A recent article stated that there have been no new SSSIs (Sites of special scientific interest) designated since 2023, leaving important areas vulnerable to developments from housing and industry. The guys give their thoughts on this, the designation process and we learn about Negus’ recent exploits as a demonstrator.
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.You can contact us by email on: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Links
– Richard Prideaux’s recent scribehound piece
– Subscribe on Patreon for extra content (you can cancel at any time)
– If you enjoy what we do, consider a one-off tip on Ko-fi
– Sign up to our Newsletter – The Rural Register
– CountrySlide website
– Negus’ book tour dates can be found here
– Land Use Framework
The Hosts
Richard Negus website
Callum McInerney-Riley website
Richard Prideaux website
Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.
Richard N: Good news, Callum. Good news. He's back.
Callum M-R: He's back. Live and in concert. Do you know what he actually looks like? That fella from The Royle Family.
Richard P: Jim Royle.
Callum M-R: Jim Royle sat back slightly in his thing. "Get us another..." what's his catchphrase?
Richard P: I'm on a Chesterfield though, so it's okay. Yeah. Is that Chesterfield?
Callum M-R: "And get us another Rich Tea."
Richard N: I tell you what, imagine Jim Royle if he had accidentally stumbled into a slightly smart, yet fading country house owned by, what's his name, Francis Fulford. And that's what we're seeing.
Callum M-R: Dressed like a plus-size mannequin in Millets.
Richard P: I'm going to give out your phone number on Twitter so people can call you.
Richard N: People do that in the street, mate. I don't need it.
Callum M-R: I do that while driving.
Richard N: Yeah, they do that anyway.
Richard P: It's on the side of your car. You just have Richard Negus's number down the side of your car with, "How's my driving?"
Richard N: If you think about it, I mean, my website's got all my contact details on there and it is on my Twitter account. So yeah, I have yet—mind you, I'm tempting fate here—I've yet to have sort of, you know, direct messaging of just abuse. But, you know, the day is yet young.
Richard P: You don't have to be doxxed, do you? Because you've kind of done it to yourself.
Richard N: We have insulted you enough. It is brilliant to have what remains of Richard Prideaux back on Countryslide.
Callum M-R: Most of him's still intact.
Richard N: Yeah, he's just got extra bits.
Callum M-R: Yeah, you got extra bits now.
Richard P: I've lost about 5 kilos as well, I think, which is mostly my muscle wastage. Now I'm just watching my spindly leg appear. Although I found out the other day, you can feel the plate under the skin. Because it's on the front of the shin, you can feel the outline of it. It's weird. Like Meccano.
Callum M-R: Should we explain if somebody's missed it? What happened? Because everyone's like, what are they talking about?
Richard P: I got hit by a tree, broke my leg, a nice man from India put a plate in my leg, and now I can't walk until the end of May.
Richard N: Yeah. So if you want to read the full, unexpurgated version, go back to the last but one episode of Countryslide or read Richard's latest Scribehound piece to find out and have the X-ray pics.
Richard P: Thank you. Yeah, I thought the X-ray pics are a good way to get people to click through. Although I don't know if you notice this when you put an article on Scribehound. Sort of the first hour or two when it goes out, because I think they go live at half six in the morning, just before everyone starts work—that's when you get your lowest rating. And then after that, it goes back up again. So I think it's all the other writers who don't like us. They click dislike, get the percentage down, and then you get your little score on the back end that you see as a writer. And then it goes back up again.
Richard N: That is probably right, actually. What it basically is, all the people who either write for Country Life or want to write for Country Life, who don't like us, they still go, "No, it's absolute rubbish. I hate that. It's about Cotswolds and point-to-pointing." And then all the real people come in from milking and taking the dogs out and go, "Oh, thank God, a breath of fresh air." And that's it. Other rural magazines are available. The Field. Very good photography in The Field, Callum.
Richard P: You got the cover this week, didn't you?
Callum M-R: Yeah, I finally got sent the issue because I haven't got the subscription. I did have one and then I just forgot because I've changed address about five times. We're in the April issue, which is fishing. And I've never ever had a fishing cover of anything before. Oh, apart from random European carp fishing magazines, which I'm not sure that counts.
Richard P: Was that Miles Malone writing about "BB"? Was that the piece?
Callum M-R: I had two! How lucky am I? Miles Malone's BB's Gun. So there's a BB Society's Day piece and a BB's Gun piece.
Richard P: I think official show historian Richard should explain who BB is so people don't just think this is an article about BB guns.
Richard N: Yes, it's not actually a little tiny gun that fires a very small round shot out. His proper name was Denys Watkins-Pitchford. He wrote some fantastic books on wildfowling. He was a long-standing contributor to the Shooting Times and probably most famously wrote that wonderful book, Brendon Chase. It actually inspired me as a young child to run away briefly just because I thought it'd be fun to live in the woods like the three boys in Brendon Chase. But he was a beautiful writer and a beautiful artist too.
Callum M-R: His writing's amazing... Oh, he also wrote about carp fishing. I asked people to write about carp fishing, and it's interesting that carp fishing writing back in the day was written like it's a gentleman's sport. These days, carp fishing is not considered to be the pursuit of the gentleman. Knock off half a day after plastering, get 15 cans of Stella, and go for 48 hours down the local.
Richard N: Unless you're fishing for carp with vintage gear that BB would have used, and then it's sort of acceptable to the slightly more aristocratic angler. I've just been doing some research about bitterns for my next book.
Richard P: Is that working title still Once Bittern, Twice Shy?
Richard N: It really should be, but no. My publisher didn't go for that. Bittern the Devil I think is a better title. But I was looking back through some of the very old ornithological books and Suffolk used to have the largest bittern population and then they just dropped off the perch, quite literally. Then they came back briefly, and then they went away again. Now they're coming back. There was a period when gentlemen gunners would actually try and shoot a bittern because of their rarity value. "Oh well, I better shoot one before it goes extinct."
Callum M-R: As a curiosity to keep as taxidermy or something.
Richard P: There's an argument that a lot of Edwardian gentlemen's activities were purely to provide conversation in the club. It was the social media of its day.
Richard N: Yeah, but rather than pretending you did it, you actually did do it. You had to prove it, so they had to go and shoot this thing. There's a bittern that may still be in the Dunwich Museum, shot by my great uncle. He wasn't a gentleman gunner, I hasten to add. He did it for a living. The interesting thing was he actually did it for ornithologists. Someone would say, "I want you to go and shoot a bittern because I want to stuff one so that we can exhibit it." Mark Nowers often says that although birds-nesting for young lads largely died out because it was banned under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, in one way, it stopped that fascination and interest in going and understanding different birds. So many of the finest ornithologists throughout history came about because they either shot birds to study as taxidermized things or they collected their eggs so they could pull out a drawer and go, "Yes, there's a marsh tit."
Richard P: Wasn't there an American bird that became extinct effectively within a two-day period? Two naturalists each shot one because it was so rare, and it looks like they probably shot the last two.
Richard N: Yeah, I think that was the Passenger Pigeon. Mark Avery wrote a very good book about the Passenger Pigeon and how it went from being as common as ticks on a dog to gone in such a short space of time.
Richard P: I called him a chunky funster in an article once.
Richard N: Yes, you did. He gave my book 9 out of 10, which is quite bizarre. Anyway, I've had an e-mail. A correspondent in Holland bought my book and she's a novelist asking a question. In her book, she's got some characters running around in a juniper forest. She says they're situated in a place called the Hoge Veluwe, which is a national park consisting of forests, heath, and sand. Her characters want to take shelter near a seemingly impenetrable hedge that had been created a decade before and has been abandoned and left to go wild. She asks: "How plausible is it for people to try to escape through a hedge gone wild? And what kind of hedge would be able to grow near a juniper forest?"
Richard P: Because all the wild junipers in the UK, they're all in upland areas. There are only about six native junipers left in Wales, and they're all hanging on the side of a crag somewhere because the sheep have eaten the rest.
Callum M-R: So Juniper grows very slow, sometimes a few millimetres per year. It's not going to take over very quickly. Ecologically important, good for biodiversity.
Richard N: And also good for gin. Speaking of which, cheers. I'm not allowed.
Callum M-R: I'm just off the stuff. I'm actually working on a job that used to be Richard's tomorrow.
Richard P: You're going to take the photos at the National Gamekeepers' Organisation's AGM and awards ceremony over in Coventry. It's at the Heart of England Conference Centre. I will say that going to an awards ceremony organised by gamekeepers is very different to going to an awards ceremony run by the debutante daughters who mostly do GWCT events.
Callum M-R: Do I have to just stand on the shoulder of someone on a peg and just hope that a pheasant comes over, or do they actually want me to do some work?
Richard P: No, you all start at the back of the room and gradually move towards the front and there's someone at the end of each line with a bit of plastic on a stick sort of flapping them.
Richard N: Look, it's very simple. If you want to get a load of gamekeepers to flock towards you, pull your hand out of your pocket with a slightly closed fist clutching notes, and they will suddenly come towards you with a big beaming smile.
Richard P: You know what's coming. So what are we going to be talking about today? You sent some news articles over in the WhatsApp group.
Richard N: I did. Wild Justice seem to have actually done something I am slightly in favour of. They have managed to highlight, via Freedom of Information requests, that Natural England is not designating any more Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), and they haven't done that since 2023. One site earmarked for protection down in Thurrock will be destroyed by a new port development known as Tilbury 3, which was granted planning permission in February this year. What is also coming into Tilbury is the Norwich to Tilbury pylon line.
Richard P: A SSSI is a weird legal structure. People always assume it's to protect one dreadfully rare thing that only exists there. But it can be geology, a landform, or an overall habitat. They were set up under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. If you have a woodland that's a SSSI and you want to apply for a felling licence, you get extra paperwork called ORNCs (Operations Requiring Nature Conservation Consent) which makes it very expensive to go through the licensing process.
Richard N: Half the reason why these woods became SSSI woods in the first place is because they were made more diverse habitats by the interaction of man—coppicing, thinning, felling. Exactly the same with reed beds. The only reason why bitterns used to be about was because you had reed beds created by the hand of man. The moment they become a SSSI, some ENGO comes in and says, "We won't touch them." And before you know it, the reed bed starts drying out.
Callum M-R: It's funny, where I live, there's a little pond that is now full of wildlife. That was actually built because when they built the M11 motorway, they took a pond that was there and they built over it, so they were required to build another one.
Richard P: That's part of the ecological mitigation for infrastructure, like HS2 and the bat bridges.
Richard N: The thing is, a true SSSI can't just be replicated. It was supposed to be a site of special scientific interest. Now you've got people like Steve Reed complaining that newts are getting in the way of building.
Richard P: It's a horseshoe issue where conservation-minded people suddenly find themselves aligning with people right at the other end of the political scale. I've talked to a lot of rural commentator friends, and it's becoming a very interesting thing to watch. If you say, "I like traditional rural things," people assume you must be some right-wing extremist. But when you go out with the actual communists who really do like nature, they make up a lot of the local ecological record-keepers or the plant life botany surveyors. There's a guy who does the polypody fern surveys around our woodland; he's the original "right to roam," walking in a straight line across everyone's land smoking a rollie, but he knows everything about ferns.
Richard N: I was at a meeting in Essex this weekend organised by the Community Planning Alliance, talking to groups of individuals who are extremely worried about the government's commitment to build one and a half million homes. You've got green-reform type people and the Village Green Preservation Society joining together with your communist fern aficionado saying, "You cannot just build all over this vital farmland." So we're coming at the same issue from different angles.
Callum M-R: Nature is a much broader category than just rural traditions.
Richard P: Before we influence any more geopolitics, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who sent me "get well soon" wishes. I want to say a particular thank you to the forestry people—Nick, Jonathan, Matthew—because forestry is bloody dangerous, and everyone's had an injury on the job. Nick Adams went through the accident with me step by step and went, "Oh, that's what you did. Oh yeah, it's nothing." That meant more to me than getting a nice new plate in my leg.
Callum M-R: Post-incident analysis from the legend. You just have to slay a Lorax now. That's the only way you get over this. Dr. Seuss. I'll read you it one day. My son always picks I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew for bed, which is a long old read.
Richard P: My friend Terry in the US demanded that I get drunk one night and record a reading of Go the Fck to Sleep* in my best low tone.
Callum M-R: I actually put a comedy voice on and narrate all the Bluetooth speakers that come from AliExpress. I picked it up on Fiverr. So if you ever hear, "A Bluetooth device is ready to be paired"—that was me.
Richard P: Well, judging by the fact that producer Amy is typing "after show, after show, for f***'s sake, after show" in the chat, it's time to wrap up.
Richard N: Isn't it lovely to have Richard back? Good night, everybody.
Callum M-R: He's back. Live and in concert. Do you know what he actually looks like? That fella from The Royle Family.
Richard P: Jim Royle.
Callum M-R: Jim Royle sat back slightly in his thing. "Get us another..." what's his catchphrase?
Richard P: I'm on a Chesterfield though, so it's okay. Yeah. Is that Chesterfield?
Callum M-R: "And get us another Rich Tea."
Richard N: I tell you what, imagine Jim Royle if he had accidentally stumbled into a slightly smart, yet fading country house owned by, what's his name, Francis Fulford. And that's what we're seeing.
Callum M-R: Dressed like a plus-size mannequin in Millets.
Richard P: I'm going to give out your phone number on Twitter so people can call you.
Richard N: People do that in the street, mate. I don't need it.
Callum M-R: I do that while driving.
Richard N: Yeah, they do that anyway.
Richard P: It's on the side of your car. You just have Richard Negus's number down the side of your car with, "How's my driving?"
Richard N: If you think about it, I mean, my website's got all my contact details on there and it is on my Twitter account. So yeah, I have yet—mind you, I'm tempting fate here—I've yet to have sort of, you know, direct messaging of just abuse. But, you know, the day is yet young.
Richard P: You don't have to be doxxed, do you? Because you've kind of done it to yourself.
Richard N: We have insulted you enough. It is brilliant to have what remains of Richard Prideaux back on Countryslide.
Callum M-R: Most of him's still intact.
Richard N: Yeah, he's just got extra bits.
Callum M-R: Yeah, you got extra bits now.
Richard P: I've lost about 5 kilos as well, I think, which is mostly my muscle wastage. Now I'm just watching my spindly leg appear. Although I found out the other day, you can feel the plate under the skin. Because it's on the front of the shin, you can feel the outline of it. It's weird. Like Meccano.
Callum M-R: Should we explain if somebody's missed it? What happened? Because everyone's like, what are they talking about?
Richard P: I got hit by a tree, broke my leg, a nice man from India put a plate in my leg, and now I can't walk until the end of May.
Richard N: Yeah. So if you want to read the full, unexpurgated version, go back to the last but one episode of Countryslide or read Richard's latest Scribehound piece to find out and have the X-ray pics.
Richard P: Thank you. Yeah, I thought the X-ray pics are a good way to get people to click through. Although I don't know if you notice this when you put an article on Scribehound. Sort of the first hour or two when it goes out, because I think they go live at half six in the morning, just before everyone starts work—that's when you get your lowest rating. And then after that, it goes back up again. So I think it's all the other writers who don't like us. They click dislike, get the percentage down, and then you get your little score on the back end that you see as a writer. And then it goes back up again.
Richard N: That is probably right, actually. What it basically is, all the people who either write for Country Life or want to write for Country Life, who don't like us, they still go, "No, it's absolute rubbish. I hate that. It's about Cotswolds and point-to-pointing." And then all the real people come in from milking and taking the dogs out and go, "Oh, thank God, a breath of fresh air." And that's it. Other rural magazines are available. The Field. Very good photography in The Field, Callum.
Richard P: You got the cover this week, didn't you?
Callum M-R: Yeah, I finally got sent the issue because I haven't got the subscription. I did have one and then I just forgot because I've changed address about five times. We're in the April issue, which is fishing. And I've never ever had a fishing cover of anything before. Oh, apart from random European carp fishing magazines, which I'm not sure that counts.
Richard P: Was that Miles Malone writing about "BB"? Was that the piece?
Callum M-R: I had two! How lucky am I? Miles Malone's BB's Gun. So there's a BB Society's Day piece and a BB's Gun piece.
Richard P: I think official show historian Richard should explain who BB is so people don't just think this is an article about BB guns.
Richard N: Yes, it's not actually a little tiny gun that fires a very small round shot out. His proper name was Denys Watkins-Pitchford. He wrote some fantastic books on wildfowling. He was a long-standing contributor to the Shooting Times and probably most famously wrote that wonderful book, Brendon Chase. It actually inspired me as a young child to run away briefly just because I thought it'd be fun to live in the woods like the three boys in Brendon Chase. But he was a beautiful writer and a beautiful artist too.
Callum M-R: His writing's amazing... Oh, he also wrote about carp fishing. I asked people to write about carp fishing, and it's interesting that carp fishing writing back in the day was written like it's a gentleman's sport. These days, carp fishing is not considered to be the pursuit of the gentleman. Knock off half a day after plastering, get 15 cans of Stella, and go for 48 hours down the local.
Richard N: Unless you're fishing for carp with vintage gear that BB would have used, and then it's sort of acceptable to the slightly more aristocratic angler. I've just been doing some research about bitterns for my next book.
Richard P: Is that working title still Once Bittern, Twice Shy?
Richard N: It really should be, but no. My publisher didn't go for that. Bittern the Devil I think is a better title. But I was looking back through some of the very old ornithological books and Suffolk used to have the largest bittern population and then they just dropped off the perch, quite literally. Then they came back briefly, and then they went away again. Now they're coming back. There was a period when gentlemen gunners would actually try and shoot a bittern because of their rarity value. "Oh well, I better shoot one before it goes extinct."
Callum M-R: As a curiosity to keep as taxidermy or something.
Richard P: There's an argument that a lot of Edwardian gentlemen's activities were purely to provide conversation in the club. It was the social media of its day.
Richard N: Yeah, but rather than pretending you did it, you actually did do it. You had to prove it, so they had to go and shoot this thing. There's a bittern that may still be in the Dunwich Museum, shot by my great uncle. He wasn't a gentleman gunner, I hasten to add. He did it for a living. The interesting thing was he actually did it for ornithologists. Someone would say, "I want you to go and shoot a bittern because I want to stuff one so that we can exhibit it." Mark Nowers often says that although birds-nesting for young lads largely died out because it was banned under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, in one way, it stopped that fascination and interest in going and understanding different birds. So many of the finest ornithologists throughout history came about because they either shot birds to study as taxidermized things or they collected their eggs so they could pull out a drawer and go, "Yes, there's a marsh tit."
Richard P: Wasn't there an American bird that became extinct effectively within a two-day period? Two naturalists each shot one because it was so rare, and it looks like they probably shot the last two.
Richard N: Yeah, I think that was the Passenger Pigeon. Mark Avery wrote a very good book about the Passenger Pigeon and how it went from being as common as ticks on a dog to gone in such a short space of time.
Richard P: I called him a chunky funster in an article once.
Richard N: Yes, you did. He gave my book 9 out of 10, which is quite bizarre. Anyway, I've had an e-mail. A correspondent in Holland bought my book and she's a novelist asking a question. In her book, she's got some characters running around in a juniper forest. She says they're situated in a place called the Hoge Veluwe, which is a national park consisting of forests, heath, and sand. Her characters want to take shelter near a seemingly impenetrable hedge that had been created a decade before and has been abandoned and left to go wild. She asks: "How plausible is it for people to try to escape through a hedge gone wild? And what kind of hedge would be able to grow near a juniper forest?"
Richard P: Because all the wild junipers in the UK, they're all in upland areas. There are only about six native junipers left in Wales, and they're all hanging on the side of a crag somewhere because the sheep have eaten the rest.
Callum M-R: So Juniper grows very slow, sometimes a few millimetres per year. It's not going to take over very quickly. Ecologically important, good for biodiversity.
Richard N: And also good for gin. Speaking of which, cheers. I'm not allowed.
Callum M-R: I'm just off the stuff. I'm actually working on a job that used to be Richard's tomorrow.
Richard P: You're going to take the photos at the National Gamekeepers' Organisation's AGM and awards ceremony over in Coventry. It's at the Heart of England Conference Centre. I will say that going to an awards ceremony organised by gamekeepers is very different to going to an awards ceremony run by the debutante daughters who mostly do GWCT events.
Callum M-R: Do I have to just stand on the shoulder of someone on a peg and just hope that a pheasant comes over, or do they actually want me to do some work?
Richard P: No, you all start at the back of the room and gradually move towards the front and there's someone at the end of each line with a bit of plastic on a stick sort of flapping them.
Richard N: Look, it's very simple. If you want to get a load of gamekeepers to flock towards you, pull your hand out of your pocket with a slightly closed fist clutching notes, and they will suddenly come towards you with a big beaming smile.
Richard P: You know what's coming. So what are we going to be talking about today? You sent some news articles over in the WhatsApp group.
Richard N: I did. Wild Justice seem to have actually done something I am slightly in favour of. They have managed to highlight, via Freedom of Information requests, that Natural England is not designating any more Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), and they haven't done that since 2023. One site earmarked for protection down in Thurrock will be destroyed by a new port development known as Tilbury 3, which was granted planning permission in February this year. What is also coming into Tilbury is the Norwich to Tilbury pylon line.
Richard P: A SSSI is a weird legal structure. People always assume it's to protect one dreadfully rare thing that only exists there. But it can be geology, a landform, or an overall habitat. They were set up under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. If you have a woodland that's a SSSI and you want to apply for a felling licence, you get extra paperwork called ORNCs (Operations Requiring Nature Conservation Consent) which makes it very expensive to go through the licensing process.
Richard N: Half the reason why these woods became SSSI woods in the first place is because they were made more diverse habitats by the interaction of man—coppicing, thinning, felling. Exactly the same with reed beds. The only reason why bitterns used to be about was because you had reed beds created by the hand of man. The moment they become a SSSI, some ENGO comes in and says, "We won't touch them." And before you know it, the reed bed starts drying out.
Callum M-R: It's funny, where I live, there's a little pond that is now full of wildlife. That was actually built because when they built the M11 motorway, they took a pond that was there and they built over it, so they were required to build another one.
Richard P: That's part of the ecological mitigation for infrastructure, like HS2 and the bat bridges.
Richard N: The thing is, a true SSSI can't just be replicated. It was supposed to be a site of special scientific interest. Now you've got people like Steve Reed complaining that newts are getting in the way of building.
Richard P: It's a horseshoe issue where conservation-minded people suddenly find themselves aligning with people right at the other end of the political scale. I've talked to a lot of rural commentator friends, and it's becoming a very interesting thing to watch. If you say, "I like traditional rural things," people assume you must be some right-wing extremist. But when you go out with the actual communists who really do like nature, they make up a lot of the local ecological record-keepers or the plant life botany surveyors. There's a guy who does the polypody fern surveys around our woodland; he's the original "right to roam," walking in a straight line across everyone's land smoking a rollie, but he knows everything about ferns.
Richard N: I was at a meeting in Essex this weekend organised by the Community Planning Alliance, talking to groups of individuals who are extremely worried about the government's commitment to build one and a half million homes. You've got green-reform type people and the Village Green Preservation Society joining together with your communist fern aficionado saying, "You cannot just build all over this vital farmland." So we're coming at the same issue from different angles.
Callum M-R: Nature is a much broader category than just rural traditions.
Richard P: Before we influence any more geopolitics, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who sent me "get well soon" wishes. I want to say a particular thank you to the forestry people—Nick, Jonathan, Matthew—because forestry is bloody dangerous, and everyone's had an injury on the job. Nick Adams went through the accident with me step by step and went, "Oh, that's what you did. Oh yeah, it's nothing." That meant more to me than getting a nice new plate in my leg.
Callum M-R: Post-incident analysis from the legend. You just have to slay a Lorax now. That's the only way you get over this. Dr. Seuss. I'll read you it one day. My son always picks I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew for bed, which is a long old read.
Richard P: My friend Terry in the US demanded that I get drunk one night and record a reading of Go the Fck to Sleep* in my best low tone.
Callum M-R: I actually put a comedy voice on and narrate all the Bluetooth speakers that come from AliExpress. I picked it up on Fiverr. So if you ever hear, "A Bluetooth device is ready to be paired"—that was me.
Richard P: Well, judging by the fact that producer Amy is typing "after show, after show, for f***'s sake, after show" in the chat, it's time to wrap up.
Richard N: Isn't it lovely to have Richard back? Good night, everybody.