1970s

CPRE's campaigning reduced the landscape impact of a huge quarry in Lee Moor, Devon. Photo: © CPRE

1970
CPRE's hedgerow campaign began. A CPRE working party investigating the rate of hedgerow loss and damage recommended the conservation of historic hedges and hedgerow preservation orders.

1971
CPRE opposed Lee Moor (Devon) china clay proposals for the biggest hole in Britain. The plan was approved but tipping space and the life of the workings was limited.

1972
CPRE organised direct representations to the European Economic Community and defeated proposals to increase lorry weight limits — the first such campaign by a British amenity society.

1974
The Government agreed to increased public participation in decisions on commercial forestry plantations, but rejected CPRE's request for planning control over new planting.

CPRE helped found the European Environmental Bureau to enable further environmental representations to the EEC, and immediately press for funds to be made available for landscape conservation schemes.

1975
CPRE published Landscape — the need for a public voice, calling for new measures to protect the countryside from damaging agricultural practices associated with farming becoming ever more intensive and industrialised.

1977
CPRE brought the problem of ploughing of Exmoor's wildlife-rich, characteristic moorlands to national notice. Lord Porchester's official study vindicated CPRE's arguments.

1978
CPRE helped defeat Southern Water Authority's drainage scheme for Amberley Wild Brooks in West Sussex, demonstrating serious defects in the cost-benefit analysis used to justify a grant from the Ministry of Agriculture to drain this wetland.

1979
Laurence Olivier Radio 4 appeal raises £10,000
On 4 March 1979, Laurence Olivier made an impassioned appeal on behalf of CPRE, calling for listeners to cherish the English countryside and support CPRE's work to protect it from uncontrolled development. Lord Olivier's speech was broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Weeks Good Cause and raised over £10,000 within one month of the broadcast.