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Walkers taking to the Scottish hills this autumn may notice some new
features in the familiar rugged landscape. Wire fences are proliferating
across the breathtaking mountain scenery of the Cairngorms, taming one of
the most magnificent landscapes in Europe. And, bizarrely, they are springing
up in the name of conservation.

But for all the talk of conservation, the Cairngorms, which occupy 300
000 hectares in the heart of Scotland, are under threat from the competing
demands of the hunting estates and wildlife. The plight of these wild hills
is also an indication of the wider crisis facing Britain’s most valuable
natural habitats, from the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland in the
far north of Scotland, to Somerset in the southwest of England.

These habitats are not only under attack from new roads and old planning
orders, they also face threats from water pollution, government tax policies
and wilful neglect. And the Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)
system – the key feature of British conservation policy – is failing to
protect them.

The Cairngorms epitomise the problem. The Cairngorms Working Group,
set up by the Scottish Office in 1991 to look at the future of the region,
reported this year that ‘there is no landscape or ecosystem quite like it
anywhere else in the world’, adding that it ‘should be the keystone of the
Scottish and UK contribution to the global natural heritage’.

An important part of the natural heritage of the Cairngorms is the ancient
Caledonian pine forest. Fragments of this 8000-year-old forest, which once
covered much of Scotland, survive high on the mountain slopes of the Mar
Lodge estate – the heart of the East Cairngorms SSSI. And one of the key
recommendations of the working group’s report is to re-establish these forests
‘primarily by natural regeneration’.

‘What remains here looks like healthy forest,’ says Adam Watson, a former
researcher at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, as he climbs around
the forested hillside of Glen Lui on the Mar Lodge estate. ‘It is certainly
old. But it is also dying. There is not a tree here that is under 150 years
old. The last saplings to survive in any numbers into adulthood sprouted
here before the highland clearings.’

Tale of the lonesome pine

Pine forests once covered much of Scotland. But the need for timber
encouraged tree felling, and great swathes of forest disappeared – a process
that reached a climax when Canadian lumberjacks were drafted in during the
Second World War. Although demand for timber from the pine forests has since
declined, the forests now face a new danger: red deer. You can see the clues
everywhere: fallen trees stripped of bark by antlers, or all foliage and
lower branches removed up to the maximum browsing height of the deer. The
only young tree to be seen on the Mar Lodge estate had established itself
out of reach of the deer, on a fallen trunk.

Red deer, encouraged by landowners wanting to attract revenue from stalkers,
are ‘the principal threat to the remains of the Caledonian forest’, says
the working group. The deer travel in herds of twenty to thirty, consuming
all green vegetation in their reach. Their numbers have grown continuously
over the past 200 years, ever since the Highlands became home to hunting
estates; the disappearance of the deers’ natural predators, bears and wolves,
also contributed to their swelling ranks. And the growing popularity of
hunting over the past thirty years has led to a doubling in deer numbers.

Almost everybody agrees that something must be done. The working group
called for a halving of the overall population of deer. It ruled that ‘the
aim should be to ensure that stalking continues as a viable economic activity,
but that deer numbers are reduced to an optimum level for the habitat’.
But Watson, and many other conservationists, say that it is not possible
to achieve both ends. A much bigger cull is necessary, he says.

Another solution, and one which is already all too evident in the landscape,
is fencing to keep the deer out of commercial forests. And there are government
grants to help. The advantages of fencing for the natural forest are obvious,
too. Halfway up the hillside, a wire fence protects a small area of pine
forest. In this experimental plot, a rash of saplings is growing from a
mound of moss, lichen and high heather. But such experiments are not universally
applauded. ‘This shows the one thing that is wrong with fencing,’ says Watson.
‘The forest should be open, not a dense undergrowth. This is no more natural
than what is outside the fence. It needs deer to browse it, but not in such
numbers that they destroy it.’

Fencing deer out of some land increases their population density elsewhere,
and with it, the damage they cause. Looking over Glen Lui, you can see where
the deer have been forced to walk down a single narrow passage between two
fenced areas of plantation forest. The heather is gone, the soil is bare
and there are signs of erosion.

One of the most enthusiastic fencers is the Queen, whose Balmoral estate
occupies 31 000 hectares east of the Cairngorms. Balmoral’s managers have
claimed Crown immunity from the designation of the great Ballochbuie Forest,
one of the largest Caledonian remnants, as an SSSI. But this did not stop
them from receiving a state grant for 7 kilometres of fencing to keep deer
out of part of the forest.

As the SSSI system is based on the ‘voluntary principle’, with no compulsion
to conserve, there are no laws enforcing the protection of SSSIs. Their
existence and enhancement is the business of the estate’s owner, which in
the case of Mar Lodge is the absentee landlord and American publishing magnate
John Kluge, one of the world’s ten richest men. Kluge bought Mar Lodge from
a Swiss financier, who reportedly boasted that it was ‘the cheapest land
in Europe’, and has put the estate up for sale several times, without success.

Going with the flow

‘Mar Lodge estate exemplifies a serious gap in the SSSI legislation,’
says Carol Hatton a planning officer at the WWF. The system, she says, ‘does
not allow the country agencies (in this case, Scottish Natural Heritage)
to interfere with current land uses. SNH has been powerless to intervene
against grazing by deer, which are almost entirely responsible for the failure
of the native pinewood, an acutely threatened habitat to regenerate.’

SNH staff admit that the designation of SSSIs is of little significance
to their work in the Cairngorms. Their main tool is the negotiation of management
agreements, which can operate inside or outside SSSIs. This has the advantage
of allowing them to consider entire areas in their remit, rather than just
the small artificial patches that often meet the strict criteria for SSSIs.

Another area where the strict criteria for designating SSSIs are being
questioned is the Flow Country. This area in the far north of mainland Scotland
is one of the largest expanses of blanket bog in the northern hemisphere.
It was the setting for one of the major environmental controversies of the
1980s – the planting of forests as a financial investment. A loophole in
British tax law made buying forests a simple way for some of the country’s
rich and famous to increase their income. In 1989, the loophole was closed.

This move did not, however, save the Flow Country. A new threat is emerging,
with the growth of the peat-cutting industry. One 500 hectare block of bog,
for example, at Westerdale, south of Thurso, is being cut to provide peat
for burning in Sweden. There is also more small-scale cutting by crofters,
who now use large mechanical earth movers rather than spades, and sell the
peat on the black market. And, if plans for a plant to manufacture charcoal
briquettes for barbecues succeed, more than 40 000 tonnes of peat per year
would be needed.

The SNH is attempting to designate SSSIs in the Flow Country. But with
two-thirds of the area surveyed, it appears that less than half will fall
within the borders of SSSIs.

Squelching across one bog, identifying the wide array of plants as he
went, Andrew Couper, the head of SNH’s peatland survey team, explains the
problem. ‘Maybe the entire landscape, because it is unique, should be protected.
But our job is to find areas of special scientific interest. We only designate
the really good bits.’ He was on the verge of deciding against designation
for one large bog because it lacked great biological diversity – ‘though
I know that with decent management, its biological interest would grow considerably’.

The strict rules about what constitutes an SSSI also concern conservationists
in other areas. One key issue is that SSSIs only cover the area deemed to
be of greatest interest during the survey; they don’t consider the surrounding
environment or any other external factors that may affect a designated piece
of land. Streams, for instance, carry a rising tide of organic pollutants
from small rural sewage works and farms, which cause ‘eutrophication’ –
the growth of oxygen-consuming algae that sometimes emit toxins and often
kill rare species. Even the rain can bring a cocktail of life-threatening
pollutants to an SSSI.

English Nature estimates that 102 of its SSSIs regularly suffer damage
from eutrophication, mostly during the summers. The Lake District, Somerset
Levels, Norfolk Broads and the River Test in Hampshire, once prized for
fishing, have all been damaged. So has Loch Leven, near Perth in eastern
Scotland. This national nature reserve and SSSI attracts the largest concentration
of breeding ducks anywhere in Britain, as well as geese and migrating waders.
But sewage and fertilisers are flowing into the shallow lake, causing extensive
eutrophication during some summers.

In wetlands such as the Somerset Levels – a region of wet pastures,
peat bogs and meandering rivers – the complex hydrology of the entire area
sustains the smaller zones within it that are SSSIs. A recently discarded
plan to turn much of the Levels into a boating area, along the lines of
the Norfolk Broads, would have raised water levels and damaged several SSSIs
across the region. But because the physical developments would all have
been outside the SSSIs, it is unclear how English Nature could have intervened.

Acid rain is a less direct threat, but it still takes its toll on SSSIs.
A study by English Nature in 1992 found that 147 designated SSSIs, covering
more than 4000 square kilometres, had been damaged by acid rain – much of
it from air pollution hundreds of kilometres away. Sites identified by Carrie
Rimes, a consultant for English Nature, included woodland pools in the New
Forest in Hampshire and Ashdown Forest in Sussex, as well as more than 50
000 hectares of the Lake District and much of Snowdonia, two of Britain’s
most prized landscapes. Among species to have disappeared were the Arctic
char from some Scottish lochs, and the natterjack toad from English lowland
ponds.

A first tentative step towards helping such vulnerable areas is provided
in the current European negotiations on ‘critical loads’, which will target
cuts in acid emissions from power stations in those places where they will
most benefit vulnerable habitats (‘How Britain hides its acid soil’, 27
February).

But even with such measures as this, it is still hard to see the benefit
of protecting ‘islands’ of rare species. More wildlife still exists outside
SSSIs than within them. In addition, the division of landscapes into small
areas where ‘rare’ species are preserved and a remainder where farmers and
developers drive out wild species can create rarity as well as preserve
it.

Martin Holdgate, chief scientist at the Department of the Environment
for most of the 1980s and now director of the World Conservation Union
(IUCN), warned last year that ‘the relatively small areas of land that
are set aside and managed as nature reserves and SSSIs will not suffice
to safeguard biodiversity’. There was an urgent need for ‘conservation in
the wider landscape’, he said.

English Nature, for one, recognises this problem. In its ‘Strategy for
the 1990s’, published earlier this year, it promotes the idea of the ‘natural
area’, chunks of landscape such as the Lake District or the Norfolk Broads
that are natural units. ‘The concept of natural areas will allow the integration
of SSSIs within the countryside as a whole rather than remaining as isolated
sites,’ it says.

English Nature wants to spread its efforts at promoting management agreements
with landowners – which already cover parts of more than one thousand SSSIs
– to these wider areas. The government is using a similar approach to designate
so-called Environmentally Sensitive Areas, within which it pays farmers
and others to adopt less intensive and environmentally destructive forms
of farming. ESAs were pioneered by John Gummer, the recently appointed environment
secretary, when he was agriculture minister.

Power failure

But, as with SSSIs, these initiatives will be hampered by the conservation
agencies lack of powers. The voluntary principle espoused by ministers for
application to nature conservation will remain just that. Landowners can
sign management agreements, and accept cash for not draining marshes or
ploughing up pastures if they want, and for as long as they want. But they
can also tear up the agreement whenever it is convenient. And at that point
the SSSI, or any similar system, is powerless as a method of protection.

The SSSI system assumes a largely passive role for conservation, restricted
to activities on the site itself and to preventing new developments. The
system cannot control outsiders, or insist on better than existing land
management. It does not supersede old planning consents, and lacks a means
of preventing parliamentary bills, or the determination of central government,
from pushing through development projects. And the rules governing criteria
for designating an area as one of ‘special scientific interest’ make it
an unsuitable mechanism for handling wider issues of landscape management,
and for conserving wild-life and habitats outside small biological ghettos.

Many of these failings could be addressed as the government reviews
its policy to meet the European Commission’s Habitats Directive and also
in the National Action Plan that Britain is required to draw up under the
UN Biodiversity Convention agreed at the Earth Summit last summer. Conservation
specialists will be watching the process very closely.

But ultimately, Britain will be judged by its actions rather than its
paper pushing. The international community will want to see evidence that
key sites – such as the Cairngorms and the Flow Country – receive the protection
that their international importance demands. As Watson, standing in the
deer-ravaged remains of Britain’s last great ancient forest, puts it: ‘The
government talks about saving the rainforests, but we have yet to see it
practice here what it preaches for others.’

* * *

The fight for natural life in the Burren

While the British government considers how to implement the European
Commission’s Habitats Directive, those directorates of the European Commission
that fund large development projects, such as road systems and dams, claim
that they are subject to neither the directive nor to other European environmental
legislation.

Europe’s poorest regions are being targeted by the European Commission’s
fast-growing Structural Funds programme, which provides money for major
construction projects in such areas. From fish farms and dams in Greece
to road schemes in Portugal and tourist developments in Ireland, much of
the programme’s annual budget of £10 billion is being poured into
the Community’s least spoilt areas.

Yet last October, the European commissioner responsible for the Funds,
Bruce Millan, agreed with a member of the European Parliament that ‘the
Commission did not consider the objectives of the Habitats Directive and
Bern Convention (on conservation of European wildlife) as forming part of
Community environmental policy for the purposes of its decision’.

The decision in question was the allocation of £2.75 million
to the Irish government to fund a tourist centre, capable of handling 60
000 people a year, on the west coast of Ireland. It will be built in the
heart of the wildest corner of the Burren, Europe’s largest expanse of rare
limestone pavement.

Now the World Wide Fund for Nature UK and the National Trust of Ireland
are using the Burren project as a case to persuade the European Court of
Justice to rule that Millan’s claim of immunity is a breach of the Treaty
of Rome.

The Burren, an area of some 60 000 square kilometres, is dominated by
‘pavements’ of exposed smooth limestone rock, broken by fissures, known
locally as scailps, which connect the surface to a network of underground
caves. In these fissures, as well as on the lightly grazed pastures, and
woodlands, fens and lakes of the area, live some 600 plant species. Here,
arctic-alpine species left over from the last ice age grow next to Mediterranean
species attracted north by the warm Gulf Stream. There are even acid-loving
plants such as ling and bell heather perched on shallow peat above the alkaline
limestone pavement.

The east of the Burren is dotted with turloughs, grassy hollows that
form seasonal lakes, filling from and emptying into the underlying caves.
Turloughs carry their own distinctive flora, including the delicate blue
herb known as the turlough violet, and the turlough dandelion. Both limestone
pavements and turloughs are listed as priority habitats for protection under
the habitats directive, and rare species found in the Burren, such as the
fen moss and the marsh fritillary butterfly, are protected under the Bern
Convention.

But tourism is gradually growing in the Burren. The government wants
to build the large visitors’ centre in a designated Area of Scientific Interest,
the Irish equivalent of SSSIs as part of a programme aimed at doubling the
number of visitors to Ireland.

Work on the tourist centre is currently suspended because the Burren
Action Group, a local pressure group, won a court ruling that the Office
of Public Works had no right to grant itself planning permission to build
the centre – a decision which has thrown Irish planning law into chaos.
But the legal action which could dictate the future direction of the Structural
Funds programme will be fought at the European Court of Justice. Carol Hatton,
planning officer for WWF UK, says: ‘it seems ludicrous that the European
Commission, while ultimately responsible for the enforcement of European
legislation, should be party to widespread damage arising as a result of
its own inappropriate funding programmes’.

Visitors’ centres built by the Office of Public Works in Ireland already
have a bad reputation. Last July, The Irish Times described a new centre
in nearby County Kerry as ‘a monstrous cattle shed’. But Michael Canny,
director of the national parks and wildlife service, sees the Burren centre
as a ‘honeypot’ to attract visitors.

‘We have two purposes, conservation and providing public access,’ he
says. ‘We want to give the public a good experience of the Burren, and this
is the best place. Eighty to ninety per cent of visitors will stay within
200 metres of the building. We want to concentrate them where we can control
³Ù³ó±ð³¾.’

But a study by Jane Smart, director of the British pressure group Plantlife,
warns that the centre’s trails ‘are certain to direct large numbers of people
onto areas of pristine limestone pavement . . . It is well known that people
will tend to walk towards a water body, if it is accessible and nearby.
In this case it would be simple for people to find their way to the edge
of the turloughs to picnic. On their way, they are likely to cause direct
damage to vegetation by trampling.’

The biggest long-term risk to the Burren as a whole could be the building
of roads to the centre. A local farmer, Patrick McCormick, says: ‘I don’t
want to keep this place for myself. But once you build the centre and the
roads, it will be open to every type of greed and prospector.’

Campaigners propose, instead, a string of small centres in the villages
round the edge of the Burren. ‘If they moved the centre four miles to
Corofin, our campaign would end overnight,’ says the Burren Action Group’s
chairman, Reverent John Donoghue. WWF UK agrees, but neither the Irish government
nor the EC will move. ‘They made a mistake, but they are just plain stubborn,’
concludes Donoghue.