All this concern about nature makes me uneasy

The countryside is going private now, and every little glimpse of it must be paid for somehow

Britain's Wildlife Trusts have been enjoying an unprecedented leap in membership, from 225,000 in 1995, to 413,434 this year. And while membership of this group of 47 county trusts, with their network of nature reserves, is showing the most massive increase, other British nature conservancy groups are on the up as well.

This seems like good news, for we are inclined to believe that a keen amateur interest in the natural world is healthy and positive, perhaps even moral. But I can't shake the feeling that it is actually somehow bad news, an indication of what we have lost rather than what we may be finding.

Maybe it is just personal association that makes these statistics appear so melancholy. The idea of people rushing off at weekends to stare at a nature cordoned off into special camps, reminds me powerfully of a poem I learned at school. The poem, "To See The Rabbit", which is still a recommended text for GCSE, is by Alan Harris. It tells of the last rabbit in Britain, secured behind barbed wire and visited by crowds of sightseers.

My 12-year-old self found this vision to be profound and prescient. Now, while I recognise crudely didactic metaphor, and simplistic imagery, I can't help wondering whether, in more subtle and beguiling form, the picture projected by Harris is coming to pass.

There is not a great deal of comfort to be drawn from the way in which the man behind this triumph describes it. Dr Simon Lyster, director-general of the Wildlife Trusts, told The Independent's environment editor, Mike McCarthy, that the steep increase in membership he has presided over can be attributed to a much more professional marketing strategy and a shift in demographic emphasis.

No doubt Dr Lyster has the best of intentions, but his analysis seems to point to the inevitability of the commodification of the countryside as a ticketed leisure pursuit and a revenue-generating tourist attraction. Whether such a development is good for nature, or for humans is a moot point.

Dr Lyster also commented on the contrast between the huge increase in interest in groups such as the one he runs, and the decline in membership of the global campaigning environmental groups which enjoyed such success in the early Nineties. Dr Lyster says: "People would like to save the world, yes, but they have other priorities. They like to enhance their own environment, and they are much more concerned about their local area than they once were."

But again, while this development is viewed positively by Dr Lyster, it is not so positive. What is happening is that a marketing push is persuading people to buy access to a sort of nature that is artificially enhanced. And this transaction is possible not because we are so very close to nature, but because we are so alienated from it.

Just as we consume more recipes than ever, but cook much less, nest-build more while hanging out with our children less, and buy more clothes than ever, leaving more of them hanging in the wardrobe, so, as we become less engaged with what non-human existence might consist of, do we go and gaze at an authorised version of it.

Rather than being seen as an embrace of what is quite literally the outside world, this increase in membership of country-protection clubs can be seen as a retreat from the public arena and into our own private spaces. Now we cannot so much as walk along a riverbank, or stroll through a thicket, unless we have bought our tickets and participated in the mediation of "our" space.

And the irony is that this very withdrawal is what feeds further withdrawal. The Ramblers' Association has for a very long time now been fighting against the total privatisation of the British countryside, the cutting off of access and the denial of community. But this new interest in nature, far from affirming the righteousness of the Association's position, is an admission that people feel more comfortable buying their own private little bit of access than proclaiming their right to have this access for free.

Meanwhile, the bucolic life the punters are buying a corner of, becomes more grotesquely farcical by the day. I know one concerned environmentalist who, like so many people nowadays, lives part of her time in the town, part of her time in the country. The country place is blessed – or is it cursed – with a heritage site on the edge of her acre or so that attracts a steady stream of visitors, especially in the summer.

So keen is this landowner to stop these people from invading her rural privacy, that she has blocked the paths on her land, never uses them herself, and tells her guests that they must walk along the busy, unpavemented road to visit the site. Even her dog cannot be let out to run on this land – the neighbouring farmer, it is feared, will shoot him.

In this way, even country dwellers, even country landowners, must gain membership of a trust before they can gain access to "nature". Is this concern for nature, or just a symptom of our alienation from each other and from the world? Further, while it is true that the roots of the countryside's hostility to "trespassers" has come about because of a minority of abusers of what used to be referred to as the "country code", this too is a vicious circle. As fewer people have access to the countryside, so fewer people know how to behave when they actually get there.

People no longer even have the confidence to just get off the beaten track under their own steam. By visiting reserves though, with their neatly signposted footpaths, their diagrams and notices, their gobbets of information along the way, and their toy-and-sweetie-flogging visitors' centres, the visitor can abdicate all responsibility for the environment they've rented.

And the really amazing thing is that such a situation has come to pass for no other reason than because powerful interests wanted it. The wealthy want their private places in the countryside, whether they are pop singers or heirs to the throne. Never mind that they can't tell a crab apple from a oak apple, or a cranesbill from a crow's beak, the countryside nowadays offers quiet and privacy to those who can afford it, and the leisure to do what they want (which is why Mr Blair's "meddling" drives them nuts). Those who still wish to earn a wage in the countryside, either have to service the privacy-seeking rich, or go down the reserves'n'heritage route. The countryside is going private now, and every little glimpse of it must be paid for somehow. It is terrible, the idea of private wealth and public theme-park, even though it is an idea we have had plenty of time to get used to.

Yet while much attention is paid to apportioning blame for how we got to this point – it's the farmers, the Government, the EU, the toffs – no one seems concerned with positing a future different from the one that beckons with such small appeal. Instead, we are satisfied, congratulating ourselves and each other on buying and selling existence so nicely. All that upsets the powerful "guardians" of the countryside – that is those who are set to profit from the rocketing price of land and the advantageous changes they see ahead – is the prospect of their private deals being interfered with by powers beyond their own.

If the last rabbit was a threat to that set-up, they'd auction the privilege of blasting it with both barrels, never mind letting us all have a look at it.

d.orr@independent.co.uk