The Conservation Prison - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 221

worn strands of the complex web of life. The lively ecological pro-
cesses I find so fascinating, the trophic cascades and unexpected
interactions, the constant surprises that in an untrained ecosystem
delight and enthral, are all prohibited.
These issues become still more pressing when you discover that, even
on its own terms, across much of the uplands this approach is failing
dismally. A survey of the birds in the Pumlumon site of special scientific
interest, of which the Glaslyn reserve is part, found that there had been
a catastrophic decline in the species the severe regime is supposed to
protect.* Their numbers, the survey found, have been falling at greater
rates inside the conservation area than in Wales as a whole. Extreme
management is not working, even by the standards it sets for itself.
Ecologists profess themselves mystified by this failure. It could be that
the management programme simply cannot sustain the species it is
designed to protect, as the sheep it relies on gradually degrade the habi-
tat: the longer they stay there, the more damage they do. Their compaction
and poaching of the land, for example, could reduce the number of lar-
val insects on which many birds depend. Or it could be that trying to
preserve the ecosystem as if it were static prevents it from adapting to
changing conditions such as global warming and acid rain (which is still
an issue in these very wet places). All we can say at this stage is that the
current conservation model appears to have failed. In its management
plan the wildlife trust remarks that the habitats it has been trying to
preserve since 1982 at Glaslyn remain in 'unfavourable condition'. 28 The
same certificate of failure has now been issued to 60 per cent of the most
important wildlife sites (the special areas of conservation) in Wales. 29
Some people have responded to such failures by blaming the fact that
the habitats they have been saving are too small. The answer, they say,
* Between 1984 and 2011. At the top of Glaslyn's plan is a list of the eight birds for
which the reserve is considered 'very important'. 26 One of these, the short-eared owl,
did not appear in either the 1984 or 2011 surveys. One other, the hen harrier, rose by
a single nesting pair: none were seen in 1984; one was spotted in 2011. One pair of
peregrines was seen in both cases. The rest were in freefall. Red grouse, skylark and
wheatear had all declined by around 50 per cent. The golden plovers seen in 2011 had
fallen by 92 per cent. Ring ouzels were not found by the second survey at all. The
report notes that 'large scale declines across nearly all the species that occur on the site
were recorded'. 27