NATURE CONSERVATION: ESSEX
87
mittee, to which reference has already been made, was set up and
financed by the Society. Properties now owned by the Society
include Woodwalton Fen in Huntingdonshire, Dancer's End in
Buckinghamshire, Badgeworth Nature Reserve in Gloucestershire
and Blackmore Copse in Wiltshire. During recent years, the
Society has made substantial grants and loans to a number of
county naturalists' trusts. Our own county trust has received
an interest-free loan (repayable in four years) of £2,000 and a
further loan (later made into a grant) of £250 towards the purchase
price of Fingringhoe Wick Nature Reserve. With the develop-
ment of the county naturalists' trust movement, the tendency now
is to get the local trusts to purchase, or otherwise obtain, and
manage nature reserves and to give financial and other practical
support to such projects.
Whilst on this theme of national bodies connected with the
conservation movement, mention must again be made of the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds. This Society, among its many
activities, owns and administers some twelve reserves and does
a tremendous amount of educational and publicity work, much of
it concerned directly with conservation.
For the last few years, the Wildfowl Trust and the Wild-
fowlers' Association of Great Britain and Ireland have, with the
Nature Conservancy, been trying to reach a generally acceptable
and scientifically sound policy for setting up a national system of
wildfowl refuges. These refuges will enable stocks of threatened or
scarce species to be safeguarded, wildfowl stocks generally to be
increased and long-term research to be carried on.
Though the interests of The Council for Nature are wide and
varied, one of its major ones is conservation. Founded in 1958,
and for the foundation of which much credit must go to the
Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, it soon set up its
now well-known Conservation Corps. This recruits young people
who are keen to go to interesting and sometimes remote places
and takes them there as teams to carry out the necessary work
of conservation and maintenance.
Among many other national bodies, whose paths often meet
those directly concerned with local nature conservation, must be
mentioned the Council for the Preservation of Rural England
(with a similar Council for Wales), the National Trust, the
Ramblers' Association, the Footpaths Preservation Society, the
Commons and Open Spaces Association, the Youth Hostels
Association, the Field Studies Council, the Botanical Society of
the British Isles, the British Trust for Ornithology and, of course,
the National Farmers' Union and the National Parks and the
Forestry Commissions.
Apart from those reserves established by the S.P.N.R., the
R.S.P.B. and county naturalists' trusts, there are about one
hundred owned or controlled by The Nature Conservancy. They
cover a total area of nearly two hundred thousand acres, among
them being such well-known areas as Beinn Eighe, Bridgwater