Landed gently, an international force for good First published in EADT Suffolk magazine, May 2007 Halesworth - quiet, mild-mannered, gentle, perhaps even genteel - is in many ways the typical small Suffolk market town. Its grand old inns; its fine late-medieval church, rather Victorianised; its two bookshops, one selling nice secondhand volumes; its organic food shop; its family butcher, selling good local meat; even its smart, modern library - all these are probably what you would expect. What you will not expect to find here is the headquarters of an international organisation. Yet behind a slightly shabby brown door on Bridge Street an old wooden staircase rises into the faded elegance and office clutter that is the beating heart of the World Land Trust.
Here, among an impressive collection of old framed bird and animal prints, John and Vivien Burton and their small but dedicated team run an operation responsible for a greater acreage of wildlife reserves than all those of the RSPB and county wildlife trusts in Britain put together. As human pressure for development, agriculture and stripping of natural assets threatens more and more of Earth's wild places, the World Land Trust is doing its bit to fight back. Working with local organisations, which own and administer the land, it has saved important tracts of forest in Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, Paraguay, Patagonia and the Philippines. It has helped establish a national park in Lebanon. It is working to restore mangrove swamps and preserve coral reefs in the Philippines and India - where it is also providing vital green corridors to help the natural migration of wild elephants. It is doing its bit for the fight against global warming by offering companies and individuals an opportunity to combat carbon emissions by offsetting - growing and preserving forests that "lock up" carbon dioxide. Its friends and champions include such luminaries of the conservation movement as Sir David Attenborough, David Bellamy and Bill Oddie as well as former England cricket captain David Gower, who is a patron. But why Halesworth? John Burton explains: "We're here because it's so good for wildlife. We've got Minsmere and Dunwich 10 minutes away. If you're going to run a wildlife charity, why be stuck in London? "My first job was at the Natural History Museum in London , then I became a freelance writer and journalist. I've worked in London for many different organisations, such as Flora and Fauna International and Friends of the Earth. But from the 1960s I've had weekend cottages in Suffolk . It's one of the best areas of the country for wildlife and we'd come up at every available opportunity. "We started this organisation in 1989 and right from the beginning we were fairly technologically-minded. We're able to run the office here because of technology, originally fax and telephone, and now the internet. We can run this entire building for the cost of a single room in London - and east Suffolk has very good communications. I can be in central London in two hours, doorstep to doorstep. And you couldn't pay the staff what we do here if we were based in London . "Originally the trust was run from our home. My wife and I were working part-time and it was run from a barn in our back garden in Sibton. When it grew and we got fed up with working a 24-hour day, we needed to employ staff, so we moved the office into Halesworth. It means we can go to work, and then go home. "Most of our staff are interested in wildlife. There is an argument that a good administrator is a good administrator of anything, but I like working with people who share the enthusiasm." For an organisation which is largely about awareness, raising money and spending it wisely, enthusiasm is vital. And they find plenty of it in wildlife-rich Suffolk. "We have a good local supporter-base," says John. Money-raising functions in the county include regular events at Wyken Hall, near Bury St Edmunds, author Elizabeth Jane Howard's garden in Bungay, and the Aldeburgh Cinema. An impressive list of commercial sponsors includes Adnams. But though they now count themselves among Halesworth's larger employers, with 12 staff, it remains John and Viv Burton's enthusiasm that drives the project. And there is no doubting the priority. John becomes animated as he insists: "The only objective is saving wildlife and habitat. Everything else is tools to achieve that. "There is so little wilderness left in the world, what's really important is saving what's left. It's just being eaten away year after year and anything we can save has to be a good thing. "If it has benefits for carbon, then great; if it has water-catchment benefits, which is probably far more important than carbon, then great. But for me, the reason to do it is what it always has been - to preserve the wildlife." The WLT began with a highly successful money-raising bid to save a threatened area of forest in Belize, a former British colony which is the only English-speaking country in Central America . "In 1989 I was becoming quite jaded with conservation. I felt a lot of money was being wasted. International conservation wasn't delivering anything very concrete. It's very difficult to pin down what all the millions spent by an organisation like the WWF actually achieves. But we can say, 'We've bought this land and it's full of animals. We've bought 252,000 acres of Belize which still exists and still has jaguars and all the animals that live in it. You can go and see what all that money you gave us has done'." John is confident that an acre of forest, which a supporter can "buy" for a donation of £25, really has been saved for the long term. All the WLT's projects are carried out with the approval of the governments concerned, often with local tax breaks. But does your £25 really save an acre? "It varies," admits John. "Some acres cost £5, some of the rainforest is up to about £100 an acre. We've just put a deposit on some rainforest in Ecuador , with 16 undescribed species of orchids on it, for only about £35-to-£40 an acre. "And we're buying 10,000 acres of dry chaco grasslands in Paraguay. The budget for that is about a quarter of what it would cost to buy 10 acres at Walberswick." And for supporters with deeper pockets, there is another advantage. "We have lots of people go to the reserves. We've had hundreds go to the reserve in Belize - the accommodation's good. In Brazil it's a four-star lodge, with a beautiful cocktail-bar, fresh limes from the trees in the garden, hummingbirds at the feeders." There are fears, of course, that tourism, especially to truly exotic places, can damage or destroy the very attractions that draw the visitors. John says: "You have to manage tourism - something of which Suffolk is an interesting example. Only certain of our reserves will ever have tourism facilities. But it's what will finance them long-term."
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