This management handbook explains the skills and systems needed by all those involved in managing the countryside. It deals with the process of management, national trends, establishing local policies and priorities, implementing schemes, as well as the legislation which surrounds countryside management.

For at least half a century since the emergence of Country Parks and Forest Parks, countryside services have provided leisure, tourism, conservation, restoration and regeneration across Britain. Yet these services are currently being decimated as public services are sacrificed to the new era of austerity. The role and importance of countryside management have been barely documented, and the consequences and ramifications of cuts to these services are overlooked and misunderstood. This volume rigorously examines the issues surrounding countryside management in Britain. The author brings together the results of stakeholder workshops and interviews, and in-depth individual case studies, as well as a major study for the Countryside Agency which assessed and evaluated every countryside service provision in England. A full and extensive literature review traces the ideas of countryside management back to their origins, and the author considers the wider relationships and ramifications with countryside and ranger provisions around the world, including North America and Europe. The book provides a critical overview of the history and importance of countryside management, detailing the achievements of a largely forgotten sector and highlighting its pivotal yet often underappreciated role in the wellbeing of people and communities. It serves as a challenge to students, planners, politicians, conservationists, environmentalists, and land managers, in a diversity of disciplines that work with or have interests in countryside, leisure and tourism, community issues, education, and nature conservation.

Urban Nature Conservation reviews the criteria for the planning and management of urban 'green space', covering legislation, policy mechanisms, environmental considerations and amenity uses.

The aim of this book is to construct a framework of understanding for those coming to the field of recreational land management from a non-land management discipline.

Successful management of agricultural landscapes depends on the recognition of the relationships between the processes and the structures that maintain the system. The rapidly growing science of Landscape Ecology quantifies the ways these ecosystems interact and establishes a link between the activities in one region and repercussions in another. A

During the last decade European agriculture has been dominated by the issues of overproduction and environmental degradation. Against this background a number of proposals to reduce surpluses and protect the environment have been implemented. Among these was the introduction in the UK of environmentally sensitive areas (ESAs) as described in the UK Agriculture Act of 1986, implementing part of an EC regulation on Improving the Efficiency of Agricultural Structures. ESAs have been set up in areas of the country where wildlife, landscape and recreation are threatened by agricultural change. Farmers, joining on a voluntary basis, are paid to continue farming in an environmentally friendly, traditional manner which is typically extensive and livestock-based. By 1994, the total area covered will be approaching 3 million hectares. This book provides a review and an economic and policy assessment of the first and second rounds of designated ESAs, five years after their inception. Seven chapters examine particular case studies, covering a range of agricultural ecosystems from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Other chapters describe the background to the setting up of ESAs, how the benefits of the policy can be measured and how it compares with alternative policy options. ESA schemes are now being initiated in France and Denmark. The book addresses a topical issue and is aimed at a wide range of readers concerned with agricultural and environmental economics, policy and management.