European National Parks:

Being focused in largest part on

The United Kingdom and

The Czech Republic

Review of some things about England

• Legal disputes settled by reference to common procedures or practiced--the common law.

• Common law can be overridden by statute• King owns the land, all of it, from whom all

private land ownership derives and to whom all land returns.

• King can operate land for his own pleasure or for the public good.

• King owns the wildlife and is not accountable for its actions.

• Sovereign, the highest Lord in the land is a commoner. The commons have the right to appeal to the sovereign for equity and application of the common law.

Space in the United Kingdom

• The UK and its component parts, Scotland, and England with Wales:

– are small places

– and awfully crowded

Open space is at a premium

Important terms:

that will be developed over the next several daysmake certain you know them

• Forest-area under the forest law, with or without trees

• Park-walled area for the keeping of deer

• Chase-a hunting area reserved by a member of the aristocracy.

• Open Field System-a field owned in distinct units by several people and farmed by custom as a single unit

• Common Fields-a field owned in its totality by several people for a purpose determined by custom

• Enclosure-termination of customary use of common or open fields and concentration of their ownership into the hands of the one or more owners.

Two kinds of English Parks

• Chases tended to become parks. Some chases and some parks have been owned by the King, particularly between Windsor and London. Remained the personal property of the king even after he stopped using them to produce deer but tended to be used as space.

• Hence “royal parks,” for example, Hyde Park, Regent’s Park.

• Enclosure of open fields was easy but enclosure of common fields was difficult. Many survived and are owned as open space by villages to this day--as “commons parks.” Examples Hampstead Heath or Trent Park, High Barnet

The Saga of the Epping Forest

Administration of the Forests• William I designated 69 forests reserved to himself. • Generate their own laws and rules (Forest Law) and

its own bureaucracy. • Forest Law had its own judiciary and court system.

– Three levels – Dealt mostly with civil cases (for example breach of

contract)– notoriously slow

– might get away with all kinds of evil doing since witness and judges were likely to die before anyone got around to

sentencing Except– In the case of criminal cases, namely poaching the King’s

critters– In which case, justice was swift, certain and final…

– Just ask Robin Hood what happens when you kill the King’s Deer

• However, different King’s treated their forests differently…– Some were adamantly serious about the

things – Others, sometime for a century or more,

seemed unaware that there were other forests.

– Or portions might be given away. Typically: • To a mistress whose presence at court had

started to get on the Queen’s nerves.• To an offended husband. • To the Church as a way of buying time out of

Purgatory• Or for peculiarly important service to the king by

a commoner or an aristocrat• Among commoners, giving offices in the forest

bureaucracy, was the usual reward which often elevated the family to the minor aristocracy.

Some Strange Terms

• Preambulation-bunch of folks get together every century or so and walk the boundaries to make sure it has moved.

• Purlieu-a place where preambulators find the forest, as trees, once was but is no more. Important, as the Common Law, not the Forest Law now applies but the King can hunt still as if the purlieu were forest.

• Ranger-a guy who guards to king’s interests in a purlieu.

• Note: we start getting something like are modern terms for these things

from the English

Family Names

• Since many forest offices were purchased and there after inherited, many of the offices become English family names:– Steward or Warden-highest administrator of a forest– Verderers-elected freemen who protect King’s

interests in the forest (curious arrangement and not a family name since the post is elected not inherited).

– Foresters-practical work in forest, lowest nobility work a walk or bailiwick (make a living extorting money from travellers).

– Woodwards-protect the trees for the King or its owner.

– Reeves-police the cattle grazing and administer the branding.

Some English Forest Terms that Don’t Mean What You Think They Do

• Disafforest or Deforest-to remove an area from the Forest Law. The term has nothing to do with the presence or absence of trees.

• Reforest or Reafforest-to put a place that was under the forest law and was disafforested back under the Forest Law.

• Therefore, by the way, a forest is a place under the jurisdiction of the forest law. The term, per se, has nothing to do with trees.

Rights of Commoners in the Forest

• The right to graze livestock except for geese and goats. Why where these excepted. Note: Pannage is specifically what pigs graze on.

• The right of gleaning. In this case the right to take dead or fallen wood for your own use, a right which in general you still have.

• The right of lopping pollards and that done long enough will give you a staghorn like the Fairlop Oak.

• Lopping, pollards? So what is that all about.

Now with that as background, let’s turn to the Epping Forest

• But it is to the Essex (45) we wish to turn. – Essex, the land of the East Saxons, is the entire

area immediately to the northeast of London– Early in its history the forest of Essex was

divided into several units, each with its own history, one of which is the (or was) the Forest of Waltham.

– In its turn, the Forest of Waltham had four subdivisions

• Wintry• Hainault• Havering• Epping--7000 acres extending on a moraine north to

south and just northeast of London

• 1812--Long Wellesley (as he was then), later Lord Mornington becomes the Warden of Waltham and sets about to enclose the forest.

• 1851--Only Epping is left (why would this be).

• 1860s--process of enclosing Epping begins.

• Nov. 11, 1868--Thomas Willingale, commoner, began lopping the trees of Epping, and it is to jail with him (a sobering experience)

• Enter, our heroes, the Commons Preservation Society (a group of intellectuals--today called an NGO).

• W. R. Fisher--Cambridge Historian--demonstrates that:– Lopping right extend throughout the forest,

rather than just the manor or perish of residence. Probably not too relevant to the run of the mill commoner, but Fish found two very interesting commoners,

– Queen Victoria

– Corporation of London.

• Queen--generally favored industry and thereby enclosure but when it came to her own hunting cabin in Epping, that is a different matter.

• Coorporation of London--starting to get nervous about open space.

• 1878 Epping Forest Act– placed Epping under Coporation of London

which was instructed to purchase lopping rights but keep grazing

– maintain conditions as in 1878 (impossible)– Reason: for “the recreation and enjoyment of

the Commoner.

The National Trust

• Commons Preservation Society reorganizes itself as the National Trust in 1895. Still an NGO

• National Trust Act of 1907-– National Trust Becomes a charter organization of

Parliament– Its lands can only be taken from it by Parliament (Police

Power of State don’t apply)

• Holdings: – 550,000 buildings on national register (compared with

38,000 in USA)– 51 villages – 140,000 acres of ecological land

Other function: Oversight of Countryside Commission and other government organizations.

National Trust, con’t

• Exported to other countries– National Trust for Scotland (the conservation

organization for Scotland)– National Trust for Barbados– Nature Conservancy (for USA)– Royal Oak Society (directly represents the interests

of the National Trust for England in the USA)– Scottish Heritage USA (directly represents the

interests of the National Trust for Scotland in the USA)

• Forms an international scholarly branch which becomes known as the Ecological Union.

• Applied branch of the Ecological Union evolves into the IUCN.

England’s National Parks

England’s National ParksA Few Generalizations

• They are in upland, cold, deforested areas• They are anthropogenic landscapes that

took much of their present form during the Iron Age.

• Therefore much of the landscape appearance was established prior to Roman settlement

• Very emotional landscapes, preserving a glimpse of rock-solid traditional England and its values.

• Lake District-William Wordsworth called for its preservation in 1812.

Creation of the Parks

• WWII England suffered tremendous bomb damage

• Reconstruction led to fears of an Americanized landscape

• Realization that the England, a fortress and a world power, was a thing of the past.

• Certain landscapes, those that were to become national parks, embraced a nostalgia for the England of Victoria and Edward

• Hence we might conclude that a political objective was the most important goal for the national parks.

• Action comes in 1945 with the John Dower Report– John Dower was then director of the

Countryside Commission– Report calls for parks:

• preserve characteristic landscape beauty • amply provide for public open-air access and

enjoyment• protect wildlife, buildings and places of

architectural and historic interest• effectively maintain established farming (ok, so

how is this to be done)

• National Parks and Access Act of 1949 (parks established in England between 1951 and 1957)

• Welsh National Park Act established parks in Wales between 1965 and 1973

• Oh notice that stuff about “access.” We need to talk about that a little.

Governing the Things

• Peak District and Lake District are governed by a autonomous planning commission.

• The rest by a combined board drawn from the County Commission and the Secretary of State (bad arrangement).

• Actual operation by the Countryside Commission

• With oversight by the National Trust

But they do have a few problems• No more than 5% of the land in any park under national

or trust control• Parks are protected largely by zoning land use

– and as with a lot of zoning folks can get by with a lot– park administrators spending most of their time

trying to get along with the local folks• Budgets

– Tax support about $.25/person to operate about 10% of the country

– Arts council, 10X >– Urban Parks & Open Space, 30X >– Sports and Recreation, 55X >

• Heavy, heavy, heavy use• few places in the USA experience these kinds of use

rates.• Gov’t policies that that to erode zoning and regulatory

policy--reservoir construction and forest planting

And more problems• Regulation of established farming is in fact not so easy.• Continuance of military training--

– 91% of military training operations are in parks– 9% in Scotland (which Scotland says is 9% too

much)• Different policies in different parks. Well, ok, that is

listed as a problem but I don’t see it.

Given their problems their future is by no means assuredbut

To their advantage, the Brits love’em and

They provide something of a futuristic role model for both American and African parks

Some Little Notes on Scotland

• So far Scotland has utterly rejected creation of national parks (though there are proposals for two).

• So far 100% of conservation in the hands of the National Trust for Scotland

• Conservation is aimed mostly at buildings and monuments

Some Reasons for this Approach• Strong national dislike of forests.

– Naturally a forested land but deforested during Roman times.

– Scots have come to see heather and moorlands as natural

• forests are row crop of exotics to supply England with pulp and timber

• heather, however, produce grouse and hunting rights to grouse go for as much as $3000/acre/week. Timber seen as poor land use compared to heather

– National parks to not allow hunting (it isn’t the Scots that are doing the hunting or keeping the bounty).

– National Parks seen as a English land grab– Everything north of the Lothian Plain, with a smaller

population than in 1600, seen as a national park in the sense of playground anyway.

And• Building preservation seen as the major

problem anyway

• Scotland is full of castles & family homes.

– Don’t think everyone in Scotland lived in a castles

– Lord or chief occupied castle which became a defensive site and surrounding territory occupied by the rest of the “clan” that lived in various states of prosperity, poverty and depravity

Today, there is nobody that can afford to keep these thing up.

Except Foreigners

• Operational budget of the National Trust for Scotland is 2X the total budget for English National Parks.

– Fully a third raised directly from foreign sources--memberships, subscriptions, donations, legacies, admissions and profits of the trading company

– does not include “indirect donations” most of which come from USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Crathes Castle and Forest of DrumAn Example

Crathes Castle and the Forest of Drum

• Along the north bank of the Dee River • Cattle breeding area and the family involved has a

history of dealing in and breeding cattle.• Family emerges in Bedford, England prior to 1066.

– Hence they are Anglo-Saxon

• By 1200 they are in the ‘service’ of the Norman kings in the Scottish Border counties. ‘Service’ probably means they were stealing cattle.

• 1323 awarded the Forest of Drum for service to Robert the Bruce at the the Battle of Bannockburn in 1309.– Services were in the area of logistics--hence commerce– Drum elevated the family to the minor aristocrary– Drum permitted the family to a minor pilfering to cattle

dealing

• Work begun in 1525 on Crathes Castle--will become the last and best example of Scottish domestic military architecture.”

• During the Reformation, one Alexander marries Janet Hamilton, bastard daughter of the Archbishop of Aberdeen who bring to the marriage about half the church lands of eastern Scotland. Upon death of the Archbishop, Alexander and Janet wise become Presbyterians literally at the side of dad’s deathbed.

• By 1635, chief sons are deported to the New World. Virginia (business factors), Barbados (sugar planters),New York (clergyman), and Nova Scotia (clergyman). Virginia and Barbados line brings in poorer members of the family as indentured servants.

• By 1750s, enclosure and many of the poorer end of family deported in chains to Australia.

• 1926-12th Baron dies. In WWI Sir Thomas was one of four British officers to survive four years of trench warfare. Came out of it not exactly sane and devoted the rest of his life to the gardens at Crathes. Bankrupts the estate.

• 1959-14th Baron dies. A drunken Australian sheep farmer, this is the end of the baronage line.

• Crathes and the Forest of Drum taken over by National Trust.

• Lord C. A. (Jamie) Burnett of Leys is a school teacher at the family village of Banchory and has a life estate for ritual purposes in one room in Crathes

• House of Burnett, USA, and House of Burnett, Australia, provide 4 horticultural gardens scholarships/year and are negotiating to assume full financial management of the house which would, however, remain a part of the National Trust Estate.

Characteristic of Crathes and Drum• Crathes

– last and finest example of Scottish “domestic military architecture”

– 595 acres– 6 marked trails from . 25 miles to 6.25 miles– famous for its gardens– habitat for several rare and endangered species

• green woodpecker • great spotted woodpecker• several kinds of fungi

• Drum– 117 acres– rookery for the rook

Two Other Important Places in Scotland

• Glenco– 14,190 acres (largest unit in National Trust for

Scotland and the nearest thing to a national park).– On A82 between Glasgow and Ft. Williams– Site of 1692 massacre of McDonalds by the

Campbells – eagle, ptarmigan, grouse, red deer, fox, wildcat,l

ferral mink• Culloudan Field

– 1754, last battle between the British and highland clans

– clans defeated, utterly. British mutilate bodies.– Enclosure and massive deportation mostly to North

Carolina– Get their revenge at King’s Mountain and Cow Pens.

The Czech Republic

Communism Reformed

Czech Republic--some observations

• Two basins surrounded by mountains– Bohemia

• containing the Labe and Vlatav rivers joining at Prague • Continues as Labe into Germany where it is known as

the Elba– Moravia

• Morava River which flows into the Danube – Some minor differences in language and culture between

the two basins– Headwaters area, very important to conservation. The

Switzerland of Central Europe. • Homeland of the Celtic• But abandoned by the time the Czech start moving in• About 900 A.D., Western Slavs occupy Prague and begin to

spread into the Bohemian and Moravian Basins.• Compete with Germans who tend to mountains and forests

Czech Republic, con’t

• Strongly tribal people• But small group quickly absorbed into larger, generally

German speaking, groups. • By 1800s Czech Nationalism begins to develop:

– romanticism – language defined and stabilized

• 1914-Czechs an unwilling part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and less than enthusiastic about WWI

• 1918-combined with Slovaks (also more or less Czech speakers) to become independent and democratic Czechoslovakia

• 1938-Nazi Germany takes German speaking portions of Czechland

• 1939-Rest made a protectorate of Nazi Germany. Slovaks elect Nazi government.

Czech Republic, Con’t• May 9-12, 1945. Czechs liberated by Russians

– Liberal democracy re-established

• 1949-by a coup, communists take power. Establish the most Stalinist government in the eastern block.

• 1966-Prague Spring. While Russia isn’t looking, Czech attempt to establish a liberal democratic communist government. Ends with Warsaw Pact (Russia and Poland) invasion.

• Nov 17, 1989-Dec 29, 1989. “Velvet Revolution” in which the communists are thrown out (literally).

• January 1, 1993-Czechs and Slovaks split.

And so, what is communism anyway?

The madness of idealism

• In theory anyway, communism is an economic system– whereby the means of production are taken

over by the works – who establish a form of democracy called a

class dictatorship– and run production for their class benefit on

the dictum “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs” (a way of doing things that is un-American).

– Tended to be a highly centralized, planned economy, very dictatorial and obsessed with theory.

• Worst term a communist can call you is:Bourgeois

(which is exactly what you are)• Bourgeois is middle class, small-time capitalists,

pretentious, given to appearances, possessions

• And here is the kick on it: • Nature is Bourgeois

• and • Biology is a Bourgeois Science

The Darwinist idea of the survival of the fittest explains why the capitalist middle class has things and the poor working class hasn’t

• According to communists – nature just has to learn to do things our way– doctrine known as “humanistic materialism”– humans are the center of creation and

material world must conform to human expectations

• Communists:– reject Darwinism– accept Lamarkian Biology (the inheritance

of acquired characteristics)– worked as a policy--corn can learn to be

raised in Siberia – results in one environmental disaster after

another

• Communists have been an urban, industrial people• little or no experience with nature

– Marx never writes about nature or farming• Communists don’t understand farming

– Farming is innately bourgeois (farmers invest labor in the land and expect a return and that is capitalism)

– Russians seek to treat food production as simply another industrial, factory operation

– collective or state farm

• Communists are very poor cost accountants– Real cost of things not known– No attempt to internalize environmental costs– In West, environmental costs tend to be passed on to

the consumer so that in the end clean producers are more profitable

Results of the approach to nature were food shortages and environmental disaster…

Environmental calamity is the single major factor leading to the fall of communism

Communists so indifferent to the environment that they believed it incredible that environmental problems would bring down governments--but they did.

:• Fall of communism has been accompanied

by

– Social demoralization: high death rates, shortened life span, increased alcoholism, increased abortion, increased suicide

• exception to this pattern is Czech Republic

– Increase in prices as commodities find their proper level

• 1st 5 years, +10% of Czech, 226% for Russians

– Drop in GDP and Industrial Production• Czech Republic stable

• Environmental situation tended to improve simply because these circumstances drove the worst polluters out of business.

So how are the former commies doing?• In general, the more western a former

communist country was and the faster is leapt into the capitalist economy, the better off it is.

• In general, then, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungry should be doing fairly well just because they are the western most of the former communist block.

• Czech Republic claims to be western European anyway

• Czech Republic had all the former already printed for breaking up state monopolies and did it about over night, a frightful shock, but one that has paid off.

Conservation in Czech Republic• Many areas of “primitive forests” set aside on

family estates.– For example Boubin, a small forest area in Sumava

NP, officially “conserved” in 1850 but an argument can be made that it has been under conservation management since 1580

• 1992, after fall of communism, Protected Territories Law was reformed. – 6 classes– “Large scale” are National Parks, and protected

landscape areas. – 3 national parks and 24 protected total 11,534 km2

(14.6% of country)– other 1623 areas=674.3 km2. These are known as

small scale areas– total is 1650 acres.

Some important reserves • National parks

– Sumava• in southern Bohemia• former soviet tank base• Areas within areas, typical of the European patter.

For example, Sumava National Park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, is within the Sumava Landscape Area, and both contain “small scale” areas. For example Boubin is within the Sumava Landscape Area but not the national park

– Krkonose• contains winter sports areas and former labor

resort areas, much damaged by acid rain

– Podyji• contains memorialized part of Iron Curtain.

And some more reserves• Trebonsko Protected Landscape

– totally manmade landscape described as having achieved “secondary balance”

– vast area of fishponds (for carp of all things) completed in 1500. Well an inland Catholic population had to get fish from somewhere.

• Krivoklatsko Protected Landscape.– Intended to protect last stands of European mixed

riverine forests

the end