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WILDLIFE IN TRUST: A HUNDRED YEARS OF NATURE CONSERVATION

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PART III: BIODIVERSITY ACTION PLANNING

biodiversity action planning

The UK Government was among more than 150 countries that signed and later ratified the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity agreed at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in1992. One of the requirements of the Convention was for contracting parties to ‘develop national strategies, plans or programmes for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity’.

A Biodiversity Challenge Group (BCG) was established in 1993 by the voluntary sector to influence the UK Government’s response to the Convention. The Wildlife Trusts was one of six organisations making up the Group – the ‘Challenge Six’. The other members were Butterfly Conservation, Friends of the Earth, Plantlife, RSPB and WWF.

The BCG’s first report, Biodiversity Challenge – an agenda for conservation in the UK, was launched six weeks ahead of the Government’s response to the convention, published in January 1994. In the run-up to these reports the BCG had argued strongly that yet another bland review document would not suffice. The Group’s tenet was that the conservation of biodiversity was a key test of sustainability and a healthy environment. More particularly there was a need for an agreement on the species and habitats that warranted the most attention and on directing resources at these priorities.

The BCG proposed an objective-led planning process with costed targets for a selection of priority species and habitats. It was convinced that there was sufficient information on most of

these to prepare meaningful plans and believed the process should be embedded into all aspects of Government policy. To show that this was feasible, it cited ‘ambitious but realistic’ targets for the conservation and recovery of around 530 species and 11 habitats as well as comprehensive action plans for two of the species and six of the habitats.

When the Government published its response to the convention, Biodiversity – The UK Action Plan (BAP), the BCG welcomed it but argued that it lacked the clear structure of its own report. There were also differences of approach, for example, on the role of the voluntary sector in the delivery of the habitat action plans. But the overall goals and objectives of the Government and the BCG were very similar and both recognised that the aim should be ‘no further net loss of biodiversity’. The Government’s report proposed a UK Biodiversity Action Plan Steering Group to take matters forward, including a range of recommendations that became known as the ‘59 steps’. Importantly, the report committed the Government to produce costed targets for key species and habitats and to produce at least the first tranche of action plans by the end of 1995.

The quality of the individuals involved with the biodiversity process in the Department of the Environment at this stage, from the Minister, John Gummer, through the senior civil servants to the report’s astute author, Roger Bendall, played a major part in the surprisingly good progress that was made after the Department’s initial reticence had been overcome. After all, the process being developed required enormous commitment and energy from all sides. There were refreshingly energetic contributions from most quarters. The collective views of the ‘Challenge Six’ were being coordinated through the BCG and the voluntary sector was now represented on the Government’s UK Steering Group and its four sub-groups taking forward the BAP. Indeed, the majority of the first drafts of the species action plans were produced under contract by the BCG’s members. The Wildlife Trusts were active on the main UK BAP Steering Group and on three of the four sub-groups, particularly in relation to data management and the biodiversity process at the local level.

A second, enlarged and revised edition of Biodiversity Challenge – an agenda for conservation in the UK was launched with sir david attenborough in January 1995.

This time it identified targets for 600 species and 35 habitats with comprehensive action plans for 44 plants and animals and six habitats. In an additional chapter it tackled the difficult issue of costing biodiversity. This helped to keep the Steering Group on its toes and to provide a bench-mark against which the Steering Group’s report could be judged.

In 1995, the UK BAP Steering Group’s report was finally published in two volumes – Volume 1: Meeting the Rio Challenge and Volume 2: Action Plans. It contained a first tranche of 116 species action plans and 14 habitat action plans and a recommendation for work on a further 286 species and 24 habitats to be completed in the next two to three years.

It was a landmark production, not least because it represented a consensus across a very wide range of organisations and institutions. Five months later, the Government formally responded to the Steering Group’s report. It welcomed its findings and supported the call for the remaining species and habitat action plans to be completed within two to three years. Above all, it stamped a Government seal of approval on a restoration, rather than a simply protectionist, agenda for biodiversity conservation.

By 2000, there were around 570 species that had either an action plan or statement or were in a grouped statement or a grouped or joint species action plan, together with 94 habitats that had either an action plan or broad habitat statement. The report recognised that each of the species action plans would be implemented by a number of players but it proposed a ‘lead partner’ to drive forward and coordinate delivery in each case. The statutory sector would be lead partners for the

habitat action plans. There was also a less official plan to get ‘champions’ for species from the corporate sector to sponsor some of the more charismatic species. In addition, the Steering Group believed much could be gained by promoting the process at the local level and in particular through the development of local partnerships and Local Biodiversity Action Plans.

Once the dust had settled, members of the BCG found themselves as lead partners for a daunting, 187 species action plans. During the preparation of the UK BAP Steering Group’s report, and after its publication, The Wildlife Trusts had, understandably, played a major part in developing the thinking on Local Biodiversity Action Plans. Trusts now became increasingly involved, and in many cases took the lead, in a growing number of local BAP partnerships. In 1996, for example, the Sussex Trust published Vision for the Wildlife of Sussex; a consortium of English Nature, Environment Agency, RSPB and the Trusts published Action for Wildlife in East Anglia – a Guide to Biodiversity in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and the Lincolnshire Trust published Nature in Lincolnshire – Towards a Biodiversity Strategy.

By May 2000, The Wildlife Trusts was lead partner for 23 priority species; nationally focusing on ten of the UK BAP priority habitats; and a key partner in 95 per cent of local biodiversity action plans. It had also been moderately successful in securing corporate ‘champions’. In 1998, for example, the early gentian was among the first of the BAP’s plant species to attract corporate support. Wessex Water agreed to fund The Wildlife Trusts and Plantlife for on-site management advice and vital research and survey work in their region

The Wildlife Trusts’ work on five UK BAP priority invertebrate species – southern damselfly, the black bog and narrow-headed ants, a leaf beetle and the mire pill-beetle – was reported in Beauty and the Mini-Beasts, published during Wildlife Week 2000. In its foreword, The Wildlife Trusts’ President, David Bellamy, reminded his audience that if invertebrate species were in decline, then humans were in trouble too. Although the Government’s BAP process was helping, “without further funding, they and a host of others will perish. That’s why The Wildlife Trusts are lobbying for policy changes and appealing for support”.16

Nine years after the Earth Summit in 2001, the BCG assessed progress in Biodiversity Counts – Delivering a Better Quality of Life just prior to the BAP’s first reporting round. The picture was mixed and the report observed “before the publication of BAP, there was no strategy for conserving the UK’s wildlife shared by Government, industry, conservation organisations and the public alike”.17 Now there was. The report called for the biodiversity process to be nurtured and encouraged, particularly at a time when many functions affecting

Corncrake - one of the priority species identified by the UK Biodiversity Action Plan

Trusts champion local biodiversity planning across the UK

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WILDLIFE IN TRUST: A HUNDRED YEARS OF NATURE CONSERVATION

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PART III: BIOLOGICAL SITES RECORDING SCHEME

biological sites recording scheme

In the late 1960s, the Society faced increasing numbers of requests from the Trusts for guidance on site recording. The problem was that there was no national agreement on a standard method for collecting information about sites of biological or conservation interest and so in 1966 the Society’s Conservation Advisory Group set about devising a system for the Trusts to use on their nature reserves and elsewhere.

Preparation of the scheme was, however, taken forward under the guidance of the Society’s new conservation liaison committee (CLC), chaired by David Streeter. The principal architects of the scheme were Streeter (he delivered a paper on the subject to the Society’s fourth national conference (conferences) in Bournemouth in 1966) and the Head of the Nature Conservancy’s Biological Records Centre (BRC) at the time, frank perring. The details of the final scheme were published by the Society in a Technical Publication No 1: Biological Sites Recording Scheme in 1969. A second, revised edition appeared in 1972.

In the context of the day the publi-cation was a landmark achievement. It established a habitat (and micro-habitat) classification with definitions and symbols and gave guidance on completing a new habitat recording card and existing species cards and on the storage and use of the data collected. The scheme received the

general blessing of the Conservancy’s BRC and it was BRC money that funded both the cards and the technical publication.

british wildlife appeal

In the mid-1980s the Society coordinated its most ambitious project to date – a British Wildlife Appeal (BWA) – on behalf of the Trust movement. The target was to raise £10 million over five years – £5 million to be raised nationally and £5 million to be raised through the Trusts. The aim was to buy and care for land with endangered species and declining habitats; to give everyone a chance to get to know and enjoy wildlife in town and country; and to promote greater public awareness of the threats to wildlife.

The Society’s 1982/3 annual report noted that “the combined effect of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and the current recession seems to have caused many more SSSIs to come on the market. The situation has been aggravated by Government instructions to the Forestry Commission that it should raise £82 million over four years by selling assets including many of its woodlands”.22 A survey at the end of 1983 revealed that Trusts were negotiating for more than 50 SSSIs costing more than £1.25 million and, as fast as one site’s future was secured, a new one was coming along. Existing sources of money were unable to meet the demand and a decision was taken to establish a fundraising unit with the primary purpose of launching a national appeal. From the outset, however, the BWA was seen not only as a major fund raising vehicle but as a way of uniting and promoting the Trust movement and of enhancing its public profile and reputation.

From 1983 onwards, an Appeal Steering Committee, initially chaired by David Robinson (1983–4), prepared the ground. All import-antly, in 1985, the Society secured permission from the Trustees of the Mary Snow Trust – the backers of the Society’s land fund

– to use the interest from the Fund to pump-prime the Appeal. With spacious rent-free office space in the City of London provided by the Vincent Wildlife Trust, the way was clear to appoint a full-time Appeal Director, John Guy, and supporting staff and to engage public relations consultants to prepare the ground for a spectacular launch on 22nd October 1985.

The chances of the Appeal succeeding were greatly enhanced when the distinguished naturalist and broadcaster, sir david attenborough, accepted an invitation from Perring to be its Chairman and when the Society’s Patron, HRH, The Prince of Wales, agreed to speak in support of the appeal at its launch in the Natural History Museum in London. More than 400 distinguished guests were shown a nine-projector BWA presentation – finalised late the night before – and heard announcements of a generous donation from the Patron through the Duchy of Cornwall. There was also an unprecedented contribution of £10,000 from the Department of Environment presented by the Minister for the Environment, William Waldegrave.

At the end of the five years, the BWA exceeded its target by more than £6 million thanks in no small

their own lists, but to press aheadwith the development of their own biodiversity strategies as well.

By December 2001, the Department (now the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – DEFRA) established the England Biodiversity Group and began preparation of an England Strategy, Working with the Grain of Nature – a Biodiversity Strategy for England, which it published in 2002. The report repeated the Government’s commitment, made at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development during the summer, to achieve a “significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010”. 20

The lobbying by the BCG for biodiversity process to be enshrined in law had paid off. In 2000, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act placed a new duty on Government Departments and the new National Assembly for Wales to have regard to biodiversity conservation and to maintain lists of species and habitats of principal importance for the conservation of biological diversity. These lists were published in England and Wales at the end of 2002. This biodiversity duty was extended to public bodies and statutory undertakers under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006.

In some respects, when similar legislation was introduced under the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004, it was stronger. A duty was placed on ‘every public body and office holder, in exercising any functions, to further the conservation of biodiversity so far as is consistent with the proper exercise of those functions’ and to produce a

Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and lists of species and habitats of ‘principal importance for the conservation of biodiversity’. The list for Scotland was published in December 2005.

By 2007, following a further comprehensive expert analysis of priority species and habitats, a list of 1,149 species and 65 habitats was approved by the Governments of all four UK administrations.

In 2003, Wildlife and Countryside Link (wildlife link) established a Biodiversity Task Force and soon afterwards it picked up the reins from the Biodiversity Challenge Group. The following year, at a Parliamentary reception, Link published Sustaining Biodiversity: Revitalising the BAP Process, and in 2007 played a key part in getting DEFRA to publish Conserving Biodiversity in a Changing Climate: Guidance on Building Capacity to Adapt.

For nearly ten years the Biodiversity Challenge Group had kept the BAP process in the spotlight, had confronted the Government with new thinking on biodiversity conservation and, through its member organisations, including The Wildlife Trusts, backed up its ideas with membership of the various groups and committees as well as data and delivery on the ground. Locally, in many cases, it had reinforced the Trusts’ position as a leading player in biodiversity conservation. The Biodiversity Challenge Group, as Marren observed, had been “one of the milestones on the journey of the voluntary bodies from amateur natural history societies to partners in environmental policy-making”.21

wildlife at UK level were being devolved to the countries. What was needed was for the process, not the detail, to be enshrined in law across the country and new, relatively modest, money made available for still more action on the ground.

Highlights of the official reporting round were published by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2003. “More than a third of the UK BAP species and sixty per cent of the habitats are beginning to show positive trends”,18 and “seventy-two per cent of the national action plans are showing progress on at least one target”.19 Out of 391 species and 45 habitats, six habitats and 25 species were increasing, six habitats and 76 species were stable, 17 habitats were in decline (but the decline was slowing for 14 habitats) and, finally, 97 species were declining (but the decline was slowing for 30 species).

In May 1997, the Labour Government of Tony Blair had been elected on promises that there would be devolved institutions to govern in Scotland and Wales. Referenda later that year delivered ‘yes’ votes from the public in favour of devolution. This meant that, in future, delivery of biodiversity conservation, as with many other policies, would rest with the different countries. The Department of Environment still felt proprietorial about the biodiversity process and the list of priority species and habitats drawn up under the biodiversity process. It wanted to retain UK lists of priority species and habitats but the countries were now keen, not only to compile

His passion for the natural environment was sparked by boyhood visits to the Welcombe and Marsland coastal valleys on the Devon-Cornwall border (nature reserves owned by the society). Later in his life, after patient negotiations with over 30 owners and tenants, he acquired and gifted these valleys to the Society as a nature reserve. In 1934, his family’s chocolate company, Cadbury’s, had posted him to Norwich as a sales representative. In his retirement speech as President, Cadbury recalled how fortunate it was that Norfolk had the only Trust and only Trust nature reserve at the time. “I caught the ‘conservation bug’ and it has never left me”.25

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WILDLIFE IN TRUST: A HUNDRED YEARS OF NATURE CONSERVATION

measure to the appeal’s director and chairman. Attenborough worked tirelessly throughout, undertaking two punishing nationwide lecture tours involving travelling thousands of miles, speaking to 25,000 people at more than 130 venues and raising more than £85,000 in the process. Attenborough was later to recall that when he had been asked to become Chairman of the Appeal, Perring had said “it won’t involve any work!”23

Many others supported the appeal, from royalty and celebrities to companies and wealthy benefactors. In 1986, for example, Julian Pettifer, wildlife film-maker and a Vice President of the Society, also toured the country with a special film compiled from his BBC TV series, The Living Isles. In 1987, a Royal Gala opening of Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet was attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales and generated more than £50,000. In 1989 a special reception at Garrards celebrated the first exhibition of Herend porcelain in Britain for 100 years. The event was attended by the Princess of Wales, herself a collector, and an auction during the evening, with actor Robert Hardy acting as auctioneer, raised £40,000. Gale’s

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PART III: CHRISTOPHER CADBURY

Honey sponsored five wildflower weeks and the car manufacturers Fiat provided 27 Panda cars worth £167,000 for the Trusts. There was a mass hand-over of the cars in Battersea Park, London, and at least one of these vehicles was still in use by a Trust at the turn of the century.

The success of the appeal, however, was in large measure a product of the imagination and commitm ent of the Trusts and their local appeals – 60 per cent of the total money was raised by the Trusts. There is no doubt, however, that the BWA impress played a vital role in the success of these appeals too. Several Trusts received sizeable BWA gifts from individuals, for example John Paul Getty Junior donated more than £285,000 in 1986 to bbowt.

Interviewed for the winter issue of Natural World in 1990, when the BWA was all over, Attenborough reflected on reaching and exceeding the £10 million target. “The winds of change were with us. There has been an extraordinary awakening. Even the Prime Minister was commenting on conservation. The situation has got so much worse; everyone now sees that the wood over the hill is

threatened and that the hedgerows have gone. We are all much more concerned about the environment. However. . . almost more important than the money, was the way that numerous people throughout the land worked together to save their local countryside. . . in a curious way I would like to think that when people look back at the affairs of conservation, they will recognise that the real achievement of the BWA was that it actually brought the Wildlife Trusts together”.24

business of conservation training programme

By the 1980s, senior staff in the Trusts were being asked to take on a wider range of tasks and to cope with increasingly complex businesses. They had often been appointed as practical conservationists but now had to cope, not just with a general broadening of the Trusts’ roles and responsibilities, but also with new challenges such as the management of large numbers of MSC-funded staff, (employment schemes) and computerisation (computers in the trusts). They needed help not only to develop and promote the Trust but to develop themselves as well.

One solution was a series of Business of Conservation staff training courses organised between 1984 and 1988. The courses were available to staff from the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV), Field Studies Council and the Society and Trusts and was supported by British Petroleum (BP), the Nature Conservancy Council and WWF. Training was led by Julian Greatrex (BP) with support from Mel Banham (BTCV). By way of example, between October and November 1986 courses were organised on Creating an Effective Organisation, Promoting Yourself and Your Organisation and Time and Team Management.

Prince Charles talks to Watch members at the British Wildlife Appeal launch, Natural History Museum, London

Ccadbury, christopher

John Christopher Cadbury (1908–1995) helped lay the foundations of the modern Society as a county-based organisation and was its president from 1962 until 1988. He chaired the Society’s Council meetings during this time and was Chairman of the Society’s Executive Committee between1981 and 1983. He was directly or indirectly involved in the acquisition of at least 30 nature reserves in Britain as well as aride island and Cousin Island in the Seychelles and nine south Atlantic islands in the Falklands (nature reserves owned by the society).

Christopher Cadbury

In 1958, he became a member of the Society’s Council and the same year joined the regional liaison committee, which had recently been formed to provide the focal point for a huge effort to expand the number of local Trusts. Cadbury became the Chairman of this Committee in 1960 and, with its secretary ted smith, devoted himself to the task in hand with tremendous enthusiasm, attending and organising meetings around the country.

Once embarked on a cause, he was never one to give up easily. He often adopted his favourite technique of persuasion which involved firing off a relentless barrage of letters copied to individuals, many of whom appeared totally unrelated to the topic in question. The recipient was not let off the hook until a satisfactory reply had been received!

In 1990, he endowed the Christopher Cadbury Medal (see

also christopher cadbury medal citations and medals) to be gifted annually by the Society. He was on the Council of the norfolk trust for 43 years and was first Chairman, then President and finally Patron of the Worcestershire Trust for more than 27 years.

Christopher Cadbury’s “heart and soul”26 were in nature conservation. He was involved in the work of RSPB, Birdlife International and WWF but he devoted most of his energy and influence to the Wildlife Trusts who benefited nationally, and at local level, from his intuition, tenacity, kindness and generosity over 37 years.

A memorial to Christopher Cadbury was unveiled by Sir David Attenborough at the Welcombe and Marsland nature reserve in Devon on 1st October 1997. There is also a granite memorial stone at the start of the hill walk on Aride Island in the Seychelles.

David Attenborough unveils memorial to Christopher Cadbury at the Marsland Valley, Devon, 1997