There is always a chink of light. I’ve been inclined to wear my heart in my boots when it comes to the state of nature in the UK. It’s a skeleton picked clean, a lifeless husk, etcetera. Bring out your dead, I cry, stalking the dried-out river beds (but for the raw sewerage), with a sickle and a heavy cloak made of dead nightingales. 

But at least there is a skeleton. At least this nation of nature lovers seeing the whole thing falling apart at the seams established the building blocks for recovery from the mayhem we have wrought on the landscape for 80 years. SSSIs, Country Wildlife Sites, Commons and RAMSARs are part of our DNA. They are the institutions that exist to provide a framework for the protection of nature.

Special Sites of Scientific Interest (SSIs) are so designated because they are special and important. They are sacred, ecological gems that have been considered untouchable by a panel of scientists and guarded by those valiant watchers of the wall, Natural England. Mess with a SSSI and you’re in trouble. If only it were so with our huge National Parks, grazed and trampled to insectless sterility by sheep and people. We have over 4000 SSSIs in England. Scotland and Wales has fewer but they cover 12% of the country. If 12% of this country was protected in the same way, we might not be in the mess we’re in. 

County Wildlife sites are the next level down and just as important. They are designated by county councils and professional ecologists from the Wildlife Trusts. They have a bearing on local development plans and are perhaps the only sensible part of that arbitrary legislative process. They are the reason that remaining fragments of bluebell woodland or wildflower meadows are not ripped up for housing. These sites are the unsung heros, little ecological gems scattered around our landscape, quietly protecting and incubating nature, buffer zones and corridors within our busy landscape which are monitored and loved assiduously by those who work in the bodies responsible for them. The Wildlife Trusts, these silent warriors of the natural world, provide guidance to owners as to how to maximise the biodiversity potential that these sites offer. 

You’re within your rights to find out where they are and marvel from the fence, but unless there’s a footpath, don’t stride boldly in with 17 Labradors bounding ahead, because you’ll probably, and quite rightly, be attacked with a machete and your labs shipped to South Korea for packing. 

Thing is folks, the reason National Parks are now such nature depleted deserts, apart from overgrazing, is over peopling. And I might add, over-dogging (in the old-fashioned sense that doesn’t involve the use of your indicators). It’s a delicate balance. Yes, nature restoration is dead in the water unless we as a nation rediscover our wonder and stewardship of the natural world, but it’s equally dead if we trample all over it, waving maps and water bottles and watching lovingly as the family pooch wreaks havoc in these very delicate habitats. 

Not so bad in winter, but devastating in spring and summer when birds are nesting. A yellow hammer, that exotic wonder, the yellowest of yellows, that barges through the air as if thrown by a secret yellow hammer chucker hiding in the hedge, nests on or near the ground late into the summer. It doesn’t take much to destroy their little nests and all within, or to scare the sitting mother away and leave the eggs to wither. 

Common-land is a contradiction these days, because since the enclosure act, it’s mostly not common at all, but owned. You could ask the landowner if he/she minded you grazing your goat, cutting wood or digging turf, but he/she will probably take your name. But without common-land, we wouldn’t have my favourite landscape, heathland, those mysterious sweeps of dwarf shrubs and screaming skylarks. 

Originally, common land was within the fiefdom of the manorial system, under a feudal grant from the monarch, so the ‘commoners’ still answered to the local toff, but could grow stuff under licence. Some common-land was genuinely common, but this was mainly either vast tracks of un-tillable land up north, or village greens. The whole thing was governed by manorial courts. An inhabitant of a cottage may have been allowed to graze a limited number of animals on beech nuts in Autumn, cut sods of earth or take brash wood for his fire. But if it got too much it was stinted, or restricted. For many centuries, this manorial stitch up preserved most of our heaths and grasslands in a state of ecological grace, rather than reverting to scrub or dense woodland. The delicate balance between grazing animals and forest, manorial lord and commoner, made very special habitats which are home to nightjars, skylarks, grey partridges, lapwing, stone curlew and all sorts of charismatic creatures that live there because of that wide open, treeless landscape, not in spite of it. 

Now, of course they’re mainly airports, forestry blocks, or sugar beet fields, ploughed up for agriculture during WW2, never to be restored, firstly because returning soldiers didn’t want that life anymore, and secondly because we started paying farmers to farm them and arming them with chemicals to make it possible. Smash, bang, wallop. Nearly all gone in a few decades after the eons that saw this symbiosis evolve. But those that remain should be cherished, along with the fine folk who look after them. I’ve nothing against trees, but they’re not the ‘be all and end all’ of nature conservation. Grasslands sequester carbon too, but thick forest is death blanket for many things. We mustn’t become blinkered or obsessed with a single point of truth, as is the style these days. 

It was the enclosure act that did for common land, as it was fenced off for agriculture and rights withdrawn, causing resistance and bloodshed. Whole communities were torn apart for the increased efficiency that could be gained from connected farmland. Sound familiar? This paved the way for the Agricultural Revolution that has landed us in the mess we’re in today. 

Nowadays, fragments of common-land are still used as such by collaborations rather than manorial legislation! But heathland is being restored through government subsidies which now reward landowners for protecting nature rather than destroying it. Thank heavens. We must guard them jealously. But common law pre-dates parliamentary law, so the best we can do make a hell of noise if we see someone ploughing, building, or parking an aeroplane on one of our precious commons. 

The RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands of International Importance was signed in Iran back in the day and you might think an international treaty wouldn’t have much bearing on us. But of course, right here in East Anglia we live in one of the most important and delicate wetland habitats on earth. With 175 RAMSAR sites, the UK has the most in the world. Next is Mexico. Isn’t that something? Our brave regional protectors of this convention are the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. They are real people you can actually talk to.

The United Kingdom is very important for birds and wildlife and East Anglia is top of the pops. Our SSSI’s, our County Wildlife Sites, our common-land (or heaths) and our wetlands, as I have said with much wailing and gnashing of teeth in previous bulletins, are the bones holding this faltering skeleton together. It is the task of the organisations I’ve mentioned in this article to protect and enhance these fragments of habitat that cling onto life, and with them the delicate ecosystems that depend on them. But the job of WildEast is to fix the soft tissue that lies between them. Our gardens, churchyards, farmyards, schoolyards, public and private spaces across the whole landscape, can make the reserves not just islands that cling on, but the beating hearts of a landscape coming back to life. Don’t settle for anything less!