If you are going to respond to the consultation on National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England, and I do hope you will, then you have until 18 December (that’s Tuesday) to do so. Maybe a task for this weekend? Here is the link.
It doesn’t take very long to respond to the 24 questions – maybe 20 minutes – and that time can be reduced considerably if you want to use my draft response as a guide to what you might say (although I’m sure you can do much better yourself). I didn’t answer all the questions.
The first five questions are easy – provided you know your name etc.
Question 6 asks for a photo that sums up NPs /AONBs and I used this one – feel free to use it too if you like.
Question 7:
Very little as far as nature conservation is concerned. They are landscape areas not nature areas.
Question 8:
Massively under-achieving for biodiversity/wildlife/nature. Considering that NPs were set up to preserve and enhance natural beauty they have done a spectacularly poor job.
UK NPs do not deserve the name of National Parks – they are masquerading as something which they are not.
Public land ownership and management should be pursued so that society can achieve conservation, recreation and landscape goals within NPs.
Some damaging land uses dominate upland NPs eg intensive grouse shooting, plantation forestry with non-native species (mostly a thing of the past but trees live a long time), and overgrazing by sheep. Our upland NPs are ecologically knackered.
Consider some of the logos: Yorkshire Dales NP has a ram as its logo – a symbol of upland mismanagement! The Forest of Bowland AONB has a Hen Harrier as its logo – once the English stronghold of this fully protected bird it is now reduced to very low numbers in Bowland due to illegal persecution. Upland NPs such as Peak District, Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors and Northumberland and AONBs such as Bowland, North Pennines and Nidderdale should be this species’s stronghold. Northumberland NP – Curlew, doing badly in all NPs.
It’s a good job that so much money is invested in logos and signs otherwise one would never know that one was standing in a protected area from the wildlife one can see around one. Upland NPs are not places the naturalist seeks out but drives past to get to richer areas for biodiversity.
Question 9a:
They play a very poor role – upland NPs (and AONBs) are wildlife crime scenes where fully protected birds of prey such as Goshawk, Red Kite, Peregrine Falcon and Hen Harrier are illegally but ruthlessly excluded by grouse shooting interests.
NPs should be sites used for rewilding – they should be the places we go to see Red Squirrel, Lynx, Pine Marten, Beaver, Golden Eagles etc and where the tree line is natural and the peatbogs are pristine.
Question 9b:
Could they do much less? Upland NPs are irrelevant to nature conservation at the moment.
Question 10:
The Sandford principle states that the protection of natural beauty (landscape and wildlife) take precedence over other issues. Let’s get back to that.
In modern Britain, where wildlife is losing out everywhere to economic activity, NPs and AONBs should be areas where nature conservation is a primary aim. They should demonstrate our brilliance at nature conservation not our indifference to it as they do at the moment.
Question 11:
We should buy out landowners at fair prices so that the state owns much more land in upland NPs and AONBs. Farming in upland NPs is unprofitable without subsidy – let’s use the saved subsidy to acquire land at fair (but relatively low) prices.
Landowners and farmers are important stakeholders in delivering the upland NPs’ aims – but they should not have a veto on biodiversity improvement.
Question 12:
I’d like to see much better access to upland NPs – tourist villages which provide hubs for access. They should be destinations for wildlife lovers. Who says that they are going to an upland NP for their holidays? We should be booking our accommodation in upland NPs a year in advance to ensure that we can enjoy their wildlife and landscapes in our holidays. No-one has ever said ‘I’m going to [English upland NP] for a week’s holiday and I am so excited by the wildlife I will see. I’ve been looking forward to it all year!’. Why not?
Question 13:
The question should be are the people who live and work in NPs and AONBs suporting the public value of NPs and AONBs? When it comes to grouse shooting they are not.
Question 15 (I skipped 14):
Most upland NPs seem to be run by a cabal of upland landowners.
We need greater public ownership of the land so that NP management can be decided rather than expensively nudged and negotiated.
I would like to see an English NP service somewhat along the US model which delivers access, recreation and wildlife.
Question 17 (I skipped 16):
Ahem – how about going back to what these areas are for first? If upland NPs were rather more welcoming places and were noticeably different in being richer in wildlife, more welcoming and obviously set up for visiting and recreation then maybe a wider range of people would come.
You might want to have a word with the grouse moor gamekeeper I met once in Nidderdale AONB. A group of us were leaving the moor after a walk and he aggressively told us that we weren’t allowed there. When we sid that it was open access land and that we were he said ‘Not at this time of year’. When we replied that we had checked the website and there were no closure orders applying to this land and no notice on the stile that we had used he told us that we should contact him before coming there again. Not exactly the most welcoming of encounters and completely and utterly false.
Question 18:
I would like to see upland NPs having more duties and targets and more powers and money to achieve them. The status quo is hopeless – change requires a stated direction and the means to get there.
Question 19:
Why not merge AONBs with NPs wherever possible? And merge NPs where they are contiguous too.
Question 20:
The current upland NPs are so worthless it would be foolish to replicate such designations elsewhere. I’d rather see all upland NPs abolished than kept as they are now.
Question 21:
There is hardly a country on Earth that has such decrepit NPs as those in the UK uplands – go visit!
Question 22:
Upland NPs could be renamed ‘Typically biodiversity-poor areas but with a line around them that makes bugger all difference’. A snappy phrase? But more accurate than pretending that we have real NPs.
Question 23:
Staying in the EU would be handy!
Yes, I mentioned merging AONBs wirh National Parks, I think it makes sense.
I thjink it would be wise to stress the visual impact caused by inappropriate and impoverishing land management practices… like muirburn and hill track construction.
Done! .. Thanks Mark.
Be careful what you wish for. I know Mark used the qualified “upland” NPs/AONBs in his response, but as what he has said is so far from the truth about lowland NPs/AONBs its easy to miss in the general hostile tone and it would have better to have unpacked it more explicitly.
The upland issues tend to be in designated landscapes because a good proportion of designated landscapes are uplands, mainly for historical reasons. But I suggest that the problems with the uplands are not driven by or the responsibility of the NP/AONB. More than anything else they are driven by agricultural subsidies and the general cultural inertia against change (aka landscape restoration). Beyond making themselves extremely unpopular with the local communities they are accountable to, its often hard to see what more the AONB/NPs as organisations could be doing (yes, they could and should be more outspoken about wildlife crime – but nb they still don’t have the powers to do more than be outspoken).
So while I don’t disagree with Mark’s messages about the failings in the uplands, a more constructive tone and a more specific upland context would be helpful. In my (lowland) experience protected areas are often seen as honest brokers locally; we need them to retain local credibility if they are to facilitate the very changes in landscape and attitudes we seek. Trying to impose change from Northamptonshire or London just won’t wash. Stable budgets (so that the are not so beholden to local politicians) and enough core staff to enable relationships to be developed and maintained are critical – AONBs in particular are operating on a much reduced shoestring (NPs have more cash its true).
The tone and sometimes explicit content of Marks comments reads as “they’re crap, why bother?” rather than “they should be playing a key role in facilitating change but they need the resources and powers to do so”. No rangers, no path maintenance, planning constraints lifted, no visitor management, no-one to stand between NE and the small farmer and broker an actual change in management or resolve a dispute; you’ll miss them when they’re gone whatever their failings about grouse moor management.
And please, don’t forget the lowlands where most AONBs and some NPs are; babies and bathwater and all that. If you think lowland protected landscapes do nothing for biodiversity you haven’t been paying attention.
jbc – it’s very clear that I was referring to upland areas because I said upland areas.
It’s also very clear that I say they need new powers and resources – in the section where one is asked that question.
But, yes, it is my view that they are so far from a biodiversity solution that they need a radical revision in order to have any real role at all – I’m glad that was clear!
Done!
My comments matched your’s pretty closely, Mark. There’s a point on lowland NP’s that jbc didn’t pick up – that one, the New Forest, is actually largely nationally owned and it has a spectacular recent record of habitat restoration – but down to the Forestry Commission EU LIFE rather than the National Park.
I worked in the North Yorks Moors in the early 1980s and it took leaflets I produced on forest birdwatching & a forest bird list to spur the Park into showing any visible interest in wildlife, despite having a very competent ecologist, Roy brown, who wrote the well known book on animal tracks and signs.
The fundamental problem is that there are two quite separate streams – the landscape/access/CPRE stream, and the nature conservation stream. The former are posher and more fashionable, the ‘arts’ stream, the latter more systematic but grubby scientists – very much a reflection of political and cultural life generally, where the non-human aspects of life are massively undervalued.
A couple of related suggestions that might help everyone’s agenda.
1. Funding. Make the AONBs less beholden to Local authorities. While most core funding (75%) come from Defra it is dependant on the 25% from LAs. if you fall out with your local authority representatives, over a planning issue, or because you’re pushing for land use changes/enforcement action that doesn’t suit them, their supporters or friends, then withdrawing or cutting the LA contribution means the AONB also loses three times as much from Defra. it’s quite a power to hold over them.
2. Governance. Related to this, its not good for any organisation to have the same chair for decades but that’s often the case with AONBs, and remember that the officers can’t do anything controversial without the chair’s sign off – I’m certain that many AONB staff would like to be much more outspoken about wildlife crime and forward looking in land management changes if they had the freedom to do so. Now they’re not NGOs, so its reasonable that there is strong local elected representation in their governance arrangements, but its also reasonable that the key roles of chair and vice chair rotate so that over time a diversity of views are represented and so that one particular interest group cannot “capture” the organisation. I’d suggest a maximum or 4 year term as Chair (one LA election cycle) with a required gap of at least another 4 years before that individual can stand as chair again. Chairs are nominally elected, but in practice its rare and risky to challenge and incumbent especially within a small and often rather feudal community.
Secure the core funding and make the governance more dynamic and fit for 21st century purpose and many of the other issues Mark has talked about start to become much more possible to address. otherwise, if governance remains same old same old,
and AONBs have to continue walking a financial/political tightrope, don’t expect much change.
The chair issue also applies to NPs, though their funding is not so much under LA control.
jbc – interesting, thank you