Conservation on a national level
The continuing attractiveness of the local landscape is not accidental, but is due to the conservation efforts of individuals, organisations and government.
For many hundreds of years there was a balance between the demand for food and resources from the British countryside and its availability. Towards the end of the 19th Century the damaging environmental impact of a rapidly growing population was becoming recognised.
In 1889 the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was formed in response to the near-extinction of the Great Crested Grebe. Within Oxfordshire, the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust ( BBOWT ) is the major non-government group active in establishing nature reserves and promoting wildlife.
Until the middle of the 20th Century, conservation was largely at the initiative of private organisations and individual landowners, but since then government involvement has also been important in protecting species, habitats and sites of landcape value.
National Parks, AONBs and SSSIs
Little Wittenham Nature Reserve (see next section) became an SSSI in 2000, and has since also been designated as one of Europe’s Special Areas of Conservation, recognising the international importance of its population of Great Crested Newts.
http://www.jncc.gov.uk/protectedsites/sacselection/sac.asp?EUCode=UK0030184
Since 1994 the UK government has promoted a Biodiversity Action Plan, focused on the national protection of species and habitats across the countryside (not just at protected sites).
Biodiversity and Agriculture
