by Bankers are not usually credited with much care for nature conservation, but Charles Rothschild was different.
Born in 1877 into one of the largest banking families in the world, he grew up working in the family business, but his true passion was nature. Charles spent his free time categorizing fleas, dragonflies and rare plants, and he met his wife, the Hungarian Baroness Rózsika Edle von Wertheimstein, on a trip to collect butterflies in the Carpathian Mountains.
A pioneer of modern nature conservation, Rothschild recognized that protecting habitat was a better strategy than trying to protect individual species. More than a century ago, he saw the impact human activity was having on our natural habitats and felt compelled to create a list of 284 sites in Britain “worthy of preservation”.
Rothschild created the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR), which later became The Wildlife Trusts, which today look after more than 2,300 UK nature reserves (more than the number of McDonald’s).
Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, tells me that “60 per cent of the UK population lives within three miles of a Wildlife Trust reserve… the concept of nature reserves is well established now, but This idea was innovative in its [Rothschild’s] day.”
Focus on swamps
This all began in the marshes of eastern England, the fertile lowlands between Lincoln in the north, Cambridge in the south and Peterborough in the west, where the rich soil is peaty and almost black. Walking through Woodwalton Fen and Holme Fen National Nature Reserves (NNR) is the closest you will get to seeing the natural landscape that Rothschild envisioned more than a century ago, but surprisingly, less than one per cent of the undrained and undrained bog survives. cultivated. today – and this was only saved because Rothschild intervened to purchase the land in 1911.
On a cold autumn afternoon, a century after Rothschild’s death in 1923, Woodwalton Fen felt comfortingly damp and the sky was darkening. Henry Stanier, Great Fen Research and Monitoring Officer, walked with me, identifying bird calls and talking a little about the area’s long history.
“The wild swamps have practically disappeared. “Locals hunted wild birds and dug peat using ‘bog boats’ – flat-bottomed punts like those seen in Cambridge – to navigate the lakes and man-made ditches,” he said.
Henry showed me the Rothschild stilt bungalow, the bankers’ fen retreat, and shared Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust’s vision for this fen to form part of a huge new wetland landscape called Great Fen.
The 50-year project to connect the fragments of Woodwalton Fen and Holme Fen will create a mosaic of habitats, a “living landscape” and work on nearby agricultural land to create a wetland corridor and has already begun experimenting with wet farming (malariaculture). . From the north-eastern edge of Woodwalton Fen you can see the stubble of fields after harvesting, but there are already bitterns inspecting the wet ditches and merlins crossing the open landscape. Beyond the farm, I could make out the thick tree line of Holme Fen, the largest birch forest in lowland England, managed by Natural England.
Britain’s first nature reserve
Rothschild initially intended to gift the marshes he purchased in 1911 to the National Trust, but they refused. Undeterred, he set up the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR), which purchased Woodwalton Fen in 1919 and created the country’s first nature reserve. But Rothschild didn’t just fight to protect wetlands, he wanted to extend protection to natural habitats across the country.
In the book Wildlife in Trust: One Hundred Years of Nature Conservation, Tim Sands writes: “His idea was to use the Society to persuade others of the ‘desirability of preserving in perpetuity sites suitable for nature reserves.’ The plan was to ‘conduct a nationwide study of such sites with the help of local societies and individuals.’”
The SPNR visited some sites and sent questionnaires to others; once completed, they were filed individually in the various blue Rothschild bank envelopes. Finally, Rothschild had his list of 284 sites and presented them to the government. Today some of these sites have been lost to time or ravaged by development, but many more are now owned and managed by a variety of organisations, including The Wildlife Trusts, National Trust, RSPB, agencies such as Natural England or Scottish Natural Heritage. or local groups.
Success stories include Blean Woods in Kent, one of the largest areas of ancient woodland in England; Braunton Burrows in Devon, the largest sand dune system in England, now part of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve; islands in Scotland, including Foula, St Kilda and Ailsa Craig, all protected for their birdlife; and remote sites in Wales, such as Holyhead Mountain on Anglesey, with its rare plants.
It is sobering to realize that despite the black and white photographs of a stern-looking man in a Victorian morning coat, Charles Rothschild was relatively young when he set out to save Britain’s natural habitats. In 1912, when he held a first meeting at the National Historical Museum to discuss the idea of forming a society, he was 35 years old. However, despite having seemingly limitless energy, her daughter described Rothschild as a “solitary and isolated figure” and, after contracting encephalitis, he committed suicide in 1923.
His foresight in recognizing that rare habitats needed protection by law led to the creation of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949, which eventually led to many of Britain’s most important spaces for wildlife and recreation They will be saved from destruction.
For more information on the Rothschild List and the living landscape of the Great Fen, see www.lifelifetrusts.org. Rachel Mills remained south of the Fens, near Houghton, in eagle mill (doubles from £105).
