Way back in the 1980s a young ranger, still wet behind the ears, joined the Association of Countryside Rangers. The ACR was a national organisation that gave him an opportunity to go off to meet like-minded colleagues from his area, and beyond, learn about his trade, and swap stories and experiences. It was a good time, and many friends were made along the way. At some point, the ACR became the Countryside Management Association, and as the young chap worked his way up the management tree and the years went by, employers became less inclined to pay for rangers to go off to networking and training events, and - like others - he became less involved with the organisation. You've probably guessed who that young ranger was.

Now the end of this venerable institution may be at hand - or possibly a new beginning. It seems as though my involvement in CMA has not been atypical. Despite a fairly lively magazine and website, the association hasn't had many active members for a long time, although there have been a few regions (step forward, the south-west) where it's been more active than others (yes, Wales, I mean you). Now the CMA is at a crossroads, and decisions are required. I realise this is a bit of a specialist article, so if you've no interest in the Countryside Management Association and its future, feel free to move along as you won't really want to read the rest of this. Otherwise, and should you also want to know my personal stance in this debate, read on.

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CMA members now face a hard choice: or perhaps an easy one. Hard, because whatever happens it will mean saying goodbye to something long-established that many of us view with affection. Easy, because the options before us are so very limited, and have no prospect of expanding.

The official information for members is here, but allow me to précis. The national committee have come up with three options for members to consider and discuss. These are:

1. Merge with the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (IEEM)


2. Carry on as now


3. Change to a simpler and cheaper 'networking & sharing of good practice' organisation

Can we stay as we are?
I've got to offer my admiration and thanks to the committee who managed to get this together: whatever course we take the one thing I see as indisputable is that this is a choice that we've needed to make for a long time. With national events no longer practical, and CMA in many parts of the country no longer active, the days of a ACR representative in each county organising events and training are long gone. Change is undoubtedly necessary because the CMA, for all its merits, is working to a model that became outdated at least ten years ago. The real cost of this approach is that as involvement of members falls below the level necessary to sustain a viable organisation, volunteers to run it become fewer and further between.

That way - the way of no change - leads to stagnation and eventual dissolution. I have for some time feared that was the fate that inevitably awaited CMA. To discover that it might not is heartening news indeed.

What has changed?
To me, the greatest value in the organisation today (as opposed to the rose-tinted memories I have of the ACR in the 1980s) is the networking and communication aspect of it. Since those early years of my career the internet has come along and revolutionised the way we communicate, and the way that specialist communities grow up and interact. Face-to-face meetings are rarer, and more expensive. Informal communication by text, email, blog or discussion forum is now commonly used by the majority. Indeed, young people coming into the industry cannot imagine any other way of working. It's worth noting that the CMA is still trying to operate a structure that was devised before we even had mobile phones, let alone computers. Countryside managers have never been short of things to say, but we no longer need an organisation to facilitate communication: we can do that ourselves. What we now need is a set of useful and interesting professionals to communicate with.

So where now?
So, assuming the status quo is not a way forward, that leaves for consideration the open arms of the IEEM. Should we step into this embrace, or reform ourselves as some kind of virtual community? To me, this seems to be a choice we don't actually have to make: we can have both. Yes, both! In fact, we probably will have both whichever choice we make. This is because giving CMA members the chance to join IEEM on what seem to be very generous terms does not necessarily mean giving up our own networking. In fact, my view is that union will enhance it.

I must now emerge from the closet and reveal myself as a long-standing IEEM member, since 1996 in fact. That body is, as many have said, a fairly academic and professional one. However, that is because the membership use it for those purposes, and is not a bad thing as far as it goes. To complement that solid professional work what IEEM members could really benefit from would be the chance to step forward and embrace the online networking culture wholeheartedly... just as the CMA has done in a small way, for example. Perhaps, actually, the IEEM is not just offering charity to another body down on its luck: IEEM knows what it is doing - perhaps it knows that it could benefit from the input of CMA members. I certainly think that a few CMA members getting directly involved in IEEM could have a big impact on that body, and a beneficial one for both IEEM and CMA members.

Our chance to get it right
My recommendation and vote will be to give the national committee a mandate to merge with IEEM. There could be many reasons for this, but mine are simple. I do not see any other sustainable way forward for CMA as it now stands. I do not wish to give up the enjoyable and beneficial friendships and professional networks that I have built up within and around CMA - but I don't believe that union with IEEM will mean the loss of such networks. In fact it may be the only way to save them.

Existing CMA members will not get as good an offer as this again. Rather than watch it fade to nothing we can take the network and knowledge we have built up and use it to benefit, in a modest way, not just ourselves but a wider professional community. Let's take this chance and go forward positively.