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A record number of England’s sites of special scientific interest have
suffered lasting damage over the past year, according to the National Audit
Office. SSSIs are the cornerstone in the defence of the country’s natural
habitats, yet the NAO reveals that during 1993 there were 40 sites in England
that suffered damage that would take more than 15 years to repair, compared
with 34 the previous year and around 20 a year during the late 1980s.

The real extent of the destruction may be even worse. The NAO warned
English Nature, which operates the SSSI system in England, that its statistics
have ‘understated loss and damage’. It found that the agency’s inspectors
visit only a third of SSSIs each year, often looking at only a part of the
site. Under-reported damage included serious pollution and bad management
by farmers, which English Nature itself regards as ‘the most serious long-term
threat to many sites’. In addition, some types of loss and damage are not
included in its assessments.

The NAO, a watchdog over public bodies that have been set up by Parliament,
also complained that ‘monitoring records were slow to be entered onto the
computer system and in some cases incomplete’, and that there are ‘differing
interpretations’ within English Nature about what constitutes damage. Even
so, one estimate made in 1992 by English Nature found ‘deterioration and
damage on over 18 per cent of sites’.

The NAO looked only at the 3700 English SSSIs. Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland were not included. After farming, the second largest cause of damage
was recreational activities, including motorbike scrambling, water sports
and off-road use of four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The report highlighted several other failings within English Nature.
In particular, the results of scientific research on nature reserves run
by the agency are ‘held by individual site managers’ and not passed on to
others. And some habitats are not properly represented among SSSIs, including
peat bogs in northwest England and moorlands and meadows in the northeast.