SOME ASPECTS OF CONSERVATION
255
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, March 1970
Some Aspects of Conservation
W. R. Masefield
This year is to be marked as European Conservation Year, 1970.
I thought it appropriate, therefore to make conservation the
subject of my Presidential Address.
At this time, over twenty European Countries, including the
United Kingdom, are making a concerted effort to bring home to
everybody—laymen, public and private bodies, governments and
politicians—the urgent need for the conservation of our habitat.
To bring about this co-ordination of action has meant a great
deal of spadework by a great many men and women in a great
many walks of life. To the people who make up the membership
of such a body as the Essex Field Club, co-operation in this
plan is a must, and, as you already know, the Club is taking an
active part.
In this paper, I want to examine some of our views about
conservation, and try to put them into perspective. It is very
easy to get one's priorities wrong in this subject, so that, with
the best will in the world, we may end up doing the wrong things.
I am reminded here of the man who tried to conserve a little
patch of fritillaries growing in a farmer's field. He was worried
lest the continual ploughing should ultimately wipe out the little
colony. The farmer was sympathetic and agreed to fence off the
patch. But, alas! within a few seasons the fritillaries had gone
—choked by the coarser vegetation. What the poor man did not
know was that the continual disturbance of the ground was the
very factor that kept the fritillaries flourishing.
So there is one important aspect. We must have adequate
and accurate knowledge of the way things grow, before we start
conserving them. But one may also ask, was it right in the first
place to try to preserve this patch of flowers? What were the
motives that prompted the man to act thus? Were his priorities
right?
To examine this question I think we must look at what it is
we are trying to conserve. Most people will answer that, broadly
speaking, it is the countryside we want to save. Now, what is
this countryside? At different times we should get different
answers to this question. In Roman times, those parts of Britain
we now regard as country were in fact almost impenetrable
forests on the uplands, and equally impenetrable marshes on