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Real national parks
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Viewpoint Real National Parks Brunsdon Yapp, a former member of the National Parks Commission, gives here a personal view of the administration of National Parks in the UK. He recommends that the National Trust should have its land expropriated and given to a new National Parks Commission as he believes that the Trust has proved itself totally incapable of looking after it. He also argues that the UK National Parks need a central authority to own and administer the core of the land. Opinions vary as to the origin of the National Park. In 1841, the American George Catlin wrote What a beautiful and thrilling specimen for America to preserve and hold up to the view of. . future ages. A nation’s Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature’s beauty.’
Almost pressed sworth:
the same idea had been exin 1810 by William Word-
persons of pure taste by their visits (often repeated) to the Lakes in the North of England, testify that they deem the district a sort of national property, in
which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy.’ It is often said that Englishmen are good at ideas and inventions, but bad at developing and exploiting them, and this is perhaps an example. America did not take up Catlin’s idea of preserving bisons and Indians of the long-grass country from Mexico to Lake Winnipeg. Later, whether influenced by Catlin’s writing or not, Judge Cornelius Hedges and his friends, camping by the geysers of Yellowstone in 1870, decided that these wonders of nature ought to be a national possession; so, being men of influence, they brought the Yellowstone National Park into existence in 1872 by legislation. Yosemite (already from 1864 partly owned by the State of California) followed soon after, and others were added from time to time.3 The first National Park to be established in Europe was in Switzerland in 1914, known simply as The Swiss National Park. The UK had to wait until 1951 when the Lake District and Peak District National Parks were set
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up; Snowdonia followed in 1953, and Scotland still has none. The original definition of an American National Park was ‘a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people’, but the Act of 1916 establishing the National Parks Service, directed it not only ‘to promote and regulate’ the public use of the areas, but to ‘conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein’. From an early date, two principles were followed to maintain the Parks: the removal of private ownership and the minimum of interference with the vegetation and with the animals - with the curious exception of fish, which could be angled for, although shooting of game was forbidden. The legend grew up that the Parks (mostly in the mountainous west) were in a state of primeval nature. This was far from true. Even in the remote parts much of the timber had been cut over and was second growth; in Yellowstone, which, with its contiguous Grand Teton National Park, covers 3060 square miles, wolves could not be confined to the Park and were soon exterminated by farmers who shot them when they emerged into the surrounding agricultural land. Tourism, for some reason, was for long regarded there, as in the UK, as not being exploitation, and this became the dominant reason for the existence of the Parks. A railway station was built in the Yosemite valley on the edge of the Grand Canyon, and the density of motor traffic along its south rim was great. Nevertheless, the Parks are still reasonably ‘natural’ - the
botanists’ term ‘semi-natural’ would be better - and exploitation by industry and agriculture have ceased, or had never begun. The Swiss National Park was from the first looked on as a nature reserve. It is defined as ‘an alpine sanctuary protected from all human interference and influence not serving its purpose, and where the entire fauna and flora are allowed to develop freely. The National Park primarily serves scientific research.‘4 Much of the area had been exploited, but the woodlands had not been cut since the second half of the 19th century, and at the date of its establishment there was little population or agriculture of any sort. Although the public is admitted, there are more strict controls on freedom of movement than in the American parks.
Little discussion The English and Welsh Parks are different. There seems to have been little discussion of the concept until Ramsay Macdonald’s Government of 1929 set up a committee under Christopher Addison, which produced its report in 1931.” No action was taken since the Labour government was overwhelmed by the economic and political disasters of 1931 and was replaced by another, still under Macdonald’s premiership, but consisting mostly of Conservatives. Addison’s Report, though forgotten (it is not mentioned in the account of Addison in the Dictionary of National Biography) is important because it set the pattern for all that has happened since. Three points in it are important. It dismissed any natural history interest in National Parks with a few lines and a contemptuous reference to bird sanctuaries. The National Trust, County Councils Association, Association of Municipal Corporations, Urban District Councils Association, Surveyors Institution, Land Agents Society, Central Landowners’ Association, Ramblers’ Federation, Association for the Preservation of Rural Scotland, Association of County Councils in Scotland, Surveyors Institution (Scottish Branch), Scottish Land and Property Federation,
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Scottish Estate Factors’ Society, Association of District Committees in Scotland and other bodies gave evidence to the effect that in any scheme of National Parks, land would need to be acquired, and the same was urged by many private witnesses. At that time, therefore, the local authorities, the representatives of owners of land, and those concerned professionally with its administration, were in favour of public ownership. Only one witness said that it would not be necessary; Patrick Abercrombie, an architect and town planner, best known for his work on industrial landscapes, began his evidence by saying ‘the recreational use of National Parks should be the primary consideration’ and then went on to say that ownership would not be needed and everything could be achieved by planning. He must have been persuasive, for the Addison Committee rejected the advice of all the other witnesses and followed Abercrombie in their recommendations.
Unrestricted access Nothing much was done officially in the 1930s. Unofficially the walkers’ organizations pressed for unrestricted access to all open land more than 1000 feet above sea level, which was naturally opposed by those interested in natural history as well as landowners. The Access to Mountains Act 1939, a private measure so ineffective that many of its original supporters disowned it, was the sucessor of many similar private bills going back to 1884, but it was never used and was later repealed. The Friends of the Lake District, founded in 1934, had as their slogan ‘Make the Lake District a National Park’, so returning to Wordsworth. During the second world war, when there was much discussion of war aims and enthusiasm for a better life when peace should come, National Parks began to be talked about and even promoted by those prominent in government. The Ministry of Town and Country Planning appointed John Dower ‘to study the problems relating to the establishment of National Parks in England and Wales’. He reported in
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1945.’ After a little recent history, he plunges into a definition of ‘National Park’. Ignoring al1 precedent except that of Abercrombie and Addison he says. “‘National” may well suggest a comprehensive public acquisition or other state action more drastic than the true purpose justifies or requires’, this might be a legitimate result of a study of the problems, but is hardly a basis for it. He refers to Yellowstone, and says, ‘Most of the American and African Parks are continuously “virgin” country’. this is clearly not true of the American Parks, and it is even less true of the African Parks. He says, correctly, ‘there are no considerable stretches in England and Wales, and few even in the Scottish Highlands, whose landscape has not been to a significant degree modified by farming or other uses’, and immediately defines a National Park in the UK as An extensive area of beautiful and relatively wild country in which, for the nation’s benefit and by appropriate national decision and action, (a) the characteristic landscape beauty is strictly preserved. (b) access and facilities for open-air enjoyment are amply provided, (c) wildlife and buildings and places of architecture and historic interest are suitably protected, while (d) establishing farming use is effectively maintained.
A committee under the chairmanship of Sir Arthur Hobhouse was appointed in 1945 by the Minister of Town and Country Planning and reported in 1947.? Its terms of reference were first to consider which areas recommended by Dower should be selected as National Parks and second, to consider the measures necessary to achieve the objects of National Parks (very much the horse following the cart) and finally to consider the conservation of wildlife. To assist them in the last they appointed a special committee with a predominantly scientific membership.” Their recommendations led to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, which set up both the National Parks Commission and, as an entirely separate body. the Nature Conservancy. It is notable that the Hobhouse remit did not prevent them from considering Scotland, and in fact the Nature Conservancy established had authority in that country, but the
National Parks Commission did not. Ten National Parks were established between 1951 and 1956. The Countryside Act of 1968 abolished the Commission but made no changes in the National Parks (as distinct from their administration).
Out of mind Scotland meanwhile had fallen out of mind, which was a pity, because the Ramsay Committee. which was appointed at the same time as Dower. suggested a very much better definition of a National Park, A National Park is an extensive tract of country of outstanding natural beauty. preferably also of scientific, cultural or historic interest, owned or controlled by the Nation, and accessible to all as a matter of right under suitable regulations, and administered by or on behalf of the Nation to the end that its distinctive values may be preserved l~nimpaired for the enjoyment and recreation of this and future generationsV
In response to their enquiries, they received no replies adverse to their proposals for National Parks in Scotland, and suggested the gradual acquisition of suitable areas over IO-20 years. In spite of these precedents. the Countryside Commission for Scotland, set up alongside the new Countryside Commission in England and Wales, produced in 1974 a document in which they rejected the idea that Scotland should have National Parks. I” Meanwhile a largely self-appointed international voluntary body had come into existence, called the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN), or later for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. The definitions of National Parks that it has used have meant little or nothing; a zoo could be included, while the American National Parks should be excluded, because not only are the lakes stocked with fish and angling allowed, but the hotels and so on are let to concessionaires for private profit just like filling stations on motorways’in the UK. Nevertheless. the IUPN produced a world list of ‘National Parks and equivalent reserves’ (this seems to be a mistranslation from the French, the primary
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Viewpoint text, which has analogue) which includes no English National Parks but does include small English Nature Reserves not in public ownership.” These, in one of their functions, may be said to be analogous to National Parks, but are in no sense equivalent. The list seems to have influenced the Countryside Commission for Scotland in their rejection of National Parks. Two purposes are embedded in the English and Welsh Parks: the preservation of the natural world and the promotion of its enjoyment by the public. In the UK, the lobby for access seems until recently to have been stronger than that for nature. All over the country natural history societies, both national and local, that flourished in the 19th century became moribund by the 20th. The British Ecological Society, the only national society professionally concerned with natural or seminatural wildlife as a whole, was founded in 1913, but it grew slowly until the war; in 1939 it had 357 members, of whom only 242 had addresses in the UK. (There are now about ten times these numbers.) Thirteen bodies concerned with animals or plants (four of them ornithological) gave evidence to the Wildlife Conservation Special Committee, but they were outnumbered by 1.5that did so although they had no connection with nature. Six of the leading national societies concerned with animals, plants or the earth declined to give evidence although invited to do so.
Involvement The Standing Committee on National Parks set up by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England had representatives from about 20 constituent societies of which only two, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB, founded in 1889) and the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (founded in 1912) were cancerned with nature. They were balanced by two organizations of motorists, the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) and the Automobile Association (AA). In 1979 the Council for National Parks into which the Standing Committee had become, had over
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30 member bodies; the RAC and AA had dropped out, but so had the RSPB. and motorists were represented by the Caravan Club.
Priority In view of this apathy on the part of those who might have spoken for natural history, it is not surprising that in England and Wales access by the public has come to have priority over nature in the Parks. A further reason for this lies in the people whom ministers have appointed to advise them. John Dower was an architect and town planner; the only scientist on the Hobhouse Committee was Julian Huxley, whose interest, apart from some early work on the behaviour of birds. was rather in the laboratory and in books than in the field. One would hardly appoint a botanist to advise on the preservation of ancient buildings, so why appoint an architect to advise on the preservation of nature? A likely answer must be that the minister was already ignoring that aspect of National Parks, and his successor continued in the same view when he appointed the Hobhouse Committee. A second feature of those selected to advise on and later to administer Nation31 Parks is their apparent ignorance of those in existence elsewhere. Dower gives no evidence that he had ever seen a National Park. It might have been impossibie for him to visit foreign Parks while he was preparing his report during the war, but the first thing that the Hobhouse Committee, or at least some of its members, ought to have done would be to go and look at least at the Swiss National Park. When I was appointed to the National Parks Commission in 1953 I had never seen a National Park outside the UK, nor, I found, had any of my colleagues or any of the Commission’s officers. Except for one member appomted from the Nature Conservancy. I was the only member with any knowledge of biology. and that was by accident. There were two ramblers, a farmer and a forester; for the rest it was a typical government commission. with a retired permanent secretary, a university vice-chancellor, a brigadier and a couple of peers.
When I suggested that we ought to be represented at the World Conference on National Parks in Seattle in 1962 no-one else showed much enthusiasm, and although I was allowed to go as a delegate, the ministry refused to sanction any expenses. It is fair to add that for some of the senior officers of the Countryside Commission, as well as of the individual National Parks, things are now different. What, then, are the characteristics of the English and Welsh Parks as they have come into existence since 1950? Firstly, they are run locally. Only one third of the members of each board or committee are appointed (formerly nominated) by the minister, and they are supposed to represent the national interest. Since they are in a permanent minority they cannot, in a last resort, have their way, however strongly they feel. Secondly, the boards and committees of the Parks are basically planning authorities, in the ordinary local authority sense, as is shown by their names, such as the Lake District Special Planning Board. This part of their job they have on the whole done well; some, as is to be expected, much better than others. There have been lapses, as when the Peak District Board proposed to institute a motorracing circuit on the roads of the Park (this was abandoned) or more recently when the Lake District Board allowed an ugly collection of huts for waterskiing on the shores of Lake Windermere. To see what might have happened in the Lake District if it had not been a National Park was has only to go and look at the Cairngorms in Scotland. There, the first downward step was taken when the Forestry Commission as owners allowed the erection of a corrugated iron boatshed in the middle of the golden sands of Loch Morlich, one of the most beautiful lake shores in the UK. It was followed, with the help of subsidiaries from public funds, by the creation in an exceptionally remote and beautiful area of a resort for skiing largely for the benefit of English shareholders and company directors. Section S of the National Parks Act lays down that the purpose of the Act is to preserve and enhance the natural
Viewpoint beauty of the Parks for their enjoyment by the public, and ‘natural beauty’ is later defined (section 14) as including fauna and flora. The members of the National Parks Commission always used to include, by administrative agreement, a member of the Nature Conservancy, and in choosing the nominated members we always tried to find one for each Park who, either professionally or as an amateur, had some knowledge of natural history. One would have thought that the terms of the Act could not be fulfilled unless both Commission and Park boards had some staff qualified in ecology, but it has only been in the last few years that any such appointments have been made and ecologists have even been appointed as chief officers. ”
Reluctance Finally, there has been a general reluctance to hold land. The Peak District has for some time had a general policy of buying woodlands, mostly small, and in about 1965 the Lake District Board decided to try to acquire any lakeshore land that came on to the market, but little came of that. Large areas have been ignored, refused, or even sold off. The Countryside Commission under Section 4 of the Countryside Act 1968, may acquire and hold land for the purposes of National Parks with the consent of the minister, but the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1982, which in general freed the Commission from ministerial control of how it spent its funds made, as I interpret it, no difference here. In any case the Commission’s policy has been not to exercise these powers. Such is the state of affairs. What changes are needed to create real National Parks in England and Wales? The solutions put forward by Ann and Malcolm McEwan in their recent book, which seem on the whole to have been well received, are in my opinion of little use.13 Much greater changes than they propose are needed. Although the Dower definition never had official standing - the government merely published Dower’s Re-
port ‘for information and as a basis for discussion’ - it was accepted by the Hobhouse Committee, of which Dower was a member, and has been the working definition of the National Parks Commission and its successor, the Countryside Commission ever since. Its last clause has been the source of much of the troubles of National Parks in the UK. Much more is known about the history of the apparently natural appearance of the country now than 40 years ago, but even then, as Dover himself recognized, the condition of the moorlands was known to be largely the product of agriculture. What he did not realize (he was not, as we have seen, a botanist) and what the amenity societies in general still do not seem to recognize is that nature, whether interfered with by man or not, does not stand still. In the 1930s ecological thinking was dominated by the views of the American botanist Clements, according to which the cover in any one place, if left to itself, will go through a series of stages called succession, until a stable state, called a climax, is reached, which will last until there is some great change such as a new Ice Age. In these terms such vegetation as the grass moor of the Lake District, produced partly by the grazing of sheep, is the climax of a deflected succession. We now know that apparent climaxes may be false; they may seem to be stable and yet be slowly changing. Oakwoods may not be able to regenerate, so that they will revert to scrub, perhaps to heath, and then come back to oakwood once more.
Oakwoods
destroyed
The sheep and other factors desthe oakwoods, probably troyed formerly continuous up to 300 m above sea level, with birchwoods above them; where there were no trees there was probably heather. Now nearly all is an apparently uniform grassland, but grassland changes. The sheep selectively eat the good grasses, the fescues and bents, so that the unpalatable mat-grass spreads. At lower altitudes, bracken invades. Some trees can regenerate in bracken,
so that if seeds are available forest may in time take over once more, and the same cycle will begin again, or if sheep are no longer present, a different one. If we want things to remain as they are, as presumably Dower did and most ramblers certainly do, it is useless maintaining established farming use, but why should things remain as they were in 1949? If oakwoods are preferable, a rather more natural cover not only for much of the Lake District but for parts of many other parks as well, why should we not plant them, or at least encourage them to spread on their own, which in places they will do? (The cycle that I have just described, with oaks coming back, can be seen in progress on the southern portion of the Malvern Hills.) The woodland on the southern shore of Ennerdale Water in the Lake District is almost entirely second growth, regenerated since 1790. The oakwood that formerly covered Skiddaw Dodd, which is shown by Pearsall as the natural vegetation of the Lake District’” had been planted by Henry Spedding in the 19th century. (It was later grubbed up and replaced by conifers.) I need not labour the point that farming, like vegetation, does not stand still, and the ‘established farming use’ of Dower’s time was only a few centuries old, if that, and has now moved on. What was the established farming use of Exmoor? Part of the moor had been reclaimed, at financial loss, only a century before the establishment of the National Park.ls Much had been abandoned, some had continued as not very profitable farms. Should we regard the recent attempts. with the assistance of subsidies and modern deep ploughing, to bring the land back into cultivation, as ‘established farming use’ (and if not, why not?). Agriculture, with forestry, was excluded from ‘development’ as defined for the planning acts, so that change of use to or within these activities cannot be controlled by using them, but they are nevertheless forms of exploitation, and there has long been clamour for forestry, but not farming, to be brought within planning control. An important form of exploitation,
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which is not generally regarded as such, is walking. One person can do little harm wherever he may go, and there is no case for any genera1 restrictions, such as the ‘Keep to the trail’ of American Parks. The most that is needed is temporary closure of limited areas for special reasons, such as the regrowth of vegetation or the protection of particular bird’s nests. What should be discouraged or even forbidden are the mass walks, still organized by well-meaning people, whether for demonstrations, fund-raising or just fun.
Hoped for acquisitions To achieve all this it would be necessary for the individual park authorities and the central authority, which I should hope would be a restored National Parks Commission, to set out to acquire over a period of years all the important parts of the Parks. This has been suggested by those best able to judge from time to time. At the first provincial conference of National Park Authorities in 1959, R.H. Hutchins, the Deputy Clerk of the Peak District Board, said that conveyance of land under the National Land Fund might be made to the Board rather than to the National trust ‘which had insufficient administrative resources’. ” At the next conference in 1960 the Planning Officers of all the Parks were unanimous that they could not do their job properly unless the important land was publicly owned. This directs attention to the present boundaries of the parks. It is not always easy to see how they were determined, but the Commission took great pains to establish them by visits of inspection and discussion. All the Parks include many villages, and some of them include small towns, and for these the ordinary planning controls are adequate. It is only the central areas, moors, lakes, woods and land which could reasonably be returned to one of these, that need special treatment and should be acquired. This leads to the concept of zoning. It has been applied in France, and was recommended by the Lake District Special Committee of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England but
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is on the whole opposed in evidence to the Addison Committee by the amenity bodies in England. The argument, as i understand it, is that saying ‘the central fells of the Lake District need a different treatment from the village of Ambleside’ is in some way to weaken the provision for the latter. This is, in my view, nonsense since the places are different anyway and are treated differently, and no one is suggesting that the present high standard of planning should be abandoned. The mechanics of aquisition are not so difficult as is sometimes thought. A very large part of the Lake District is already in national if privately administered ownership; 55000 ha, nearly one fifth of the whole Park, belongs to the National Trust, and this includes most of the central fells. However that body has looked after its historic buildings, the other limb of its trust, places of natural beauty, it has treated with ignorance. Until very recently its only concession to natural history was to have an honorary adviser for zoology and botany, in the person of Sir Edward Salisbury; he was a very distinguished botanist, but when his name disappeared from the Annual Report in 1977, he was 91. He had been joined in 1966 as honorary adviser in ecology by Professor Roy Clapham. an excellent choice, but he is stili there, aged 79. I cannot believe that elderly men can be the most appropriate people for a job that to be done properly needs not only knowledge but energy and the willingness to go at short notice to remote parts of the country sometimes at high altitudes. The regional agents of the Trust, who have great freedom of action in their area, are mostly Land Agents, and good ones, but this is not adequate qualification for looking after natural beauty, including fauna and flora. The fate CD. Acland, the agent in the Lake District and a nominated member of the Park Board, discussing with me the provision of electricity in the Buttermere valley, said ‘I am not interested in the National Park: I am interested only in the welfare of my tenants’. In a paper read to the conference of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves
in 1966, an officer of the Trust said that its policy was to let other bodies look after natural history.” The Trust’s leaflet on its woodlands” contains much sense, but the general outlook is that of the townsman rather than of the ecologist, with its recommendation of the use of woods for car and caravan parks, and the encouragement of sycamore, a non-native tree that is home neither for many birds nor insects and which was introduced into the Lake District mainly because its timber is good for making cottonreels, for which it is no longer used. The National Trust having shown itself incapable of properly looking after its land in the National Parks, should have it expropriated and given to a new National Parks Commission to own. They might manage some themselves, other parts they might allow the Park Boards to manage as agents. Such expropriation would not be as unfair as might be thought, since much of the Trust’s holdings in the Parks has in fact been originally acquired by pubiic gift, mainly as land that has been accepted by the Treasury in lieu of Death Duty or Capital Transfer Tax, or more recently by means of grants from the Countryside Commission. This leads to the subject of the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The forerunner of this, the National Land Fund, was said by the chancellor, when he formed it by selling war stores after 1946, to be for such purposes as the purchase of land in National Parks. It was never used for this and most of it was absorbed back into the Treasury. The National Heritage Memorial Fund that was brought in to replace it has mostly been used in the interests of art. If &2000000 is spent on buying a Poussin for the National Gallery, the picture is in no fundamental sense saved, since it merely stays here instead of going to the USA. If the same sum is spent on buying for the nation perhaps 8000 ha of the Lake District or Exmoor that would otherwise be ploughed or covered with spruce, saving is a good description, since otherwise the beauty would be gone for ever. Other important parts of National Parks are in the possession of the
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Ministry of Agriculture or of the Water Boards. For the rest of the important parts, privately owned mostly in large blocks, management agreements would do for the present, followed by purchase on the death of the present owner, or pre-emption, in the way in which France deals with important works of art, on a previous sale. A little has been done in this direction. Somerset County County, on behalf of the Exmoor National Park, has received a large area of moorland with the help of the National Memorial Heritage Fund but the Peak District Park has let the Kinder plateau go to the National Trust rather than to take it for themselves. It is rumoured that Nature Conservancy could have bought 11348 ha of the Inverpolly estate in Wester Ross for 04000 in 1961 but preferred to take most of it on lease. This is not only one of the most beautiful parts of the UK but is without roads or houses except on the boundaries, and could have been a National Park on the American model. An objection that has been raised to public ownership is that individuals would then be averse to paying either towards purchase or upkeep - they pay for entry to the houses of the National Trust, even when they have already bought them through the National Heritage Memorial Fund! When these large areas have been acquired, they should be treated in accordance with the objects of the Act for preservation of nature and for the enjoyment by the public, with the addition of ‘both now and in the future’. Section 84 of the National Parks Act, which requires regard to the needs of agriculture and forestry, should be repealed as contradicting the purpose of National Parks. When the Act was passed few people thought of a nature reserve as needing to be more than a few acres, such as ‘bird sanctuaries’. Abercrombie’s These are important, but it is now generally realized by ecologists that what are needed even more are large areas of habitat, and though one cannot fix a minimum one can say ‘the larger the better’. Areas such as the central fells of the Lake District are
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the best we can do. To a great extent they should be left to themselves. This would mean the removal of sheep, which at the least prevent tall grasses and herbs from flowering and trees from regenerating. Anyone who doubts that the removal of sheep would enhance the beauty of the hills should go and look at the small experimental areas from which they have been excluded by the Nature Consevancy Council on Cross Fell in the northern Pennines. Trees, especially oaks, would need to be planted. The change should be carried out gradually as tenancies fall in, so that existing farmers would not be disturbed and sceptics could see the effects. Some grazing of the hills is natural, but not by the introduced sheep and rabbit. Other uses of the public land should be considered very carefully. Water gathering has little if any effect and must be unobjectionable but reservoirs can be ugly, especially their dams, but they need not be. Brianne reservoir that Swansea Corporation has recently constructed in the Upper Towy valley destroyed some delightful and ancient oakwoods, but it is one of the most beautiful lakes in Wales. Military occupation is incompatible with the second purpose of a National Park since it excludes the public, but it is not necessarily inimical to the first. Indeed it has been said that it is good for nature conservation just because of that. Even the use of live ammunition is not wholly bad, since scarred land and battered trees provide good sites for birds and insects. Of the two purposes of a National Park, the preservation of nature and its enjoyment by the public, the former, fundamental one, has been neglected, partly through ignorance and partly through a misguided attempt to maintain ‘established farming use’. Future generations must be remembered. If those who want National Parks will first understand what they are, and then combine the objects of preservation and enjoyment of ecologists and ramblers, National Parks will become of longstanding value. Brunsdon Tewkesbury,
Yapp UK
References ‘George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians, 1841, Vol 1, p 262. Published by George Catlin, London, 2nd edition. *Joseph Wilkinson, Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, Ackermann, London, 1810. The anonymous introduction is by Wordsworth; it became Wordsworth’s ‘Guide to the Lakes’, and was reprinted many times. 31sabelle F. Story, The National Park Story in Pictures, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1957. 4Throuoh the Swiss National Park. Enolish edition:Committee for Scientific deseirch in the National Park, Neuchatel, Switzerland, 1966. %eport of the National Parks Committee, HMSO, London, Command paper no 3851, 1931. ‘John Dower, National Parks in England and Wales, HMSO, London, Command paper no 6628, 1945. ‘Repoti of the National Parks Committee, HMSO, London, Command paper No 7121, 1947. ‘Consetvation of Nature in England and Wales: Report of the Wild Life Special Committee (England and Wales), HMSO, London, Command paper no 7122, 1947. ‘National Parks: A Scottish Survey (the Ramsav RepoHJ, HMSO, London, Command paper’no 6631, 1945. “A Park Svstem for Scot/and. Countrvside Commissidn for Scotland, ’ Perth, ’ UK, 1974. “‘United Nations list of National Parks and equivalent reserves’, International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Brussels, Belgium, 2nd edition, 1971. ecology is strictly “For clarification, serious scientific discipline concerned with the relationships of animals and plants with each other and with their environment. For practical purposes, in the UK an ecologist may be defined as a member of the British Ecological Society. There are only a few exceptions either way. 13Anne and Malcolm MacEwen, National Parks: Conservation or Cosmetics, Allen and Unwin, Reserve Management Series, no 5, London 1982. 14W.H. Pearsall, Mountains and Moorlands, Collins, London, 1950, Figure 39. %.S. Orwin and R.J. Sellick, The Reclamation of Exmoor forest, 2nd revised edition, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, UK, 1970. ’ 6Report of the Proceedings of the Conference of National Park Authorities, Peak District Board, Bakewell, UK, 1959. “‘The National Trust and the conservation of nature’. Paper presented to the Fourth Bienial Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, Bournemouth, UK, 1966. “The National Trust and Woodlands, The National Trust, London, 1980.
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Viewpoint Real National Parks Brunsdon Yapp, a former member of the National Parks Commission, gives here a personal view of the administration of National Parks in the UK. He recommends that the National Trust should have its land expropriated and given to a new National Parks Commission as he believes that the Trust has proved itself totally incapable of looking after it. He also argues that the UK National Parks need a central authority to own and administer the core of the land. Opinions vary as to the origin of the National Park. In 1841, the American George Catlin wrote What a beautiful and thrilling specimen for America to preserve and hold up to the view of. . future ages. A nation’s Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature’s beauty.’
Almost pressed sworth:
the same idea had been exin 1810 by William Word-
persons of pure taste by their visits (often repeated) to the Lakes in the North of England, testify that they deem the district a sort of national property, in
which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy.’ It is often said that Englishmen are good at ideas and inventions, but bad at developing and exploiting them, and this is perhaps an example. America did not take up Catlin’s idea of preserving bisons and Indians of the long-grass country from Mexico to Lake Winnipeg. Later, whether influenced by Catlin’s writing or not, Judge Cornelius Hedges and his friends, camping by the geysers of Yellowstone in 1870, decided that these wonders of nature ought to be a national possession; so, being men of influence, they brought the Yellowstone National Park into existence in 1872 by legislation. Yosemite (already from 1864 partly owned by the State of California) followed soon after, and others were added from time to time.3 The first National Park to be established in Europe was in Switzerland in 1914, known simply as The Swiss National Park. The UK had to wait until 1951 when the Lake District and Peak District National Parks were set
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USE POLICY July 1984
up; Snowdonia followed in 1953, and Scotland still has none. The original definition of an American National Park was ‘a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people’, but the Act of 1916 establishing the National Parks Service, directed it not only ‘to promote and regulate’ the public use of the areas, but to ‘conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein’. From an early date, two principles were followed to maintain the Parks: the removal of private ownership and the minimum of interference with the vegetation and with the animals - with the curious exception of fish, which could be angled for, although shooting of game was forbidden. The legend grew up that the Parks (mostly in the mountainous west) were in a state of primeval nature. This was far from true. Even in the remote parts much of the timber had been cut over and was second growth; in Yellowstone, which, with its contiguous Grand Teton National Park, covers 3060 square miles, wolves could not be confined to the Park and were soon exterminated by farmers who shot them when they emerged into the surrounding agricultural land. Tourism, for some reason, was for long regarded there, as in the UK, as not being exploitation, and this became the dominant reason for the existence of the Parks. A railway station was built in the Yosemite valley on the edge of the Grand Canyon, and the density of motor traffic along its south rim was great. Nevertheless, the Parks are still reasonably ‘natural’ - the
botanists’ term ‘semi-natural’ would be better - and exploitation by industry and agriculture have ceased, or had never begun. The Swiss National Park was from the first looked on as a nature reserve. It is defined as ‘an alpine sanctuary protected from all human interference and influence not serving its purpose, and where the entire fauna and flora are allowed to develop freely. The National Park primarily serves scientific research.‘4 Much of the area had been exploited, but the woodlands had not been cut since the second half of the 19th century, and at the date of its establishment there was little population or agriculture of any sort. Although the public is admitted, there are more strict controls on freedom of movement than in the American parks.
Little discussion The English and Welsh Parks are different. There seems to have been little discussion of the concept until Ramsay Macdonald’s Government of 1929 set up a committee under Christopher Addison, which produced its report in 1931.” No action was taken since the Labour government was overwhelmed by the economic and political disasters of 1931 and was replaced by another, still under Macdonald’s premiership, but consisting mostly of Conservatives. Addison’s Report, though forgotten (it is not mentioned in the account of Addison in the Dictionary of National Biography) is important because it set the pattern for all that has happened since. Three points in it are important. It dismissed any natural history interest in National Parks with a few lines and a contemptuous reference to bird sanctuaries. The National Trust, County Councils Association, Association of Municipal Corporations, Urban District Councils Association, Surveyors Institution, Land Agents Society, Central Landowners’ Association, Ramblers’ Federation, Association for the Preservation of Rural Scotland, Association of County Councils in Scotland, Surveyors Institution (Scottish Branch), Scottish Land and Property Federation,
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Scottish Estate Factors’ Society, Association of District Committees in Scotland and other bodies gave evidence to the effect that in any scheme of National Parks, land would need to be acquired, and the same was urged by many private witnesses. At that time, therefore, the local authorities, the representatives of owners of land, and those concerned professionally with its administration, were in favour of public ownership. Only one witness said that it would not be necessary; Patrick Abercrombie, an architect and town planner, best known for his work on industrial landscapes, began his evidence by saying ‘the recreational use of National Parks should be the primary consideration’ and then went on to say that ownership would not be needed and everything could be achieved by planning. He must have been persuasive, for the Addison Committee rejected the advice of all the other witnesses and followed Abercrombie in their recommendations.
Unrestricted access Nothing much was done officially in the 1930s. Unofficially the walkers’ organizations pressed for unrestricted access to all open land more than 1000 feet above sea level, which was naturally opposed by those interested in natural history as well as landowners. The Access to Mountains Act 1939, a private measure so ineffective that many of its original supporters disowned it, was the sucessor of many similar private bills going back to 1884, but it was never used and was later repealed. The Friends of the Lake District, founded in 1934, had as their slogan ‘Make the Lake District a National Park’, so returning to Wordsworth. During the second world war, when there was much discussion of war aims and enthusiasm for a better life when peace should come, National Parks began to be talked about and even promoted by those prominent in government. The Ministry of Town and Country Planning appointed John Dower ‘to study the problems relating to the establishment of National Parks in England and Wales’. He reported in
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1945.’ After a little recent history, he plunges into a definition of ‘National Park’. Ignoring al1 precedent except that of Abercrombie and Addison he says. “‘National” may well suggest a comprehensive public acquisition or other state action more drastic than the true purpose justifies or requires’, this might be a legitimate result of a study of the problems, but is hardly a basis for it. He refers to Yellowstone, and says, ‘Most of the American and African Parks are continuously “virgin” country’. this is clearly not true of the American Parks, and it is even less true of the African Parks. He says, correctly, ‘there are no considerable stretches in England and Wales, and few even in the Scottish Highlands, whose landscape has not been to a significant degree modified by farming or other uses’, and immediately defines a National Park in the UK as An extensive area of beautiful and relatively wild country in which, for the nation’s benefit and by appropriate national decision and action, (a) the characteristic landscape beauty is strictly preserved. (b) access and facilities for open-air enjoyment are amply provided, (c) wildlife and buildings and places of architecture and historic interest are suitably protected, while (d) establishing farming use is effectively maintained.
A committee under the chairmanship of Sir Arthur Hobhouse was appointed in 1945 by the Minister of Town and Country Planning and reported in 1947.? Its terms of reference were first to consider which areas recommended by Dower should be selected as National Parks and second, to consider the measures necessary to achieve the objects of National Parks (very much the horse following the cart) and finally to consider the conservation of wildlife. To assist them in the last they appointed a special committee with a predominantly scientific membership.” Their recommendations led to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, which set up both the National Parks Commission and, as an entirely separate body. the Nature Conservancy. It is notable that the Hobhouse remit did not prevent them from considering Scotland, and in fact the Nature Conservancy established had authority in that country, but the
National Parks Commission did not. Ten National Parks were established between 1951 and 1956. The Countryside Act of 1968 abolished the Commission but made no changes in the National Parks (as distinct from their administration).
Out of mind Scotland meanwhile had fallen out of mind, which was a pity, because the Ramsay Committee. which was appointed at the same time as Dower. suggested a very much better definition of a National Park, A National Park is an extensive tract of country of outstanding natural beauty. preferably also of scientific, cultural or historic interest, owned or controlled by the Nation, and accessible to all as a matter of right under suitable regulations, and administered by or on behalf of the Nation to the end that its distinctive values may be preserved l~nimpaired for the enjoyment and recreation of this and future generationsV
In response to their enquiries, they received no replies adverse to their proposals for National Parks in Scotland, and suggested the gradual acquisition of suitable areas over IO-20 years. In spite of these precedents. the Countryside Commission for Scotland, set up alongside the new Countryside Commission in England and Wales, produced in 1974 a document in which they rejected the idea that Scotland should have National Parks. I” Meanwhile a largely self-appointed international voluntary body had come into existence, called the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN), or later for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. The definitions of National Parks that it has used have meant little or nothing; a zoo could be included, while the American National Parks should be excluded, because not only are the lakes stocked with fish and angling allowed, but the hotels and so on are let to concessionaires for private profit just like filling stations on motorways’in the UK. Nevertheless. the IUPN produced a world list of ‘National Parks and equivalent reserves’ (this seems to be a mistranslation from the French, the primary
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Viewpoint text, which has analogue) which includes no English National Parks but does include small English Nature Reserves not in public ownership.” These, in one of their functions, may be said to be analogous to National Parks, but are in no sense equivalent. The list seems to have influenced the Countryside Commission for Scotland in their rejection of National Parks. Two purposes are embedded in the English and Welsh Parks: the preservation of the natural world and the promotion of its enjoyment by the public. In the UK, the lobby for access seems until recently to have been stronger than that for nature. All over the country natural history societies, both national and local, that flourished in the 19th century became moribund by the 20th. The British Ecological Society, the only national society professionally concerned with natural or seminatural wildlife as a whole, was founded in 1913, but it grew slowly until the war; in 1939 it had 357 members, of whom only 242 had addresses in the UK. (There are now about ten times these numbers.) Thirteen bodies concerned with animals or plants (four of them ornithological) gave evidence to the Wildlife Conservation Special Committee, but they were outnumbered by 1.5that did so although they had no connection with nature. Six of the leading national societies concerned with animals, plants or the earth declined to give evidence although invited to do so.
Involvement The Standing Committee on National Parks set up by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England had representatives from about 20 constituent societies of which only two, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB, founded in 1889) and the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (founded in 1912) were cancerned with nature. They were balanced by two organizations of motorists, the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) and the Automobile Association (AA). In 1979 the Council for National Parks into which the Standing Committee had become, had over
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30 member bodies; the RAC and AA had dropped out, but so had the RSPB. and motorists were represented by the Caravan Club.
Priority In view of this apathy on the part of those who might have spoken for natural history, it is not surprising that in England and Wales access by the public has come to have priority over nature in the Parks. A further reason for this lies in the people whom ministers have appointed to advise them. John Dower was an architect and town planner; the only scientist on the Hobhouse Committee was Julian Huxley, whose interest, apart from some early work on the behaviour of birds. was rather in the laboratory and in books than in the field. One would hardly appoint a botanist to advise on the preservation of ancient buildings, so why appoint an architect to advise on the preservation of nature? A likely answer must be that the minister was already ignoring that aspect of National Parks, and his successor continued in the same view when he appointed the Hobhouse Committee. A second feature of those selected to advise on and later to administer Nation31 Parks is their apparent ignorance of those in existence elsewhere. Dower gives no evidence that he had ever seen a National Park. It might have been impossibie for him to visit foreign Parks while he was preparing his report during the war, but the first thing that the Hobhouse Committee, or at least some of its members, ought to have done would be to go and look at least at the Swiss National Park. When I was appointed to the National Parks Commission in 1953 I had never seen a National Park outside the UK, nor, I found, had any of my colleagues or any of the Commission’s officers. Except for one member appomted from the Nature Conservancy. I was the only member with any knowledge of biology. and that was by accident. There were two ramblers, a farmer and a forester; for the rest it was a typical government commission. with a retired permanent secretary, a university vice-chancellor, a brigadier and a couple of peers.
When I suggested that we ought to be represented at the World Conference on National Parks in Seattle in 1962 no-one else showed much enthusiasm, and although I was allowed to go as a delegate, the ministry refused to sanction any expenses. It is fair to add that for some of the senior officers of the Countryside Commission, as well as of the individual National Parks, things are now different. What, then, are the characteristics of the English and Welsh Parks as they have come into existence since 1950? Firstly, they are run locally. Only one third of the members of each board or committee are appointed (formerly nominated) by the minister, and they are supposed to represent the national interest. Since they are in a permanent minority they cannot, in a last resort, have their way, however strongly they feel. Secondly, the boards and committees of the Parks are basically planning authorities, in the ordinary local authority sense, as is shown by their names, such as the Lake District Special Planning Board. This part of their job they have on the whole done well; some, as is to be expected, much better than others. There have been lapses, as when the Peak District Board proposed to institute a motorracing circuit on the roads of the Park (this was abandoned) or more recently when the Lake District Board allowed an ugly collection of huts for waterskiing on the shores of Lake Windermere. To see what might have happened in the Lake District if it had not been a National Park was has only to go and look at the Cairngorms in Scotland. There, the first downward step was taken when the Forestry Commission as owners allowed the erection of a corrugated iron boatshed in the middle of the golden sands of Loch Morlich, one of the most beautiful lake shores in the UK. It was followed, with the help of subsidiaries from public funds, by the creation in an exceptionally remote and beautiful area of a resort for skiing largely for the benefit of English shareholders and company directors. Section S of the National Parks Act lays down that the purpose of the Act is to preserve and enhance the natural
Viewpoint beauty of the Parks for their enjoyment by the public, and ‘natural beauty’ is later defined (section 14) as including fauna and flora. The members of the National Parks Commission always used to include, by administrative agreement, a member of the Nature Conservancy, and in choosing the nominated members we always tried to find one for each Park who, either professionally or as an amateur, had some knowledge of natural history. One would have thought that the terms of the Act could not be fulfilled unless both Commission and Park boards had some staff qualified in ecology, but it has only been in the last few years that any such appointments have been made and ecologists have even been appointed as chief officers. ”
Reluctance Finally, there has been a general reluctance to hold land. The Peak District has for some time had a general policy of buying woodlands, mostly small, and in about 1965 the Lake District Board decided to try to acquire any lakeshore land that came on to the market, but little came of that. Large areas have been ignored, refused, or even sold off. The Countryside Commission under Section 4 of the Countryside Act 1968, may acquire and hold land for the purposes of National Parks with the consent of the minister, but the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1982, which in general freed the Commission from ministerial control of how it spent its funds made, as I interpret it, no difference here. In any case the Commission’s policy has been not to exercise these powers. Such is the state of affairs. What changes are needed to create real National Parks in England and Wales? The solutions put forward by Ann and Malcolm McEwan in their recent book, which seem on the whole to have been well received, are in my opinion of little use.13 Much greater changes than they propose are needed. Although the Dower definition never had official standing - the government merely published Dower’s Re-
port ‘for information and as a basis for discussion’ - it was accepted by the Hobhouse Committee, of which Dower was a member, and has been the working definition of the National Parks Commission and its successor, the Countryside Commission ever since. Its last clause has been the source of much of the troubles of National Parks in the UK. Much more is known about the history of the apparently natural appearance of the country now than 40 years ago, but even then, as Dover himself recognized, the condition of the moorlands was known to be largely the product of agriculture. What he did not realize (he was not, as we have seen, a botanist) and what the amenity societies in general still do not seem to recognize is that nature, whether interfered with by man or not, does not stand still. In the 1930s ecological thinking was dominated by the views of the American botanist Clements, according to which the cover in any one place, if left to itself, will go through a series of stages called succession, until a stable state, called a climax, is reached, which will last until there is some great change such as a new Ice Age. In these terms such vegetation as the grass moor of the Lake District, produced partly by the grazing of sheep, is the climax of a deflected succession. We now know that apparent climaxes may be false; they may seem to be stable and yet be slowly changing. Oakwoods may not be able to regenerate, so that they will revert to scrub, perhaps to heath, and then come back to oakwood once more.
Oakwoods
destroyed
The sheep and other factors desthe oakwoods, probably troyed formerly continuous up to 300 m above sea level, with birchwoods above them; where there were no trees there was probably heather. Now nearly all is an apparently uniform grassland, but grassland changes. The sheep selectively eat the good grasses, the fescues and bents, so that the unpalatable mat-grass spreads. At lower altitudes, bracken invades. Some trees can regenerate in bracken,
so that if seeds are available forest may in time take over once more, and the same cycle will begin again, or if sheep are no longer present, a different one. If we want things to remain as they are, as presumably Dower did and most ramblers certainly do, it is useless maintaining established farming use, but why should things remain as they were in 1949? If oakwoods are preferable, a rather more natural cover not only for much of the Lake District but for parts of many other parks as well, why should we not plant them, or at least encourage them to spread on their own, which in places they will do? (The cycle that I have just described, with oaks coming back, can be seen in progress on the southern portion of the Malvern Hills.) The woodland on the southern shore of Ennerdale Water in the Lake District is almost entirely second growth, regenerated since 1790. The oakwood that formerly covered Skiddaw Dodd, which is shown by Pearsall as the natural vegetation of the Lake District’” had been planted by Henry Spedding in the 19th century. (It was later grubbed up and replaced by conifers.) I need not labour the point that farming, like vegetation, does not stand still, and the ‘established farming use’ of Dower’s time was only a few centuries old, if that, and has now moved on. What was the established farming use of Exmoor? Part of the moor had been reclaimed, at financial loss, only a century before the establishment of the National Park.ls Much had been abandoned, some had continued as not very profitable farms. Should we regard the recent attempts. with the assistance of subsidies and modern deep ploughing, to bring the land back into cultivation, as ‘established farming use’ (and if not, why not?). Agriculture, with forestry, was excluded from ‘development’ as defined for the planning acts, so that change of use to or within these activities cannot be controlled by using them, but they are nevertheless forms of exploitation, and there has long been clamour for forestry, but not farming, to be brought within planning control. An important form of exploitation,
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which is not generally regarded as such, is walking. One person can do little harm wherever he may go, and there is no case for any genera1 restrictions, such as the ‘Keep to the trail’ of American Parks. The most that is needed is temporary closure of limited areas for special reasons, such as the regrowth of vegetation or the protection of particular bird’s nests. What should be discouraged or even forbidden are the mass walks, still organized by well-meaning people, whether for demonstrations, fund-raising or just fun.
Hoped for acquisitions To achieve all this it would be necessary for the individual park authorities and the central authority, which I should hope would be a restored National Parks Commission, to set out to acquire over a period of years all the important parts of the Parks. This has been suggested by those best able to judge from time to time. At the first provincial conference of National Park Authorities in 1959, R.H. Hutchins, the Deputy Clerk of the Peak District Board, said that conveyance of land under the National Land Fund might be made to the Board rather than to the National trust ‘which had insufficient administrative resources’. ” At the next conference in 1960 the Planning Officers of all the Parks were unanimous that they could not do their job properly unless the important land was publicly owned. This directs attention to the present boundaries of the parks. It is not always easy to see how they were determined, but the Commission took great pains to establish them by visits of inspection and discussion. All the Parks include many villages, and some of them include small towns, and for these the ordinary planning controls are adequate. It is only the central areas, moors, lakes, woods and land which could reasonably be returned to one of these, that need special treatment and should be acquired. This leads to the concept of zoning. It has been applied in France, and was recommended by the Lake District Special Committee of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England but
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is on the whole opposed in evidence to the Addison Committee by the amenity bodies in England. The argument, as i understand it, is that saying ‘the central fells of the Lake District need a different treatment from the village of Ambleside’ is in some way to weaken the provision for the latter. This is, in my view, nonsense since the places are different anyway and are treated differently, and no one is suggesting that the present high standard of planning should be abandoned. The mechanics of aquisition are not so difficult as is sometimes thought. A very large part of the Lake District is already in national if privately administered ownership; 55000 ha, nearly one fifth of the whole Park, belongs to the National Trust, and this includes most of the central fells. However that body has looked after its historic buildings, the other limb of its trust, places of natural beauty, it has treated with ignorance. Until very recently its only concession to natural history was to have an honorary adviser for zoology and botany, in the person of Sir Edward Salisbury; he was a very distinguished botanist, but when his name disappeared from the Annual Report in 1977, he was 91. He had been joined in 1966 as honorary adviser in ecology by Professor Roy Clapham. an excellent choice, but he is stili there, aged 79. I cannot believe that elderly men can be the most appropriate people for a job that to be done properly needs not only knowledge but energy and the willingness to go at short notice to remote parts of the country sometimes at high altitudes. The regional agents of the Trust, who have great freedom of action in their area, are mostly Land Agents, and good ones, but this is not adequate qualification for looking after natural beauty, including fauna and flora. The fate CD. Acland, the agent in the Lake District and a nominated member of the Park Board, discussing with me the provision of electricity in the Buttermere valley, said ‘I am not interested in the National Park: I am interested only in the welfare of my tenants’. In a paper read to the conference of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves
in 1966, an officer of the Trust said that its policy was to let other bodies look after natural history.” The Trust’s leaflet on its woodlands” contains much sense, but the general outlook is that of the townsman rather than of the ecologist, with its recommendation of the use of woods for car and caravan parks, and the encouragement of sycamore, a non-native tree that is home neither for many birds nor insects and which was introduced into the Lake District mainly because its timber is good for making cottonreels, for which it is no longer used. The National Trust having shown itself incapable of properly looking after its land in the National Parks, should have it expropriated and given to a new National Parks Commission to own. They might manage some themselves, other parts they might allow the Park Boards to manage as agents. Such expropriation would not be as unfair as might be thought, since much of the Trust’s holdings in the Parks has in fact been originally acquired by pubiic gift, mainly as land that has been accepted by the Treasury in lieu of Death Duty or Capital Transfer Tax, or more recently by means of grants from the Countryside Commission. This leads to the subject of the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The forerunner of this, the National Land Fund, was said by the chancellor, when he formed it by selling war stores after 1946, to be for such purposes as the purchase of land in National Parks. It was never used for this and most of it was absorbed back into the Treasury. The National Heritage Memorial Fund that was brought in to replace it has mostly been used in the interests of art. If &2000000 is spent on buying a Poussin for the National Gallery, the picture is in no fundamental sense saved, since it merely stays here instead of going to the USA. If the same sum is spent on buying for the nation perhaps 8000 ha of the Lake District or Exmoor that would otherwise be ploughed or covered with spruce, saving is a good description, since otherwise the beauty would be gone for ever. Other important parts of National Parks are in the possession of the
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Ministry of Agriculture or of the Water Boards. For the rest of the important parts, privately owned mostly in large blocks, management agreements would do for the present, followed by purchase on the death of the present owner, or pre-emption, in the way in which France deals with important works of art, on a previous sale. A little has been done in this direction. Somerset County County, on behalf of the Exmoor National Park, has received a large area of moorland with the help of the National Memorial Heritage Fund but the Peak District Park has let the Kinder plateau go to the National Trust rather than to take it for themselves. It is rumoured that Nature Conservancy could have bought 11348 ha of the Inverpolly estate in Wester Ross for 04000 in 1961 but preferred to take most of it on lease. This is not only one of the most beautiful parts of the UK but is without roads or houses except on the boundaries, and could have been a National Park on the American model. An objection that has been raised to public ownership is that individuals would then be averse to paying either towards purchase or upkeep - they pay for entry to the houses of the National Trust, even when they have already bought them through the National Heritage Memorial Fund! When these large areas have been acquired, they should be treated in accordance with the objects of the Act for preservation of nature and for the enjoyment by the public, with the addition of ‘both now and in the future’. Section 84 of the National Parks Act, which requires regard to the needs of agriculture and forestry, should be repealed as contradicting the purpose of National Parks. When the Act was passed few people thought of a nature reserve as needing to be more than a few acres, such as ‘bird sanctuaries’. Abercrombie’s These are important, but it is now generally realized by ecologists that what are needed even more are large areas of habitat, and though one cannot fix a minimum one can say ‘the larger the better’. Areas such as the central fells of the Lake District are
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the best we can do. To a great extent they should be left to themselves. This would mean the removal of sheep, which at the least prevent tall grasses and herbs from flowering and trees from regenerating. Anyone who doubts that the removal of sheep would enhance the beauty of the hills should go and look at the small experimental areas from which they have been excluded by the Nature Consevancy Council on Cross Fell in the northern Pennines. Trees, especially oaks, would need to be planted. The change should be carried out gradually as tenancies fall in, so that existing farmers would not be disturbed and sceptics could see the effects. Some grazing of the hills is natural, but not by the introduced sheep and rabbit. Other uses of the public land should be considered very carefully. Water gathering has little if any effect and must be unobjectionable but reservoirs can be ugly, especially their dams, but they need not be. Brianne reservoir that Swansea Corporation has recently constructed in the Upper Towy valley destroyed some delightful and ancient oakwoods, but it is one of the most beautiful lakes in Wales. Military occupation is incompatible with the second purpose of a National Park since it excludes the public, but it is not necessarily inimical to the first. Indeed it has been said that it is good for nature conservation just because of that. Even the use of live ammunition is not wholly bad, since scarred land and battered trees provide good sites for birds and insects. Of the two purposes of a National Park, the preservation of nature and its enjoyment by the public, the former, fundamental one, has been neglected, partly through ignorance and partly through a misguided attempt to maintain ‘established farming use’. Future generations must be remembered. If those who want National Parks will first understand what they are, and then combine the objects of preservation and enjoyment of ecologists and ramblers, National Parks will become of longstanding value. Brunsdon Tewkesbury,
Yapp UK
References ‘George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians, 1841, Vol 1, p 262. Published by George Catlin, London, 2nd edition. *Joseph Wilkinson, Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, Ackermann, London, 1810. The anonymous introduction is by Wordsworth; it became Wordsworth’s ‘Guide to the Lakes’, and was reprinted many times. 31sabelle F. Story, The National Park Story in Pictures, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1957. 4Throuoh the Swiss National Park. Enolish edition:Committee for Scientific deseirch in the National Park, Neuchatel, Switzerland, 1966. %eport of the National Parks Committee, HMSO, London, Command paper no 3851, 1931. ‘John Dower, National Parks in England and Wales, HMSO, London, Command paper no 6628, 1945. ‘Repoti of the National Parks Committee, HMSO, London, Command paper No 7121, 1947. ‘Consetvation of Nature in England and Wales: Report of the Wild Life Special Committee (England and Wales), HMSO, London, Command paper no 7122, 1947. ‘National Parks: A Scottish Survey (the Ramsav RepoHJ, HMSO, London, Command paper’no 6631, 1945. “A Park Svstem for Scot/and. Countrvside Commissidn for Scotland, ’ Perth, ’ UK, 1974. “‘United Nations list of National Parks and equivalent reserves’, International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Brussels, Belgium, 2nd edition, 1971. ecology is strictly “For clarification, serious scientific discipline concerned with the relationships of animals and plants with each other and with their environment. For practical purposes, in the UK an ecologist may be defined as a member of the British Ecological Society. There are only a few exceptions either way. 13Anne and Malcolm MacEwen, National Parks: Conservation or Cosmetics, Allen and Unwin, Reserve Management Series, no 5, London 1982. 14W.H. Pearsall, Mountains and Moorlands, Collins, London, 1950, Figure 39. %.S. Orwin and R.J. Sellick, The Reclamation of Exmoor forest, 2nd revised edition, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, UK, 1970. ’ 6Report of the Proceedings of the Conference of National Park Authorities, Peak District Board, Bakewell, UK, 1959. “‘The National Trust and the conservation of nature’. Paper presented to the Fourth Bienial Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, Bournemouth, UK, 1966. “The National Trust and Woodlands, The National Trust, London, 1980.
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