THE proposal to make St Ouen’s Bay Jersey’s first national park is akin to shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

The very title ‘national park’ conjures up visions of vast expanses of pristine wilderness, protected by law from human development and pollution. The ethos behind the creation of national parks worldwide was best summed up by the poet William Wordsworth, who in 1810 described his beloved Lake District as ‘a sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy’.

Regrettably, those who have governed us have lacked the foresight of the early proponents of national parks. As long ago as 1832, the government of the United States was legislating to protect areas of outstanding natural beauty, yet it took 40 years before the world’s first truly national park was created at Yellowstone.

More than 100 years were to pass before the States of Jersey took measures to protect the hinterland and dune system of St Ouen’s Bay.

It was only fitting that the campaign for governments to acquire land, and to legislate to protect it for the people to enjoy, had its beginnings in the United States. In the 19th century, as the settlers moved ever further west, land was up for grabs. So apart from the indigenous people who had roamed the prairies undisturbed for millennia and who were treated with cruel indifference, there were no landowners to upset with compulsory purchase orders.

Those intrepid settlers came from Europe, where most of the land was privately owned by monarchs and landed gentry and was out of bounds to the common man. They were determined that, in protecting their new environment against the threats of a rapidly expanding population, the people in whose name the parkland was protected would enjoy what it had to offer.

Today there are 6,555 national parks in the world. Fourteen of them are found in the British Isles: nine in England (including the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and Dartmoor), three in Wales and two in Scotland. A 15th is proposed in the South Downs.

Taking the British example, which is a likely model for any similar venture in Jersey, each park is operated by its own National Park Authority, with two core statutory aims. The first is ‘to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the area’, and the second is ‘to promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the park’s special qualities by the public’.

Those admirable aims are already being largely met in the safe and considered management of areas in the bay owned and cared for by the States, the National Trust for Jersey and thoughtful private landowners.

In the majority of designations, national parks were created to protect wilderness, natural features of a landscape and wildlife and its habitats, although this was not the situation in the UK.

The Yorkshire Dales is a working park, with farmland, villages, towns and light industry. The dry-stone walls that criss-cross the terrain, and the ancient barns and livestock shelters that are unique to the region, are considered just as worthy of protection as the natural landscape. Nor, in the British example, is all the land in a park government-owned, and it is common for large towns and other settlements to exist within a national park’s boundaries.

National parks can generate a significant income for those who work and live in them. Each year more than 100 million people visit the parks in the UK, bringing money into what would otherwise be remote and impoverished regions. But the activities of those visitors can impact adversely on the park. Hikers, mountain bikers and the hoofs of trekking ponies cause erosion to footpaths, the cars visitors travel in cause congestion on narrow country lanes, and the local economy that exists to serve visitors neglects the needs of the resident population.
Those problems aside, without national park status the likes of the New Forest and the Lake District would not be the attractive places they are today.

In the immediate years after the Occupation, when Jersey should have been following the UK’s lead, the demand for new homes almost led to the wholesale destruction of St Ouen’s Bay. Plans were drawn up for a new community to be built on the shoreline, complete with shops and a school. In the end, thankfully, the developers set their sights on Les Quennevais.

Imagine what St Ouen’s Bay would look like now if a new town had been built there. There would no doubt be high-rise hotels and apartment blocks on the coastal strip in the fashion of a crowded Spanish costa, with St Ouen’s Pond encircled with villas in a manicured environment of lawns and neat flower beds.

The bay has suffered from inappropriate development over the past 60 years, in spite of the sterling efforts of dedicated environmentalists and conservationists. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but why were the planners and politicians so neglectful of their duty in allowing development to encroach on the sand dunes and St Ouen’s Pond?

The biggest blot on the landscape of this outstanding area of great natural beauty is Les Mielles golf course. Whoever allowed the most manicured of all man-made landscapes to be laid out in the centre of the bay should be put on trial for committing a crime against the people of Jersey.

The time to designate St Ouen’s Bay as a national park has long gone, and it doesn’t require yet more hollow legislation to put matters right. There is a tendency among our politicians to pay lip service to the environment. They adopt strategies and ratify international conventions yet rarely produce the money so sorely needed for environmental projects, relying instead on the dedication of private organisations and their volunteers.

The idea of making St Ouen’s Bay a national park is clearly well intentioned, but it would be a hollow gesture that comes a century too late.