{"id":368,"date":"2011-11-15T17:40:44","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T06:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/?p=368"},"modified":"2011-11-15T17:40:44","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T06:40:44","slug":"a-nature-conservation-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/?p=368","title":{"rendered":"A Nature Conservation Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Rating:<\/strong> \"★\"\"★\"\"★\"\"★\"\"☆\"<\/p>\n

Derek Ratcliffe (ed). 2011. A Nature Conservation Review: Vol 2. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978 0 521 20348 7.<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

It might fairly be asked as to why a review site looking at the most recent publications in ecology should be focussing a text made famous over 30 years ago! This volume (and the companion, Volume 1<\/a>) formed one of the best reviews of conservation and its criteria ever published in the UK.<\/p>\n

In 1977 (when they first appeared in hardback, nature conservation in the UK had been undergoing something of a revolution. Courses in environmental studies were gaining a threshold in schools and universities, the world was still considering the impact of the first UN conference in Stockholm and there was a need to make conservation a more\u00a0 “scientific” study than just picking the sites that looked “best” (although, ironically, a small field trial from around that time in Bedfordshire got the same results by just ‘looking’!).\u00a0 Ratcliffe at the time was the chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy Council (now English Nature). Asked to devise a system to select the best representative sites for Great Britain, he eventually came up with this two-volume set. The first (not yet re-issued) looked at the criteria (now often called the Ratcliffe criteria: size (extent), diversity, rarity, position in a geographical or ecological unit, fragility, typicality, intrinsic appeal, potential value and recorded history. The second volume contains the descriptions of the 735 sites chosen under this methodology to represent their ecosystems.<\/p>\n

As such this should be seen as a turning point in conservation science and evaluation. Although there are other criteria now in operation (especially with the advent of GIS) Ratcliffe’s set still bears favourable scrutiny. This publication is still worthy of use. It’s historical and ecological importance cannot be underestimated for the UK. Now that it is easily and cheaply available it should be seen as a must-buy for any serious conservation library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rating: Derek Ratcliffe (ed). 2011. A Nature Conservation Review: Vol 2. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978 0 521 20348 7. It might fairly be asked as to why a review site looking at the most recent publications in ecology should be focussing a text made famous over 30 years ago! This volume (and the companion, Volume 1) formed one of the best reviews of conservation and its criteria ever published in the UK. In 1977 (when they first appeared in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[88,87,86],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-great-britain","tag-natural-areas","tag-nature-conservation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":374,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}