CMA 60 year review

By Chris Baines, CMA Hon Patron

I feel I have been tracking the progress of the countryside ranger movement all my life. I was first carried, shoulder high, through the heather of the Derbyshire moors in the year that the ground-breaking National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was passed - 1949. I grew up in Sheffield, and my mum and dad were life-long ramblers – steeped in the history of the 1932 Mass Trespass and the struggle for access to the hills that they loved. The Peak District National Park was finally made “official” in 1953, but the landscape was already familiar to a generation of urban escapees. There were no rangers then, of course. In fact, the opposite was true. The large private estates were aggressively patrolled by “keepers” and it took the appointment of the first National Park Warden in 1953, and the establishment of Edale’s voluntary rangers a year later, to kick-start the lasting change.

Of course, the ranger service in the USA stretches back much further. It was established more than 150 years ago to protect the public as they began to explore the Yosemite wilderness. I must confess that it was Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters who were to blame for my early awareness of their role. Yogi Bear and his sidekick Boo-Boo were in constant conflict with Ranger Smith as they played havoc with the picnic hampers of Jellystone. It was rather comforting when I visited Yellowstone National Park, decades later, to find that the rangers really did wear Ranger Smith-style hats and that the picnic-raidin’ bears were still as pesky as ever.

The Countryside Management Association was first established as the Association of Countryside Rangers in 1966 and we claim to be the oldest collective association of rangers in the world. Since then we have played a central role in building an international network of similar national organisations. In 1974 the CMA combined forces with the Scottish Association of Countryside Rangers, and then in 1992 they were joined by the USA’s Association of National Parks Rangers. This laid the foundation for the International Ranger Federation.

The North American National Parks undoubtedly pose far greater challenges to the public and to rangers than the UK’s more benign wild spaces and farmed countryside. However, as the International Federation has spread worldwide, the risks that some of our colleagues face have been brought into sharp relief. One of my first wake-up calls as a CMA Patron came at the international conference in Stirling, where I took part in the presentation of posthumous awards for African rangers who had been killed in the line of duty. Worldwide that figure can be as many as 150 colleagues in a single year – lost to poachers and other killers, to accidents in remote places, and to attacks by wild animals.

The International Federation gives us in the UK a valuable sense of proportion, but it also provides us with a wonderful pool of knowledge worldwide. I have been lucky enough to travel a great deal and have seen the benefit of the network at first hand. In Uruguay I contacted the (only) national ranger – a man I had met at the Stirling conference. I asked if he could show me capybara in the wild, and sure enough he knew exactly where to take me. A day’s drive, ending with a bumpy ride along an obscure track through the jungle was rewarded with the spectacle of dozens of animals, lounging in a wonderful hidden wetland. In South Africa another IRF member guided me to a place among giant sand dunes, just a few miles away from the crowds, where I had the most spectacular view of southern right whales and their calves.

In a world where more than half the population is now living in towns and cities, there is a greater need than ever for knowledgeable individuals who can bring the natural world into our lives. The grounding that I had from my parents is denied to most of today’s younger generation unless they have access to the kind of people who make up the ranger family. That task is as hard as it has ever been in the 60 years of the CMA’s existence. Over that period the UK has become the most nature-depleted country in Europe, so simply finding inspiring and accessible landscapes can be a challenge. Resources are shrinking, out-competed by welfare and warfare budgets. That is particularly ironic since we know that an appreciation of nature holds the key to improved health and wellbeing, to peace and tranquillity, and to sharing global resources.

The term ecosystem services is just the latest label for something that we have known for decades. People need nature, and nature needs people! In the face of climate change, escalating evidence of drought and flooding, development pressure, food insecurity and a host of other local and global issues, the way we manage land and water is increasingly critical. With all our inspiring history, and faced with so many challenges, the role of the countryside ranger is more vital than ever.

The prospect of sustainable stewardship may seem like a distant dream, but the journey begins by building a better appreciation of the ways that we can work with nature and with one another. One of the striking changes I have seen over recent years is the move towards far greater co-operation. The wildlife charities that were once competitors are now combining forces to address the looming landscape issues. Farm clusters are cropping up across the countryside, uniting land managers in a determination to combine productivity with conservation. There are inspiring land management partnerships involving some of the UK’s major infrastructure industries – water, transport, quarrying, energy distribution – and in all these cases the role of the knowledgeable facilitator is vital.

Find out more about the Countryside Management Association (CMA) - www.countrysidemanagement.org.uk

Search for how to join, details of our professional accreditation process, past Awards for outstanding projects, the Ranger magazine and our 60th Anniversary Conference in Hampshire in September - all welcome; members and non members.

For the October edition of the Ranger, our editor is looking for before (60yrs or so ago) & today photos of where you work now (non members very welcome!) Plus a few sentences on how rangering has changed over time - any thoughts?! We'd love to hear from anyone who'd like to have their site or area in print!

Find all the articles in the CJS Focus on...Countryside Management Series here

More from Countryside Management Association