Britain, France, and the European Union - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 91

countryside. Wordsworth described the Lake District as “a sort of national
property, in which every man has a right and an interest who has an eye
to perceive and a heart to enjoy.” 2 Putting his emotions to verse, he wrote:
I wandered lonely as a cloud, That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 3
Nature lovers organized. In 1865 the Commons, Open Spaces, and
Footpaths Preservation Society was founded, and in 1889 the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds was founded. The National Trust was
established in 1895, due to concern about the impact of uncontrolled
development and industrialization. The trust, a private charity, acted
to protect threatened buildings, coastlines, and countryside. As people
began to tour the mountainous regions, many proposed creating national
parks like those in the United States, but this met with opposition from
local landowners. In the 1930s hikers and conservationists in groups like
the Ramblers' Association, the Youth Hostels Association, the Council for
the Preservation of Rural England, and the Council for the Protection of
Rural Wales joined together to lobby to protect and allow access to the
countryside. In 1932 they organized a mass trespass to publicize their
demands. On the political scene, the Labour Party was sympathetic, and
when it came to power after World War II, it passed the National Parks
Act. It also passed the Town and Country Planning Act, creating a com-
prehensive legislative framework for city and rural planning.
Like the United States and continental Europe, Great Britain developed
a greater concern with the environment during the 1960s. A few inter-
est groups like the National Trust dated back to before the turn of the
20th century. The Fauna and Flora Preservation Society began in 1903.
A number of groups had an international or Empire-wide orientation
like the International Council for Bird Preservation and the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature. The World Wildlife Fund began in
1961 amid fears that habitat destruction and hunting would soon bring
about the extinction of much of the wildlife in India and Africa. The British
Friends of the Earth began in 1970, and it soon had a more important role
there than its parent organization in the United States. At present 5 million
Britons belong to environmental organizations. The National Trust alone
has more than 2 million members, and the Royal Society for the Protection
of Birds has nearly a million. Greenpeace has 300,000 members in the