The management of wildlife and amenity a UK post‐war perspective

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Abstract
This article relates the circumstances in which, as part of the post‐war reconstruction effort, the newly‐conceded responsibilities of the state for protecting wildlife and the landscape were allocated respectively to a scientific body, the Nature Conservancy, and a planning body, the National Parks Commission. As well as pressing for effective powers to protect the countryside from damaging forms of development, more positive ways were sought for managing wildlife, landscape and the recreational resource. The evolving relationship with agriculture, the most important form of rural land‐use, is outlined. An account is given of how the three basic assumptions of the post‐war nature‐conservation movement came to be challenged, namely by the separation of the executive and research responsibilities for wildlife conservation in 1973, the break‐up of the UK approach in 1990, and misgivings as to how far the state should be directly responsible for acquiring and managing the expanding series of National Nature Reserves.