Nature lover Robin Buxton stands down

We all love water voles and tree sparrows, but does it really matter if they disappear? Robin Buxton believes so, and he’s been trying to do something about it for most of his life.

He’s not just keen on the cuddly wildlife that everyone loves – his doctorate was on the ecology of termites in Kenya, so his passion also stretches to slugs, mosquitoes and wasps. So why is he stepping down as head of Wild Oxfordshire, the county’s umbrella organisation for nature conservation?

I wondered if he was fed up with spending too long sitting in meetings when he could be outdoors enjoying the nature on his doorstep in Little Wittenham, where he set up the Earth Trust to manage 130 acres of woodland, and Wittenham Clumps, two treetop hills which are a landmark for miles around.

No, he says, it’s not that he dislikes meetings. “Yes, I am a naturalist, but I am also an environmentalist.

“I see the problems we have with the environment and I am looking for solutions. A lot of the problems are with institutions, and with the interactions between them.”

It’s more that his long experience of organisations, from the Earth Trust to the BBOWT local nature trust, has taught him when to take a back seat from day-to-day involvement.

As the son of Sir Martin and Lady Audrey Wood, founders of Oxford Instruments, he grew up absorbing the fundamentals of business and management – “kitchen table stuff that I heard being discussed for years”.

He felt a ‘step change’ was needed, but remains as a patron of Wild Oxfordshire, which has an endowment from the Woods to employ two full-time and two part-time staff, but will now need to secure its future by seeking other funds. I thought about how we could tap more resources, more people and more sectors of society to engage with nature conservation and biodiversity.

“With climate change, we need to be informed about what is likely to happen in future.”

In July, he helped to appoint a new chief executive of Wild Oxfordshire, Ingo Schüder, who moved from English Nature, and now Dr Buxton has stepped down to make way for a new chairman, Dave Woodwark, a former Harwell environmental scientist.

Dr Buxton, 64, said: “I have done it for 21 years and I have engineered major change to set it on a new path. Were people going to believe that it was really different if I had stayed on as chair?

“I am passionate about the plants and animals of the countryside and its importance for mental and physical health.

“I stuck my head above the parapet and didn’t like what I saw. Now I have broken down the parapet, I will leave the new team to carry on the work.” He walks with a stick as a result of contracting polio at the age of two, but that hasn’t stopped him doing the things he loves, including tackling Kilimanjaro.

As well as the Earth Trust, he is involved with the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, and chairs the Patsy Wood Trust, a grant-making body set up in memory of his younger sister, who died of cancer seven years ago.

He hopes Wild Oxfordshire will provide “habitats where both people and wildlife can thrive for many generations” and highlight how rescuing endangered species can help issues as diverse as flooding, food prices, mental illness and criminal behaviour.

The organisation will continue to be based in free office space at Little Wittenham, where the Woods have provided homes for various organisations whose work they support. He recognises that his successors have a difficult job, for example, showing how river catchment affects water quality and flooding to people like a farmer who told him: “God put the Thames on my land to act as a drain.”

Oxfordshire is a good example, he says, of somewhere which will pay a high economic and social cost if it ignores environmental management.

“Parts of this county are really short of water for growing crops. The Cotswolds, for example, dries up very quickly in some summers, and farmers are very challenged.

“In other places and at other times, there is too much water.

“The ability of the soil to transfer that water is an environmental issue vitally important to buildings and businesses. We have to show these connections, otherwise biodiversity and nature conservation is seen as something that is nice but not all that important.”

As I watch the blue tits gathering at the feeder outside his office, he tells me about a project with prisoners funded by The Patsy Wood Trust, which has reduced re-offending.

He believes involvement with wildlife can have equally dramatic effects on people’s wellbeing.

“We all know that public spending is under pressure, and our relationships with local authorities have weakened. We have to look at how we can help them. It could be to do with ill-health among old people.

“Are there things like that that we can address?

“Interaction with the countryside, and taking people out of their environment and letting them get cold and muddy. That’s a way of benefitting wildlife and individuals as well as society as a whole.”

Wild Oxfordshire, working with 50 different organisations, aims to organise more ‘Oxfordshire Goes Wild’ days for families, and support teachers and local environment groups with information and networks. It is also compiling a document showing ‘trends, threats and opportunities’.

Dr Buxton said: “There are some terrific stories, like red kites and otters returning, but on the whole it is a tale of decline.”

Wild Oxfordshire has already drawn up a map of 36 ‘conservation target areas’ – the most important areas for wildlife where targeted conservation work will have the greatest benefits.

He is particularly concerned about the ‘Oxford meadows’, including Port Meadow, but also lesser known places such as Oxey Mead and Pixey Mead, ancient haymaking sites which have somehow survived for centuries, despite the arrival of canals, railways, the A40, A34 and numerous gravel diggings.

Unlike Wittenham Clumps, they don’t represent the ‘cuddly’ landscape where development or non-traditional farming would cause immediate outrage.

He recognises the pressure for new homes and better roads. “Like everyone else, we want to maximise the economic benefits of the intellectual property coming out of the university. But some of these places are more irreplaceable than Salisbury Cathedral.

“It is not that we are being precious. These are significant habitats in a European context, not just a local one. Looking at Wittenham Clumps, which everyone loves.I would remind people that it does cost money. There is a high price behind that free access.”