These are vital issues for the wellbeing of the planet and of us. Raising awareness and campaigning on them at every opportunity is a central aim for CPRE. In general, people are in favour of conservation with its corollary biodiversity and since the first decade or so of the 21st century the terms have become closely mixed in with the language of other big ‘green’ issues around climate change. There is an obvious overlap with the big Climate Change problem of how to capture more carbon through woods, wetlands and peat. The care of our natural world and the myriad lives lived in it have become important to a great many people – one could almost say ‘most people’ – whether or not they actually get involved with ‘nature’ beyond their own back gardens. Their engagement is often through writers or campaigners or film-makers who bring to their attention the existential threats and the amazing work being done to conserve a species or a place. Moreover, there is plenty of activity in local communities, often lead by conservation groups like the Woodland Trust or the National Trust mobilising teams of people for conservation works like habitat restoration, planting new woodland or collecting data on butterflies or bats. So many of us are would-be conservationists and in some cases this extends to caring about buying organic or local food and ethically sourced clothing.
As the sequence of COP conferences to date has shown, there is a great deal of unanimity about the basics of nature conservation in the face of Climate Change but moving from words to action has proved difficult, or in fact almost impossible. A view of nature conservation and the protection or enhancement of biodiversity as Very Good Things, has become generally accepted. There is, however, very little understanding of the true scale of the threats to land, sea, plants or creatures from human beings, and the corresponding scale of the action we need to take. Current generations baulk at being asked to pay for what our forefathers did with such success: making money and breaking wide open the gap between haves and have-nots. Nowadays we know of the big destructive acts like clearing rainforest, continuing to drill for oil or leaving water companies unregulated, right down to just throwing away a wipe or a plastic bottle. We are becoming better informed about these things but actually achieving changes seems impossible; it should be making activists of us all.
There is a literature of conservation that can inspire and even sometimes motivate. Writers like Wendell Berry, James Rebank, Roger Deakin and Richard Mabey have described the beauty of natural things and their vulnerability in the face of modern life. Isabella Tree’s book on the re-wilding of a West Sussex estate had a profound impact. Such advocacy gives us an argument for conservation based on a love of particular places, animals, birds or insects, a kind of romance of the natural world that has the power to move us – sometimes even to act or to campaign. Contact with the professional scientists and ecologists of the natural world can also be inspiring: their work is impressive and their message is almost universally persuasive. People are fascinated by a close-focus view of a creature or a plant or a whole hillside: science informs and tells us these things matter.
The big players in conservation in Cornwall are the Wildlife Trust, the National Trust, Natural England and the Woodland Trust; all four work in partnership with Cornwall Council. Cornwall Wildlife Trust is working under the banner of a Living Landscape, conserving and restoring for people and wildlife in areas large or small, with an ambition to connect up managed nature reserves with ‘islands of biodiversity’ like churchyards or gardens, so that a variety of habitats can interrelate. There is a parallel Living Seas initiative, monitoring and campaigning to protect marine species – at the moment particularly the maerle beds in the estuary of the Fal.
The National Trust runs a variety of nature conservation projects including woodland, hedgerow, wetland and moorland schemes. In the past two years they have been working on a Lizard Rarities Project, creating and restoring habitats in the rocky clifftop grass and heathland of Lizard Point for butterflies, insects and rare (and often very tiny) flowering plants: in effect, from the smallest detail up to the whole spectacular sweep of the landscape at the point. Natural England manages Cornwall’s Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) including the Penwith Moors and marine habitats like beds of seagrass or maerle. It is a consultee on planning matters and nature recovery initiatives where the interests of conservationists and the planning authority can agree to dovetail their efforts. Natural England also promotes new habitats to help reverse the loss of biodiversity, giving free advice to farmers and landowners about creating or restoring woodlands, scrub, wooded pasture or wetlands: all of them vital to build climate resilience. They promote the planting of woody habitats with native species of trees and shrubs and seeding with seeds collected as locally as possible to the new ground. They advocate complex, messy, varied habitats where trees and plants can colonise themselves.
An influential nation-wide organisation that is also working in Cornwall is the Soil Association, the people who bestow the authoritative and respected logo of organic certification. Their work to improve soil quality underpins all efforts at sustainability in food production; the character and quality of their soil is crucial to organic farmers and growers. The Association works with farmers, continuously raises awareness of the importance of soil quality, encourages agroecological farming methods and lobbies government to help move food production into sustainability.
Through the middle of 2025 CPRE was collaborating on the development of a Land Use Strategy that could help national and local government with the allocation of land for development – or for special protection. One of the first findings was that land classification data was missing or out of date in many areas. Apart from statutorily protected places like nature reserves or National Landscapes (formerly known as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) we do not have clear data showing what we have. The character of Cornwall’s land is particularly difficult: we have scattered localities amongst broader swathes like Bodmin Moor or the Penwith Hills, pockets of ex-industrial landscape and mostly less than top-grade farmland, the whole encircled by a coastal landscape of exceptional beauty. As Richard Mabey has written: ‘We are all coming to terms with the uncomfortable fact that the provision of sustainable energy and affordable housing are themselves the causes of damaging habitat loss and pollution.’ In Cornwall’s case, conservation and biodiversity must be upheld against house-building targets imposed by the government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, under which the National Planning Policy Framework gives commercial developers opportunities for more and more houses on greenfield sites, unaffordable for people who live and work in Cornwall and damaging to our natural environment.