Promoting Management

Most times we see an article on wildlife  in the environment pages of national newspapers it has originated as a press release from one conservation industry group or another. The groups have targets for their staff for the number of times they get a press release taken up by the papers. There are two main kinds of press release, the bad news and the good news. The bad news kind tells us that certain species are declining because there's not enough management and the good news kind is telling us that species are doing well because of the good work of managers. There's very little that doesn't fit into these categories.  The reason for this is that the most important task that conservation managers are expected to do is the management of public perception. People must be made to understand that managers are essential.

A typical example is the recent article in The Guardian from a butterfly conservation manager. There is no balance here because the writer is the promoter of the view not an independent voice. It's about top-down management turning countryside areas into gardening projects. Intensive conservation industry management projects are  the only solutions considered to have an answer to these manufactured crises. Little surprise considering the huge increase in managers turned out from university courses in recent years; each course has taught them the lesson that nature  has to be controlled, or how else can they expect to earn a living? That nature was doing a fine job on Blacka before the managers came was a threat that could not be allowed to go unchecked. Once the general population got to know this the supply of jobs subsidised by agri-environment schemes would be ending; as would be the jobs in higher education as teachers would run out of students.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/02/uks-most-endangered-butterfly-high-brown-fritillary-makes-comeback