The Wild View: Time to move beyond the 'museum model' of conservation

The SSSI designation framework[1] and the Ratcliffe Criteria[2] that underpin it were originally designed to identify and protect specific species or habitats. While this model has admittedly been effective in halting the immediate loss of some rare habitats and vulnerable species, it is fundamentally failing to deliver in an era of rapid ecological change. A recent review by the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP)[3] shows that in England only a third of SSSIs are in favourable condition, deterioration is increasing, monitoring and enforcement have been severely weakened, and Government is nowhere near meeting its legal nature commitments. Nature is also in freefall in Scotland, where 43% of species are facing population losses[4] and in Wales where nearly 80% of habitats are in an unfavourable condition[5]. Across Britain, nature is still in decline.

We need a fresh approach to not only protecting nature, but enabling it to take care of itself — and us — again. That’s what’s unique about rewilding. At its heart, rewilding is about reinstating natural processes, like letting rivers flow freely and bringing back missing species – and allowing them to replenish nature’s remarkable web of life. For Britain to achieve its 30% by 2030 commitments and restore nature at scale, the SSSI framework has to evolve beyond a focus on preservation towards restoration. It must embrace the restoration of natural processes and the myriad of dynamic, successional mosaic of habitats that emerge. In essence, we must unleash nature from its human imposed constraints.

The Ratcliffe trap

Part of the issue is that SSSIs are heavily based on a rigid set of standards, known as the Ratcliffe Criteria, that determine what is worth protecting. While terms such as diversity’, ​‘rarity’, ​‘fragility’ and ​‘naturalness’ are conceptually strong, these criteria are often interpreted as fixed endpoints. An example of where these measurements can fall down is, say, if a site is protected and managed for a specific butterfly, and that butterfly moves north due to climate change, the current system views the site as a failure rather than valuing whether it is resilient as a shifting landscape in transition[6]. 

Although the Ratcliffe criteria don’t cover the marine environment their equivalents for Marine Protected Areas don’t fare much better. They also almost exclusively focus on static designated ​‘features’ — again specific habitats or species – and can struggle to capture the fluid, three-dimensional processes that shape ocean life.

What we need is a radical overhaul of these criteria that’s fit for the 21^st century.

Introducing ​‘Natural Process-Led’ sites

While species-centric approaches are still important in halting immediate loss, our outdated system for protected areas just can’t deliver future-proof ecosystems and large-scale nature recovery unless it embraces natural process-led perspectives. 

What would really make a difference is to have a root and branch review of the Ratcliffe criteria so that we can move towards something that values a ​‘whole-site’ approach. We could build on existing protections for individual ​‘features’ within SSSIs – a single reef or a specific woodland fragment, for example — to restore entire ecosystems by establishing a network of ​‘Natural Process-Led (NPL)’ sites. Here’s how we could adapt a number of the criteria to better measure the health of our ecosystems across such a network:

Transforming these criteria would enable the restoration of larger, interconnected landscapes and mean that we could properly value the impact of those using a rewilding approach. Such a change would secure these areas not just for what they are today, but for their ecological potential and the dynamic processes that drive long-term resilience. This process-led approach isn’t about abandoning species-centric work but amplifying it, creating a powerful synergy between targeted protection and larger scale recovery[7].

As a dynamic process, this can challenge the traditional monitoring approaches used to track changes at more conventional nature conservation sites. The evaluation of these sites must therefore evolve – which is why we have recently developed a novel Rewilding Monitoring Framework. This framework – the country’s first robust system for measuring ecological, social and economic change across rewilding sites – advocates for exactly the sort of ecosystem function indicators we’d like the government to adopt for protected areas, including habitat heterogeneity, structural diversity, species dispersal and trophic interactions. 

For a new set of criteria to be really effective, however, it’s also clear that the UK and devolved governments would need to allocate sufficient resources to regularly monitor the sites and carry out condition assessments. Additionally, any interventions taken to meet the criteria should be co-designed with local communities, so that they draw on local knowledge and are responsive to grassroots perspectives.

Enabling the future of the wild

Our protected sites are more vital than ever. Reforming these criteria is not about abandoning scientific rigour; it’s about modernising it for a world of rapid ecological change. By shifting from static protection to dynamic stewardship, we can move beyond the fragmented successes of the past and start enabling the future recovery of wilder nature.