Guest blog – Across The Pond: How ecological conservation differs between the US and the UK by Melusine Velde

Mélusine Velde is a franco-american ecologist and flower enthusiast from Chicago, Illinois. During her studies at the University of Chicago and Imperial College London, she supplemented her classroom studies with extensive exploration of the parks and trails around her campuses, and most importantly, the plants and animals that inhabit them. Her interests and passions in ecology include the rewilding of agricultural land, wildflower diversity, and the impact of domestic cats on urban bird populations. She is planning a move to the UK in September and will be looking to start her career in conservation.

 

Across The Pond: How ecological conservation differs between the US and the UK

Having studied conservation in the US and the UK, I’ve gotten an interesting look into the field of ecological conservation in both countries. I’ve noticed that while the two countries are about as similar as two countries get in the grand scheme of the world, you don’t have to dig too deep to find certain cultural differences, and specifically ones that lead to different perspectives in the world of ecology and conservation.

I think we have to start by looking backwards in time at the ways in which historical land practices affected the relationship that people have with nature. Historical use of land for sustenance was very different in the Americas compared to Eurasia, which led to contrasting ecological developments. The UK moved towards intensive agriculture much earlier than the Americas, where indigenous communities focused on more sustainable practices. This wasn’t necessarily that Native Americans had a special relationship with nature that was inherent to their culture (as certain narratives like to proclaim), but more simply due to two biogeographic elements: a lack of domesticable animals that could be used for agricultural labor, and a north-to-south continental gradient which led to distinct climates which hindered the spread of crops. Food acquisition ended up being more focused on hunting and fishing and supplemented by agriculture. The relationship to the land through sustenance was very different in Europe, where sedentary communities were built around the use of the land; villages and towns set aside communal land for farming, and much of the landscape was converted very early on to pastures and farmland. This kind of intensive farming in Europe led to a larger exploitation and degradation of the land; in contrast, Indigenous societies had a larger incentive to maintain the ecosystems that provided their food sources, leading to large swaths of landscape that remained mostly untouched.

While ecological landscapes remained relatively preserved by indigenous communities, the rise of settler-colonialism in the 17th and 18th centuries had a large impact on land use; destruction of natural environments accelerated in the Americas just as the agricultural and industrial revolutions raged in the UK. Over time in England, land allocation had moved away from communal plots for farming and grazing and increasingly toward land ownership by the aristocracy. Property became synonymous with income and profit, and ecosystem health lost its relevance, particularly as more efficient and destructive ways of farming were developed in the 19th century. A similar fate awaited the pristine lands of the western US; the way that land was divided during the westward expansion led to a similar shift away from preserving healthy landscapes, and the exploitation of land intensified. The Homestead Act parceled “unclaimed” land out in square plots without any regard for land or topography (and consequently nature), and those features had to be removed for effective farming. It also very much affected the way of life of settlers, forgoing communities for isolated individual farms, which we still very much see today in the Midwest, and removing any connection to nature around home.

However, it’s not too long after that we start seeing a growing environmental movement and increasing awareness of the importance of natural spaces. The first national park in the US was established in Yellowstone in 1872, and the creation of the National Parks Service in 1916 established a precedent while cementing the importance of preserving the natural areas that were left in the US. The environmental movement in the UK grew out of different motivations than in the US; an awareness of the depletion of resources such as woodlands and game combined with a blossoming Romantic movement glorifying the beauty of nature contributed to a growing environmental consciousness and precipitated the need for nature protection acts in the UK. Around the same time as in the US, we start seeing policies such as the Wild Birds Protection Act in 1872, the National Trust Act of 1907, and the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949; perhaps inspired by the US, the first national park in the UK was established in 1952, and a system of park preservation was put into place. More recently, efforts to give land access back to the public have led to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act in 2000, expanding access to public footpaths and walking routes across the country.

These different historical timelines have led to two countries with different relationships to nature and outdoor spaces. Most people in the US, whether in cities or in many rural areas, have little access to casual nature around their home and instead dedicate trips and vacations to enjoying the outdoors. National parks are very much tourist destinations, especially the more spectacular ones out west, which bring in many domestic and international visitors. Even state parks, national monuments, and nature reserves are a day trip or weekend activity, unless you’re lucky to live right by one. Growing up in Chicago, my family had to drive many hours to find hikes to do on weekends, and there was no access to wilderness without taking a plane. However, the beauty, vastness, and spectacularity of the wilderness in the US makes it worth the travel, and immersion into the wilderness is an opportunity that we don’t often take for granted. In contrast, perhaps due to the proximity and ease of travel, access to natural spaces in the UK is much more casual and present in the everyday life of Brits. Many are lucky to live in national parks, and many who live outside of the largest cities can easily go on rambles through the countryside. The right to roam gives access to public footpaths and other great walking routes, and these are often taken advantage of on weekends and summer evenings (as I certainly did during my time in the British countryside).

As such, the relationship that the US and the UK has with their land and nature is very different, and ecological conservation efforts are based on these differing needs. While the US has a conservation approach that is much more reliant on preserving what still exists, the UK prioritizes restoring what was once destroyed. These policies are not only impacted by the way that land has been used historically, but also by the nature of the land itself.

One of the major differences is that the US is just so much bigger than the UK; it’s 40 times the size of the UK, and its biggest national park (Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park) is 11 times bigger than the Cairngorms. This inevitably requires conservation efforts to be undertaken in vastly different ways. The management of a 13 million acre park involves a larger number of employees, subentities, and operational strategies; at the same time they turn to a more hands off approach to conservation in the US because the areas are larger, less fragmented, and more intact. The management comes more in the form of maintaining the land and making sure it’s accessible for visitors. Conservation itself is done by researchers at research institutions, conservation non-profits, and more in the form of better understanding the ecosystems as opposed to direct intervention. In the UK, smaller parks have smaller teams, including ones specifically for conservation, and strategies include increasing biodiversity in addition to maintaining the land.

The scale of the parks has a large effect on the amount of nature that is left within its boundaries. US national parks are areas designated almost exclusively for nature and are dedicated to “[preserving] unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System” (NPS website); on the other hand, UK parks mostly encompass privately owned land used for resource extraction (mines, forestry, farming) and that are lived and worked on. Management policies in the UK have to take into account that the land is being used, and must therefore work with many different groups (farmers, conservationists, researchers, visitors, locals) to come to agreements on how to work towards conservation. US parks also have to take into account various entities (tribes, local governments and associations) but have a lot more direct control over their land and the management of it. This includes the biodiversity, landscape, and cultural heritage of the land within the park, and the preservation of these elements, individually and as a whole, are the biggest priority for the Park Service. Because of the way the land is used and the limited intact nature within it, conservation in UK parks is more geared towards assessing biodiversity and finding ways of increasing it (by restoring habitats, monitoring and focusing on certain critical species, rewilding) in ways that allow everyone else who is using the land to continue their practices and livelihoods.

Not only does the amount of nature that is left impact the way conservation can be enacted, but the wide variety of landscapes and biogeographical regions in the US creates much less cohesion in conservation efforts than in the UK. The diversity of habitats in the US encourages each park to be their own distinct entity and focus on their own land. Each has their own unique habitat and biogeography and the parks within them are dedicated to the features that are important to that specific park. Consider the diversity in Yellowstone, the Everglades, and the Sonoran desert; each has little applied conservation knowledge to contribute to others due to the vast differences in biodiversity and habitats between them. Therefore conservation efforts are focused specifically within the region, and each park has its own challenges and goals to focus on. In the UK I’ve noticed much more collaboration between parks and reserves because they have similar habitats and ecosystems, and management strategies can be shared between conservation organizations. Rewilding practices and species reintroductions are undertaken in similar ways across various areas, and the challenges and successes are shared and taken into account by other groups, creating a more cohesive conservation network.

These are really just some of the ways in which people’s relationship with nature and consequent conservation efforts are different in the US and the UK; there are many other cultural, political, and social differences between the two countries that contribute to these contrasting perspectives. However, I’ve found this framework to be a useful one in assessing my own goals for the kind of conservation work I would like to do; I am currently looking to start my career in the UK, but hope to get the opportunity to discover other countries and their own practices. There are so many different approaches to conservation that we can learn from, and the more collaboration and understanding we can get from others, the better off we will be.

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