Supermarkets of the Countryside

The government's thinking about ownership and management of National Nature Reserves is intriguing; all part of their approach to dealing with the budget deficit. The text of the Guardian's article suggests that some of these places "could one day theoretically be owned and managed by a big supermarket like Sainsbury's or Tesco, an oil company or a local community."

Well some of the parallels could already be with us in increasing parts of the countryside. Is it going too far to see the top down management and uniformity of approach emanating from a centralised structure and leading to Tesco towns being the model for some of the ways that our countryside is currently being managed by bureaucracies and charities like Natural England and the Wildlife Trust movement? I'm thinking of the display boards that went up around Blacka when SWT took over with symbols and logos from the trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund and English Nature (as then was) and reminders of the SSSI status. And the way that every countryside site has to be managed as an artificial site with farming and livestock to the fore. The management structures are another similarity and the approach to public relations. I'm sure that all wildlife trusts attend the same seminars and away days and standardise their approach. And can we really say that has no discernible effect on what we see on the ground? That does not necessarily mean they use the same supplier of barbed wire, but if it is not so now the time may come; and there will be someone in the establishment who believes not enough barbed wire is to be seen in our countryside, nor enough cow pats either.