Diploma of Countryside Management

Quotes for Essay 1: Why Manage the Countryside

Conservation in progress – Goldsmith & Warren

G&W Pg 26 – most managers fear that if the past management is not restored, the changes would take place that world threaten the existence of the wildlife that they hope to protect. Since most reserves are dominated by succession vegetation, there are sound reasons for their fears.

G&W Pg 26 – Management plans encourage a continuity of purpose that is vital for successful conservation and they help to drawer together the interest groups served thy the existence of a reserve.

G&W Pg 27 – Projects are written for the manipulation of ever feature of a reserve, when in it may be preferable many cases it may no management action is taken. Although the plans that are prepared are for nature reserves, we often leave very little to nature itself.

G&W Pg 28 - Not only are reserves in Britain often little more than small islands within a sea of intensively used land, making it difficult for plants and animals to disperse between sites, but we have also lost many of larger wild animals ands restricted the effects of natural physical processes. Both of these would have been very important natural management agencies in the past.

G&W Pg 28 - If we were to restore a more natural management, how could we be sure that we were getting things right, not merely basing our new management techniques on guesswork and supposition? If that were the case would our new management regimes be any better that continuing with the outdated traditional management techniques

(Van Weiren 1991) in G&W Pg 29 - Like the human volunteers engaged in traditional management practices, wild animals act selectively and would encourage structural vegetation in plant communities. Even our most diverse modern reserves may be but a mere shadow of former glories. However, if we are to ever to return to those more natural communities, we will need to set aside very large areas as reserves.

G&W Pg 29 - Perhaps the majority of our native species will have to be forever protected in tiny, intensively managed preserves, with plans designed to promote the particular features needed for their survival. If so, we must be willing to pay the annual cost of this preservation. Only on our larger sites, if we are brave enough, will we be able to restore the larger animals that we have lost, or trust the natural vagaries of climate without fear that we will lose some prize possession.

G&W Pg 29 – Despite these difficulties, perhaps the greatest impediment to the development of more natural management is the attitude of the managers themselves. Even though few examples of natural temporal variation are documented, e.g. Peterken & Jones, 1987, managers prefer to attempt to maintain stability, trusting the evidence of the past rather than a vision of the future.

G&W Pg 33 – Even if it is not possible to move to a state in which the biological features of reserves are unmanaged, there is at least considerable room for relaxation of the present control exerted by site managers. The perpetuation of past practices via the institution of management plans is unjustified, except on small sites where this seems the only way in which the survival of rare species can be ensured. Rather than encourage active management, plans should prescribe non-interference, unless direct manipulation can be fully justified.

G&W Pg 33 – Most of all there is the need for a new ‘working guide’. In Britain we have become too entrenched in the idea that we must always be in control of our reserves. If we can better appreciate the nature which we seek to protect, and trust that nature is a better and more appropriate manager that ourselves, we may eventually discover new delights in the very unpredictability that is the hallmark of wildness

G&W Pg 35 – Amongst the general public more people than ever before expressed concern about pollution and environmental change, and green consumers showed a fidelity to being actively ‘green’ which surprised politicians and believers alike.

Shoard This land is our Land Shoard Pg 438 – Britain boasted a planning system which had succeeded in keeping the countryside free from urban intrusions and in conserving the best of the built environment. But this system did not cover agricultural operations and concern over the havoc which the post-war agricultural revolution was wreaking on the rural landscape had never been greater.

Bromley (1990, reprinted 1996) Countryside Management. E& FN Spon, London. Brom PG 15 - One of the basic requirements of management is to come to terms with, and direct the constant flow of interaction and change which occurs in the wider physical, cultural and economic environment. Drucker (1995) has suggested that ‘the major concern of management. . must be in the direction of systematically trying to understand the condition of the future so that it can decide upon the changes that can take (them) from today into tomorrow’. Management is therefore seen here as a process that both accommodates and initiates change. Given the constantly changing cultural, social and physical pressures which come to bear on the countryside, then management of change is obviously one reason to ménage that environment.

Brom PG 15 – A second requirement of managements that the optimum use is made of resources.

Brom PG 15 – turning ideas into action is a function of management.

Brom PG 16 – A third need fulfilled by management is that of providing a framework which allows different approaches to reaching objectives to be explored.

Brom PG 21 – Management is a continuous process. It is both human behaviour and a continual process. It is both flexible and changeable. It needs a framework, core elements, basic functions and logic to achieve its results, for management is a means towards an end.

Brom PG 173 - (…) Leaving such areas to their own devices will simply produce long, alien cultivars, and not a more diverse sward

Brom PG 174 - (…) it is clear that they all have knock-on effects, and these in turn influence the manager’s overall responsibility.

Brom PG 169 - If we destroy the habitats we destroy the very basis for the recreational, ecological or other objectives for which we strive.

Brom PG 198 - (…) many of the habitats with which a countryside manager becomes involved are not natural, but man-made and man-arranged. Many woodlands have been actively managed for centuries and have reached a balance between wildlife and what might be best termed ‘traditional management techniques’

Adams Future Nature Adams Pg 28 - The area of lowland peatlands throughout Great Britain has fallen dramatically since the end of the Second World War due to horticultural peat extraction, reclamation for agriculture and forestry planting

Adams Pg 29 - Much of the habitat that remains in lowland Britain has been degraded through the withdrawal of traditional management, eutrophication and other forms of pollution.

Adams Pg 31 - The main human influence on British vegetation has always been the advance of agriculture

Adams Pg 32 - ( . . ) wildlife has to be protected outside reserves, on land whose primary use was for agriculture, forestry and recreation

Adams Pg 37 - The protected area system, and indeed conservation as a whole, is ill-adapted to face the new threat of climate change.

Adams Pg 43 - The creation of new SSSIs just allows us to slide further down the line of declining diversity in the countryside, and further into the fragmented landscape.

Sutherland & Hill Managing Habitats for conservation

S&H Pg – 4 Much habitat management is a mixture of managing for specific species and managing to maintain communities.

S&H Pg – 49 Footpaths should be visually attractive but unobtrusive, be easily maintained and have minimum liability to erosion.

S&H Pg – 269 On many sites the invasion of Bracken and scrub and the development of secondary woodland has led to the loss of characteristic heathland communities.

Keirle Countryside Recreation and Site Management

Keirle Pg 197 - ( . . ) sometimes the needs of different user groups conflict with each other

JS - 04.11.06