Nature Trails: The Production of Instructive Landscapes in Britain, 1960–72

Matless, David; Watkins, Charles; Merchant, Paul

doi:10.1017/s0956793309990124

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Recreational innovations included new trails and hides for viewing wildlife and sculpture trails. Nature trails became popular in the early 1960s through the development of county naturalists' trusts and the establishment of the Council for Nature, a national body which actively lobbied for better management of nature reserves (Matless et al 2010). In Grizedale in the Lake District, the Forestry Commission established a Wildlife Centre in 1968 and opened a sculpture trail in 1977 (Steele 1972;Nevard and Penford 1978).…”

Section: Forest Change Due To Intensification Of Timber Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land-use legacies of twentieth-century forestry in the UK: a perspective

Raum

2020

Landscape Ecol

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Context Complex interactions between societies and their environment have shaped landscapes across Europe over centuries. Therefore, taking a historical perspective can be important when designing new forestry policy and management activities. Objectives This perspective aims to improve our appreciation of how a better historical understanding of landscapes can increase our understanding of current conditions and inform current and future policy and practice. I provide a perspective on land-use legacies and forest change, with a particular emphasis on landscapes, and using the example of forestry in the United Kingdom. Methods For this purpose, I undertook a comprehensive review of scholarly forestry literature and of relevant policy and legal documents in the UK, covering the last 100 years. Results This brief review of the dynamics of forest landscapes in the UK over the last 100 years, shows that certain decisions, policies and management activities had major effects on the landscape, especially in terms of landscape patterns and species distribution, constraining it until today. Historic research investigated some of these legacies, leading to real change in policy and management, including a Broadleaved Policy, an Ancient Woodland Inventory, habitat restoration, habitat network and rewilding schemes. Research on past experiences of Dutch Elm disease in the UK and of similar outbreaks in other countries have guided responses to today’s tree pest/disease outbreaks and plant trade decisions. Conclusion A better appreciation of past decisions and activities, especially in forestry, helps to anticipate landscape legacy effects and potential cross-scale interactions of new policies and practices. It may also help to better justify and negotiate new decisions and long-term planning among multiple actors.

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Section: Forest Change Due To Intensification Of Timber Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land-use legacies of twentieth-century forestry in the UK: a perspective

Raum

2020

Landscape Ecol

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“…Matless has explored the ethics of close attention to nature developed, for example, in the bestselling 'I-Spy' books and in spatial practices such as the construction and walking of nature trails. 41 The 'What to Look For' books endorse this moral geography. The text accompanying the wild rose spread encourages young readers to walk among swathes of cut hay in the hope of finding, 'if you are lucky', tiger-moths, cream-spot tiger-moths, ghost swifts, slowworms and long and short-tailed field mice.…”

Section: Summermentioning

confidence: 99%

Ladybird landscapes: or, what to look for in the What to Look For books

Burchardt

2020

Rural History

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The interlocking relationships between agriculture, nature, science and modernity underwent fundamental, far-reaching change in mid-twentieth-century Britain. This article examines Ladybird’s iconic, bestselling but under-researched ‘What to Look For’ seasonal natural history series, focusing particularly on the illustrations by the distinguished wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe and their relationship to the text by the biologist Elliot Lovegood Grant Watson. Beneath their apparent simplicity, the ‘What to Look For’ books attempt an ambitious, forwards-looking synthesis between mechanisation and tradition, nature and livelihood that calls into question historiographical critiques (by Newby, Miller and Bunce, for example) of contemporary representations of the rural as nostalgic and evasive. The ‘What to Look For’ books quietly subvert some of the more distorting tropes of English landscape representation. People are shown going about their everyday work (in contrast to the ‘landscape without figures’ tradition) and modern farm machinery such as tractors and seed drills are also acknowledged and even celebrated. Tunnicliffe and Grant Watson sought to harmonise these potentially discordant elements; their vision of the rural was an inclusive one that accommodated working women, children and even to some extent ethnic diversity. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century attempts to imagine a positive relationship between rurality and modernity such as Ladybird’s were increasingly undermined by escalating ecological crises.

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References

2014

In the Nature of Landscape

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Nature Trails: The Production of Instructive Landscapes in Britain, 1960–72

Cited by 9 publications

References 14 publications

Land-use legacies of twentieth-century forestry in the UK: a perspective

Land-use legacies of twentieth-century forestry in the UK: a perspective

Ladybird landscapes: or, what to look for in the What to Look For books

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