United Kingdom Conservation

“The Pere David's deer was once found only in China along the central and lower Yangtze River basin. But, years of overhunting and loss of its wetland habitat due to reclamation led to the extinction of the species in the wild in the early 20th century.“  In 1864, The French missionary Père Armand David “discovered”  the deer in the Nanyuang Royal Hunting Garden otherwise closed off to the world since the Yuan Dynasty (1205-1368).  Several from this group were imported to Europe. When the garden was occupied by troops during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the remaining deer were shot. “However, a small population of Pere David's deer bred at the Woburn Abbey wildlife park in the United Kingdom were re-introduced to the Central Yangtze in 1985 by the Chinese government, and in 1986 by WWF....A recent count put the population at 2,500 individuals in three national nature reserves.” The Pere David's Deer remain extinct in the wild.

31 year old British animal rights activist and mother, who was crushed to death under the wheels of a truck transporting live veal calves heading for continental Europe via Coventry Airport.

Tom Worby, a 15 year old British hunt saboteur was deliberately run over by a hunter during his first foxhunt protest.

"There are numerous cases of transnational cooperation yielding environmental improvements in the postwar era. In the case of the Rhine River, for example, an international commission composed of representatives from the Netherlands, Germany, France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland helped to transform the 'sewer of Europe' from the 1960s into the 'cleanest river in Europe' by the 1990s."

"After the disastrous smog in December 1952, which caused the death of about 4000 people in the London area, British Parliament passed the Clean Air Act in 1956."

"Paper recycling began in Britain in 1921, when the British Waste Paper Association (now Confederation of Paper Industries) was established to encourage trade in waste paper."

Term "Smog" coined as a contraction for smoke-fog.

Founding of Selbourne League in England to protect rare birds, plants and landscapes.

"The first legislation on the preservation of archaeological and historic sites in Britain was the Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882. It made arrangements for the 'guardianship' of some 50 prehistoric sites and appointed a single inspector of ancient monuments."

British River Pollution Control Act makes it illegal to dump sewage into a stream

This Act contained a list of 82 birds recommended for protection by the committee of the British Association.

Charles Darwin established the theory of evolution and as a result, a deeper human kinship with animals. "In the mid-nineteenth century, Darwin, Hakel, and other scientists discovered the importance of the interaction among species and their environments in evolution, and began to conceptualize a science of ecology. This was an expression of the modern rebirth of natural science. The physical sciences in a partnership with technology, provided the means for greater impacts of humans on the rest of the natural world....Darwin's most important contribution to the explanation of evolution was the idea of natural selection. Darwin applied this principle to the principle of all living species. If unchecked, any species will increase until it uses all the resources available to support its numbers."

"The 'Great Stink' of sewage in the Thames River spurs work of British Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal. Meanwhile, revolts break out in India, and the two events become linked in the public mind: 'For the first time in the history of man, the sewage of nearly three million people had been brought to seethe and ferment under a burning sun... Stench so foul we may well believe had never before ascended to pollute this lower air. Never before, at least, had a stink risen to the height of an historic event... For months together this topic was almost monopolized in public prints... 'India is in revolt and the Thames stinks' were two great facts coupled together ... to mark the climax of a national humiliation.' (Babbitt, 1922; Glick, 1980) See also Steven Holiday, The Great Stink of London (Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 2001)."

Prof. Michael Farraday writes Observations on the Filth of the Thames, contained in a letter addressed to the Editor of "The Times Newspaper: 'The whole of the river was an opaque pale brown fluid...If there be sufficient authority to remove a putrescent pond from the neighborhood of a few simple dwellings, surely the river which flows for so many miles through London ought not to be allowed to become a fermenting sewer...If we neglect this subject, we cannot expect to do so with impunity; nor ought we to be surprised if, ere many years are over, a hot season give us sad proof of the folly of our carelessness.'"