http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/2013/04/03/natural-resources-wales-is-launched/ Advancing ecology and making it count Tue, 14 May 2013 07:10:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/2013/04/03/natural-resources-wales-is-launched/#comment-17111 Richard Keymer Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:58:03 +0000 http://britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/?p=3381#comment-17111 This has the feel of an experiment and Wales is small compared to England.It also feels very much like it is being done to reduce costs.It is rather remarkable how much the goverment sees the environment only in terms of an impediment to growth, rather than being valued as a resource that can fuel growth in the future. It also seems to me inevitable that in the bigger organisations that are being created nature conservation would lose out to many of the other interests. I cannot believe that a single organisation in England would be able to do an effective a job, as its agenda would simply be too large and diverse. This has in effect been shown by Natural England which resulted from English Nature, Defra’s Rural Development Service and the Countryside Agency being brought together.There is no doubt in my mind that in this case the agenda of the Countryside Agency has suffered. At a time when the environment is under threat as never before we should be bolstering our environmental agencies, not combining them and reducing their resources.

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