The statutory stick is evident alongside the payment carrot

摘要

The punishment given recently to the Herefordshire farmer who took some heavy machinery to a stretch of the River Lugg site of special scientific interest (SSSI) is a throwback to when I started my job in 1984 and a Kent farmer who ignored an SSSI designation also got a jail sentence.Back then, the relationship between farming and conservation interests was tense. The equivalent of Natural England (NE) was embroiled in notifying SSSI designations, and conservation bodies saw the resulting compensation claims from farmers as money for nothing. Farmers saw their freedom to manage land as they always had done being taken away - they had made these places deserve SSSI status, after all.