27 May 2006
Return to founders values call at AGM
A plea for the national park movement to look again at what the founders of the movement expected our finest landscapes would deliver for the people of England was made at the FLD AGM.
Ian Brodie said that we have not been as proactive in explaining why we still need national parks and why they are in continued need of our highest care and enhancement of their local character. It is time for all who love those areas to seize the initiative and show how the original vision and ethos still is relevant to these living, working landscapes we strongly cherish today.
Mr Brodie looked at some of the expectations of the post-war legislation and argued that a number of the concerns of the founders of our movement have not yet been met. Why, for example, does the MoD so heavily use our national parks when they were regarded as war memorials to those who fought in two world wars?
He ask questions about the need to consider the creation of a nationally based service to help the national park administrations escape the grip of parochialism -a service the founders envisaged as a necessity. He also argued on these need to put the statutory purposes of national parks at the heart of planning.
Mr Brodie concluded that the nation increasingly needed areas of high landscape value where the nation could re-create, find peace, quiet, inspiration, and spiritual encouragement in a landscape where we can still reconnect with Nature.
