Wild Penwith A major new project in West - Cornwall Wildlife Trust

A History of the Isles of Scilly
Wildlife Trust: 1985–2006
Part 4: A new Director
Mike Gurr continues his historical saga
In 1994, the first director, Peter Murrish, retired.
As the Trust took its first hesitant steps, he had
contributed significantly to its establishment, through his
organisational abilities and financial management. What
was lacking was a clear sense of what constituted good
public relations and any expertise in nature conservation.
A second director was in post only a few months and the
third, Andrew Gibson, came to the Trust from a position
as Warden of Lundy Island and so was able to begin to
give the Trust some leadership in conservation.
By this time, however, the finances were pitifully inadequate
to entertain any ideas of habitat management on a scale that
was envisaged by the original management plan and that
was needed by the Islands. It is interesting to note that the
body that could have helped enormously at this stage, in
terms of expertise, if not in funding, was the then Cornwall
Society for Nature Conservation, later Cornwall Wildlife
Trust. Although the possibility of approaching colleagues in
Cornwall had been given passing mention in the minutes,
there is no record that such an approach was ever officially
made. English Nature (now Natural England), because of its
duty of care for the two dozen or so SSSIs (Sites of Special
Scientific Interest) in Scilly, had primary responsibility for
nature conservation in Scilly and an important development
for the Trust was entry into the Reserves Enhancement
Scheme (RES) in 1995. Beginning in 1996, another
important initiative was the Countryside Stewardship
Scheme (CS), administered by MAFF (Ministry of
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, now DEFRA, Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). This provided
modest funds for the management of specified areas of
land in accordance with very precise guidelines, until 2006.
By the end of the 1990s, three relatively secure sources of
funding for environmental management by the Trust had
become established: RES, CS and a grant from English
Heritage for habitat management around seven scheduled
monument sites on Trust-leased land.
Funds did not allow the Trust to employ the number of
staff needed to manage over 1,000 hectares of land. The
practical solution had to be the efficient use of volunteers
and it did not seem practical to find such volunteers from
within the resident population. In Scilly, recruitment of
staff or volunteers from the mainland has always been
limited by the availability of suitable accommodation.
The Director proposed that a long-disused naval gun
battery on ‘The Garrison’, a fortified hill on St Mary’s,
could be adapted to provide volunteer accommodation.
A substantial grant toward this conversion was obtained
from MAFF with small inputs from other sources. As
the scheme developed, the Trust was obliged to use a
significant proportion of reserves laid down in its early
years, leaving it in a somewhat precarious financial
situation. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the facility,
though costing the Trust dearly, has enabled it to attract
many first-rate volunteers who have enabled it to carry out
far more conservation work than would otherwise have
been possible.
Mike Gurr
Teän Sound, St Martins. Photo: Angie Gall
Page 32 Issue 109 Summer 2009