88
THE ESSEX NATURALIST
Bay, the Cairngorms, the Gower Coast, St. Kilda, Scolt Head and
Skomer Island.
Under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act,
1949, county and county borough councils have powers to establish
nature reserves, but a considerable amount of prodding and
persuasion is necessary. Where such reserves are established, the
local authority must inevitably draw upon the advice of local
naturalists if such reserves are to be efficiently managed. How
fortunate the conservation movement is in those areas where one
or more of the councillors are naturalists. Apart from the estab-
lishment of reserves, local authorities can help the conservation
movement by the protection of birds and plants, preservation of
roadside verges, tree-planting schemes and donations to county
naturalists' trusts.
Mention has already been made of the National Trust. Pro-
perties in Essex which it owns and which, though not designated
as nature reserves, are protected from development and are the
joy of naturalists as well as of ordinary lovers of the countryside,
are Blakes Wood, Little Baddow (over eighty acres of woodland,
mainly hornbeams and chestnut coppice), Lingwood and Danbury
Commons (about two hundred and fourteen acres in extent) and
Hatfield Forest (over a thousand acres of rolling, timbered
country).
How is conservation, which has been defined as the prevention
of destruction or injury to habitats and keeping them in the right
state to enable the most varied and plentiful plant and animal life
to flourish therein, to be carried out? Some might say that con-
servation is also the act of maintaining the balance of nature—but
what, in fact, is this balance of nature? How is one to be sure that
the state of a nature reserve when it is established is the state in
which it should be preserved? In my own opinion, a reserve
containing a variety of habitats cannot long be preserved as such.
The scales are always swinging—as first this group of species and
then that (whether they be of our flora or fauna or a combination
of them) become dominant factors—and can the hand of man
keep the scales balanced? A reserve of a more selective type,
such as a beach preserved as a ternery, a copse preserved for a
particular plant or a piece of heathland preserved for its Adders
are different propositions and their centres of interest can possibly
be maintained for a very long time.
One of the most dramatic natural unbalancings of nature (or
perhaps the balancing of a previously unbalanced state?) during
recent years has been the onslaught of myxomatosis through the
Rabbit population. Many effects of this have been recorded but
they show the same general pattern. Vegetation, formerly cropped
by the Rabbits (and, incidentally, manured by them) has increased
in height and density and this has led to many habitats being less
suitable as nesting sites for such birds as the Stone Curlew, the
Ringed Plover and the Woodlark. This loss of nesting sites has
been counterbalanced by a gain in certain species of our flora