Biodiversity Challenge 3: Habitats

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Miles King

Continuing my series to celebrate 20 years since the launch of Biodiversity Challenge: an Agenda for Conservation in the UK (yes I had a hand in the hubristic title), today I look at Habitats.

Derek Ratcliffe had developed the criteria for selecting SSSIs in the 1970s and the definition of habitats had occurred alongside, with the best sites for each habitat being defined in A Nature Conservation Review in 1977.

The National Vegetation Classification (NVC), the uses and abuses of which I have recently blogged about, also defined plant communities based on the fidelity of plant species to their communities. These in many ways defined most terrestrial habitats.

By the 1990s conservation was starting to get an idea of how much was left of each habitat, with habitat surveys that had been initiated in the 1970s. But no-one had actually thought what each habitat needed for its conservation, or how much of a given habitat was “enough”. Biodiversity Challenge introduced Habitat Action Plans to the UK. These HAPs would spell out everything that was known about a habitat – where it was, how much was left, the reasons for its decline, and what needed to be done. The actions included creation/restoration targets, but also wider policy actions such as reform of agri-environment schemes, or strengthening the SSSI legislation, which at the time was still weak.

The adoption of the HAPs was a long slow and painful process. Although the first official HAPs were published in the UK Biodiversity Steering Group report (1995), HAP implementation didn’t start until much later, as I recall. HAPs really got going, in as much as they got going at all, in 2003 when the devolved Biodiversity Strategies were published. To be honest I was away from the affray doing freelance work so I have no memory of what happened. It did feel like (from the outside) the initial excitement and momentum had gone from the whole thing by then. I joined the Lowland Grassland HAP steering group in 2007 and watched it die a slow and painful death. Although everyone at the group wanted it to work, it had no influence over anything really – it reported into other toothless groups like the England Biodiversity Group, whose plaintive cries were lost long before they reached the senior corridors of Defra, let alone the Minister.

Some good  came of the HAP process. Tomorrows Heathland Heritage (THH), whch began in 1997 was the first (only) large scale commitment to nature conservation from the Lottery. It funded millions of pounds of heathland restoration work across the country – directly as a result of Biodiversity Challenge.

Challenge, and subsequently the BAP process, introduced criteria for determining conservation priority for habitats, as much as it for species. Ultimately this led to the Priority Habitats lists that we have today. Many are still vulnerable to damage and loss because the underpinning regulatory protections are too weak (EIA for Agriculture is one I have particularly focussed on). All habitats now have definitions, although some are much clearer than others. You can find these definitions on the JNCC website.

Did the Challenge approach to HAPs work? Ultimately no, because the HAPs are now dead, killed off by bureaucracy (although the woodland and wood-pasture HAPs continue on as zombie groups, not knowing they are dead). During their lifetime did they move habitat conservation forward? Yes I would say they did. Just as for species, some of the more neglected habitats saw recognition for the first time – Brownfield habitats now have priority status (as the cumbersomely named Open Mosaic Habitat on Previously Developed Land). Even though HAPs are dead, priority habitats live on in the current round of national biodiversity plans, and each is given at least some attention both by NGOs, conservation agencies and local government. Presence of a priority habitat is now a material consideration in planning, which it never was unless the site had some form of designation. And the recognition and identification of priority habitats has driven a great deal of sectoral action in the voluntary sector (Million Ponds, Wetland Vision, saving our magnificent meadows, The Floodplain Meadows Partnership) and has greatly influenced how funding is allocated to conservation, from sources like Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and the Landfill Tax Credit Schemes.

Some might say, this is all technocratic nonsense, and habitats grade into each other – we lose the value of the spaces in between the definitions. This is true, but there is still value in defining what we are trying to conserve, if we are trying to conserve habitats, rather than just processes.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Action Plans, biodiversity, grasslands, regulatory reform | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Biodiversity Challenge 2: Species

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Miles King

UKGF ancient tree

veteran tree with priority lichen species (c) Miles King

Continuing on my theme for this week, which is about Biodiversity Challenge 20 years on, today I’m looking at what BC did for species conservation in Britain.

As I said yesterday, before Biodiversity Challenge and the BAP, species conservation in Britain focussed on Birds, a few mammals only the most charismatic of other species. And the approach was very, very site-based. Conservation priority was based primarily on absolute rarity – how many 10km squares a species occurred in; and how pretty it was.

I worked at BBONT (now BBOWT) before I went to Plantlife and was lucky enough to have 2 military orchid sites and a Red Helleborine site under my responsibility. These very rare orchids got a great deal of attention – indeed orchid wardens would spend the summer in rickety old caravans on site, to stop orchid thieves stealing them. Actually there werent really any orchid thieves, but there were hundreds of photographers some of whom werent too fussed about the damage they caused, to get the best photo. So the wardens were visitor managers really.

Meanwhile other species that were rapidly disappearing from England – Blysmus compressus the Flat Sedge, or Carex vulpina the True Fox sedge, were paid little or no attention.

Biodiversity Challenge changed all that, by introducing the 4 criteria for conservation priority-setting – global threat, international importance, rate of decline and absolute rarity.

This was fantastic for the neglected taxa non butterfly inverts, lower plants and fungi. But it did present us with a problem – we didnt have the data to show for example decline rates. However I was extremely lucky at Plantlife to have Plantlife Link which brought together experts from the Learned plant Societies (British Bryological Society, British Lichen Society, British Mycological Society, the British Pteridological Society and the British Phycological Society – if I have missed anyone out I apologise – it was a long time ago). They provided expert opinion on which species met each criteria.

Pulling together data and expert opinion we compiled the short list of priority species, the middle list and the long list. There were many arguments about which species should be on which list, but we tried to be as objective as possible, and added weight to global threat and rate of decline. Thanks to increased funding for species conservation, from English Nature, CCW and SNH plus other sources, the NGOs started to broaden their approach to species conservation. Butterfly Conservation were particularly good at raising funds to widen their species work. I think the success of BC also spurred others into action to create new organisations – Buglife for instance, founded by Alan Stubbs who played such a key role in the early days of Biodiversity Challenge.

The priority list was originally I think about 300 species. Each species had a Species Action Plan produced for it and these were implemented, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on funds.

After I left Plantlife I worked on implementing SAPs for Shore Dock and Juniper, both priority species. For shore dock it was relatively straightforward, a case of doing more survey, finding more locations and getting them protected. As a habitats directive listed species this was quite easy, although we still failed to stop one site being partly destroyed by a hotel insisting on a soft cliff being rock-armoured to prevent erosion (that was probably being caused by run-off from the cliff top tennis court). For juniper, the opposite was true. There were so many intractable problems with conserving juniper in England and it was going down the pan so fast, it was like a slow motion car crash. Juniper expert Lena Ward and I re-surveyed Juniper in Sussex – it was my only  published scientific paper. The decline was staggering and no matter how effective a SAP for Juniper was, it wasn’t going to stop that decline.

Once the ground had been prepared by Challenge, the official BAP process came up with “Lead Partners” “Contact Points” and “Champions”. The Lead Partners were statutory agencies, contact points NGOs and Champions were sponsors. I have to say from my perspective this never really worked. NGOs who did most of the hard work resented being called contact points, while some Lead Partners were anything but, and only the most charismatic species gained Champions. Plus ca change. Having said that Scottish Link have done a very successful mini campaign getting MSPs to sign up to be species champions for priority species in Scotland. This is clever, as it draws in political engagement and even a sense of ownership, which is totally essential for any conservation activity.  Even now the Splendid Waxcap has so far no MSP champion – fungi are as ever at the bottom of the priority list, despite being probably the most important group from an ecosystem perspective.

Now, 20 years on, we have a legally constituted Section 41 (or S42) list of species of principal importance – with over a thousand species on it. This list is by no means perfect. Invertebrate experts have pointed out to me that there could easily be five times as many inverts on the list as there currently are, based on threat and decline. Indeed it came as news to me that some of the inverts are there to represent a whole group of species; something that has not really worked. The failure to create a meaningful biodiversity duty as a tool to implement action for priority species has also mitigated the value of the list. I actually think the S41/42 lists are too long now, as the task is now so insurmountable as to be demoralising. The original short list of 300 or so I think would have been the right sort of size to aim for, for political reasons.

Nevertheless I think it is true to say that BC changed the face of species conservation in the UK.

Posted in Action Plans, biodiversity, biodiversity challenge | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Biodiversity Challenge: 20 years on

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Miles King

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It seems unbelievable to me but it is 20 years this week since the launch of “Biodiversity Challenge.”I am going to celebrate this anniversary with a series of blogs this week, and possibly next.

Challenge, as it became known, was a gauntlet thrown down, by the 6 leading nature NGOs of the time. It was thrown at the feet of John Major’s government, challening him to adopt with alacrity the Convention on Biological Diversity. This was the Convention that his Environment Secretary John Selwyn Gummer (now Lord Deben) had done so much to bring into the world, at the previous year’s Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro. The Rio Summit also created the Climate Change Convention.

We knew the Government had intended to produce a report stating that all was fine and there was no need for us to produce a plan – they were just going publish a list of the “59 steps” that were already being taken. With hindsight it was almost colonialist in its attitude  – ” you new countries, you need to produce plans for your wildlife; but us, the mother country, we already know how its done, and we are going to tell you how we did it so successfully. But we are not going to do it. Now run along.”

RSPB, under the leadership of Graham Wynne, had brought together The Wildlife Trusts, Friends of the Earth, Plantlife, Butterfly Conservation and WWF in the summer of 93 and as a very new and very “green” head of conservation at Plantlife, I found myself thrown into the world of conservation policy and politics for the first time. We were going to get our rebuttal out first.

We started work on the report in September and launched it in December. It was a mammoth effort and incredibly exciting – everyone threw themselves into it with great enthusiasm. We wanted to change nature conservation in the UK, and I suspect others were thinking about making waves beyond our shores too.

The Convention on Biological Diversity or CBD for the first time required every country on the planet to produce a plan and commit to doing tangible things to prevent their biodiversity from declining. Targets should be set and monitoring programmes introduced to tell how well everyone was doing.

Graham had been head of planning at Hackney Council before joining RSPB and he was very keen on a plan led approach. RSPB had been trialling species action plans for rare birds in the early 90s and we all thought it was a good idea to role them out. Challenge introduced the idea of species and habitat action plans into the world. It should also be said that these were intended to be a bit of a trojan horse, as each one would, as well as doing direct actions for species and habitats “on the ground”, also include the policy and legislative actions needed to achieve the conservation of species and habitats; rather naively in retrospect we thought that if Government could see that their policies on agriculture, water, pollution, forestry climate change and so on, kept cropping up in every plan, the overwhelming weight of evidence and the requirement to implement the plans would lead to wholesale policy change for biodiversity.

The report also looked at each sector of the economy and identified what impact they were having on biodiversity and what steps were needed to be taken to reduce that impact.

Perhaps the single most significant shift in conservation policy advocated by Challenge was that conservation action should be based upon which species and habitats had highest priority, with priorities being determined by objective criteria: global threat, international importance, rate of decline, and absolute rarity.  Up until then nature conservation was about SSSIs, plus a very small and select band of species (mostly bird and mammals, the odd butterfly and orchid) mostly chosen for their charisma.  Wildlife Sites were still in their infancy and entirely local.

Agr-environment schemes were also very new, ESAs mostly focussing on landscape restoration; and Countryside Stewardship was still in the hands of the Countryside Commission!

How the landscape has changed.

 

 

Posted in Action Plans, biodiversity, biodiversity challenge, environmental policy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Seeing the wood for the Trees

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Miles King

 

sells wood

Natural England chair designate Andrew Sell’s wood

I’ve written a fair bit over the past 3 years about Think Tanks. Are they a force for good?

Most Think Tanks are on the right of the political spectrum – in fact practically all of them are. Many are euro sceptic and some verge on the libertarian. They are paid for by secretive individuals and organisations and that means they can be fronts for corporate interests. These fronts can be highly effective, especially when the media fail to recognise them as fronts – take the simmering row between George Monbiot and the BBC, over the IEA, who he claims is acting as a front for the Tobacco Industry that funds it.

Think Tanks do some research, come up with a new policy idea, then advocate it as hard as possible through the channels of influence they already occupy – often through the rather shady networks of parliamentary researchers, special advisors, commentators and politicians. They can be extremely effective.

Matthew Elliott could be seen as Think Tanker in chief – he set up the Tax Payers Alliance + Big Brother Watch and has taken a sabbatical from TPA to run Business for Britain, another eurosceptic outfit. Elliott recently celebrated the influence of the tiny area of the Westminster Village where the wonks hang out. he also celebrated the number of Think tankers who have moved seamlessly from think tank to ministerial special advisor (SPAD) to politician to minister. Nick Herbert and Nick Boles both rose from Think Tank roles to ministerial positions, via safe Tory seats.

He finished his article thus “2014 is likely to be a defining year for British politics and think-tanks and campaign groups will all be lobbying hard to influence the parties’ manifestos. Everyone who wants to see a creative, innovative and provocative political debate over the next eighteen months should welcome the fact that, whilst politics inside the Houses of Parliament can often feel stale, in Britain we are lucky to have a thriving think-tank scene.”

Does anyone else find this deeply alarming? The thriving think tank scene of which Elliott talks is unelected, funded by secretive organisations, often with corporate interests hiding behind astroturf. How is Britain lucky to have this lot creating policy for Government to impose on us?

Even more amazingly, many are also charities – now charities are very restricted in the political activity they can carry out. The Policy Exchange is a charity  – this is the one Tory donor Andrew Sells is just resigning from as Treasurer.Who Funds You gave Policy Exchange a D (the worst is E – Tax Payers Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute got an E) for transparency, because they give no information about who funds them. Powerbase identify individuals and corporations in the City as providing PE with much of its funding. And one only has to look at its list of Directors to see in which part of the political spectrum it sits.

If Policy Exchange is just another charity, like the RHS, and is studious to avoid accusations of political partisanship – why would Andrew Sells feel the need to resign from its board?

Posted in Andrew Sells, Charities campaigning, George Monbiot, neoliberalism, Policy Exchange, Think Tanks | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

EFRA fails to grill Sells, more of a light poaching

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Miles King

As  I recall there was a lot of effort involved in turning Parliamentary Select Committees from a cross-between talking shops and clubs, into an influential element of Parliamentary procedure and ultimately an addition to the British Democratic process. Watching the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee question Natural England chairman designate Andrew Sells yesterday made me wonder whether it was all worth it.

The questioning was almost entirely insipid, and in places verged on the banal. MPs apparently need to be paid a handsome salary in order to attract the brightest and the best into politics. On this showing, they may need to think about more than just salary.

Still it was possible to find out something more about Sells, despite the quality of the “inquiry”.

We know now that there was a “very strong field of candidates”

Sells “has always been a country boy” and after a life of high finance, “at age 55, decided to use half my life to put something back, being a useful public servant.” He is now 65.

Putting something back for Sells means being Treasurer of the Royal Horticultural Society, Treasurer of Policy Exchange, a co-treasurer of the No2AV campaign, and on the Board of Open Europe, a business-led anti-regulation Eurosceptic Thinktank.Oh and chairing a working group at DWP looking at how to make the disastrous Work Programme work. Accountant giants Deloitte have just given up on it, so I guess they know it’s a pup.

Apart from the RHS, I think what Sells meant by “putting something back” is helping people like him to express their views about the economy and society (profit-driven, small government, little regulation) in an influential way, rather than doing things for the public good. I could well be wrong though.

Anyway we now know he is “passionate about the countryside, lives in the countryside, was born in the countryside.  He “can understand and empathise with those who want to improve the countryside.”We know someone else who wants to improve the countryside, SoS Owen Paterson, so that will help.

EFRA Chair Anne McIntosh, was particular gimlet like in her questioning  – she forensically dissected his past, noted that being NE chair was “different to work done before, in high finance” and asked whether this meant he was “qualified for position of chair of Natural Environment (sic)”.

Natural Environment! The chair of the EFRA committee does not remember the name of Natural England.

Sells explained that he had been pleasantly surprised by “how much I enjoyed doing something I didnt know anything about (DWP)” so that should mean he will enjoy being Natural England chair, but does not necessarily qualify him for the job.

He then repeated “I feel passionate about preserving countryside. Can make a contribution too.” He had insight that “part of [the] work is hard work and chairing, understanding science and technology.”

McIntosh dived in with another probing question: “when do you expect to take up the post?” my heart sank – this was a gentle chat not an enquiry.

Sells explained he had a “long standing commitment to go to Australia and New Zealand” and would be back at the end of January.

Mcintosh was back like a flash “what does the natural environment mean to you, which parts do you most relate to?”

Sells not surprisingly explained that he “most relate[d] to farming and the countryside. I used to work as a boy on a farm” he drove a tractor and his job was to ” increase every field on every farm.”

He recognised that farming had come a long way since then and even knew about farmland bird decline, though I think his 2/3 decline figure might a bit awry.

He seemed pretty sure he knew a lot about the environment (useful when chairing the new organisation Natural Environment) apart from marine. He explained that he doesnt “farm commercially but I roughly understand how grants and incentives work.”

Asked whether he would follow in Poul Christensens footsteps and go around the country meeting farmers he agreed it was “very important, more important than sitting in meetings in london.” Phew Defra can relax now.

Jim Fitzpatrick noted Sells was “a major donor to tory party”. Though there were on the  same side of the no 2 AV campaign.

Fitzpatrick asked if Sells was conscious of political criticism about his appointment. Sells explained that most of his “donation” to the tory party was a painting he had commissioned of David Cameron before he became PM – it had only cost him £15k and it was now valued at £75k. He went on to state the total donations to the Tory Party were about £140k and actual cash donations run to about 15k a year. He was “not in Lord Ashcroft’s league”. That’s a tory fundraisers joke by the way. He also noted that his donations to registered charities were “multiples of £15k annually”, but then he also forgot to mention that The Policy Exchange, of which he was treasurer, is a charity. Charity treasurers are often tasked with gathering funds from their friends. That’ll be part of his “putting something back”. One could call Policy Exchange the incubator for Tory advisors who become politicians. Nick Boles came from there, and Alex Morton has just left PX to join the Number 10 policy unit, working under Boris Johson’s smarter brother Jo, on housing.

Sells now set out his stall. He won’t “give any more money to political parties”  and he’s “going to be studiously non political, sit on the metaphorical cross benches” and “have the support of either party, no party or any party”. I wonder whether that means he won’t be giving any more money to Tory thinktanks.

He was then questioned about footpaths on his land, several of which are blocked, one by a tennis court. He claimed he adhered entirely to rights of way legislation. When pressed he claimed that it must have been someone else’s land, despite the fact that the footpath runs directly past his house. Apparently it is a genuine oversight on his part.

After some very lukewarm questioning about whether he was backing out of all other directorships and interests (he thinks he is), Neil Parish stepped up. Parish is generally good value – a Somerset Dairy farmer, who knows more about conservation than you might think. He can be disarmingly inquisitive.

Parish asked Sells “where would you like to take NE?” Sells suggested that NE needed a period of stability and no major transformational reform. Sells now remembered to mention NE’s statutory duties and independent future (was he briefed by NE Exec Board Directors?) but may need to do more for less (we all know more cuts are coming.)

Sells said he was “concerned about biodiversity schemes are under threat.” but I don’t know exactly what he meant  – probably Stewardship would be my guess.  He praised NE staff for being “passionate” about nature and was clearly looking forward to “restructurng the board.” and bringing in a “stronger area management team. ”

Parish probed – any specific gaps in the Directors skills?”

Sells produced an interesting metaphor – work with what skills the board has and “put pit props around what you dont have”.

Parish asked Sells about Lindem Homes and “what lessons have you learnt about the balance between environmental improvements and rural growth?”

Sells explained that Linden was a “pioneer in developing brownfield sites” that had  “transformed Caterham barracks into a modern village”. “I was always the one fighting for preservation and trees”. “I learnt you can do huge amounts of development and preserve the environment. ”

Parish asked him about Biodiversity Offsetting. Sells said

“I don’t want to get into a conversation about Biodiversity Offsetting” before doing just that. Sells said “developers say its very expensive”, but Sells felt that “quite a lot of compensation to the envronment is not being enforced presently”. He wanted to “hold developers to greater account” and said “I dont want anyone to believe I will be a friend to the developers. I think I know exacly what they want – they will have to comply wth statutes they operate under.”

Parish though Offsetting would be a “good idea if its practical and delivers something for the environment.” But Sells cautioned “If Offsetting becomes the norm, we will overlook the need to actually conserve what is there. We should “not damage what otherwise might be damaged”. He asked “How do you offset some ancient woodlands that HS2 are going to remove? it can’t be done.

After what may have been an inintentionally open airing of views on a hot topic, Sells went into professional chair mode, and impressively dodged some questions about HS2 and gave anodyne management speak answers to boring questions about plans and relationships with Defra and other departments. He got into his stride.

It seems to me that Sells could potentially become a good NE chair, given the right training. I think he is willing to learn. Although he is clearly a serious Tory supporter, and probably on the eurosceptic side of the party (and worryingly deregulatory for the chair of a key regulator) he is also well-connected and potentially influential for good. I’m not prepared to write him off just because of his politics.

Posted in Andrew Sells, Natural England | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

A State of Mind

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Miles King

Today is an important anniversary for me. It’s a year to the day since I went to my GP and he diagnosed me with anxiety and depression. I had known there was something wrong for a long time but had feared to address it. I suppose you could say a year ago was the bottom of the pit from which I have been slowly climbing out.

What’s depression and how does it differ from feeling “down”? For me, and a lot of this is personal, I felt pretty hopeless, useless and increasingly suicidal. I felt my family would be better off without me, and my friends knew what a bad person I was and kept away. I thought I was rubbish at my job (and that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy) and became pretty paranoid.  I had a constant very negative internal voice damning me for my failures and inadequacies. Having suicidal thoughts when you’re driving a 200 mile weekly commute is not a good idea. Anxiety is mainly not being able to stop worrying about things – to the point where the same things go round and round and never go away. I would wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, thoughts racing round, unable to stop them.

I knew that there was a “me” somewhere inside, that wasn’t the person who was having these thoughts, but they became increasingly distant. Fortunately I didn’t lose touch with this “me” altogether.

It didnt come out of the blue – I had been through a traumatic year in 2009-10 when my dad got cancer, recovered, then succumbed finally. My late brother couldn’t deal with it at all, and my mum was obviously in pieces, so I had to step up and be the strong one, the “father” figure. And as a result I had’nt dealt with my own grief, just locked it away. Then I developed a mystery illness – nasty dizzy spells and nausea brought on by computer use or travel. In the end I had a very tentative diagnosis of migraine without headache, which I have since realised is migraine associated vertigo. I also developed panic attacks. Looking back I can see these symptoms were related to my developing (decaying?) mental state.

Then the organisation I had helped build and loved, The Grasslands Trust went to the wall. I had already left to work for another organisation so saw it crumble from afar. The other organisation was a long way from home (hence the 4oo mile round trip) and necessitated staying away from home 3 nights a week. It was with hindsight, a massive error. The pressure of the move and being away from home took its toll rapidly. This wasn’t helped by mum being ill for much of last Autumn and I found myself triangulating between home, her house in London and work. It wsa exhausting and when I was at home I was either very grumpy or very taciturn. my wife and kids became increasingly worried for me and I couldnt speak to them about it  – because I feared of their reaction.

What has the last year brought? I parted company with the organisation I had joined and “came home”. I got help – my doctor put me on anti depressants and I’m still on them. Yes, they do help. I also had a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which was also very helpful. My brother became ill last winter and died in the summer. And yes it has been traumatic but I have found new mental strength to deal with it and support my mum through everything, because recognising my own mental frailty has been a source of strength. I believe that naming a fear reduces the strength of it, which is a very ancient belief and possibly a built in defence mechanism. Writing a blog, which I started after I left my previous employer, has been very therapeutic. It’s also helped my self esteem as it is very helpful to know that people read what you write and like it (well some of them like some of it which is more than enough). Yes it’s a bit of an ego trip, but that’s not an entirely bad thing.

I think one of the hardest things is to open up and explain to my wife what has been happening – I was really afraid of her reaction; yes she was frustrated that it had taken so long for me to come to terms with the fact that I was ill, when it was plain to see from her perspective. I accept that. But overall it feels like a great barrier has been removed; at least most of the time. I can also see that stressful situations can bring the barrier back very quickly and have to be mindful of that. Mindfulness is something that I have become much more …err mindful of… in the past year. I mean being aware of what your mind is doing, rather than assuming that it is just being “me”. It’s a case of being aware that odd thoughts can pop up and not to take them too seriously.

I was exceptionally fortunate to find myself invited to join a vibrant local ecological consultancy Footprint Ecology, in the summer. I talked openly with them about my mental state and they have been incredibly supportive to me, to the point where work is undoubtedly helping me recover my mental resilience, instead of battering it. Having an understanding and supportive employer is very important for people suffering from mental illness

I have had some fantastic experiences in the last year – the ongoing debate with George Monbiot on re-wilding and conservation has been wonderful and I think having had this experience it has made me question a lot of my assumptions about conservation and nature. I have found some friends to be amazingly supportive, and I have been surprised to discover how many others in conservation have also suffered from depression.

There is also still stigma out there, and there may well be employers who read this and think “oh dear we’d better not employ him then.” Well it’s ok because I wouldn’t work for you either, with that attitude.

I think depression may be an occupational hazard in conservation. We spend our time working against the grain of the economy, trying to slow down processes over which we have almost no influence. We rejoice in small victories but see the continuing trend.

Anyone who is reading this and has had the sorts of experience I have, but hasn’t sought help – please do.

Posted in conservation, ethics, George Monbiot, spiritual value | Tagged , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Conservation and Re-wilding: the film

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Miles King

The Linnean Society filmed the debate I had with George Monbiot in November, discussing the pros and cons of Re-wilding and Conservation.

The film, which was professionally made and edited, is now available to watch here . I haven’t seen it yet, but I think I know what’s going to be in it (you can never tell until you’ve seen the edit.)

Please take a look and let me know what you think.

Posted in conservation, ethics, George Monbiot, landscape dynamics, Linnean Society, rewilding, self-willed land | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Lodge Hill Grasslands and the NVC

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Miles King

I’ve received this comment from Doug Hulyer, Board member of Natural England, regarding my post about the notification of Lodge Hill as an SSSI.

It was good to see you at the Board meeting, Miles. I take issue with your claim that no board members understand the NVC. I’ve sat on NEs Board since it was vested, and on English Nature’s Council for four years before. My career in nature conservation began being a warden for two downland/grassland and one woodland reserve in Surrey in 1977 and I was Director of Conservation Programmes at WWT for many years, responsible for the oversight of several Ramsar sites. I won’t begin to list the achievements and ecological credentials of my fellow Board members, Prof David MacDonald and David Hill. There is substantial ecological expertise on the Board and, though I probably don’t have the detailed understanding of NVC that you do, before every visit I make to a SSSI before they come to the Board, I make sure I understand the NVC categories under consideration and their nuances.

Doug Hulyer

Thanks very much for your comment Doug. Perhaps I was a bit harsh when I said “no board members understand he NVC”. In my earlier post I was a little more nuanced and stated  “When it came to discussing the intricacies of vegetation they were all at sea. In a way this sums up where we are in conservation – we can deal with single species and their requirements, but when it comes to assemblages, or communities, and their multifaceted behaviour, the preference is to turn away, to avoid having to deal with it.”

My experience of listening to the board members talk about the grassland at Lodge Hill did leave me a bit shocked. The Board comprise: 2 farmers, a management consultant, a statistician and an accountant, plus yourself David Hill David McDonald and Andy Wilson. As far as biological expertise I would class you, Andy and David as principally bird experts  (you have all worked for the RSPB or WWT) and David M as a mammal expert.  I think it’s fair to say no-one on the board has specific plant or plant community expertise.

That came out very clearly in the discussion about the grasslands at Lodge Hill. The objectors succesfully sowed doubt in your minds using spurious arguments which commonly crop up when the NVC is discusssed. The main one used is “this is not a good example of this particularly NVC type because it is a poor fit to the floristic table.” And they then go on to bandy about statistics from MATCH to show how poor the fit is. When at The Grasslands Trust I took a complaint against Defra to the European Commission on the grounds that they were failing to implement the EIA Directive for agriculture and allowing semi-natural ie unimproved grasslands to be destroyed. Defra’s approach was that in order to prove a grassland was semi-natural, NVC data would have to be collected and put through MATCH. If a good fit was not achieved, the grassland could be destroyed. Of course most of the time there was NVC data to put through MATCH because the grassland had already been ploughed up. But the idea that MATCH could give you an unequivocal answer led Prof John Rodwell, Godfather to the NVC, to describe the relevant people at Defra as Woodenheads, and who am I to disagree with the Prof? MATCH should be used with extreme care because its results are invariably based on an insufficient number of samples. In this case we had to witness the absurd application of MATCH by the objectors to single quadrats!!

To dismiss a grassland because it is not a “good” fit to the floristic tables in the NVC is equivalent to Darwin visiting the Galapagos Islands and refusing to see the new species of finch, on the grounds that they were not “good examples” of the species of finch he was familiar with, and should therefore be ignored. The NVC itself emphasises time and time again that a stand should be characterised using the floristic table in combination with a close reading of the description in the text. The text provides considerably greater nuance and understanding than just a reading of the tables.

Grassland communities, just like species, are highly variable – indeed because they comprise many different species all varying their behaviour in slightly different ways, communities are much more variable than species. The NVC communities are “a reference system of nodal points in a complex multidimensional field of variation in vegetation so that any particular stand can be identified either as representing one nodal point or as occupying an intermediate position between two or more.”

Sadly the NVC in the intervening decades has been increasingly misunderstood as codifying a set of nodes as the “best”, rather than as archetypes around which much variation occurs. MG5 is probably the most abused NVC community, because it is a defnition by exclusion, covering such a wide range of variation; and also happens to be the one vegetation type that is both vanishingly rare and easily developable, so is commonly fought over. 13 years ago Rodwell recognised that the MG5 definitions in the NVC were inadequate “MG5 is a more diverse grassland than the present account indicates.”

In the end it was left to David McDonald to put forward the arguments that the grassland at Lodge Hill should be included in the SSSI, on the grounds that since some of it did qualify, even if other parts didn’t, then it should all be included. You asked if the grassland in Rough Shaw could be included, and the rest removed.  But all of the grassland is unimproved and species-rich Doug – all the scientific evidence showed that. The question came down to whether the stands were a “good” fit to the MG5 floristic tables – they were not, and that variation is the lifeblood of nature.

Posted in grasslands, Lodge Hill, Natural England, NVC, Professor John Rodwell, SSSis | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Co-operating in a stitch up?

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Miles King

Interesting news today that the Co-op bank is paying “hundreds of thousands of pounds” to Reputation management company Quiller Consultants, while slashing support for charities, including the Co-operate Women’s Guild and Mutuo, the co-op’s thinktank. This is apparently as a result of a £1.5bn black hole in the banks finances – due in large part to the bank investing in toxic sub-prime mortgage investments. Co-op’s troubles led to it losing its mutual status in the summer, when US “vulture funds” swooped in to make a killing.

Leith_Provident_Co-operative_Society_Limited
By Margaret Ferguson Burns (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

 

The Co-op group is and has been historically very closely linked to the Labour Party. Actually over 30 Labour MPs are Labour and Co-operative Party MPs. Former shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh is one such MP. These MPs receive financial support from the Co-op but I suspect the ties run much deeper, as the Co-op also directly or indirectly employs many labour supporters and has over 7 million members, many from traditionally labour supporting communities.

The Co-op bank has now effectively been taken over by city investors and US Hedge Funds.  Co-op group (and its members) has just 30% of its shares. The new owners have appointed Quiller Consultants to start work to reconstruct the reputation and image of the bank – but who are Quiller Consultants? Quiller were created by PR and Lobbying guru Jonathan Hill – who is also known as Cabinet member and Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Hill of Oakeford. Here are some of their other clients. Hill is also a former Tory campaign director.

It’s also interesting that, unlike RBS, Lloyds NatWest or HBOS, Co-op Bank did not get a taxpayer funded bailout, but instead was left to be gobbled up by private investors, including US hedge funds which turned a tidy profit on the deal.

Some conspiracy theorists might make connections between influential city folk and tory strategists seizing opportunities to divest Labour of a key funding source and supporter base. I’m sure it is all coincidence though.

Posted in banking crisis, co-op, Labour, Lord Hill of Oakeford, Quiller Consultants, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Nelson Mandela Rest In Peace

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Miles King
Frederik_de_Klerk_with_Nelson_Mandela_-_World_Economic_Forum_Annual_Meeting_Davos_1992
By Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

I grew up in East London during the era of the National Front, the Anti Nazi League and the Free Nelson Mandela campaign. When I went to Bristol University I was shocked to see students wearing badges with “Hang Nelson Mandela” on them. One of these students (from the Federation of Conservative Students) was the son of a Cabinet member. I was shocked and joined a group of students protesting against extreme rightwing tory politicians being invited to speak at the University. They included Harvey Proctor and John Carlisle – both very ugly far-rightists.

Looking back at our student protests it makes me realise that had I tried to do such a thing in South Africa I would have probably been arrested – had I been black in South Africa I might well have been killed. I wonder whether I would have been prepared to protest under different circumstances.

Nelson Mandela RIP.

Posted in Nelson Mandela | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment