With the Right to Roam campaign we support exclusion in cases where access rights are incompatible with the flourishing of very vulnerable species that are important for their conservation. Think for example of salt marshes, seabird colonies and some beaches.

We could also agree to go further as a society and include some exclusion zones, for the sake of exclusion itself. Perhaps to gather some baseline data on what the absence of people does and does not produce.

Democracy

The crucial point is that such projects are transparent and socially just; not just an escape clause to perpetuate arbitrary exclusion through the back door. A non-arbitrary model is indeed essential to ensure that such projects are seen as legitimate, which – much more than the ‘Keep Out!’ sign – is needed to reinforce compliance with all legitimate restrictions and rules.

But I don’t think we should accept the negative framing of access as presented by the authors. We have become too accustomed to seeing the presence of people in the land as a problem to be managed, not as an asset to be embraced.

In Britain, such ideas have a long and dubious history, having been used over the centuries to justify the destruction of common rights or to preserve the game of the nobility.

Later, in the early 20th century, protectors of the countryside developed their own arrogant class morality to deplore the return of the plebs to the countryside. They coined strange terms like ‘disobedient bathing’ and called for ‘persecution of the noisy’.

As someone succinctly summarized in the 1930s, shortly after the extension of the right to vote, “the only way to save the countryside for democracy is to keep democracy out of the countryside.”

Critics

Nowadays, such arguments often take on a conservationist gloss (what wildlife manager has not rebranded himself as a “practical conservationist”, whether falsely or not?), but the roots are largely the same. Then, as now, these stories prove to be a convenient distraction from the real causes of ecological loss.

Lloyd asks us and all what the last curlew on Dartmoor would think about the ‘tourist onslaught’ every Easter, as if that had much to do with the sudden decline of the species.

We need only look at the plight of the curlew in Ireland, where the population has declined by 98 per cent over the past three decades. This in a country with no roaming rights, no equivalent to the CRoW Act and no proper network of rights of way.

The factors are little different from those causing the decline of the curlew in England: silage harvesting, commercial reforestation which destroys habitats and increases the abundance of predators, the draining of peat bogs and wet fields. The odd walker has little to do with it.

Okay, but could people—and we almost always mean their dogs—make a bad situation worse? There’s some common ground here between access activists and their critics.

Ecosystems

We believe that not all access rights should apply to pets. It is high time that action is taken in the area of ​​dog ownership and related sectors, in the interests of both wildlife and farm animals.

As far as I know, the activists at Right to Roam are the pioneers in this area. They have developed a range of comprehensive measures for dogs that we believe should be part of any reform of dog access. [full list: here].

For those who want the former without the latter: fine, but how do you achieve it? Wrapping specific and sensible regulations within a popular expansion of rights is one way to motivate politicians and offset political risk. A strong offer of access reform could be just the vehicle such legislation needs.

And for those concerned about the impact of access, it’s hard to see why the status quo is so acceptable. The effect is already that public access is being crushed along with conservation sites: with over half of our existing access land (covering almost eight per cent of the land in England) designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve or a Local Nature Reserve.

The first monitoring of these sites by Natural England after the introduction of the CRoW Act (which introduced a ‘right to roam’ for walkers and climbers, mainly in the uplands) found that the ecosystems had changed little from the experience.

Protection

But for those who still object, a flexible, non-habitat-specific model that alleviates access pressure at designated sites surely holds greater potential. And while honeypots will always exist, better access at the front door would likely reduce the number of visitors who have to drive hours to distant national parks for hiking and swimming.

This is also important for nature, because our environment is where we have the strongest influence and agency. Like ourselves, the authors support the rights of nature.

Yet they seem to show antipathy for the very people they are most likely to support. Even our current modest means of access have shown us what is possible, with communities across the country taking a stand for their natural heritage – a concept we call Wild Service.

We have seen it in Sheffield, in Wellingborough. On the Wharfe and the Wye, the Cam and the Avon. In countless other places around the country where connectivity has served as a precursor to protection.

Link

These actions are almost never counted as conservation benefits of access, but that is exactly what they are. In fact, it is becoming increasingly important in our environmental politics, as river pollution rises higher on the political agenda; even as we are forced to contest the basic right to swim.

All of these conservationists, and I suspect the authors themselves, are motivated by their formative experiences with the natural world, and the basic requirement for that is access to the outdoors.

But with more and more micro-enclosures taking place across the country, and the attempt to restrict even long-standing rights in places like Dartmoor, we are making such fundamental experiences harder than ever. In the words of Chris Packham, the most endangered species in the countryside today is the young nature lover.

The authors also express concern that “many in our urban communities in particular have lost their sense of being living participants in the natural world,” while implausibly arguing that “access itself does not, however, lead to connection.” Well, no. But it’s a lot harder without it.

Police

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the authors’ beliefs, or that they are motivated by anything other than the plight of the natural world that vehemently advocates for the right to roam and share. But piggybacking their agenda on a fundamentally unjust system is a dangerous gamble.

If we do so, we undermine the legitimacy of conservation in the long run and mobilize those who seek to make a profit by pitting the interests of humanity against those of nature, as if their fates are not intertwined.

Ultimately, we who identify as environmentalists must stop thinking that we are somehow better, more unique, and more special than those who are not (yet).

If everyone has the resources, time and experience – everyone – has the same capacity to become nature’s defenders. The future of conservation depends on making each of those elements more available. Not by policing who we think cares and who we don’t.

This author

Jon Moses is a freelance writer and organiser of the campaign group Right to Roam, a group fighting for free, fair and informed access to land and water across England.