...and there's yet another reason why this particular quango cobbled together in unseemly haste and born out of the Foot and Mouth fiasco are so unpopular with so many agencies who are trying to do their very best for the land that they manage. The pages of British Wildlife Magazine are a good place to begin when looking for criticism of this particular body of the UK Government. If NE were a little more in touch with the management requirements of the SSSI's under their stewardship and listned a little more to the land owners and often volunteer groups that are there on the ground we may not have a situation where the majority of SSSI's in this country are, as described by NE themselves as "unfavourable/declining"Gruditch wrote:Getting permission to remove any fauna or flora from a SSSI, isn't as straight foreword as one might think. The land owner has to be granted permission from NE, before they can hand it on to you.
There was a collective oops at one conservation HQ when they discovered this.![]()
And let's not even start on the fact that conservation groups across the UK have accused Natural England of failing to fulfil its remit as an 'independent and powerful guardian of our natural landscape' by accepting the previous Government's projections that three million new homes are needed by 2020, and by going along with the proposed speeding up of the planning system which shall allow local authorities to cirumvent the Green Belt legislation put in place to contrain urban sprawl.
I could go on. Natural England, described by many of it's stake holders as "dictatorial, interfering, petty-minded and out of touch" must not be confused with the body which it replaced, English Nature. As different as chalk and cheese.
So anyway, enough of my latest tirade, suffice to say that just because NE have put in place some convoluted process which effectively makes the job of conservation groups even more difficult than it has to be does not make it right.
Felix.