The Conservation Prison - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 218

it benefits from changes caused by humans. What is healthy for red
grouse tends to be unhealthy for other species, even for other species
of grouse, such as the black grouse, the capercaillie and the hazel
grouse (which might have lived in Britain before we lost most of our
forests). Sustaining the kind of habitat required to support artificially
high numbers of red grouse destroys the habitat required by rarer spe-
cies. So why are red grouse a 'key indicator'? Because they show the
trust that the 'interest feature' - the treeless, blasted upland heath -
has been maintained. We return to the head of the snake.
It is true that, unlike the red grouse, some of the species chosen as
members of the favoured assemblages are rare. But some of those not
chosen are even rarer: they no longer exist in many regions, because
the habitats in which they lived have been replaced by the 'interest
features' conservationists are trying to preserve. Both the wildlife
groups and the official bodies are advised by ecologists. They defend
the animals and plants they study as much for professional reasons as
for environmental ones. Moorland weevil specialists become moor-
land weevil champions. A weevil ecologist tends to have little interest
in capercaillie, and would respond with hostility to an attempt to
expand capercaillie - or wildcat or lynx - habitat at the expense of
weevil habitat. But because there are no longer any capercaillie, wild-
cat or lynx in Wales, and therefore no one studying them there, there
is no competing group of local scientists arguing for capercaillie for-
ests instead of weevil moor. Conservation policy is self-reinforcing.
There are two other official reasons for protecting particular places:
'high risk' and 'rapid decline'. These were the justifications the Mont-
gomeryshire Wildlife Trust gave me for the way it manages its reserve.
Heather, it said, 'is now a rare habitat with its distribution limited to
Europe'. 14 This is questionable: there are between 2 and 3 million
hectares of upland heath in the UK alone. 15 But why should the
decline of a man-made habitat make it worthy of preservation? The
contaminated land associated with active industry, fresh slag heaps
and the tailings from deep coal mines are all in precipitous decline in
Europe. If the criteria were to be applied even-handedly, these - and
the sparse life they harbour - would be our conservation priorities.
Would it not be better to stop suppressing natural processes and
allow the land to find its own way? Somewhere like Glaslyn is likely