Landscapes versus that across England. Apart from two types (arable and standing water & canals) for every other habitat type the difference in condition is small and in every case showing less than 10% variation from the England wide measure.

Figure 6. SSSI favourable condition by broad habitat type as variation against the England average

English Nature SSSI unit data with Broad BAP habitat data attached, supplied April 2006; Natural England SSSI Unit (England-wide), Downloaded May 07 from http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp.

Do bird populations buck the trend?

The BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey (BBS)6 is a national project aimed at keeping track of changes in the breeding populations of widespread bird species in the UK. Well established, the BBS involves over 1,700 participants who now survey more than 2000 sites across the UK, enabling us to monitor the population changes of over 100 bird species. In Figure 7 we present trend information from BBS, only including species where there is sufficient information, and in this case for the largest bundle of species (24) where we can robustly separate out the Parks and the AONBs. For the last decade or so, there is little difference in trends, at an England scale, in or out of the Protected Landscapes.

Although not presented here, if we bundle the information for farmland species only, or woodland species only, the pattern is broadly similar. This BBS information provides a rich source of potential analysis, and could for instance generate other measures of bird utility (e.g. abundance) rather than just trends, or for more detail say a comparison of woodland species trends north and south. We should also be cautious about over-interpretation, but on our analyses so far these trends do not suggest the Protected Landscapes buck the national trends.

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 Figure 7. Breeding bird trends, in and out, of the Protected Landscapes

Trends have been produced using a standard BBS (see note 6) modelling approach. BBS sites were assigned into a Protected Landscape if 50% or more of the site fell in the Landscape area, and the analyses only included species where information was available for at least 30 BBS squares. In this ‘all species’ indicator the 23 species included in the analysis are: Blackbird, Bluetit, Carrion Crow, Chaffinch, Cuckoo, Curlew, Dunnock, Goldfinch, Great Tit, Jackdaw, Lapwing, Linnet, Mistle Thrush, Magpie, Meadow Pipit, Pied Wagtail, Robin, Skylark, Starling, Swallow, Song Thrush, Woodpigeon, Willow Warbler.

Giants and sleeping?

The giants and sleeping strapline has some justification then. At an England level the Protected Landscapes place is central to achieving the countries biodiversity conservation goals, but like all giants we need to be careful how he or she gets woken. A nuanced analysis will need to get beyond the National Parks and the AONBs as fit for purpose institutions, and also to ask how their policy and pay masters, Defra and Natural England, know and respond to this giantism? How do other agents of government, institutional land owners like the Forestry Commission, interest groups, and of course the private interests of farmers and landowners, play their part? In commenting on the places, is performance much more a function of the strengths and weaknesses of the England system for biodiversity conservation?

Protected landscapes – a mandate for biodiversity?

With their origins in the post war settlement that produced the National Health Service both National Parks and AONBs root back to the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. Almost 60 years of development then, but what are 80

ECOS 29(1) 2008 the institutions themselves charged with doing and how does this relate to biodiversity? How are they best located in policy, strategy and delivery terms? In Figure 8 we set out the main influences on the strength of this mandate to operate for biodiversity.

Figure 8. Biodiversity in the context of the dynamics of England’s Protected Landscapes.

The darker the shading – the more dynamic the context.

Purpose The ‘purpose’ question has particular meaning in this context, for the Protected Landscapes ‘purpose’ or purposes, are the statutory starting point for this mandate.

The 1949 Act, and subsequent Acts and Orders, have all reinforced these core definitions of purpose. The first purpose of the National Park’s designation is: “to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of their areas.”

The statutory purpose of AONBs is: “to conserve and enhance the natural beauty of the area.” ‘Natural beauty’ is further defined by statute to include wildlife, physiographic features, as well as landscape and scenery. In the case of conflicts with other purposes, conservation takes precedence. In both cases, the purpose is strong for biodiversity.

Rules for others A general duty is also placed on all relevant authorities 11, to have regard to these purposes when coming to decisions or carrying out their activities relating to or affecting land within National Parks. Relevant authorities are expected to be able 81

ECOS 29(1) 2008 to demonstrate that they have fulfilled this duty. Similarly, relevant authorities must have regard to the purpose of conserving and enhancing an AONB when exercising or performing any function that will affect land in an AONB12.

Management Plans The orthodoxy that every decent institution needs its management plan is firmly embedded in Parks and AONBs processes. Statute13 and guidance 14 15 make it clear that these plans are intended to guide both the institutions themselves in carrying out all their functions and all other bodies and individuals who have an interest in the management of the areas. The central importance of these Plans is stressed for instance by Defra in its most recent review (2002) of National Parks 16 where it notes that: “the National Park Management Plan should be given renewed importance in government policy advice”.

It is also clear that these are multi-objective institutions, but biodiversity gets a clear name check amongst topics for the Plans, thus for the Parks this includes “wildlife/biodiversity (habitats & species) informed by Natural Area profiles and national, regional and local biodiversity action plans and targets, including targets for SSSI condition” 15. Using a scorecard approach, in 2007 we examined 43 of the 45 Protected Landscape’s Plans for their clarity of purpose and commitment to delivery on biodiversity conservation. Using twelve categories of questions, with weighted scores for each, we searched for example for specific actions for birds and biodiversity, including targets, through to recognition of conflicts, and a sense of sufficiency to deliver. Assigning scores to four classes from high to low, we found 5 Plans in the highest class (19 points +), 14 in the next class (14-18 points), 13 in the next (9-13 points), and 11 in the lowest class (<9 points). While each Protected Landscape is different (including in its biodiversity challenges), and we have across the set a range of circumstances probably as wide as rural England can provide, the centrality of Management Plans in contemporary approaches to purpose, function and development of these places is powerful. Across the piece then, how these Plans describe and provide for the biodiversity giant, seems at best a very varied geometry.

Political dynamic The operating context for the Parks and AONBs is set by interactions with and between central government, its agencies various, key stakeholders and an important understanding of the Protected Landscapes as independent institutions close to local government. More precisely their governing bodies, the National Parks Authorities (NPAs) and the Joint Advisory Committees (JACs)17 of the AONBs, are best described as hybrid, place based, parts of England’s local government architecture. While central government (via Defra) provides the financial settlements for the Parks (£44m in 2007/08) 18 and via Natural England ditto for the AONBs (estimated as £14m in 2006/07) 19 decision-making and delivery is in the hands of the NPAs and JACs. Less obvious than annual financial settlements, but more clearly on a national environmental program radar, a simple 82

ECOS 29(1) 2008 indicative estimate of agri-environment spend in National Parks and AONBs of £107m in 2007 is 38% of the total £279m spent in England20. Staff, budgets, estates, partnerships and collaborations, visions and ambitions, and the instruments of delivery, norms, attitudes and behaviors, are all place based.

Mandate strong but visibility low?

Just how visible is biodiversity in this set of influences? Starting with the more obvious policy end of the Governments system for biodiversity, bizarrely given its giant nature, phrases like ‘just about visible’ sum up this presence in the biodiversity strategy for England.21 The Governments new natural environment PSA delivery agreement 9 just about notices the Parks but is silent on AONBs, while in Defra’s ‘Conserving Biodiversity – the UK Approach’ 22 the Protected Landscapes are really invisible. With a still new Natural England it remains hard to locate this key agencies overall approach to biodiversity in the Protected Landscapes, though a recent NE Board paper 23 may hint at a tone to come: “Natural England believes that protected landscapes play a key role in the conservation, enhancement and delivery of the sustainable use and management of England’s natural environment; exemplifying and demonstrating best practice.”

Orchestrating the biodiversity system – where’s the conductor?

Any review of action for biodiversity in our Protected Landscapes will note many examples of successful and innovative activity. We should celebrate this. This paper though looks across the set, at where the system for biodiversity conservation has got. Is the simple sleeping giants characterisation of these places much more a sense of the limits of our current system for getting biodiversity delivery done? What theory of improvement can we suggest?

If the Parks and AONBs have long escaped a ‘1949 landscape plus access’ view 24 of their role, are they really championing a fit-for-the-challenge biodiversity cause?

In a system sense, who ‘sponsors’ an improvement approach? Is biodiversity action faced with a simple lack of institutional capacity to translate strategies from the design stage to the delivery or implementation stage? Or is the quest now to move on from questions of strategy – the broad direction of travel, to operations and activity – where more and better collaboration will achieve better biodiversity services? Will we get the political ambition allied to professional excellence the biodiversity case deserves? Do we have an approach that recruits not loses 25 those who can most help delivery, the land owners, farmers and woodland operators?

These are big questions of the English system for doing biodiversity, both inside the Protected Landscapes and elsewhere, but the giant nature of the opportunity demands a new search for answers.

A pro-biodiversity renaissance?

Iconic scenery, ecosystem services, rural communities and their welfare, education, and in this case their wildlife - a giant slice of the England biodiversity 83

ECOS 29(1) 2008 cake. Additional tiers of administrative and delivery resources in these places suggest they should be at the forefront of brokering solutions to tough environmental challenges. The biodiversity indicators, if they are to improve, should improve here first. New insights and energy, political leadership at twin national and local levels, information, engagement and persuasion, and heroic collaborations between state, agency, third sector and the private interests of the land based businesses, are all part of the potential. Based on this study, we have to raise our expectations for England’s biodiversity in these special places.

Taking the system view, across certain parts at least, biodiversity is barely visible.

Across the individual Parks and AONBs, at least in our analysis of their Management Plans, attention to biodiversity is variable. Across the set, singly as National Parks or as AONBs or together, biodiversity information systems may be poorly developed. We may need to look again at our understandings and misunderstandings of the role of these special places for biodiversity. Strangely, given the significance we have set out, the central narrative championing the Protected Landscapes for their biodiversity conservation remains largely unwritten. Climate change, globalisation and agricultural reform provide massive forces for change, but so much can be gained for England’s biodiversity if this giant wakes. Time for a renaissance?

References and notes 1.

2.

For a starting point on England’s Protected Landscapes go to www.countryside.gov.uk/LAR/Landscape/DL/index.asp . A third member of this family – the ‘Heritage Coasts’ (HC) – has become almost invisible in contempory England, and they are excluded from this study. They do not receive the same statutory protection as the other two designations, with HC status conferring no new statutory powers or obligations. Their purposes, excepting a focus on the environmental heath of inshore waters are very close to those of National Parks and AONBs. Overall, 89% of the total HC area lies in these two areas. See: LUC 2006. Review and Evaluation of Heritage Coasts in England. Report to the Countryside Agency.

In an analysis we assigned Protected Landscapes as upland if >50% of their area fell into ‘less favoured’ and ‘severely disadvantaged’ designations. On a second measure using those areas over 200m in altitude, we found a similar division.

3.

As a simple measure we have taken the SSSI area as the area of semi-natural habitat (5625 km2), the area of woodland as that recorded on the Forestry Commission’s register of woodlands greater than 2ha (4040 km2). As proportions of the total Protected Landscape area these are 18 and 13% respectively, leaving the remaining 21,272 km2 as farmland. There are of course overlaps and conditions to make on these estimates, some woodland falls into the protected site series (the SSSIs), there is an unknown area of woodlands less than 2 ha in size, and of course not all of the remainder is farmland (some will be built up for instance).

4.

The top 10 largest cities in England are: London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Hull, Leicester and Stoke. Their combined area is: 2556 km2 (source: www.lovemytown.co.uk/populations/townsTable2.htm)

5.

In the Birds of Conservation Concern approach the UK's birds are split in to three categories of conservation importance - red, amber and green. Red is the highest conservation priority, with species needing urgent action. Amber is the next most critical group, followed by green. http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/status_explained

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 6.

The Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) monitors terrestrial birds throughout the UK to provide information that underpins the conservation of species and habitats. The BBS is organised by the BTO on behalf of BTO, JNCC and RSPB. Find more at: http://www.bto.org/bbs

7.

The Bird Conservation Targeting Project is supported by a partnership between: the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Centre for Environmental Data and Recording (CEDaR), the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW), the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), the Environment and Heritage Service (EHS), Forestry Commission England (FCE), Forestry Commission Wales (FCW), Forest Service (FS), Natural England (NE) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). Find more information at: http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/projects/targeting/index.asp

8.

English Nature (2006) Martin Doughty, Chair Designate of Natural England, in the foreword to: ‘Target 2010. The Condition of England’s Sites of Special Scientific Interest in 2005’.

9.

Public Service Agreement (PSA) 28 (Oct 2007). Secure a healthy natural environment for today and the future. http://search.treasury.gov.uk/ See page 3, in English Nature 2006, note 8 above.

11. ‘Relevant Authorities’ are: any minister of the Crown, any public body, any statutory undertaker, and any person holding public office.

12. s85 CROW Act 2000 13. The Environment Act 1995 (s66 (1)) requires National Park Authorities (NPAs) to prepare and publish National Park Management Plans.

14. Countryside Agency (2001). Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty Management Plans – A Guide (CA 23) and Countryside Agency (2006) Guidance for the review of AONB Management Plans.

15. Countryside Agency (2005). National Park Management Plans – Guidance.

16. Defra (2002). Review of the English National Park Authorities.

16. Para 4.29 in reference 15 17. A small number of the more substantial AONBs have elected to adopt, and central government has agreed, another ‘Conservation Board’ structure.

18. Defra website: National Park Authorities: Funding, at http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/issues/landscap/authorities/funding.htm 19. Personal communication, Mike Taylor, Chief Executive of the Association of AONBs (AAONBs).

20. This estimate uses recent participation data for agri-environment schemes in the Protected Landscapes across England. It assumes these areas receive the average amount of funding, which in the case of HLS might not be true. The major assumption here is that this is indicative of the likely orders of magnitude at least.

21. Defra (2002). Working with the grain of nature – a biodiversity strategy for England.

22. Defra (Oct 2007). Conserving Biodiversity - the UK approach.

23. NE (December 2007). Board Paper ‘Natural England’s Draft Policy on Landscape. NEB PU08 05.

24. Phillips A. (2007). National Parks in the 21st Century – Time to Face Reality. Paper to the National Park Societies Conference 2007, Snowdonia, Wales.

25. Robins M and G Williams (2005). From Pizzas to Corncrakes – capturing better rural delivery. ECOS 26 (2)

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 26. Data sources: Natural England Sites of Special Scientific Interest (England-wide). Downloaded May 07 from http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp Natural England Special Protection Areas (England-wide). Downloaded May 07 from http://www.englishnature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp Natural England Special Areas of Conservation (England-wide). Downloaded May 07 from http://www.englishnature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp

Natural England Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation (England-wide).

Downloaded May 07 from http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp

Natural England SSSI Unit (England-wide). Downloaded May 07 from http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp

RSPB. Important Bird Areas (England) Natural England National Nature Reserves (England-wide).

Downloaded May 07 from http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp

Natural England Local Nature Reserves. Downloaded May 07 from http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/gis/gis_register.asp

Natural England. Registered Common Land (England). Version date 08 September 2005.

Defra. Less Favoured Areas (England). Version date 29 April 2004.

27. Data sources Natural England Draft Habitat Blanket Bog inventory for England Natural England Draft Coastal and Floodplain Grazing Marsh Habitat Inventory for England (excluding Isles of Scilly) Natural England Draft Fen Habitat Inventory for England (excluding Isles of Scilly) version 1.2 Natural England Draft lowland beech and yew woodland priority Habitat Inventory for England Natural England Draft Lowland Calcareous grassland priority habitat inventory Natural England Draft Lowland Dry Acid Grassland priority habitat inventory Natural England Draft Lowland heathland priority inventory for England Natural England Draft lowland mixed deciduous woodland priority Habitat Inventory for England Natural England Draft Lowland Meadows priority habitat inventory for England v1.2 Natural England Draft Lowland Raised Bog Habitat Inventory for England (excluding Isles of Scilly) Version 1.2 Natural England Draft Purple Moor Grass and Rush Pastures priority habitat for England inventory v1.2 Natural England Draft Reedbed Habitat Inventory for England (excluding Isles of Scilly) version 1.2 Natural England Draft Upland Calcareous Grassland Habitat Inventory for England Natural England Draft Upland Hay Meadow priority habitat inventory Natural England Draft Upland Heathland Inventory for England Natural England Draft upland mixed ashwoods priority Habitat Inventory for England Natural England Draft upland oakwoods priority Habitat Inventory for England Natural England Draft wet woodlands priority Habitat Inventory for England

Acknowledgements

A number of RSPB staff colleagues were particularly helpful in accessing and analysing information and in discussions around the potentials of this work including: Julie Sutton, David Fouracre, Mark Eaton and Sue Armstrong-Brown. RSPB volunteers also play a large part in our work, and the wider project associated with this article benefited from the input of Paul Hicks, Rebecca Green, and Alice Feast. A good number of individuals across the Protected Landscapes world were also helpful in discussion.

Mark Robins is Senior Regional Policy Officer for the RSPB. He spent six years as a member of the Exmoor National Park Authority, has lived in four of Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Protected Landscapes, and worked for three. Mark.robins@rspb.org.uk This article is produced on the BANC website www.banc.org.uk with the figures in colour.

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The estate we’re in Social landlords manage large tracts of land as well as provide housing for many of the country’s most disadvantaged people. Can the nature conservation sector continue to afford to ignore them?

MATHEW FRITH In a corner of Clapton, just off ‘Murder Mile’ in the London Borough of Hackney, a floral revolution is blooming quietly - a little riot of its own. Within the labyrinthine mosaic of used-less green spaces that envelop the Clapton Park Estate, pinks, reds and yellows are shamelessly adorning nooks and crannies, skirting railings and exploding over the lawns (see main front cover photo of this ECOS).

This is the work of John Little’s Grassroof Company that has transformed the dead spaces into strips of unruly wildflower meadows, scarlet-poppied verges, and rampant daisy-chained rose-beds at the invitation of the Estate’s Tenant Management Organisation (TMO). After trials in 2002-03, the TMO grasped the nettle and the wildflowers have been rolled out further across the estate; elderly residents hadn’t seen poppies and cornflowers since they were children.1 Spurred on by this success the TMO worked with John Little to exhibit part of the estate at the Chelsea Flower Show last year.2 Another outburst of wildflower-colour seeded out of the earlier pioneering eruptions in Knowsley and Sheffield. That set tongues wagging, and helped to germinate possibilities on other housing estates. All very well, but is it really nature conservation? Surely, in the greater scheme of things, this is a horticultural sideshow?

Growing assets, lost opportunities That housing has caused damage to the natural environment and put adverse pressure on ecological systems is patently obvious. Yes, there have been some halfhearted schemes from volume house-builders to ‘soften the blow’, and some pioneering examples show what’s possible given the will and circumstances.3 But by and large ‘housing’ in all its modern land-hungry homogeneity is a major threat to what most of us cherish.

In tenure terms, nature conservation’s relationship with housing is largely onesided (and contradictory at that). The majority of new housing is to be sold on the open market, and battles are fought with house-builders over the location and design of the dwellings. Then comes the twist: we fight the builders on one hand, and urge the eventual house-holders to join us on the other.

We rarely engage with the rented sector, and in particular that of social housing which consists of about 5 million homes in the UK (about 20% of the total housing 87

ECOS 29(1) 2008 stock, but proportionately higher percentages in Scotland and Northern Ireland).

Between social landlords - local authority housing departments and Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) – the shift is towards RSL ownership; in 2006 RSL stock exceeded that of local authorities for the first time. This trend is set to continue, not only through the new affordable housing that RSLs are building, but in the stock transfers of existing local authority estates that government is encouraging.

Most of these come with land.

Why should this matter to those of us with an interest in the natural environment? Three key reasons deserve further exploration. First, social landlords are responsible for significant areas of green spaces, albeit mostly in urban areas, where nature sometimes exists and, with some help, can be allowed to flourish. Second, there are millions of people housed by social landlords, many of which are subject to considerable social, economic and environmental inequalities. Third, pragmatically, social housing has its own organisational framework, regulatory obligations and objectives, which makes it something that the biodiversity conservation sector can potentially engage with.4

Hidden gems…

Whilst the total area of green spaces owned by social landlords across the country is unknown, this area probably exceeds that of public parks in some districts, especially in inner urban boroughs. It certainly well exceeds the total area of all urban nature reserves. Do we understand the constraints that social landlords face, or see the opportunities that this presents?

Let’s be frank; the spaces in and around social housing are largely crap. Whilst there are excellent examples dotted around the country that almost match some of our better parks, they are the exception to the rule. A banal mosaic of rye-grass deserts, punished evergreen shrubberies, tired lollipop cherries, incessant railings, and sweeping concrete vistas are characteristic, often further blighted by the signs of neglect or anti-social behaviour. For all the deprivations that some of our public parks suffer, they are nothing compared to the poverty of spaces in and around much of social housing. These are spaces that people wish to avoid if possible; but for many, they can’t. Ecologically speaking they are invisible.

And yet, how many of us have looked closer at these? How many have been surveyed for their biodiversity? Or have they simply been dismissed as being of no value? Many estates, especially of the inter-war years and 1950-70s, were built on greenfield sites. Their landscapes may have been hammered by gang-mowing, but not to the extent of agricultural land. Old trees, hedgerows and other features often survive within estate landscapes, and some relaxation of management may reveal some hidden gems. For example, relict chalk grassland survives within the labyrinthine networks of grassland around the New Addington (Croydon) and Whitehawk (Brighton) estates, and a population of corky-fruited water-dropwort at Southwark Council’s Countisbury House (Sydenham Hill) now flourishes after decades of ignorance. And many estates stand adjacent to wildlife-rich sites.5 88

ECOS 29(1) 2008

Chalk downland cheek by jowl with the Whitehawk estate in Brighton.

Photo: David Larkin

In addition, many RSLs have acquired land of nature conservation value through stock transfers from local authorities, or through neglect of hidden corners.

Peabody Hill woodland is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance, undoubtedly because Peabody Trust didn’t know what to do with it when it started growing in the 1970s, and couldn’t build on its slopes. Social landlords will also own landbanks earmarked for future development, which may or may not be of interest.

… and blank canvases But without further investigation do we know what we’re missing? Private gardens were largely ignored by conservationists until the late 1970s, and only in recent years have we seen them recognised as important ecological assets, and the focus of significant research and conservation attention. Might the same be possible for housing estates? And if this land doesn’t have much interest, then surely the bleak green deserts are ripe for enhancement? Do those forlorn evergreen banks of cancatching Mahonia and Pyracantha shrubberies have to stay forever? Can we help bring to life some of the ecological memories to places anointed with names that rarely reflect their current reality.6 But does the eye that sees the opportunity to enhancing a park or a garden for wildlife, alight on a housing estate with the same curiosity?

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Hello, we are here too It’s not surprising that the Biodiversity Action Plan process and subsequent nature conservation policy has virtually ignored social housing. During the preparation of Defra’s NERC biodiversity duty guidance, I submitted some questions regarding social housing. The response was ‘what’s social housing?’ (yes, it does exist in the countryside – but it’s becoming rarer than avian ‘flu); the published guidance suggests that my response fell on deaf ears.7 Amongst the plethora of initiatives that have emerged from the department for Communities and Local Government (and its predecessors and cohorts) to reverse the decline in our parks and green spaces, little of this guidance and policy addresses social housing. This is not surprising, given that there were no social housing representatives on the Urban Green Spaces Taskforce, and only one reference to social landlords and the green spaces we manage in the mass of material from the Taskforce’s deliberations. This bears no relation to the scale of the assets we manage, or the issues we face. Unsurprisingly, we have little to offer that is seductive, rare and exciting - tainted as social housing is becoming in this owner-occupier society.

And it ain’t easy Landscape management is not the core business of social landlords, and they rarely consider the consequences of programmes that do not focus on the provision of housing. Consider these points, as examples: • With stock transfers from local authority to RSL, the land is often transferred with the stock, but without the staff skills and resources that previously managed this; • I have yet to find more than five RSLs with staff that have an exclusive responsibility for landscape management issues (there are over 1500 RSLs in England); • Landscape management - largely ‘grounds maintenance’ – is often subcontracted through cleaning contractors, and, if managed, usually by maintenance contract administrators more familiar with lifts and lighting than horticulture; • RSLs are obliged to sign up to the Respect agenda; the government guidance for social landlords refers to our landscapes purely in negative terms of graffiti, fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour problems.

One key barrier has been the acute lack of information on the social housing sector’s approach to green space management, and the spaces they are responsible for. There are no figures at a national level of the number or areas they manage, they are often omitted from local authority open space strategies, and many social landlords have no clear idea themselves.

The green space policies, guidance and programmes produced by Government, CABE Space and others suggest that these may also be applicable to social 90

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Pointless lawns are typical of much of the landscapes of social housing.

Photo: Mathew Frith

landlords and the spaces they manage. In some generic areas of concern this is undoubtedly true, for example: • significant legacy of poorly-designed and under-managed spaces; • accumulative disinvestment over many decades; • competition for resources; • low aspirations in terms of design and use.

But the language assumes an understanding of common landscape design and management practices that is simply not held within social landlords. Grant schemes have excluded social landlords (their spaces are rarely public, no matter whom they may benefit). And there are issues that have not been sufficiently considered, including: • high fragmentation (compared to parks and other public open spaces); • ambiguous ownership for users, and tensions between private and communal needs; • existence of marked social territories that will influence behaviour; 91

ECOS 29(1) 2008 • increasing complexity of tenure, such as pepper-potted leaseholds on estates; • competition for use, such as car-parking and development; • absence of relevant regulatory frameworks; • Respect agenda and Secured by Design leading to lowest-common-denominator design.

Given the above picture, the tasks social landlords face are generally far more acute than those of local authority parks departments. Without significant changes the woeful legacy of existing housing estates and their lacklustre landscapes will remain. And given that social landlords are likely to become owners of more open space this is an area which requires attention. For all the fine projects by Groundwork Trusts and others on housing estates, they are usually end-of-pipe exploitations of funding and resource opportunities, and rarely result in a change of outlook of the landlord. Social landlords need to change and take responsibility for the spaces they manage in order to benefit their residents. But they will need support and appropriate help.

We mustn’t forget, also, that housing estates aren’t easy places to manage. Given the media’s stigma of these places,8 no self-respecting conservationist would dare set foot on one if they valued their lives. There are undoubtedly some difficult and scary estates, compounded by the rampant poverty and collapse of community cohesion that underpins the worst. And whilst the majority have far fewer problems, it is no wonder that social landlords rarely have time to consider the birds and bees.

Why bother?

Nature conservation in Britain has made significant attempts over the past 30 years to reach a broader public audience, especially in urban areas. Much of this has undoubtedly been to secure political support and credibility, driven by external agendas (reflected, for example, in grant criteria, and the current focus on the ‘health agenda’). Nevertheless, there has been a notable shift in organisational policies and practices that appear to reflect genuine attempts at an inclusive approach to reach many parts of society.9 But how far does this growing social awareness extend? Self-consciously aware of their ‘white, educated, and middle-class’ make-up, many nature conservation organisations have attempted to demonstrate their broader social appeal, either through particular programmes, the use of specific design and language, or working with partners already steeped in community activity. The science with which the nature conservation sector uses to justify its work often appears to be used as a defence from venturing into the social unknowns. Nevertheless, different faces are peering out of the front covers of annual reports, suggesting more than icing on an increasingly rich cake.

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A social conscience?

Social landlords predominantly house people that are described as ‘disadvantaged’; disproportionately high numbers of elderly residents, black and minority ethnic residents, single parents, long-term unemployed, and those suffering physical and mental disabilities. 70% of social residents have incomes from the poorest two fifths of overall income distribution, and over 50% of working age residents are not in paid employment. Of the £16bn of public support for social housing in England in 2003-04, over £10bn went on housing benefit.10 Social housing residents are more likely to live in areas of poor environmental quality and public open space deficiency; half of social housing is clustered in the most deprived fifth of neighbourhoods.11 Research suggests that there is a strong correlation between socio-economic and environmental deprivation.12 Poorer communities tend to live in more polluted, less green, locations. They are proportionately less likely to have easy access to open space, whether a private garden, or a public park within a five minute walk. They are also more likely (because of their age, ethnicity and/or cultural values) to avoid public parks and open spaces due to fears over their safety, whether they are ‘allowed in’, or other barriers, and less likely to afford access to paid-for recreational pursuits.13 And as such they are more likely to suffer health problems such as obesity, coronary heart disease, chronic depression, and other related illnesses linked to inactivity and poor quality environments.14 The problems of anti-social behaviour that seem to afflict many housing estates are undoubtedly related to the dreadful quality of the environments they occur in.15 These issues have already been taken up by a number of environmental NGOs, notably BTCV, Black Environment Network, Groundwork Trusts, some of the Wildlife Trusts, and more local organisations – this disparate activity now amounts to a track record that others can learn from.16 Sometimes biodiversity conservation is a key vehicle for these projects, but often not. Play, art, music, food-growing, cookery, spiritual activities and cultural folklore will often be crucial hooks for engagement of these communities, and helping them relate to their local natural environments.

Notions of native-ness are usually inappropriate and negative references to ‘alien species’ are downright risky when working with people whose first language isn’t English. It requires working from where these communities stand, rather than imposing the standard nature conservation frameworks and jargon.

Is this real nature conservation? Isn’t it diluted, even polluted? Putting aside the debate of whether society comprehends and supports the kind of world that most conservationists aim for, is this a diversion from what nature conservationists have been striving? Surely, the future of red-tipped cudweed, wart-biter, corncrake, water vole, wet woodlands and lowland heaths are far more deserving of our limited resources? And surely re-wilding projects are much more exciting and give us grander spaces to play with? Why take our eye off the ball now?

But the places where I believe we can and should make a difference are on people’s doorsteps. Cynically, one could argue that here is a ‘captive audience’ of 93

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Transformation of the green deserts of Knowsley to wildflower prairies Photo: Landlife

hard-to-reach communities of whom we actually know much more about than the visitors to public parks, National Nature Reserves and the countryside at large. And given what we already know about the growing disconnection of many people from the natural world and the relationship between people’s well-being and access to good quality green spaces, surely social housing estates should be seen as priorities for addressing some of this?

Social landlords work hard to address the problems affecting their resident communities, often with significant success. But they are not yet well-equipped to address the existing and future landscapes that can have a fundamental and profound psychological impact on the lives of their residents. After four years of developing Neighbourhoods Green, as a vehicle to highlight many of these issues within and without the social housing sector, there is growing recognition that the design and management of their green spaces is an increasingly important matter.

The first forays Clapton Park’s remarkable wildflowering follows on the heels of innovative precursors. Landlife’s radical endeavours in transforming some of Knowsley’s housing green deserts has been a dogged journey since the late 1970s, but with revealing results, especially for the communities that live there.18 More recently 94

ECOS 29(1) 2008 Green Estate’s work with Sheffield Homes has begun to transform a number of the city’s estates, by utilising the network of green spaces as the foundations for community development, providing training and employment opportunities, foodgrowing programmes, educational work, as well as biodiversity enhancement.19 Much of this is through standard practices and techniques that nature conservationists have developed and adopted over decades; it is familiar stuff to the likes of us, but it is in new surroundings and with different partners, some of whom have had to challenge accepted practices.

Places for People (one of the country’s largest RSLs, with over 58,000 properties in 225 local authorities) have joined forces with the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester & North Merseyside, following the latter’s work in and around Preston.20 This collaboration forms part of a partnership with the Riverside Group and Peabody Trust that secured over £15m from the Big Lottery Fund’s Changes Spaces portfolio programme in 2007. The first strategic landscape project of its kind led by social landlords, this aims to transform over 70 housing estate landscapes across the country, many of which will deliver biodiversity enhancements.

Portsmouth Housing Association’s focus on landscape work in its Improvement Agenda, in collaboration with residents, local planning authorities and Ingol Pond in Preston – an example of the active management of wildlife habitats on the estates of Places for People. The conservation activity is done in partnership with Lancashire Wildlife Trust.

Photo: Places for People

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 Groundwork Solent, suggests a deepening recognition on the need to provide a quality environment for residents to feel pride about, again with benefits for wildlife.21 Greenspace Scotland’s integrated programmes are specifically targeting the qualities of many Scottish housing estates, where environmental qualities are often more acutely degraded than in English estates.22 These few examples show that with the right measures and resources in place, social landlords can start to make a difference. Neighbourhoods Green has published guidance and examples for social landlords on how to improve housing estates for biodiversity. Natural England is further supporting this work through a series of pilot projects on 10 estates in London and Bradford. The results – for biodiversity – maybe meagre in the short-term, and irrelevant at the wider landscape scale. However, there is anecdotal evidence that the continuity of banal and dumbed-down housing estates is unsustainable for socio-economic reasons, and that some social landlords want to take bold steps to enhance the liveability of the whole environments in their care. But they will need greater support, incentives and encouragement to make what will appear for them to be bold and risky forays into the wild.

References and notes *

In England Registered Social Landlords include housing associations, Tenant Management Organisations (TMOs) and Arms-Length Management Organisations (ALMOs). Similar classifications apply in the other devolved countries.

1.

Millis, D. (Ed.), (2004) Green Places; Review of the Year, Landscape Design Trust, Redhill.

2.

John Little, pers. comm.

3.

For example, the Green Leaf Awards.

4.

In England Registered Social Landlords are regulated by, and receive funding from, the Housing Corporation, and RSLs and local authority housing departments are audited and inspected by the Audit Commission. Similar systems apply in the other devolved countries.

5.

My favourite view within Richmond Park NNR is looking east in late afternoon to the gleaming white tower blocks of the Alton Estate in Roehampton, that anchor the horizon.

6.

Wood Dene, Willow Tree Lane, The Meadows, Elm Village, Woodberry Down, Brambledown, and Hollytree are just the tip of an iceberg of estate names in London; further exploration of their etymology is probably a pointless exercise.

7.

DEFRA (2007) Guide for Public Authorities on Implementing the Biodiversity Duty, DEFRA. www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/pdfs/biodiversity/pa-guid-english.pdf

8.

It’s not all media hype; a significant majority of the 27 teenage murders in London during 2007 were committed in housing estates and/or involved individuals living on estates, through ‘postcode’ gang warfare.

9.

I’ve never forgotten an English Nature site manager stating – with some relish – that his favourite reserve was the one where the public weren’t allowed in. His views weren’t – and are still not – uncommon. Did he ever wonder who paid his wages?

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ECOS 29(1) 2008 10. Hills, J. (2007) Ends and Means; the future role of social housing in England, CASEreport 34, ESRC Research Centre 11. For example, DCLG’s Trees in Towns 2 survey (in press) has identified a correlation between poor tree canopy cover and areas of poverty.

12. For example, Mitchell, G. and Walker, G. (2003) Environmental Quality and Social Deprivation, R&D Technical Report E2-067/1/TR, The Environment Agency, Bristol.

13. Frith, M. and Harrison, S. (2005) Decent Homes Decent Spaces, Neighbourhoods Green, Peabody Trust and Notting Hill Housing Group, London.

14. Bird, W. (2004) Natural Fit; Can Green Space and Biodiversity Increase Levels of Physical Activity?

RSPB, Sandy.

15. Kuo, F. E. and Sullivan, W. C. (2001) Environment and Crime in the Inner City: Does Vegetation Reduce Crime? Environment and Behavior, 33, 3, 343-367, Sage Publications, California.

16. For example, Church, C. (2004) Environments for All; the BTCV guide for community action, BTCV, Doncaster.

17. Neighbourhoods Green is a project, led by Notting Hill Housing and Peabody Trust, aiming to improve the green spaces in and around social housing, See: www.neighbourhoodsgreen.org.uk 18. See: www.landlife.org.uk 19. France, S. (2007) Our Green Estate – Sheffield’s inner city landscapes, in Conservation Land Management, 5, 1, Spring 2007, Natural England, Peterborough. See also: www.greenestate.org 20 See: www.24dash.com/content/news/viewNews.php?navID=1&newsID=8556 21. Anon. (2006) Decent homes, Decent neighbourhoods, Groundwork, Birmingham.

22. Anon. (2006) Greenspace & housing, Greenspace Scotland, Stirling. http://www.greenspacescotland.org.uk/upload/File/GS%20Housing.pdf 23. Riley, J., Frith, M., Massini, P., Kimpton, B. and Newton, J. (2007) A natural estate, Neighbourhoods Green, Peabody Trust and Notting Hill Housing Group, London.

Mathew Frith is Landscape Regeneration Manager with Peabody Trust (a social landlord) and co-leads the Neighbourhoods Green project (www.neighbourhoodsgreen.org.uk). These views are his own. mathew.frith@peabody.org.uk

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The wild boar action plan shooting in the dark?

Defra’s new action plan for wild boar simply offers a comfort break before assembling guidance and coordinating the action that has long been obvious and necessary.

MARTIN GOULDING In Februray Defra released its policy document on the management of wild boar in England.1 After reading it, the saying 'it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive', sprang immediately to mind. Furthermore, the journey was long - over 10 years, and the ticket expensive: well over one million pounds of tax payers money spent on research alone.2 Regrettably, Defra has not delivered the first class service we expected.

A list of eight action points frames the plan, with each action delegated to one or more of the various government partners, for example, Natural England (NE), Deer Initiative (DI), Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Lacor - see list below.

Forthcoming government advice on feral wild boar • Guidance for land managers on the impacts of wild boar and their management. (DI & NE) • Guidance on welfare such as minimum recommended firearm calibers. (DI & NE) • Guidance on best practice and safe shooting (DI) • Guidance on carcass handling including meat for human consumption and waste disposal (DI & FSA) • Advice to aid hunters, gamekeepers and stalkers in disease identification (DI, FSA & Defra) • Public awareness of wild boar including safety advice (DI & NE) • Advice on dealing with wounded wild boar (DI) • Advice for keepers of wild boar and local authorities to minimise the risk of further escapes (DI, NE, Local Authorities Coordinators Of Regulatory Services) 98

ECOS 29(1) 2008

These action points will eventually deliver useful information, but not today.

The journey still continues. This is just a comfort break. We have waited over 10 years and spent a small fortune just to be presented with a list of action points that were obvious from day one, when the first wild boar set down a liberated trotter on the outside of the fence.

Action and management needed now What is desperately needed today, and what should have been delivered, is advice that is essential to enable the boar to be managed, borrowing a quote from the Deer 99

ECOS 29(1) 2008 Initiative themselves, with “a humane, responsible and sensitive approach”.3 For example, advice on a close season to reduce the number of lactating sows with dependant piglets from being shot. Advice on which age class of animal to shoot, and how many, and how often, and of which sex, and at what time of the year?

Also, advice on how to shoot cleanly and safely without just maiming the pig or person - an injured wild boar is a very dangerous animal, an injured person very litageous. Furthermore, where is the awareness that wild boar groups are matriarchal and if the alpha female is shot, bang also goes group cohesion. More wild boars are therefore likely to turn up, in an excitable and unpredictable state, in unsuitable places as school playgrounds.

And that is where the truth behind the release of the action plan lies. Despite the considerable wait for the action plan, in the end it was hurriedly written and rushed out to placate parochial unrest in the Forest of Dean stemming from a wild boar straying onto a school playing field adjacent to the forest. And to silence a disgruntled Conservative MP who was using the wild boar to score political points.

As a result of the action plan stating “regional management to be most appropriate”, the Forestry Commission, particularly in the Forest of Dean, now has permission to start culling wild boar. Unfortunately it will be doing so with no idea as to what an acceptable or sustainable boar population level is. The wild boar reintroduced themselves into Britain through the back door, but they are now in danger of being eradicated by a government action plan using the same entrance.

However, the boar train does not recognise national boundaries. The action plan concerns only England, and there are feral wild boar populations in Wales and Scotland. I wonder if Defra has plans for a border patrol?

References 1.

Feral wild boar in England: An action plan. www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/vertebrates/pdf/feralwildboar.pdf. Accessed on-line 21 Feb 2008

2.

Defra and Wild boar. http://www.britishwildboar.org.uk/defra.html. Accessed on-line 21 Feb 2008

3.

The Deer Initiative Accord. www.thedeerinitiative.co.uk/pdf/deeracc.pdf. Accessed on-line 21 Feb 2008

Martin Goulding is author of Wild Boar in Britain and coordinates www.britishwildboar.org.uk

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Book Reviews

own photographs, and well produced

by Whittles Publishing in Caithness, the book provides a stimulating juxtaposition of photographs: predators devour prey alongside a butcher’s display, for example, and human and animal subjects are treated with equal skill, enhancing the narrative.

Cairns and Hamblin dive straight in with an opening chapter on wolves, the last big predator to be exterminated from our island. We are told that while 61% of UK teenagers think it important to have wolves in Europe, even more (87%) of Spanish teenagers, who already have the wolf in their country, think the same.

The authors next look at the conflict between the red grouse and the hen harrier, the country’s most persecuted raptor. Sea eagles and the island of Mull form the starting point for the next discussion, which takes us to the fjords of northern Norway to look at livelihoods from ecotourism, and cleverly relates this to the potential on Mull.

TOOTH AND CLAW Living alongside Britain’s predators Peter Cairns and Mark Hamblin Whittles Publishing, 2007 Hbk, £25, 235 pages, ISBN 9-781904-445463 www.toothandclaw.org.uk for special offer signed copies In this bold book, which I thoroughly recommend, wildlife photographers Peter Cairns and Mark Hamblin venture well out of their usual habitat to examine how we in Britain live alongside predators. The book complements the authors’ innovative Tooth & Claw website which has flourished for the past three years.

Beautifully illustrated by the authors’

In Pigeons, Peregrines and People, the book looks at how the peregrine was decimated by pesticides in the 1950s and 1960s, but the population has sprung back and the bird, so valued by birders, is now breeding in many of our cities. For many pigeon fanciers, though, this raptor is nothing but an enemy. Next, in Back from the Brink, the authors look at the changing mix of species in UK ecosystems. Pine martens, for example, have made a dramatic recovery, while translocations have restored red kites to England and Wales, but what has the revival of marten meant for red squirrels and goldeneye duck? The authors’ final comment is “Perhaps we've never had 101

ECOS 29(1) 2008 the ability to stand by and allow predator-prey dynamics to flourish.

Perhaps we never will”. That's what we should be examining in our own selves as we read this book.

HOW TO BE WILD Simon Barnes Short Books, 2007 Hbk, 282 pages, £14.99, ISBN 978-1-904977-97-1

Further chapters explore the plight of the Scottish wildcat (currently the subject of a survey by SNH to determine the population level), the conflicts between fishing and seals, and the situation for wolves, lynx and brown bear in mainland Europe - an encouraging story which might point to possibilities here in Britain. In the final chapter, the authors explore our relationship with nature, our need for this contact to be enhanced, and the magic draw which predators seem to exert on so many of us. The final section consists of ten pages of comment and opinion distilled from the Tooth and Claw website, with disparate viewpoints, ranging from 67% support for the reintroduction of lynx to 60% support for a legislative reduction in domestic cats.

I once saw Simon Barnes outside Liverpool Street Station, presumably on his way to cover a sporting event which he would describe with eloquence and efficiency as behoves the best of sportswriters. A bird of prey – a sparrowhawk or one of London’s pioneering peregrines – swept through the glassed and tarmaced space, a wild spirit interrupting one of our most ‘civilised’ places, the financial heart of the great city.

I wanted to grab Simon, spin him round and share the moment with him. But the bird, and the flash of wildness, was gone.

The authors’ premise is that meaningful discussion involving a wider public is the only way to solve these arguments. I agree with that sentiment, but recognise that humans are contrary by nature and the idea of getting everyone to agree is impossible. This book's importance, though, lies in laying out the arguments and allowing people to think, for the chapters draw no conclusions. After you’ve read it, get your allies and your protagonists to read it too and then let the debate commence… Talking and understanding is what Peter and Mark want you to do, and that is what nature needs.

Roy Dennis 102

The skill of a great writer is to share episodes like this with the many - beyond the converted few. Delightful chance events must be coloured with some deeper meaning and relevance, to engage and carry readers along.

Barnes does this in spades. He is no Mabey – his style is, unsurprisingly, journalistic. Not for him the rich and evocative prose that the “dragon man” Barnes’ fond reference to Mabey - uses to help us see and appreciate nature’s glory.

By and large Barnes lets nature and wildness do the talking; quite literally sometimes, as he (like Mabey) reminds us how the melodies of nightingales and the screams of swifts evoke something very wild and, paradoxically something very human too.

The book is a year-long journey - an annual pilgrimage to places (some close-by and revisited often, some far way) where Barnes experiences nature up close and personal. They are wild experiences, not because they are exotic, dangerous, unique

ECOS 29(1) 2008 or peerless, but because they are potentially everyday and commonplace – if you are wild. And this is the central point to Barnes’ thesis. We are all increasingly naturedeprived and we will lose something of what it is to be human unless we touch-base with the wild, unless we make sure that parts of us and parts of the places we inhabit remain “unfucked” (a powerful and beautifully appropriate word when one considers the connotations with Eden, which Barnes himself alludes too when describing his beloved Luangwa Valley in Zambia).

Barnes is not the first to articulate how to be wild. So is Barnes just Mabeylite? Is How to be Wild the palliative, Nature Cure the complete remedy? I think not. The title, and its strapline ‘We are all wild. It’s just that civilisation keeps getting in the way’, had bugged me from the outset. It smacked of populism. The opening paragraphs, a description of the delights of Luangwa Valley with its inevitable elephants and lions, seemed to have been culled from an in-flight airline magazine. Yet, deftly, Barnes moves from apparently hackneyed scenarios to images and events which purposefully exalt the seemingly mundane. For he is not writing for those of us who think we are wild, his mission is greater, to communicate to the many.

As befits a journalist, Barnes’ book focuses on the human story. It is shot through with humanity: walking, talking, drinking, enjoying life with family, friends and fellow-travellers. Barnes tells us he is writing the book “To remind us all to keep things open: eyes, ears, hearts, minds. And souls, I suppose”. We all need reminding, often. This book jogs the memory well.

Peter Massini

GALLOWAY AND THE BORDERS Derek Ratcliffe The New Naturalist Library, Collins 2007 Hardback £45.00, ISBN-10 0-00-717402-0 Pbk, ISBN-10 0-00-717401-2 Hbk Galloway and the Borders was Derek Ratcliffe's last book – it was at proof stage when he died suddenly in 2005. It gives a kind of unity to his life, because it was as a young man that Ratcliffe left his parents’ house in Carlisle and caught a train to New Galloway to explore the "wide panorama of lonely uplands" at the beginning of a distinguished career. In this book he revisits the places that made him the finest British field naturalist of his (or any previous) generation.

Yet, Galloway and the Borders is permeated by sadness for another reason. Sixty years on, the landscape that greeted Ratcliffe in 1946 has been almost completely altered by forestry and stands poised to vanish under yet more developments. The high wide Southern Uplands are a magnet to environmentally sanctioned wind turbines, and skylines that once framed only clouds will soon be lined with giant turbines in an array of infrastructure which some call 'farms', each with a scarring access road to reinforce the impact. As if to underline this depressing future, which is a futile response to climate change, the cover design shows how those hills might have looked in the 40s, executed in a retro artistic style.

The New Naturalist Library remains devoted to a great principle: “… to interest the general reader in the wildlife of Britain by recapturing the 103

ECOS 29(1) 2008 enquiring spirit of the old naturalists.”

It reeks of Post War ambition, the various national ‘Councils’ established from 1945 onwards to promote knowledge and excellence in areas such as the arts and sciences, their origins embedded in the nascent Welfare State. How much longer this epic series can continue to follow this path is a nice point on which to reflect.

One hopes that its spirit will survive especially in the form in which Ratcliffe embodied it. A formidable scientist, he wrote for the ‘general reader’ without effort.

There are no scientific names in the text and the complexities of ecology are rendered with ease – simply but never simplistically. Chapters run through the geological facts and zoological history of the region, to present-day ecology, commenting on the various ecotypes and illustrating points with measured observations. Ratcliffe was scrupulous in acknowledging the work of others, and he cites many amateurs side by side with renowned field workers, not least himself. What binds the text together is a passion for the whole: mountains, woodlands, rivers and lakes, and the creatures which inhabit them, one continuum of dependent observation. As with nearly all his written work, Derek Ratcliffe wrote as a thoughtful, feeling individual. What emerges is a loving portrait of this ‘Cinderella’ region, full of unexpected glories. He was blessed with a largeness of spirit which infuses the text, and for this reason I will treasure this book.

In his wonderful biography, In Search of Nature, Derek Ratcliffe sidestepped the chance to summarise the struggles that marked his career as Chief 104

Scientist to the Nature Conservancy Council, particularly mustering resistance to upland afforestation. This omission disappointed some. However, the book’s penultimate chapter ('The Crusade for more Forests') goes into the subject as fully as the law will allow. For the first time in print he makes it plain that it was leading personalities inside the Scottish Nature Conservancy Council’s Advisory Committee who successfully sought to oppose his scientifically reasoned objections to the pell-mell spread of forestry in the uplands. It may be too late now to demand explanations for this betrayal, but as Galloway and the Borders will serve to demonstrate to those with eyes to see, the losses incurred are sharp and enduring.

Des Thompson's gracious foreword tribute to Derek Ratcliffe begins aptly with a quote from George Orwell about the essence of good prose writing.

Ratcliffe was not simply a great field naturalist but a man who came back from walking the "lonely uplands" and memorably told us how that felt.

Barry Larking SEA CHANGE - Britain's coastal catastrophe Richard Girling 2007, Eden Project Books Hbk, 353 pages, £16.99, ISBN 978-91903919774 I grew up in the 50s and 60s on the south coast, overlooking the Solent towards Cowes, and across Southampton Water to Fawley oil refinery. I jumped off wooden breakwaters, dodged floating “jobbies” from sewage outfalls, cleaned off beach tar with eucalyptus oil; and cursed the wake from cross-channel

ECOS 29(1) 2008 ferries that scooped up sandals and towels. We lived out our summer days on the beach, taking picnics of cold potatoes, drenched in salad cream, and sealed in a screw top jar. My mum would show us where the horned poppy, seakale and sea holly grew in the shingle. In my teens, sailing would open up the Solent’s many beaches and harbours to me, and a naughty pleasure during long summer evenings was to rush home from school and sail the five miles over to Cowes for a drink at the Folly Inn. In Sea Change, Girling has written an account of our recent coastal history that revived these childhood memories and put into context the changes that have happened since. The tar and faeces in the Solent have gone, as has the speeding of ferries. So too though has the last remnant of natural coastline where I lived, lost to a linking up of the concreted promenade.

As befits his trade, Girling takes a journalistic approach, painting his arguments using the words and human characters that make up the theatre of his observations. There are no references in what is otherwise a textbook-like thoroughness, but which is always an easy read. While there is an index, I wish he had included a more detailed contents that would refer to all the different aspects of our relationship with the sea and its coastline that he covers. Thus a snapshot is coastal defence through Shoreline Management Plans that comes in a chapter entitled ‘The Monstrous Deep’, coastal erosion in the chapter ‘Over the Edge’, fisheries and quotas in ‘The Final Harvest’, salmon farming in ‘On the Ranch’, pollution from oil and rubbish in ‘Dishing the Dirt’, and port development – in particular, an account of the refusal at Dibden Bay on Southampton Water – in the chapter ‘No Exits’.

The most poignant of his chapter headings befits the overwhelming message that comes through in this book.

On marine conservation, he takes his heading from a summary of responses to the Marine Bill consultation in 2006. A voluntary scheme to protect the Overfalls, a gravely underwater sandbank in the Solent, is judged to be of limited success because of ‘Inadequate Stakeholder Consensus’ amongst sand and gravel dredgers. He adds to this sorry story by recounting the failure in practice of the voluntary no-trawl zones for scallop dredgers in Lyme Bay, in spite of endless negotiation, and the failure of the voluntary no-take zones for crab and lobster fisherman on the St Agnes coast in Cornwall because of their resolute ignoring by just one commercial fisherman. I would add in myself the voting down by local fishing interests of the statutory no-take zone in the Skomer Island Marine Nature Reserve.

Girling is right when he says that “We are, as a species, conspicuously bad at accepting responsibility for our actions”.

What he reveals is the fallibility of people.

His refrain is that Government departments act with all the speed of a nerve impulse travelling from the brain to the tail of a diplodocus; that vested commercial interest is implacable; that the feted ecosystem approach is undermined by an over-emphasis on resource use; and that the triumvirate of sustainable development in giving equal priority to environmental as well as social and economic interests is a wicked illusion. Don’t be put off by this since we get nowhere if we are not honest with ourselves, and Girling gives it to us in a straight, entertaining and informative way. He recognises in an Afterword that topical issues move on quickly, meaning that there is always hope. He would be 105

ECOS 29(1) 2008 pleased that the Marine Bill now has potential and that in 2007 Defra announced a blueprint to help to deliver improved protection for people and property from coastal flooding and erosion.

Mark Fisher GREEN LETTERS Association for the Study of Literature & Environment nr. 7 (2006) & nr. 8 (2007), 52 & 44 pp., £3 to UK non-members of ASLE ISSN 1468-8417, John.Parham@tvu.ac.uk Originating in the USA, ASLE has grown several branches. Green letters is the small refereed journal of ASLE-UK. Refereeing in this corner of Academe is apparently a mild process, a benefit being that these papers are readable by the layman.

Both numbers contain material relevant to this issue of Ecos. Nr. 7 has articles reflecting on what ecocriticism is for, posing questions for its theorists, drawing lessons from nineteenth century philosopher Schopenhauer, and discussing ‘literary Darwinism’. Nr. 8 presents an interview with poet Jeremy Hooker, a response to the ‘What is ecocriticism for?’ paper, (eco) critical comments on a performance of ‘The Tempest’, and observations on the relationships between the arts and consumerism. There are also reviews.

Terry Gifford’s ‘What is ecocriticism for?’ is a stimulating but too brief article. He sees here some potential for “changing our behaviours” and promoting activism; but he also shows signs of frustration at the limited impact to date. David Ingram takes a look at conflicts between arts and 106

consumerism – in particular the environmental impact of the creation and dissemination of music, but his comments relate readily to the inspiring, making, marketing, and consumption of nature writing.

Michael Cohen’s ‘questions for ecocritical theory’ are largely concerned with the relationship between authors’ and critics’ understanding and usage of scientific concepts. He asks: “Are there usable boundaries between Nature Writing and Nature? Or shall we slide easily back and forth across what has been conceived of as the Nature / Culture divide? I hear many of my colleagues treating literary fictions as if they represented biological data.” And again: “Do poets, nonfiction prose writers, novelists and scientists see these boundaries in the same ways?”...”Why do we not consider... scientists (e.g. Gould, E.O. Wilson, Chomsky) to be Nature Writers?”, and “Is Global Warming a subject for nature writing?”. Indeed. One of his suggestions for what ecocritics need to do surely has quite wide relevance: “Talk to more than ourselves about more than ourselves.” Indeed!

Martin Spray EARTH SHATTERING. Ecopoems Neil Astley, editor Bloodaxe Books, 2007 Pbk, 256 pages, £9.99, ISBN 978-1-85224-774-4 “It was alright till the poetry....” Someone had enjoyed the conservation meeting until... it stopped being serious? it didn’t make any sense? it became embarrassing? It is sometimes difficult to understand how poetry has survived into our era of newspeak, professional

ECOS 29(1) 2008 superjargon, and the ‘processing’ of words. But it has. In fact, there is quite a lot of it around, though very often sitting shyly at the far end of the bookshelf, or being intoned to a select group in the pub’s back-room once a month. Poetry publishing in Britain seems to be fairly healthy: at least, there are innumerable d-i-y. magazines and small books, plenty of websites, and regular catalogues from publishing houses. One of the betterknown, specialist, high quality, publishers is Bloodaxe. One of Bloodaxe’s recent issues is (if you like this sort of thing) full of green goodness.

Green, much of it, in a poetic sense, of course: the cover of Earth shattering carries a still from The day after tomorrow – the water is flooding through the city; the people are fleeing. Earth shattering is a selection of so-called ecopoetry, which is explained as going beyond – to a wider horizon – traditional ‘nature poetry’, to face the global environmental problems we make. Compared with our ‘common knowledge’ of the problems, “when it comes to solutions, much environmentalist literature – although passionate, informed, and utterly convincing on environmental problems – subsides into rather insipid discussion about values, to the effect that if we only changed our hearts a little and loved the planet and each other all would be well. The crudeness of this approach lies in its inability to examine how such values came to be adopted in the first place – why we feel as we do about our surroundings.” This is not from Astley’s anthology (which is claimed as the first covering ecopoetry’s full range), but from Beneath the wide, wide heaven (Sara Dunn with Alan Scholefield, eds., Virago,1991, and as wide-ranging as Earth shattering...).

Such poetry has a long history: Astley goes back to the ancient Chinese.

Although much is straight celebration

and admiration of Nature and its parts, much of it – and not only from recent years – is expressing the sadness, anger, and love felt in the face of human interference with and degradation of that Nature. Examples seem to be found in the songs and writings of all societies, from all times. Although examples of feelings against nature can be found, also, the claim that poetry is especially good at explaining how we feel about the loss, and why we feel as we do, seems supported in this collection. That said, most of the poems I’ve so far sampled are fairly gentle, perhaps non-committal, or tangential, as regards elucidating why our feelings are as they are.

The book is structured predictably, with sections including Rooted in nature, Killing the wildlife, Pollution, The great web, Natural disasters. There are cameos of each poet; also extracts from the prose of major environmentalists such as Leopold and Lovelock, poets include the expected likes of Wordsworth and Clare, Snyder and Whitman, Li Po, Du Fu and Wang Wei, and a host of the less famous, to be systematically read or randomly dipped into. Two dippings: Dana Giola ‘Becoming a redwood’ Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds start up again. The crickets, the invisible toad who claims that change is possible, and all the other life too small to name.

Kofi Awoonor At home the sea is in the town, Running in and out of the cooking places, Collecting the firewood from the hearths And sending it back at night; The editor’s introductory essay is a clear, lively, and not overburdened, look at ecopoetry and ecocriticism, and 107

ECOS 29(1) 2008 what he sees as the role of his book (he is also the publisher). Partly, it is to show the progression from earlier writing which was descriptive or egocentric to that of our current ecological awareness. Poetry is just one – but one rather neglected means of spreading that awareness, experienced emotionally as well as intellectually. At present, these represent two ‘camps’.

Some more interaction between them, and much more mutual support, would be welcome. Both could usefully do as Mario Petrucci suggests: Take our words. Enrich them. They are already active – but enrich them.”

Martin Spray MANAGEMENT PLANNING FOR NATURE CONSERVATION A Theoretical Basis & Practical Guide Mike Alexander Springer Science, 2008 Pbk, xviii + 425 pages, £29.50, ISBN 978-1-4020-6580-4 Management planning is probably not the favourite activity of nature reserve site managers. Indeed, before the late 1980s and early 1990s few nature reserves had management plans and it was only really the publication of a guide by the Nature Conservancy Council that started to change things. Site managers had demanding jobs and little time to spend drawing up plans. They were probably also not by their very nature the sort of people who would enjoy sitting in an office writing a plan.

The NCC guide, amounting to 40 pages, is still in use and there has been surprisingly little done to change the format it promotes. However, Mike Alexander’s considerably more substantial 108

new book will challenge site managers and conservation organisations to produce modern, improved plans that will actually be used. Unfortunately many old plans were probably only written to ‘tick boxes’ or satisfy grant aiding bodies.

Mike Alexander is aware that many plans fail to be implemented and he sets out some reasons why this may be, such as lack of corporate support. He emphasises the need for site managers to be the planners, but do they think the process is worthwhile? Probably not, in many cases, so perhaps there is a need to convince site managers otherwise.

Provided that organisations commit themselves to continuity of management, site managers can influence the future management of the sites they have often devoted a large part of their lives to, through management plans.

Mike’s book is written for “students and practitioners” in “plain and uncomplicated language”. In addition to a detailed guide to the writing of management plans, the book contains some valuable thoughts on nature conservation. There is even a useful chapter on the ethics of conservation management. I particularly liked the idea of a concise ‘vision’ for a site.

Performance indicators and measurement of outcomes are relatively new ideas in nature conservation, but figure prominently in the book. It is certainly true that many old plans just contained vague objectives such as ‘maintain and enhance the nature conservation interest of the site’, whatever that meant. Conservation managers need to be able to know what they are trying to achieve and whether they are succeeding. My concern is that the

ECOS 29(1) 2008 desire for success or failure through SMART targets can be taken too far. Few site managers are likely to be lucky enough to have much time and resources for monitoring. Some of the examples given by Mike, such as the detailed measurement of canopy gap creation in woodlands, are therefore only at best aspirational in my view.

Furthermore, failure to achieve targets in the stated timescale may result in early and unnecessary intervention.

I was surprised to see that although Mike rightly states that ‘small is beautiful’ when it comes to plans, one edited example he gives for a ‘small uncomplicated site’, is still 29 pages long. I was also disappointed to see little reference to maps in the book and none shown in the examples. Maps are surely a vitally important feature of any management plan and that needs to be made clear.

Notwithstanding my quibbles, this book will undoubtedly be essential reading for conservation planners.

Michael Jeeves THE ROAD Cormac McCarthy Picardor, 2006 Pbk, 307 pages, £7.99 ISBN 978-03300-44754-6 THE WORLD WITHOUT US Alan Wiseman Thomas Dunne Books, 2007 Pbk, 324 page, ISBN: 978-03123-4729-1 These two books approach the topic of the earth under stress, and the implications for humanity and nature in very different ways. The Road is a novel

by Cormac Macarthy that imagines a

post apocalyptic world where humans are the only species left. The World Without Us is a popular science book by Alan Weisman that examines the impact of man on nature and hypothesises about the time needed for nature to reclaim the planet once we are gone.

The Road is powerful and gripping. It follows a father and his young son as they struggle to survive in a world without an environment capable of sustaining them. In the novel everything is either dead or dying and humans are the only species left to roam the earth. It is unlikely that humans would be the most robust species on earth and the only able to survive a nuclear Armageddon, but the imagery conjured up by the descriptions of this desolate environment is vivid and shocking.

Although the relationship between father and son takes centre stage, the lifeless world around them helps intensify it: “The road crossed a dried slough where pipes of ice stood out of the frozen mud like formations in a cave. The remains of an old fire by the side of the road. Beyond that a long concrete causeway. A dead swamp. Dead trees standing out of the gray water trailing gray and relic hagmoss. The silky spills of ash against the curbing. He stood leaning on the gritty concrete rail. Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains.

The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence.”

The reactions of the father and son to their predicament need a different moral code to that of a civilised word. The tortured planet is only inhabited by other menacing bands of malnourished humans all trudging the land trying to find food 109

ECOS 29(1) 2008 supplies from anywhere thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not been looted. The novel explores the reaction of people to a broken society without law, order or even food production. The outcome is frequently unpleasant.

Although bleak and intense, the story is so well crafted that even at its darkest points it is difficult to put down. The relationship between father and son carries the book and is both believable and genuinely emotional. Despite the tense narrative and harsh subject matter, ultimately the book is about hope and perseverance.

The World Without Us flips the premise of The Road on its head. It highlights not just the fragility of nature but the tenuous hold humans have on the planet - such as the ephemeral nature of modern buildings. The beginning of the book looks at the constant maintenance required to keep nature at bay. It notes, for example, that New York would flood in a matter of months without a dedicated band of workers manually clearing the sewerage system of plastic bags.

The book is filled with interesting facts and comments, but it lacks structure and flits between topics, locations and timescales. Chapter introductions seem like padding rather than build up, so if you are impatient like me, this will further frustrate you. I suspect there are other books out there now, and likely in the future, that manage the subject in a less scrabbled and ultimately more compelling way.

Despite my gripes, this book has enjoyable and thought-provoking moments. One of the best chapters features the overkill theory of North American mega fauna extinction. It suggests that our ancestors killed giant 110

sloths and mammoths as they ventured across from Africa. African mammals managed to avoid this fate as they coevolved alongside humans as they developed tools, and thus evolved defence mechanisms in response (not unlike the competitive advantage of many alien species in novel environments). This is backed up by extinction patterns in fossil records where giant sloths appear to have lasted longer on islands like Cuba, until they were eventually colonised by human ancestors. This chapter ponders whether, without us, diverse large mammalian species may evolve to repopulate North America. However no real thought is given to the niches that will emerge or to what species will most likely speciate to fill them.

If the theories are true then the human race or its ancestors have always been a significant factor in the extinction of other species. This realisation makes me feel that there is inevitability about our future and makes our continued mistakes more understandable - if no less forgivable. Like the characters in The Road, I still have hope that we can live in ways more in tune with our environment by ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to engage first hand with nature. After all, in a world without us who would be around to appreciate the wonders that have taken millennia to evolve?

Ralph Underhill

ECOS 29(1) 2008

BANC events in 2008 Wild Ideas Challenging nature conservation 9 July 2008 10.00am – 4.30pm Coin Street Centre, South Bank, London, SE1 9NH – A conference to explore new thinking in nature conservation – A mix of talks, workshops and debate – A day to hear new ideas and to brainstorm your own Themes for the day include: • Breaking the mould – conventions in conservation that affect us all, but which are starting to be challenged.

• Wild ideas today – cutting edge issues happening now. How have they emerged and what are their implications?

• Wild ideas tomorrow – what ideas are on the horizon and how will they shape conservation in the future? Plus a chance for participants to brainstorm and consider their own wild ideas.

Key issues and outcomes from the event will be taken forward on the BANC web site and in ECOS. Programme and booking details at www.banc.org.uk

BANC Away day and AGM 11 October 2008 BANC’s annual visit to an innovative project in conservation...

A chance for members to meet up for the day, and we’ll even fit in an AGM! Details soon on www.banc.org.uk

111

ECOS 29(1) 2008

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Up to date prices and order forms for back copies are available at www.banc.org.uk. � 28 (3/4) Climate Change adaptation – helping nature cope � 28(2) Nature’s Id � 28(1) Loving Nature? � 27(3/4) Accepting the wild? � 27(2) Shores and seas – the push for protection � 27(1) Species reintroductions � 26(3/4) Aliens in control � 26(2) Carbon, conservation and renewables � 26(1) The extinction of outdoor experience � 25(3/4) Wilder landscapes, wilder lives? � 25(2) Superquarry finale & last chance for the countryside � 25(1) Wild boar and wild land � 24(3/4) Extinction of Experience � 24(2) Urban greening � 24(1) Nature conservation – Who cares? � 23(3/4) Citizen Science � 23(2) Reintroductions and aliens � 23(1) Land reform � 22(3/4) Nature in the neighbourhood � 22(2) Foot and mouth and the future landscape � 22(1) Foot and mouth fallout, and thinking big in conservation ECOS & BANC - keep in touch on the web BANC’s web site offers a chance to…

• Follow up the debate in ECOS between issues • Link to current news in conservation as it breaks • Learn about new initiatives and campaigns We look forward to seeing you at www.banc.org.uk

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ecos a review of conservation

Volume 29

Editorial 1. The missionary position. Martin Spray and Geoffrey Wain Themed articles – Walking the talk in conservation 2. The force of nature – a BANC investigation. James Robertson 10. Obfuscation and the language of nature conservation Matthew Oates 19. Nature by proxy. Thoughts on nature writing. Martin Spray 30. Conservation at the key board. Can we blog a better environment? Mark Fisher, Alison Parfitt, Mathew Frith 39. The nature of natural – a journey of discovery.

John Barkham and Martin Spray 61. Wild walking on the East Coast. Jules Pretty 68. Starting fires without matches. Gavin Saunders Feature articles 74. Protected Landscapes – sleeping giants of English biodiversity Mark Robins 87. The estate we’re in. Mathew Frith 98. The wild boar action plan - shooting in the dark? Martin Goulding

cos

Issue No 1

CONTENTS

101. Book Reviews

2008 British Association of Nature Conservationists ©ISSN 0143-9073 Typesetting/Artwork by Featherstone Design Cheltenham.

Printed by Severnprint Ltd, Gloucester