Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
change from subsistence peasants and landlords to recreational or tourism visitors and
residential postindustrial commuters. Few, if any, of these people practice traditional
resource management. In the United Kingdom, in particular, farmers of the late-
twentieth century have been seen as the enemies of conservation, and it is only re-
cently that the pendulum has begun to swing back to farmers as custodians of a
healthy countryside.
Tourists and new urbanite residents may celebrate history and seek to touch the
past, but their lives do not depend upon local natural resources. Farmers may also be-
come conservationists, but they differ fundamentally from their forebears in their re-
lationships with nature. Conservation is seen as a desirable add-on, but not as a fun-
damental part of sustainable subsistence and survival.
This transition in land use is a problem and, perhaps, one of the most serious threats
to environmental sustainability and nature conservation. With abandonment of tradi-
tional uses and practices, many sites have been lost or fragmented. Those remaining
receive little or no management and quickly pass through successional change. Not
“natural” but “eco-cultural,” these landscapes have ecologies that evolved for cen-
turies with locally distinct and generally predictable exploitation driven by economic
need. Attempts to conserve and manage remaining fragments are too little and too
late. Moreover, these landscapes lack long-term economic viability and are discon-
nected from land management processes. Economy and landscape, once linked
through cultural tradition and subsistence, are replaced by “sticking plaster” ap-
proaches of targeted grant aid and land management plans. Laudable and, in the short
term, essential if sites, species, and traditions are not to be totally lost, it is not a long-
term solution, and regarding it as such may be dangerous.
The concept of re-wilding or re-naturing has recently emerged (Taylor 2005;
Buissink 2007; Fraser 2009), offering huge possibilities for rural landscapes. In Eu-
rope, this approach is often based on Frans Vera's ideas about the origins and nature of
European landscapes (Vera 2000). Yet most of the concepts, visions, and projects over-
look the cultural links between Vera's landscape and the early modern period—a fun-
damental error. Furthermore, there is a danger that projects for re-wilding and rein-
troduction of large grazing herbivores fail to understand the ecosystem carrying
capacity, landscape cultural history, or likely economic impacts of so-called eco-
tourism. There is a widespread myth that release from farming leads to landscape re-
wilding or re-naturing and is inherently good for wildlife. It is true that some species
benefit from abandonment and ebb and flow with successional change. However, in
many cases, abandonment of cultural or working landscapes is dereliction, as seen
across the Mediterranean where rural areas depopulate with resulting social and envi-
ronmental problems (Agnoletti 2006). Favorably located landscapes may acquire ve-
neers of tourism affluence or commuter-belt sophistication, but most go into steep
decline. With derelict landscapes, no working rural community, degraded ecology,
and abandoned cultural heritage, these regions discourage tourism or leisure visitors
(Doncaster et al. 2006; Rotherham 2008a, 2008b).
Severance between past and contemporary cultural landscapes, with consequent
implications for conservation and restoration, is mostly overlooked. However, the
