Crying in the Wilderness       

George Darwell   (Organiser, DCV, 1974-6)

Ashley Wood in December 2003 was the first DCV task I'd attended since 1977. In my 25 years in the wilderness - another county, not a wild place worth conserving - I'd had, in the best tradition of mystics, a vision and a dream.

The vision is stark. Much of the UK conservation movement has lost its way and is heading down a blind alley. It's failing to achieve its objectives, and blaming everybody but itself.

Take the appalling state of the nation's hedges after decades of neglect and mechanical trimming. DCV readers will know how they can be restored to vigour, but laying is skilled hand work and therefore expensive. Forget the convenient myth of bloody-minded farmers determined to grub hedges up; the problem is economic. In strict accountancy terms hedge-laying has probably been uneconomic ever since barbed wire was invented. So conservationists have nibbled at the problem in 2 ways: they've sought Government grants to subsidise hedging contractors, and encouraged volunteers to get involved.

Gordon Brown has other uses for our money. Many causes compete for volunteers. One recent Spring I drove the entire length of a Southern county by the most obvious route. Of all the miles of hedgerow visible from the road, many in terminal decline, just 50 yards had been recently laid. So much for conservationists. Just how many more volunteers and millions will be needed to make an impact?

A strategy relying on subsidised professionals and on volunteers has a yawning gap in between. While an "uneconomic" activity can't be done at a profit by paid labour, enthusiasts may still do it anyway to earn something - if only beer money.

Remunerative hobbies are important to the economy. Most households offering B&B are not earning a living from it on a fully commercial basis. But imagine the Lake District with holiday accommodation provided only by hotels and not-for-profit Youth Hostels. The tourist industry would be in as bad a state as our hedgerows.

Conservationists are far too ready to beg, whether Government grants, our money or our labour. I was particularly incensed recently by junk mail from a UK body aping an appeal for subsistence farmers in the 3rd World: "£15 could purchase an essential hand tool... £100 could train a volunteer in woodland coppicing and traditional hedge laying." It conveniently failed to mention that, with an ounce of initiative, the trained coppice worker or hedge layer could earn that £15 for his hand-tool in his first morning, and thereafter readily match the hourly earnings of a small-time bee-keeper.

Transpose the key: £15 could buy a smoker for a novice bee-keeper; £100 would cover his evening classes; Queen and 50,000 workers to support - please give generously! Preposterous isn't it?

A few hundred professional bee farmers make a very hard-earned living harvesting some 25% of Britain's honey. Proudly independent of unnecessary hand-outs, tens of thousands of small-time bee-keepers pursue their hobby and produce the rest. I suppose there must be the odd entomologist out there somewhere, keeping bees (or wasps) out of pure scientific interest and failing to take the honey...

British bee-keeping generates some £20 - 30 million p.a. of direct economic production: a tiny cottage industry. Its incidental free environmental service - pollination - has been valued at over half a £ billion p.a. to the UK economy.

So my dream? To make small-time hedge-layers and coppice workers as common as bee-keepers, with at least one in every suitable village, generating £ millions of honest earnings and hundreds of £ millions of environmental benefit. For conservation organisations to help realise this dream by providing a supporting infrastructure. And for the conservation movement as a whole to resist being sucked inexorably into the highly competitive charitable begging industry.

The bundles of hazel rods we salvaged from Ashley Wood were a symbolic small step in the right direction. They will generate some income, and yet could so easily have been wasted. Let's develop local markets and do better next year.

And those 50 yards of laid hedge? I did them myself for a fair price without any subsidies. I'd shudder to earn a living from hedge-laying, but it's kept me in beer for many years, and now butters the bread of my pension.

[We shall be arranging a social visit with George in the Spring, to see what he is doing with the by-products of conservation work. Editors }