Conservation
Access agreements are how most private land gets walked
A great deal of walking happens on permissive routes that could be withdrawn tomorrow, and mostly is not.
Conservation
Who is protecting these landscapes, how it is funded and whether it is working.
25 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 3
Conservation
Rewetting: why conservationists keep blocking drains
Ditch blocking is the least photogenic and most effective intervention in upland restoration.
Conservation
Marine protected areas that permit the thing they were made to stop
Designation without management is common, and the term protected does a great deal of unearned work.
Conservation
Green lanes, byways and vehicles on ancient routes
Some historic routes carry vehicular rights, and the conflict between use and erosion is genuinely difficult.
Conservation
Bracken, gorse and the plants that win when management stops
Undermanagement produces a predictable set of dominant species, and reversing it is harder than preventing it.
Conservation
Grazing animals are a conservation tool and a conservation problem
Many of the habitats we now protect exist because something ate them. The argument is about which animal, how many, and when.
Conservation
Biodiversity offsetting trades a certain loss for an uncertain gain
The idea is simple: damage habitat here, create or improve habitat there. Almost every difficulty lives inside the words create and…
Conservation
Planting trees is the easy half of making a wood
Getting saplings into the ground is a photograph. What happens over the following twenty years is the actual project.
Conservation
Fences decide what a landscape is allowed to become
A line of posts and wire is the cheapest and bluntest conservation tool there is. It works exactly as well as its side effects…
Conservation
Abstraction is the quiet reason some rivers run low
A river can be clean, undammed and still failing, because too much water is being taken out of it upstream and out of the ground…
Conservation
Small populations fail genetically before they run out of habitat
A species can have space, food and protection and still decline, because the arithmetic of a small isolated population works…
Conservation
How anyone actually knows whether a conservation project worked
Most projects report activity: hectares managed, trees planted, fences built. Whether the thing they cared about improved is a much…