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The revisionism of the conservation industry – expanding the noosphere in Britain |
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I have
remarked before about the revisionism that characterises the conservation
industry when it comes to justifying and aggrandising their management
practice (1). Then there is their devaluation of words like “rare”
and “precious” through a misuse by association with their
irrational preferences, the choices of their dogma (2). I was thus wary in
approaching the consultation on a “light touch” review of the Guidelines
for the Selection of Biological Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)
for fear that the revision would add further evidence of a shifting
baseline, exemplified throughout our cultural history and in our
conservation philosophy, in what we are expected to believe is the state
of wild nature in Britain. The auguries were not good when attention was
drawn
to
areas of the revised Guidelines where more substantive changes had been
made. Here is the one that disturbed me (3):
The
Guidelines currently in use date from 1989, and
have
interest as an historical document in seeing how thinking has changed in
the last 20 years (4,5). In that document, there are two references to
natural habitats, none to near-natural, with the rest being references to
semi-natural habitats. Thus putting an emphasis on near-natural in the
rewrite, and using it in the same breath as semi-natural, demands scrutiny
for its intention. Near and semi are paired six times in the revision,
once in combination with natural, which itself has two further instances
on its own, and three with semi-natural (6). A definition of near-natural
is given in the revision:
There is,
however, no overt definition given for natural or semi-natural.
Confusingly, near-natural is lumped in with semi-natural in terms of an
experiential quality of wildness, in a sentence that appears to contradict
the assertion above of the essentially unmodified nature of near-natural
habitats:
Near-natural
is lumped in again with semi-natural in a consideration of their combined
extent in Britain: How much near-natural is there? The revision remarks that there is a wide variation in the distribution and abundance of these two habitats across Britain, with the greater part being in the upland districts of Wales, northern England and Scotland. While there are some examples given in the definition above of what may distinguish a near-natural from a semi- natural habitat, the revision itself does not venture to put a figure on what may be the extent of near-natural habitat alone. DEFRA recognises that no more than 2.5% of the UK is above a tree-line in those high mountain tops in the uplands, and where trees would not naturally grow (7). This rules out much of the rest of the uplands as being near-natural, as it is a landscape denuded of trees. Thus while it may be dominated by native species, it must be considered to be semi-natural as the true potential natural vegetation is not expressed. To that naturally tree-less area above the tree-line can be added the naturally waterlogged wetland areas, the rocky outcrop or cliff face, some substantial intertidal areas plus areas of natural maritime grassland with high coastal exposure. All these are where trees would also not thrive, and where the true potential natural vegetation is likely to be expressed. However, the rest of our land area would be woodland of varying character. That we have only 2% of Britain with a cover of ancient woodland, and not all of that is comprised of native species, shows the extent of the loss of species through cultural modification, and the simplified ecologies that we have been left with.
There is a
sleight of hand going on here, an elision of boundaries between
definitions, a running together of meanings. It comes from a shift away in
the revision from some essential honesties that appear in the earlier
version. Thus in 1989, an explanation of the high nature conservation
value given to certain habitats described as "man-made", such as both
lowland and upland grasslands and heather moorland, is because they are
seen as being on a continuum of variation in naturalness, and thus
representative of their point on the continuum. They are not lumped
together as in the revision. Moreover, in listing
examples of
habitats in the UK that are highly localised in Europe, the existing
guidance is decidedly frank about the origins of heaths (5):
A
plagioclimax is where human
impact (anthropogenic) has prevented the ecosystem
from developing further into the later stages of vegetation (potential
natural vegetation) as is the case for heath. However, in the revision,
the overt anthropogenic origin of the heathland plagioclimax has gone, but
there is a nod to its reality (6): Human control and the noosphere
Conservation
grazing with domesticated livestock has of course become the essential
element of heathland management, a supreme representation of the human
impact that is evidence of the noosphere, as is argued by Dr Peter
Rhind, a coastal ecologist working for the Countryside
Council for Wales (CCW). Peter and I corresponded in
2004, when our shared concern about the interventionist approach of the
conservation industry led us to consider setting up a campaign group.
Peter set out his stall in an article in British Wildlife (8). He invoked
the noosphere, a term coined by the Russian Vernadsky in 1945 to
describe the pervasive and ever-widening sphere of influence of the human
mind (noos is derived from the Greek for mind). Vernadsky predicted
that eventually all aspects of the biosphere would come under that
influence, as the last of many stages in its evolution. Peter explained: Peter pointed to the system of SSSIs containing elements of noosphere expansion, because it requires that control mechanisms through management intervention are put in place to prevent any natural development that may alter the species composition of the SSSIs, such that they are frozen in time. What we need, he wrote, is a more flexible system of conservation, with legislation that not only protects sites of conservation interest, but also incorporates the legal mechanisms for allowing unhindered natural succession to take place. He argued that one of our primary conservation objectives should thus be to reduce Britain’s noosphere and to regain an element of wildness. (I have given before examples of a few areas of non-intervention where succession is taking place, and which are not protected as such under our current legislation (9))
The
noosphere is being expanded in Britain every day by the conservation
industry. I came across a typical example when researching the plan to
fence off and graze Padworth Common after I was contacted by one of the
objectors to the scheme (10). Here is the classic heathland horror story:
Padworth is a heath-dominated registered common, owned by West Berkshire
Council, which designated it a local nature reserve in 2005 (11). It’s a
popular and well used spot for walking and riding. However, the Council
succumbed in 2008 to the lure of filling their boots with the agri-environmental
stewardship funding of the Higher Level Scheme (HLS). As a heathland site,
the signing up to a grazing option from the menu of HLS funding was
inevitable, and so it is no surprise that the HLS agreement for Padworth
foresaw the enfencing of the Common (12):
The first
application by the Council to enfence the common in April 2010 was
eventually withdrawn after significant opposition led the Planning
Inspectorate to conclude that a Public Inquiry would be needed to consider
the application (13). The Council, even after revising some of its
proposals, obviously lacked confidence that it would have been able to
address the particular points about access from the objectors, nor show
that it had sufficiently consulted with local people. On the latter, there
is a telling section in one of the letters of objection sent to the
Planning Inspectorate, from Adeliza Cooper (14): The Council embarked on a “period of informal consultation” which turned out to be just one “user group and residents meeting” before submitting a second application last September (15). The second application has also attracted a large number of objections - about 120, and including the Open Spaces Society (16) - so that the Planning Inspectorate again intend to hold a Public Inquiry. Bending the natural reality
There are
assertions in the fencing and grazing proposal, written by Sara
McWilliams, a Countryside Ranger with West Berkshire Council, which should
be challenged at that Inquiry, since they are definitely expanding the
noosphere in their bending of the natural reality. Here is one
(17):
This is
unsupported nonsense, as can easily be demonstrated by anyone who makes
the slightest effort to discover the truth in the examples from each
continent of the globe that follow. In
the particular case of lowland heathlands, a recent systematic review of
the evidence in Britain of the relative impacts of grazing compared to alternative
management interventions came to the conclusion that grazing can drive out
heath and turn into grassland, and that some heathland managers might be
reluctant to admit that (18). Moreover, it was the belief of heathland
managers, elicited using a questionnaire, that negative impacts of grazing
on some habitat attributes are widespread. Thus declines in the vertical
structure of ericaceous shrubs, gorse cover and abundance of grass
tussocks, are likely to be deleterious to reptiles. Similarly, the
reported declines in the abundance of tree species, cover of ericaceous
shrubs and abundance of grass tussocks are likely to have negative impacts
on invertebrate communities, whereas the declines in gorse cover and
vertical structure are likely to have negative impacts on some bird
species, such as Dartford warbler and linnet. As the authors noted, while
there was a relatively large literature on the topic, it did not yield
much that was conclusive in the way of supporting the virtue of grazing: Moving further afield, a recent study in Spain showed a negative relationship between the rise in cattle numbers in the Cantabrian Mountains in NW Spain over the past 20 years, and the occupancy of capercaillie leks (19). The rise in cattle grazing was linked to agri-environment funding and the conservation policies of EU, which reflect an overarching concern about the alleged negative effects on biodiversity of abandonment of traditional uses such as livestock herding. However, the authors claim those negative effects are neither straightforward nor always supported by hard data. Their conclusion is that while preserving traditional uses of the landscape and helping local human communities are legitimate policy options, they argue that such goals should not be disguised under the term of nature conservation. Instead, they should be named according to their main objective, which is preservation of cultural landscapes or of economic activities. The resurgence of brown bear on the upland grassland of the Tichá Valley in the Tatra mountains in Slovakia is attributable to the removal of cattle and sheep grazing. Land nationalisation began in 1948, and went hand in hand with the creation of the Tatra National Park and the removal of grazing rights (20). It took another 10 years until the remaining sheep grazing was removed from the valley. However, where there was once only four bears, there is now a population of over 40. That bears flourished after the removal of grazing livestock is unlikely to be due to resource competition alone, and probably has a major element of these large animals being better able to exhibit their natural behaviour within their natural range (21). This has implications for the re-introduction of domestic livestock into abandoned areas that may already be seeing a repopulating with bears and the larger carnivores. It will create tensions that paradoxically are not just about the threats to the livestock, but the carnivores will get the blame. Australia presents another example of where the removal of livestock grazing was considered essential for wild nature. The Australian alps is a mountainous area that straddles Victoria, New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory. These upland areas had been used for the summer grazing of domestic livestock for over 150 years (22). They are predominantly treeless plant communities of grasslands, herb fields and wetlands that occupy only about 0.1% of the Australian continent. They are hardly ever grazed by large, native herbivores, since kangaroos, wallabies and wombats are extremely rare in the alpine landscape. Consequently, the alpine vegetation did not evolve in conjunction with native vertebrate grazers. The introduction of cattle was therefore a major departure, especially since the soils are extremely low in nutrients, and are easily disturbed. They are highly erodible, both by wind and water and may be subject to frequent frost action. Thus, the nutrient limitations of the soils, and the generally short growing season, dictate that the growth of alpine plants is slow, and that, following severe disturbance, regeneration is also slow.
In the
1920s, grazing was temporarily halted in the area of Mount Buffalo
National Park, Victoria, and finally stopped in 1952. Because of its
effect on water quality, cattle were taken out of Kosciuszko National Park
in NSW during the 1950s and 60s. Reports by scientists on the many aspects
of cattle damage grew over the years, but the practice continued within
Victoria's Alpine National Park into the current century – no other alpine
park allowed grazing to continue. Cattle were eventually removed from the
Alpine National Park in 2005 after a thorough investigation by the Alpine
Grazing Parliamentary Taskforce. One of the reasons for ending licensed
alpine grazing was the damage cattle were causing to the hundreds of mossy
peat beds scattered throughout the high country. Alpine
streams and rivers
were also damaged, increasing siltation and nutrient loads in streams, and
affecting rivers and dams downstream.
The grazing
lasted
only three months before the national Government shut
the trial down, calling in the five year proposal by the Victorian
Department of Sustainability and Environment to reintroduce up to 400
cattle to graze in the state's Alpine National Park for up to five months
a year as a research trial. The proposal was assessed under the
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999, with
the Environment Minister Tony Burke recently declaring that it would have
an unacceptable impact on the national heritage values of the Australian
Alps National Park (23): His personal view is that a national park should not be used as a farm (24). The Kruger National Park (KNP) in South Africa has a range of expectation on its delivery of experience, as well as its focus on conservation. The charismatic species of KNP’s large herbivores, such as elephant, buffalo, giraffe and zebra, are an obvious attraction, but they have had a largely undetermined effect on the vegetation and ecosystem processes. KNP is mandated to ‘‘maintain biodiversity in all its facets and fluxes’’ (25). Biodiversity in this context for KNP is based on the three core attributes of composition, structure, and function, a compelling approach recognized by Franklin in forest ecosystems (26) and expanded upon by Noss (27). This holds up to shame the devalued concept of biodiversity in Britain, as narrowly defined by the priorities and choices of the conservation industry. A recent study took advantage of a range of different age herbivore exclosures in the KNP (6-, 22-, 35-, and 41-year exclusions) to identify differences in the cover of woody canopies, live and dead/senescent herbaceous canopies, and bare soil using airborne optical mapping methods (28). The three-dimensional (3-D) structure of vegetation is central to the functioning of African savannas, providing habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals. Too many herbivores can lead to the loss of ecological functioning through alterations in vegetation composition and structure. Areas in which herbivores were excluded over the short term (6 years) contained 38%–80% less bare ground compared with those that were exposed to mammalian herbivory, but with only a few measurable differences in the 3-D structure of woody plants. In the longer-term (>22 years), the 3-D structure of woody vegetation differed significantly between excluded and accessible landscapes, with up to 11-fold greater woody canopy cover in the areas without herbivores, and much greater 3-D structural diversity. These differences in turn affect the diversity and richness of animal species, as well as the ecological functioning of these systems. The authors note that the greater canopy structural diversity enhances the habitat available for a wide range of organisms beyond the herbivore communities and alters such ecological processes as nutrient cycling, seed dispersal, and germination. The authors suggest that land managers at KNP will have to consider altering or deflecting herbivore populations in an effort to maintain whole system biodiversity. Is grazing giving heath back to nature?
I find a
striking parallel between this negative impact of herbivory on the structural
diversity of savannah for wildlife and the negative aspects of grazing
management of lowland heathland on its vertical structure described
earlier and with its consequent impact on reptiles, invertebrates and some
bird species. It brings me to a second assertion in the fencing and
grazing proposal for Padworth Common by Sara McWilliams that rides on the
back of a particular perversion of natural reality that has gained a lot
of traction in NW Europe (17):
Let's look
in detail at her assertion. Heathland
was never “managed”: the tradition was its extractive use to the
point of sucking the life out of it, or as Dr Peter Shaw, Department of
Life Sciences at the University of Roehampton, puts it in a lecture on
heathland management in his module on Conservation Ecology (29):
Dr Shaw is
very frank with his students about how heathland should be managed now,
seeing a barrier as being a shortage of modern day peasants:
He goes on:
Thus the depauperation needed to
maintain heath is more than just grazing, which in effect only converts
vegetation into topsoil while having no impact on the removal and leaching
of nutrients that is necessary. Adrain Ince made a similar point in his
objection to the fencing at Chobham Common at the recent Public Inquiry.
He considered that the Statement of Case for the fencing made by Surrey
Wildlife Trust was deceitful not only in saying that the Common had been
created by cattle grazing, but that the cessation of grazing by commoners
had been responsible for the deterioration of the Common, and that only
the reinstatement of cattle grazing could restore it (30):
McWilliams has little to say in the fencing proposal for Padworth Common
on the range of extractive activities other than about grazing, but is
that
giving the heath back to nature in employing that alone? McWilliams uses a sleight of hand in the
fencing and grazing proposal that compares livestock grazing to the
mechanical methods of heathland management, such that we are to believe
that the former is more natural than the latter (17):
We get this also from
Surrey Wildlife Trust and their much trumpeted Grazing Project (31):
In what
seems to be becoming obligatory in this new era of using domestic
livestock as agents of nature, some of the Trust’s cattle have GPS tracking collars (32):
Such is
the cutting edge logic of Surrey Wildlife Trust that it expects us
to disregard the admittance that in their world “agriculture
and conservation are intertwined” (33) as it is
of
course generally in
the
conservation industry in Britain. The Trust demolishes all credibility for the
naturalness of their Grazing Project with this (32): The sleight of hand of imbuing domestic livestock as agents of nature also characterises a number of grazing projects based in the Public Forest Estate (PFE), with the Forestry Commission succumbing to the expansionist tendencies of the conservation industry, desperate as it is for larger areas of land to act out their grazing fantasies. Thus the vision of the Neroche partnership in the Blackdown Hills is to “liberate the landscape” through a herd of English Longhorn cattle grazing areas of the PFE after conifers have been harvested (34). It is claimed that the cattle will “help generate a more naturalistic pattern of vegetation” and that the large area of grazing will allow “natural patterns of foraging to be expressed”(35). So clear felling conifers and turning it into farmland with domestic livestock grazing is natural?
The Friston Forest Grazing Project covers about a
quarter of the 850ha of Friston Forest near Eastbourne, leased by the
Forestry Commission from South East Water since 1929 (36). The project is
managed by Sussex Wildlife Trust, which introduced a small herd of
British White cattle in 2008 into the northern end of the forest, adjacent
to Lullington Heath National Nature Reserve. The Trust describes it as
“a pioneering approach to land management”. They at least allow that
it will be natural processes, such as wind, drought and fungal decay,
which along with the grazing animals will determine how the site will
evolve. However, they then imbue the cattle with wild characteristics, an
element of de-domestication that is just wishful thinking, and does not
need the nonsense of hourly radio-collar tracking via a base-station in
Germany:
Dunwich Forest in Suffolk is described by Simon Leatherdale of
the Forestry Commission as (37):
Is clear
felling conifers and then grazing with livestock really rewilding? The
county wildlife trust is more circumspect, having badged it as one of
their newest Living Landscapes (38): However, the origins of the context in which this Living Landscape project was conceived was as a rewilding project of a local biodiversity partnership, the principle of which Suffolk County Council wishes to extend to the rest of the Suffolk Sandlings (39). Gary Battell, a Woodland Officer with Suffolk County Council, has a greater grip on natural reality when he describes the main aim as being the creation of 320ha of wood pasture, a culturally managed landscape, after the felling of conifers and the introduction of 28 Dartmoor ponies (40). Battel writes that the development of the trees in this wood pasture will be dependent on regenerating broadleaves that were already seeding in before the ponies were introduced. Will that happen in the presence of grazing by the ponies? How many more people are going to be incensed at the reduction in access that has resulted from the increase in fencing that has gone up? The Vera hypothesis and Nature Development
The
spontaneous outburst of regeneration of open or scattered broad-leaf
woodland in the presence of livestock grazing is the basis of the “Vera
hypothesis”, a notion so full of holes that it is routinely trashed in
the literature (see later) and which I have explored before (41, 42). In
the Netherlands, where it originated as a concept before Vera published
his PhD thesis, it came to be known as Nature
Development. As the name suggests, it is no longer about protecting and
conserving existing nature, but is a move to produce new nature. That this
should have arisen in the Netherlands is hardly surprising, since it is
one of the most intensively used and highly modified landscape areas in
Europe, with about
half of its surface area less than 1m above sea level. Nature Development,
based on the
habitat requirements of large herbivores, was thus proposed by Wallis De Vries
in 1995 as a key to the design of large-scale nature reserves. He gave two
points to support his argument
(43):
He goes on
to say:
This is
remarkably naïve, for a number of reasons, not least that Wallis De Vries
is wrong about carnivores. In a criticism of Nature Development,
Jozef Keulartz had this to say (44):
Keulartz
was not too happy about the all-pervasive Nature Developers, who he felt
made
highly selective use of
ecological findings,
and monopolised the social debate on nature and landscape:
The
Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands is so often given as the
inspiration for reinstating a grazing pressure as a missing natural
process from many of our modern day forests. Oostvaardersplassen was a
brownfield site, not a wooded area. Is there much woodland developing
there now? Will the numbers of introduced grazers continue to increase
year on year? (see my lecture on Nature Development,
the
Oostvaardersplassen and the Vera hypothesis (45)).
A news feature about the Oostvaardersplassen appeared in the journal Nature in 2009.
It gave voice to critics of
Nature Development, who say that
the projects are more sentiment than
science (46). Dustin Rubenstein, an ecologist at Columbia University, NY,
argued that placing proxy animals such as horses in a modern landscape is
not the same as turning back the clock. He also worried
about how the projects in
Europe were being run and said that information about them is not being
disseminated “We’re not seeing the results in the peer-reviewed
literature”. Emma Harris, the author of the news feature, and who
interviewed Frans Vera, was not very complimentary about his hypothesis -
“His is the minority
view”.
She had a devastatingly simple critique:
Vera trotted
out his usual excuse,
that thorny shrubs will establish themselves and act as
nurseries for tree seedlings, but see later. Harris then got to the nub of
the flaw in the
Oostvaardersplassen with this: The use of large herbivores for Nature Development started out in the Netherlands as an experiment on a 98ha nature reserve Baronie Cranendonck near the Dutch–Belgian border (47). Arable fields and pastures covered one third of the area, and the rest was made up of dry heath with juniper shrub on former drift sand, and some planted pinewood and oakwood. The whole area was put under a year-round grazing regime from 1973 onwards with Iceland ponies. The ponies obviously kept mostly to the areas of grass. Initially, the number of rabbits increased, which combined with the grazing by ponies, prevented tree regeneration on the former fields, as was revealed by the few small exclosures created on the site. The rabbit population dropped away as the grass sward that developed in response to horse grazing was no longer attractive for foraging rabbits. However, 27 years after “abandonment”, the former arable fields in the study site were still more than 98% open grassland. The increase of woodland cover in the whole study area only amounted to 8% between 1970 and 1999. This was caused mainly by lateral crown-spreading of the ageing oak and pine trees and to some extent by the regeneration of Scots pine in parts of the area that were hardly grazed by the ponies, such as grass-heath on former drift sand. The study at Baronie Cranendonck is a test of the theory of tree regeneration under the herbivore pressure in Nature Development being aided by thorny shrubs over those 27 years. In common with the sun rising each day, the authors found that tree regeneration in the few areas of bramble (<0.1% of the total area) was greater compared to the areas of heather, soft rush or grass. They were, however, a bit optimistic to predicate a continuing and accelerated woodland recruitment on that theory. A quick check of a satellite picture of the regeneration over the last 12 years of the area shows their optimism to have been entirely misplaced. Thus 39 years into the project, and the only thing to show for it is a few more areas of grass and heath that developed on the “abandoned” arable fields. This has been confirmed by other studies on woodland regeneration in the presence of grazing, one of which concluded that in homogeneous grassland, woodland regeneration is almost impossible, even with very low herbivore densities (48). Contrast that to the regeneration of woodland cover on Scar Close in the Yorkshire Dales after the sheep were fenced out (9). What is of course missing in this Nature Development approach are the native carnivores. While the Nature Developers may vary the number of herbivores, they seem incapable of understanding the role of predators in regulating the activity of herbivores, and especially the spatial variation of herbivore pressure that is induced by the physical presence of carnivores. They should take notice of the comparative studies in Venezuela by John Terborg, on the influence of predators on landscape vegetation. Those studies have made a significant contribution to our understanding and support for the top-down control that has been dubbed the Green World Hypothesis – that predators limit the influence of herbivores, allowing vegetation to flourish (49). It was the fortunate set of circumstances, the inundation of a section of the Caroní valley in Bolivar State for a hydro-electric scheme, that brought forth a group of predator-free islands, and which provided the experimental model that gave convincing evidence of a trophic cascade. The latter is where predators in a food web suppress the abundance and/or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation, such as reducing the effect of herbivores on vegetation. The subsequent paper in the journal Science boldly declared an “ecological meltdown” resulting from the unregulated activity of herbivores (50). The dramatis personae of Terborg’s research were exotic by the standards of our temperate and generally depauperate landscapes in Britain, devoid as they are of large carnivores. His research talks of howler monkeys, iguanas and leaf-cutter ants as the primary herbivores; and with armadillos, harpy eagle, jaguar, puma and ocelot as the predators missing from the small islands. The meltdown so brutally described was the complete demise of the semi-deciduous, dry tropical forest into a barren ground of leafless trees, red earth brought up by the excavations of the ants, and all smothered by a defensive thorny scrub that was choked by lianas (51) That top predators have a profound influence on woodland regeneration has been shown by the studies of Oregon-based researchers Robert Beschta and William Ripple, many of which are founded on observations of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in America after wolves were reintroduced there in 1995 (52). Willow species and aspen showed significant regeneration in riparian corridors along with the returning wolf population, the studies describing a spatially patchy recovery of woody browse species released from the herbivorous actions of elk. The patchy nature of recovery was due to elk avoiding places or browsing less where there was a higher risk of wolf predation, such as along river banks. Predators are thus a key consideration that is missing from initiatives that take a Nature Development approach with free-ranging domestic livestock, or domestic livestock as proxies or analogues of native herbivores. Herbivore pressure in these grazing obsessions will never be as close to the natural situation as possible without native carnivores also being present. Terborg, in revisiting the Green World Hypothesis, reflected on the loss of the many elements of wild nature, eliminated over much of the contemporary world to the extent that intact ecosystems replete with top predators and large ungulates have effectively been reduced to a few scattered remnants (53). His fear is that the aberrant world that is left, a greatly diminished state of nature, should not be taken as a frame of reference because “ecology will by default become the science of human artifacts”. Such a dreadful prospect that he could have been talking about the noosphere, but then he was also foretelling the revisionism of the conservation industry in Britain and its pathetic attempt to pervert what is wild and natural. Mark Fisher 15 March 2012, 8 April 2012, 25 June 2012 (1) The most unnatural conservation policy possible, Self-willed land July 2010 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/unnatural_policy.htm (2) Rare and precious – words devalued by the conservation industry, Self-willed land May 2011 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/rare_precious.htm (3) Invitation to comment on the revision of the Guidelines for the Selection of Biological SSSIs, Joint Nature Conservation Committee 2012 http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/sssi_consultationletter20120123.pdf (4) Guidelines for selection of biological SSSIs, Part A: Rationale, Nature Conservancy Council 1989 http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/sssi_ptA.pdf (5) Guidelines for selection of biological SSSIs, Part B: Operational approach and criteria, Nature Conservancy Council 1989 http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/sssi_ptB.pdf (6) Guidelines for the Selection of Biological SSSIs, Part 1: Rationale, Operational Approach and Criteria for Site Selection, Joint Nature Conservation Committee 2012 http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/sssi_consultation20120123.pdf (7) Thematic Report on Mountain Ecosystems, UK National Report to the CBD February 2002 http://www.cbd.int/doc/world/gb/gb-nr-me-en.pdf (8) Spread of the Noosphere, Peter Rhind, British Wildlife December 2004, pg. 107 http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/noosphere.pdf (9) Walking the wild places, Self-willed land September 2010 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/non_intervention.htm (10) Public inquiry to be held into plan to fence off part of common, Jane Meredith, Newbury Weekly News 9 February 2012 http://horseytalk.net/ROW/pdfs/PadworthCommonNewspaperArticle.pdf (11) Padworth Common Local Nature Reserve and Wildlife Heritage Site, West Berkshire Council http://www.westberks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=5824 (12) HLS AG00264577 - management of environmental features. Specific options, prescriptions and indicators of success. 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