Ministers retreat from plan to scrap countryside watchdogs

Ministers are this weekend trying to back away from abolishing England's official independent wildlife watchdog in the face of a fierce public outcry, after The Independent on Sunday exposed the plan last week.

But they are up against strong resistance from senior civil servants who are determined to bring English Nature - which has frequently proved to be a thorn in their flesh - under government control.

With the support of Downing Street, civil servants had planned to subsume English Nature and the landscape watchdog, the Countryside Agency, into a new Land Management Agency subordinate to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The plan, seen as revenge for the watchdog's successful opposition to GM crops, was to be announced on Tuesday, when ministers are due to publish a report by Lord Haskins, the Prime Minister's personal adviser on the countryside. But the internal battle within Whitehall is now so intense that one senior official says, if the deadline is to be met, "the arguments will still be going on until after midnight on Monday".

Ministers have been astounded by the intensity of the opposition, and have been trying to limit the damage all week. In a speech last Tuesday, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Margaret Beckett, insisted she wanted to "preserve and strengthen independent voices". Her junior minister, Ben Bradshaw, called in most of the council of English Nature in an attempt to reassure them.

Mr Bradshaw - who confessed his astonishment at the public reaction to The Independent on Sunday's exposé - promised the body would remain an independent watchdog, and might even retain its name. But within hours, senior officials were trying to undermine the promises and make environmental protection subordinate to farming and rural development.

In manoeuvres that recalled the worst days of the little-lamented Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff), which preceded Defra, civil servants are pressing for a new body to be set up under special legislation. Such a move would paralyse the watchdogs for years by throwing them into a legal limbo.

"It shows that Defra is up to Maff's old tricks" said Tom Burke, a former adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, who is now a member of the council of English Nature. "It shows that nothing has changed."