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Book Review: Inuit, whaling and sustainability

sports provided support for the nascent Conservancy and yet undermined its credibility as a research organization. This book’s main contribution is its elucidation of the political battles and debates behind the quiet growth of the Conservancy in the 1950s and 1960s. One battle was over increasing state control of private land management. There were Conservative concerns that the designation of nature reserves was land nationalization ‘through the back door’. Support for the Conservancy was, however, strengthened through its important research into the effects of DDT on bird populations. John Morrison, the Conservative MP who was an influential early critic of the role of the Conservancy in impeding farmers and landowners, was later to be a firm supporter of its findings on the effects of DDT. Other key debates closely examined include the relative importance of the land management and research roles of the Conservancy and the institutional divide, yet to be resolved, between state control over land management for recreation and scientific conservation. John Sheail’s careful, unpolemical analysis provides great insights, backed up by carefully chosen observations and case studies. It is, for example, fascinating to read of John Hope-Simpson warning Max Nicholson, the director-general of the Nature Conservancy, as late as 1954 that ‘grassland “improvement” might be as disastrous to the wildlife of many sites as being ploughed up or afforested’ (p. 66). Sheail’s analysis of the effects of the institutionalization of agronomy within the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, sylviculture within the Forestry Commission and ecology within the Nature Conservancy is also of great value. The excellent archive photographs, many taken by Peter Wakely, add substance to a book which makes a major contribution to our understanding of the development of nature conservation in Britain.