NATURE CONSERVATION: A REVIEW OF THE CONSERVATION OF WILDLIFE IN BRITAIN 1950-2001. By Peter Marren. New Naturalist No. 91.

2002 1st edition. Pp344. Colour and b/w photographs, b/w illustrations, bibliography. Green boards.

This is a valuable overview of the conservation situation in the UK at the time of publication. The author's angle of view gives the impression of a huge, externally imposed NGO exercise, rather than a description of a living landscape, and so the book offers a useful means of understanding the Conservation Industry quite as much as what is going on in the landscape itself. If the purchase of Carbon Offsets and supermarket food with a picture of a tractor on it seem ecologically meaningful actions, then read some of the older more geographical New Naturalists, beginning with the first Snowdonia book. This will put into perspective what has been lost up to the time of this present title. The movement outlined here is emphatically not working backwards towards the former position of sustainability so recently lost. Chapters include; introduction, where we are now; Part I, dramatis personae - the official conservtion agencies, the voluntary army, conservation politics, SSSI's and the law; Part II, wildlife habitats - nature reserves, the farmed environment, woods and forests, bricks and water (the urban and marine fringes); Part III, living with wildlife - development causes celebres, animals that get in our way, biodiversity, seaeagles and parrots' feathers, invading and nesting, summing up, whither nature conservation?; main events affecting nature conservation in Great Britian, 1970-2001.