The British Isles supports an amazing diversity of wildlife. Home to wetlands, peatlands, grasslands, heaths, centuries old woodlands, we also have one of the most dramatic coastlines in the World. The UK is a refuge for thousands of wild species: the Wild Cat, Red kite, Adonis Blue Butterfly, Black Poplar, Grey Seal and the Harbour Porpoise, for example.
But all this is at risk. Our wildlife wealth is being traded for the short term profit of developers, farmers and industrialists. Indeed most of the country's natural habitats have already gone. The scale and rate of habitat loss in the UK has been officially described as catastrophic [1].
The very best of our wildlife habitats are known as SSSIs - Sites of Special Scientific Interest (Areas of Special Scientific Interest in Northern Ireland). This cumbersome name applies to what are the finest remaining fragments of our once extensive natural habitats. They represent the bare minimum needed to maintain our wildlife heritage for future generations.
Yet these sites are barely protected at all. A SSSI designation is little more than an indication of where an important area of habitat is. William Wilkinson, formerChairman of the Nature Conservancy Council (the forerunner of today's Government conservation agencies) said in 1995: “I should like to set to rest the serious and widely held misconception that SSSI designation confers actual protection. In fact it does nothing of the sort. It acts as a feeble trip wire. It sets up a negotiating process, and the final decision rests with Government”.
Over 300 SSSIs are damaged every year according to the official statistics of the Government's wildlife agencies [2], most of them, according to the National Audit Office, quite legally [3]. Friends of the Earth is campaigning to halt the loss of these, our finest wildlife habitats, through making the law strong enough to actually protect them.
After centuries of industrial development and decades of intensive agriculture, much of our natural heritage has been lost. What remains in most areas are mere fragments of once widespread wildlife habitats.
The 'semi-natural' habitat which remains contains many important wildlife species and includes ancient broadleaved woodland, grasslands, scrub, fen marshes, some dunes, heaths and moorlands. The following are estimates of the loss of some of these habitats since 1945[4]:
There are nearly 6,500 SSSIs in England, Wales and Scotland (4,000 in England [5], 1,434 in Scotland [6] and 924 in Wales [7]). They are notified by the councils of the Government's statutory nature conservation agencies, English Nature (EN), the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). In Northern Ireland conservation issues are handled by the Environment and Heritage Service. The number of ASSIs currently stands at 132 [8].
Most SSSIs are privately owned and many have commercial activities going on inside them (largely farming). The protection and management of these sites therefore depends on the voluntary support of landowners and occupiers. The relationship with owners and occupiers is one of the most important elements of the legal system that identifies and regulates SSSIs.
The SSSI system extends only as far as the low tide. The 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act also allowed for the identification of important marine areas, called Marine Nature Reserves, but (as with SSSIs) these areas too are virtually devoid of any protection. To date, only three Marine Nature Reserves have been designated - at Lundy, Skomer and Strangford Lough.
The Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, and a subsequent amendment in 1985, are the foundations of wildlife 'protection' in the UK. Part I of the act is concerned with species and Part II with sites.
There is a common misconception that a SSSI is protected by law. In fact all the law does is tie owners or occupiers into negotiations about any damaging operations they might want to conduct. If the negotiations are not satisfactory to the landowner, then the damaging operation can go ahead quite legally. This means that the protection of SSSIs in Britain relies primarily on good will.
Only a small proportion of sites actually qualify for protection under rarely used provisions in the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Under Section 29 of the Act, the Secretary of State for the Environment is able to intervene to prevent an 'operation likely to damage the special interest' by imposing a Nature Conservation Order (sometimes called an NCO or a Section 29 Order). However, this is only to be used on those sites considered to be nationally important. In practice this typically means those sites with European designations (Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation) or those listedin A Nature Conservation Review (a list of sites of national nature conservation importance in Britain) [9]. NCOs are, in any event, rarely issued - just 36 times since 1981 in England [10] - while hundreds of sites a year are damaged.
Ultimately, SSSIs receive less protection than that afforded to grade I listed buildings.
The official statistics for loss and damage recorded by the nature conservation agencies paint a gloomy picture of the state of SSSIs. In England and Wales one in five SSSIs were damaged between 1991 and 1996 [11]. In England 45 per cent of SSSIs are officially classified as in an 'unfavourable condition' [12].
Offham Down on the South Downs near Lewes in East Sussex is an outstanding example of species-rich chalk grassland and, as such, has been designated as a SSSI. It is also part of the South Downs Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA), which means that the farmer who owns it can obtain payments to manage the land for the benefit of wildlife. However, the farmer, who received £40 per hectare ESA payment, decided this was not enough and sought to obtain subsidy payments of up to £591.16 per hectare by ploughing the grassland and growing flax.
The farmer was legally required to notify English Nature of his intention to conduct this damaging operation and entered a four month legal period of negotiation. In the end English Nature offered him £345 per hectare in “profits foregone” not to plough the site - in other words, money to do absolutely nothing [13]. The farmer decided that this was not enough and, quite legally, ploughed the site.
It took determined action from campaigners to save the site. Ecologists surveyed Offham Down and found significant populations of nationally scarce species including Bastard toadflax and Round-headed rampion. Protesters camped on site to prevent the farmer from ploughing any more and started to turn the ploughed turfs to 'unplough' and restore the site. After calls by Friends of the Earth, the Sussex Wildlife Trust and other conservation organisations, the Secretary of State finally issued a Nature Conservation Order.
The best part of the site has been rescued through political action and pressure from protesters and the strength of the campaign. It was not saved by the law.
As noted above, part 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 is concerned with species protection. Despite the Act, rare species such as the Great Crested Newt, Bottle-nosed Dolphin, Marsh Fritillary Butterfly and Starfruit are still suffering from habitat deterioration, wilful destruction and reckless human disturbance.
It is not only species in designated areas that need protection but also those in the wider countryside. This was reflected in the 1990 Countryside Survey which showed that over the previous six years the number of species found in woodlands declined by 14 per cent and in semi-improved grasslands by 13 per cent [14].
Clearly, we can not ensure future generations will have a wildlife-rich environment to enjoy just by improving the legal protection of SSSIs. Changes are needed in our own behaviour both inside and outside SSSIs, by building fewer roads and using our cars less, saving energy and water in the home, consuming less and reducing waste. If the new Government is to protect biodiversity it must implement effective cross-departmental environmental policies to ensure that individual departments do not undermine UK and European nature conservation legislation and strategies.
A SSSI notification is merely an administrative process and ultimately does not ensure protection. The 'network' of sites that now exists is not explicitly intended to be a network or to meet any nature conservation objective such as conservation of the UK's biodiversity. Nor are sites managed for an overall conservation purpose, SSSIs are just places where important wildlife exists.
These fundamental flaws in the law mean that the SSSI system is basically a list of important areas for wildlife and not a network of protected areas.
If an owner/occupier destroys a site without having notified the statutory agency of their intention to do so, they are liable to prosecution. However, as there is no systematic monitoring of SSSIs and they are often remote, some suffer damage that goes unreported and wildlife vandalism goes unpunished. Few prosecutions have in fact been taken - a situation which conservationists have criticised. The statutory wildlife agencies do not consider themselves to be enforcement agencies and are reluctant to take prosecutions - in stark contrast to the Environment Agency which takes high profile criminal prosecutions against illegal polluters.
Friends of the Earth launched its campaign to improve the legal protection of SSSIs in 1994 with a set of proposed changes to the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Years of intense campaigning managed to persuade the last Government to support the Bill and, in May 1996 the then Under Secretary of State for the Environment, James Clappison, stated that: “The Government broadly welcome the Bill, which they believe will... make an important contribution to the cause of nature conservation”.
The Bill was eventually passed through the House of Commons, but not before Matthew Banks, then Conservative MP for Southport, delayed its progress at a crucial moment. The Bill was delayed long enough to enable opponents to stop it going through the House of Lords. It therefore had no chance of becoming law. Mr Banks lost his seat at the last General Election.
During the 1997 General Election the Labour Party made manifesto commitments to improving the protection of wildlife. The Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, in July, called for the Wildlife and Countryside Act to be 'revised and strengthened'. He stated: “I think we have gone too far in the opposite direction where too many SSSIs are being damaged”. A formal review of the protection and management of SSSIs has begun. It remains to be seen, however, what form any new legislation will take and when it will be introduced, if ever, to Parliament.
With these uncertainties in mind, the major nature conservation organisations in the UK have united to press for better legal protection for wildlife. The organisations form part of Wildlife and Countryside Link and include Butterfly Conservation, Plantlife, RSPB, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, the Wildlife Trusts, and WWF-UK. The detailed content of new wildlife laws proposed by these organisations was published on 17 November 1997 as a Wildlife Charter.
A network of well-managed protected areas is essential for conserving the UK's wildlife. New legislation is urgently needed to address the shortcomings of the current site protection system:
The present law protecting species must also be strengthened. Populations of important species are still suffering declines in the UK due to habitat deterioration, reckless human activity, wilful destruction and persecution.
For further details and a copy of the charter contact Friends of the Earth.
[1] Nature Conservancy Council (1984). Nature conservation in Great
Britain. Nature Conservancy Council.
[2] Wild Places! at http//:foe.co.uk/wildplaces
[3] National Audit Office (1994). Protecting and Managing Sites of Special
Scientific Interest in England. Report by the Comptroller and Auditor
General, HMSO, London.
[4] Nature Conservancy Council (1984). Op cit.
[5] English Nature Magazine (1997). SSSIs Update, No.34, November, English
Nature, Peterborough.
[6] Scottish Natural Heritage (1997). Personal communication, Scottish
Natural Heritage.
[7] Countryside Council for Wales (1997). Personal communication, total
up to end of September 1997.
[8] Department of the Environment Northern Ireland (1997). Personal
communication.
[9] Ratcliffe, D. (1977). A Nature Conservation Review, Cambridge University
Press.
[10] English Nature personal communication.
[11] Wild Places! at http//:foe.co.uk/wildplaces
[12] English Nature Magazine (1997). Op cit.
[13] Farmer's Weekly (1997). Flax grower seeks police guard against
protesters, 18-24 April.
[14] Land Use Consultants (1990). Countryside Survey 1990 Policy Review.
DoE, London.
December 1997 Frances MacGuire/Matt Phillips
Published by Friends of the Earth Ltd
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December 1997
Frances MacGuire/Matt Phillips
Last modified: December 2001
