Salvation in prospect for Kipling's dream Downs

The Iron Age hill fort of Chanctonbury Ring, on the South Downs, West Sussex (above) would be part of a special conservation area covering the whole of the South Downs - stretching from the cliffs of Beachy Head to the outskirts of Winchester - proposed yesterday by the Countryside Commission, writes Stephen Goodwin.

Some 32 million visits a year are made to the 938sq km Sussex section alone, as many as the most popular national park and testimony to the lure of Kipling's "blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs". A six-year experiment with Sussex Downs Conservation Board ends in March 1998; conservationists, amenity groups, farmers and councils judge it a success.

The commission would like the arrangement made permanent and the board's remit extended to take in the 383sq km East Hampshire area of outstanding natural beauty.

But the plan falls short of the protection offered by national-park status and there are doubts about where the money would come from to run the new Downs body. Half the Sussex board's pounds 1.2m budget has been met by the Commission and half by councils. But the Commission wants to see its overall level of support "reduced significantly".

The Downs was one of the 12 areas earmarked for national-park status in the 1940s. But the ploughing up of pasture for food and urban development led to the chalkland being dropped from the list. Consultation prior to yesterday's proposal revealed widespread opposition to declaring the area a national park, especially from landowners and from councils who would have lost their planning powers.

Photograph: Tom Pilston