When we started the Practice, the Wildlife & Countryside Act was only four years old and had barely begun to impact upon planning decisions and changes in land-use. Contemporarily, the Berne and Bonn Conventions on wildlife and migratory species, and the EC Birds Directive, were just beginning to make their mark. We thought about landscape and development then in an entirely different way, with wildlife and nature conservation playing only a relatively small role. We wrote reports on early Amstrads or even the faithful old BBC Micro and produced all the graphics by hand. Desktop colour printers were effectively unavailable and, for a decent quality text output, we relied on cabled links to an electronic typewriter with a golf-ball head or disc-wheel.

The big changes in the type of work we did arrived with the next wave of legislation, regulations and conventions coming from Europe, and International political change, brought about by conservation pressure groups - the Habitats Directive in particular (1992) and the signing of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in the same year, not to mention all the more general environmental legislation of that period. There is a sense of satisfaction in having been part of the design and establishment of new procedures in applied ecology and nature conservation science that were an outcome of all this. Most of the standard survey and conservation management techniques we use routinely today, for example, have been devised and honed to their current high standards (when used properly!) during the past twenty years.

Even more revolutionary has been the transformation of the office and our business practices. We all now have access to whizzy computers with almost unlimited memory, virtual private networks that are linked increasingly wirelessly and make geographical location irrelevant, CD-ROMs, ADSL, digital cameras, scanners, mobile phones, e-mail, blackberries (nothing to do with R. fruticosus!), cheap printers that give top quality output, and all the rest And the mind-blowing, earth-shrinking, superlative information resource that is the internet represents, for us ageing baby-boomers anyway, a true wonder of the modern world.

It is a pity our governments have been such a disappointment (to the founders, anyway) during this exciting time. The imposition of silly and petty rules about, for example, health and safety, the unnecessary sea of paperwork in which we now all swim (or drown), the demotivating levels of taxation on hard work, the blame culture, the fall in educational standards and the wholesale intrusion into our private lives by a nanny state are an embarrassment to our great society. Joseph de Maistre in his Lettres et Opuscules Inedits about Russia in 1811 said “Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle merite” (every nation has the government it deserves). Britain deserves a better deal from its politicians.

We like to take a wider world view. Happily, the professional business community contains a preponderance of free and original thinkers, and transcends many political and national boundaries. We shall continue to adopt innovations that make good sense and, as a company of scientists, make up our own minds on how to go forward, based on objective evidence. We will resist government and bureaucratic interference as far as we lawfully can, and put our clients first, always striving to maintain our standards of excellence and remain receptive to beneficial changes. Biological science has come to the fore in recent years, and the environment has never needed more care and attention in the whole of human history than it does now. We have a huge and exciting future ahead of us and it will be a privilege to take part in it. We still miss the BBC Micro, though!

CBEB - The Future
The Practice has built an enviable reputation for high quality work, delivering excellence, meeting deadlines and operating cost-effectively within budgets to clients’ and statutory organisations’ rigorous standards. To maintain and build on that in the future, with a growing client base and operational needs, we have invested in a carefully planned programme of expansion. The present offices in Martley will be increased in size by 50% this year to house more scientists and facilities. Additionally, a new storage and field support building will be constructed at the far end of our site, and the entrance and car-park areas upgraded. IT systems and links between the main office, off-site personnel and our French location will continue to be upgraded: that will involve a new server, more computers and the latest business and communications software. Our library, already large and containing many out-of-print and hard-to-obtain biological keys and other works, is being extended to include a larger and more thoroughly referenced intranet database which can be consulted by CBEB staff, and it will also ultimately cover our electronic library resources, our many reference specimens and our biological records.

Another high priority growth area is our web site. This has already been transformed from its early incarnation to a more extensive and flexible resource; it will soon offer “on-line” consultancy, and already has publication sales with a shopping basket, a special password-protected private client area where clients can access their reports and Management Plans, etc., and more downloadable resources.

Aspects of the business that we are expanding include our Ecological Engineering/ Ecosystem Care and Repair division. This broadly offers ecological services in estate management such as Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), reedbeds, habitat repair and creation, ecology input to green burial sites, semi-natural plant community establishment, Nature Conservation Management Plans and much more. As well as consultancy and expert advice, we shall be offering more practical land management and maintenance services, under licence where any transitory disturbance to protected species may be involved. We already have experience in construction of items such as artificial badger setts and bat caves, and we shall be enlarging that part of our practical habitat work.

All of this is supported, as always, by our key resource: our scientists and other staff.