Nature Conservation. Peter Marren

– the peat industry or the voluntary bodies?

      It was English Nature’s misfortune to be seen to be less than zealous when an issue became headlines, such as the Newbury bypass (p. 217) or the great newt translocation at Orton brick-pits (p. 207). Of course, as a government body EN had to be careful when an issue became politically sensitive, but on such battlegrounds it was easy to see it as ‘the Government’ and bodies like the WWF or Friends of the Earth as the opposition; it contributed to the tense relationship between the agencies and the voluntary bodies at this time. The year 1997 was a particularly difficult one for English Nature. It failed to apply for a ‘stop order’ at Offham Down until prodded by its parent department (pp. 96-7). It wanted to denotify parts of Thorne and Hatfield Moors which would clearly enable the peat producers to market their product more widely. This ill-timed decision led to an embarrassing public meeting at Thorne, when chief executive Langslow was all but booed off the stage, followed by an enforced U-turn after the minister politely advised English Nature to think again. EN’s latest strategy, ‘Beyond 2000’, was ill-received, despite its clumsy attempts to involve the voluntary bodies with questions like ‘How can we improve our measurement of EN’s contribution to overall wildlife gain’ (uh?). On top of all that, in November WWF published a hostile critique of English Nature, A Muzzled Watchdog?, based on a longer report on all three agencies I had written for them. It was not so much what it had to say as the unwonted sight of one conservation body publicly attacking another that attracted attention. EN’s refusal to comment, apart from some mutterings about ‘inaccuracies’, did not help its case.

      And then, suddenly, all was sunshine again. New Labour had made a manifesto commitment to increase the protection of wildlife. It also lent a more friendly ear to the voluntary bodies, especially those with upwards of a hundred thousand members. English Nature’s first chairman, the cautious and politically acute Lord Cranbrook, reached the end of his term and was replaced by the leftish-inclined late head of RSPB, Barbara Young, who also held a government job in the House of Lords. Council included more credible members. Parliament, investigating the work of English Nature and inviting voluntary bodies to participate as witnesses, kindly concluded that any lack of zealotry on the part of EN must have been due to insufficient money, and so increased its budget.

      Thorne Moors SSSI was a bone of contention in the 1990s between English Nature, which sought a compromise deal with the developers, and campaigners who wanted to stop peat extraction altogether. (Peter Roworth/English Nature)

      A fresh breeze. Barbara Young (Baroness Young of Old Scone), chairman of English Nature 1998-2000. (English Nature/ Paul Lacey)

      A friendlier minister and a more supportive social climate seem to have increased English Nature’s confidence. Opposing harmful developments is back on the agenda. It dared to criticise the Government line on Genetically Modified Organisms. One particular case summed up the change in attitude. In 1999 EN prevented a proposal to tip ball-clay waste at Brocks Farm SSSI in Devon, having turned down the owner’s offer to ‘translocate’ the grassland habitat. ‘The first prerequisite for protecting an SSSI is to leave it as it is,’ said EN’s spokesman. Both the crispness of the language and the conviction behind it seemed a world away from the rather hapless appearance English Nature had created a few years earlier.

       Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH)

      Headquarters: 12 Hope Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 2AS

      Mission: ‘Working with Scotland’s people to care for our natural heritage’.

      In 1992, Malcolm Rifkind, Secretary of State for Scotland, told his newly established natural heritage body that if it was not ‘a thorn in his flesh from time to time’ then it would not be doing its job properly. It was expected, however, to ‘work with Scotland’s people’ more successfully than its predecessor, which meant not running too far ahead of public opinion. Scottish Natural Heritage was set up by Act of Parliament in 1992. It combined the functions of the old NCC in Scotland and the Countryside Commission for Scotland, a disproportionately small body compared with England’s Countryside Commission (for Scotland had no National Parks), responsible for footpaths and non-statutory ‘National Scenic Areas’. ‘SNH’ was given a generous first-year budget of £34.6 million and inherited a combined staff of about 530. Its chairman, the television personality Magnus Magnusson, was an unashamed populist and ‘aggressive moderate’, professing to dislike ‘the harsh voice of single-minded pressure groups’ quite as much as ‘the honeyed tones of the developer’. The new chief executive, Roger Crofts, came fresh from the Scottish Office, as did two of his senior directors.

      Although the nature conservation responsibilities of SNH were similar to its predecessor – new legislation had not changed the statutory instruments in Scotland, which were still SSSIs – the ground rules were different. SNH’s founding statute emphasised the magic word ‘sustainable’ for the first time in British law, although exactly what was meant by the duty of ‘having regard to the desirability of securing that anything done, whether by SNH or any other person (sic) in relation to the natural heritage of Scotland, is undertaken in a manner which is sustainable’ – is open to interpretation! It was plainly ridiculous to make sustainability a duty of a minor government agency but not of the Government itself (‘like giving a wee boy a man’s job’). SNH put on record its view that sustainable development in Scotland required serious changes in government policy and the way public money was spent. But it, like English Nature, also espoused a corporate ethos that sought consensus and partnership, which inevitably means doing things more slowly. Confrontation was the policy of the bad old days.

      Des Thompson, SNH’s senior ornithologist, surveying Flow Country patterned bogs by the Thurso River in Caithness. (Derek Ratcliffe)

      The second ground rule was accountability. To give at least the semblance of bringing SNH ‘closer to its constituents’, it was organised into four local boards, each with its own budget, work programme, and salaried board members, and responsible for three or more area ‘teams’. Predictably enough, the regional boards proved expensive to run, sowed wasteful bureaucracy and duplication of effort, and set one local ‘power base’ against another. They were abandoned in 1997, and replaced by a new structure with 11 ‘areas’ overseen by three ‘Area Boards’. This was SNH’s third administrative upheaval in five years.

      Another significant change was what the former NCC’s Scottish director Morton Boyd called ‘the fall of science’. The minister in charge of environmental affairs at the Scottish Office was Sir Hector Monro (now Lord Monro of Langholm). He had served on the NCC’s Council ‘and had grown to dislike scientists’ (Boyd 1999). The role of science must be advisory, he insisted, and should not be used as the basis of policy. Hence SNH’s top scientist, Michael B. Usher, was not the ‘Chief Scientist’, as before, but the ‘Chief Scientific Adviser’, and he was eventually excluded from SNH’s main management team. Nor were SNH’s local boards particularly rich in scientific experience. The scientists sat on a separate research board under Professor George Dunnet, later named the Scientific Advisory Committee. It was rich in IQs but poor in influence, and, fed up with being repeatedly ignored, Dunnet resigned in 1995. As Boyd commented, the standing of scientists is not what it once was. Not only were they held responsible for the disputes that had made the NCC unpopular in Scotland, scientists were also seen as an unacceptable ‘élite’. The new approach had to be ‘people-led’.

      Humility? The NCC’s scientific advisory committee dwarfed by the great beeches of the New Forest. (Derek Ratcliffe)

      With the Scottish Office breathing down its neck, landowners