Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
farm, the available incentives for environmental objectives and particular marketing opportunities, there
will be some difficult decisions to take.
As far as direct resources for conservation initiatives are concerned, as this chapter shows, the history
of such activities in Gower has been intermittent. Those initiatives dependent on external funding have
rarely been made permanent and there is never enough long-term support from the organisations them-
selves, both the donors and the recipients, to make a permanent difference.
FIG
175.
Looking north across Whiteford from the Bulwark, a view that encapsulates the variety and beauty of
Gower. (Harold Grenfell)
The continually shifting priorities and fashions make it difficult to resource the basic work that is neces-
sary to conserve the area. A large part of the problem, however, is that giving a local authority respons-
ibility for managing a national landscape designation, and making it rely on grant aid from a range of
countryside agencies, simply does not work. The people campaigning for Gower's designation fifty years
ago recognised that the peninsula has 'National Park scale' problems without the equivalent resources,
and this is still the case today. The five AONBS in Wales do not have the same level of financial support
as those in England and despite small-scale grant schemes, such as the Sustainable Development Fund
supported bythe National Assembly,this problem still needs to be addressed. Ifthe AONB designation is
failing Gower,because oflocal politics, perhaps it isnottoolate tohave the area designated asaNational
Park? That, after all, was the original aim of the Gower Society in the 1950s.
