The Great Outdoors - UK (2021-08)

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IN JUNE, Rewilding Britain issued a call for
government action on nature-depleted
national parks. The charity says that
protected sites located in national parks
are often in a worse condition than they
are elsewhere, with key species missing
or declining and decades-old laws
hampering National Park Authorities’
ability to protect nature.
Its suggestion is that the government
should create core rewilding areas on
public land across 10% of the national
parks. “Wilder national parks could lead
the way for a healthier, more nature-rich
Britain, with opportunities for communities
and local economies,” said Guy Shrubsole,
Rewilding Britain’s Policy and Campaigns
Coordinator. “Nature would be in an even
worse state were it not for the parks, but
we’re being outpaced by the nature and
climate crises.
“Despite some superb initiatives, the
parks’ ability to upscale nature’srecovery
and lead the way is being hobbled by
decades-old laws dating as far back as the
1940s. It’s time for change. Without wilder
national parks, the Prime Minister’s pledge
to protect 30% of Britain for nature by 2030
is just not credible.”


Bleak picture
The notion that our national parks are
failing to protect nature is nothing new.
The RSPB’s Lost Decade for Naturereport,
published in 2020, found that national
parks are consistently failing to deliver for
biodiversity across the UK.
“In England, the condition of Sites of
Special Scientific Interest [SSSIs] is worse
inside national parks and AONBs [Areas
of Outstanding Natural Beauty] than it is
outside,” the report concluded. “Protected
areas for nature on land are now in a worse
state than they were in 2010 despite bold
promises made by governments across the
UK to improve them.”
The government’s own 2019 independent


review into protected landscapes painted a
bleak view of the state of national parks and
AONBs, calling for England’s national parks
to be made “greener, more beautiful and
open to everyone.”
Currently, it would be hard to claim that
our national parks are managed for the
benefit of nature. Many are dominated by
farmed landscapes – in the Peak District,
for example, 90% of the park is farmland.
The World Conservation Union (IUCN)
puts the UK’s national parks in category V,
its second-lowest conservation category.
It considers category II (Yellowstone in the
US being one example) as the international
standard for national parks. England's
national parks also haveaverage woodland
cover of just 15%. A Friends of the Earth
study showed there is less woodland cover
in the Yorkshire Dales than in London, less
in the Peak District than in Leeds, and less
in the Lake District than in Sheffield.

False start
So what’s going wrong? Many

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conservationists argue that Britain’s
national parks were primed for ecological
failure right from the beginning. Even
before the National Parks and Access to
Countryside Act (NPACA) was passed in
1949, the remit of proposed protected
areas focused mainly on planning controls.
“It’s the lead-up to this legislation that
really sets in place the character of national
parks,” explains Mark Fisher, founder of Self
Willed Land and a member of the Wildland
Research Institute. “The Addison report – the
first report commissioned on the potential
for national parks in Britain – concluded that
Britain was such a denuded country in terms
of its nature that it didn’t need national parks
like those in Europe and the US, but instead
that it would havenational reserves that had
some kind of control over development as
a way of protecting the scenic beauty of the
countryside.”
Twofurther reports came to the
same conclusion. The NPACA states that
national park powers should be used “for
the purposes of preserving and enhancing

Despite being Britain’s most ‘protected’ landscapes, biodiversity


in our national parks is in decline. As campaigners makenew


calls for rewilding, Hanna Lindon investigates the issue


Why are our national parks


failing to protect nature?


NEWS FEATURE


A rare wildflower meadow
in the Yorkshire Dales

18 The Great OutdoorsAugust 2021


ALMANAC

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