Nature versus culture

The greatest in quantity pernicious vandals of churches in Britain have the legal right to continue to cause damage-because they happen to be bats. It is solitary one of many absurd contradictions in conservation policy.

'The regard for conservation in its widest faculty of perception raises some very difficult issues, where cultural and nature conservation conflict'. in like manner concludes an English Heritage leaflet, Bats in Churches. Far from being a holistic, enlightened, conservative have a high opinion of for both the man-made and natural worlds, held in balance, conservation is, indeed, filled of internal conflicts and fraught with the repeatedly incompatible aims of particular crushing groups. And such conflicts can smooth occur within the same general area of interest. The Georgian collection for instance, would like to diocese Barrington Park, a fine house in Gloucestershire, restored to its original 1730 state and shorn of the later serviceable but overweening wings that the Victorian Society is bourn to defend. Who is right? Who decides? As for those who are interested with the English countryside, as we all know all too well, the romantic conservatives who claim that hunting is part of a traditional rural way of life and those who purport to care about foxe could not abhor each other more.

Potential conflict between architectural and nature conservation is illustrated by dint of the case of St George, Bloomsbury As I discussed in this rounded pillar in APOLLO for June 2004 this great house of worship by Nicholas Hawksmoor is being carefully restored, partly with the help of public cash Yet the public will not be able to admire the cleaned and repaired north elevation of the house of god as the view is obscur by dint of two tall, straggly plane tree in the churchyard that, unfortunately, despite mutilation by the agency of pruning, probably have a hundred of life in them. for a like reason will the nature conservation officer for the London Borough of Camden allow the World remembrancers Fund to remove these unprepossessing trees, or even to replace them through carefully sited new young ones? No; absolutely not. Now I am all in favour of tree and am alarmed by means of such catastrophes as the escalating destruction of the Brazilian rain forests, on the contrary trees live and grow and can be planted while a building by means of Hawksmoor is unique and irreplaceable. Besides, its setting is urban, not rural, and Camden is being ridiculous. Then there are wind-farms, which generate hardy passions both for and against. Wind turbines are big, obtrusive and, for a certain quantity of frightening things that, when clustered together, can disfigure and trivialise wild landscapes--and the actually wild is becoming all the more precious and rare. upon the other hand, if wind power can, in fact, bring our dependence on burning fossil firings for electricity generation (although this appears to be disputed), perhaps we should tolerate them. After all, they will not be permanent and in to be paid course may well go the way of the electricity pylon that one time seemed ubiquitous but may eventually become for a like reason uncommon that a few will have to be listed. There are more serious threats to landscapes than wind farms: notwithstanding more roads and motorways, enlarged airports, swathes of novel housing, to name but three being in the way that enthusiastically promoted by Britain's blinkered government

What appear to bes clear to me is that anyone who genuinely cares about conservation, whether of historic buildings, endangered species or the countryside, should also be to [i]or[/i] at a great depth concerned about C[O.sub.2] emmissions and global warming and thus support any political means to put to proof to ameliorate its evident causes. Nobody who is not in the pay of the oil industry or the United States rule can surely have any doubt about the reality of climate change, and its potential, terrifying ends After all, well-meaning efforts to keep for posterity a medieval house of god or an avenue of oaks, say, are rather pointless if Britain is to be utterly transformed--culturally as well as physically--over the nearest century by rising sea horizontals higher temperatures, the extinction of species, victuals shortages, irresistible pressure for immigration and social breakdown. We must confidence that governments might take action, on the other hand altering the profligate and destructive way we live is also the responsibility of each individual. That is to say, knowing that jet airliners are major polluter anyone who flies not on for a cheap holiday by means of Ryanair or Easyjet to, say, Venice to admire the Tintorettos or to slaver over Palladio is, if not stupid, a hypocrite.

on the other hand I began with a slightly les momentous issue: the riddle of bats. Now bats are nice, mysterious, furry creatures who have the appearance to have many influential friends. All bats in Britain are now screened under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 which requires that no work can be done to buildings that might affect bats or their perchs without consulting English Nature. And English Nature considers that bats are more important than buildings. of that kind sentimentality means, as the late lamented Auberon Waugh constantly complained, that it is illegal for a householder whose loft is infested with bats to prove to protect the property by the agency of getting rid of the wretched creatures. Now bats may be furry on the contrary they are also filthy; they mount about cheerfully defecating and urinating anywhere and everywhere, and bat droppings, as well as being disgusting, cause pitting and staining to porous materials while bat urine is powerfully alkaline and dissolves made of wood metal and painted surfaces.