The Changing View of UK Conservation

By Jessica Hope, University of Manchester

Last month the Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) exhibition opened at the National History Museum, celebrating 50 years of the WPY competition.  The competition champions the diversity of life on Earth, encouraging photographers to think differently about the way that they tell the stories of nature and depict the natural world. The photographs in the competition present the diversity, beauty and wonder of the natural world. It seems an obvious next step to question how we look after and protect wildlife in the UK.

In the current issue of the journal ‘Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers’ William M Adams, Ian D Hodge and Lindsey Sandbrook consider recent developments in conservation in the UK, namely conservation’s expanding territorial claims. They argue that the models of  large-scale conservation being developed in the UK are a form of re-territorialisation, linked to wider neoliberal values and logic. For example, they consider the 2011 UK government White Paper on the natural environment. This White Paper restated a public policy vision for conservation in England, adopting “the positive language of success and expansion, rather than the more familiar conservation tropes of threat and retreat” (2014:574). However, the importance and value of conservation was justified with the logic of neoliberalism – presenting conservation as a means of meeting wider social and economic purposes, for example growth, prosperity and security.  This article charts these changes in UK conservation policy and raises questions about the challenges that this conservation model will face. Moreover, it draws attention to the need for more analysis of the power dynamics at play in the balance of public and private interests that come together in these larger conservation endeavours. The article reminds us that, like photography, how we see and value nature impacts how we protect it