Travel: Fighting for Hampshire's Green and Pleasant land

Simon Calder on the quangoes that look after the New Forest

What is the best way to look after our most ancient tract of organised wilderness? Nine hundred years after it first became subject to the whim of William I, the New Forest has somehow survived as part of the natural heritage. Progress has left it only slightly bruised, with late 20th-century roads responsible for most of the scar tissue. The fact that half of the Forest is owned by the Crown helps, but controls are essential to prevent unrestrained development in the remainder of the area. It is a Good Thing, we all agree, to preserve a priceless piece of countryside. But getting to grips with the labyrinthine bureaucracy that seeks to protect the New Forest proves tougher than scrambling through the wildest heathland gorse.

The government has defined a New Forest Heritage Area, and applied to it the wonderful Whitehall-woolly phrase "An Area of National Significance" Two years ago, the Environment Minister Robert Atkins decided against making the New Forest a fully-fledged national park. Instead, the area was to be protected by a sheaf of regulations: "The same planning policies as would apply if that area were a national park," according to Mr Atkins.

Not being a national park, there is no single authority to run the Forest. The closest contender is the New Forest Committee, located in the High Street of Lyndhurst - the "capital" of the New Forest. But this name and address conceals a proliferation of authorities: eight on the committee itself, with a further three watching from the sidelines.

National bodies are represented by the Forestry Commission, the Countryside Commission and English Nature (formerly the Nature Conservancy Council), which looks after Sites of Special Scientific Interest. A double layer of local government adds four councils to the tally. And the uniquely feudal tradition of the Forest means that Commoners are represented by the Verderers, whose head is appointed directly by Her Majesty. The New Forest Committe has to make sense of a range of opinions with more shades than the most colourful of maples.

In America, where they invented the national park, they do things rather differently. The National Parks Service, a federal agency, looks after everything from the French Quarter in New Orleans to the world's first national park, Yellowstone. Britain took up the idea of protecting open space during the Labour government's planning surge after World War II. The urban element of late 1940s town-and-country legislation created a ring of new towns around London, thus bestowing Basildon upon the post- war world. Perhaps by way of atonement, the government set out to protect areas of wilderness where people from centres of population could enjoy the country. The UK's first national park, the Peak District, was neatly inserted between Sheffield and Manchester. Now there are ten parks in England and Wales, stretching from Dartmoor to Northumberland National Park. (Scotland asserts its independence in these matters, and has none.)

Except among those who want to build a factory or prospect for oil, the idea of protecting areas of countryside would seem to be naturally popular. Yet some environmentalists say national parks are inappropriate for an overcrowded nation such as Britain. Only in big countries like the US and Australia, where vast tracts of land can be protected, do they work. In the UK, the effect can be to create tourism "honeypots" but prevent a little old lady from putting up a garden shed or a farmer from making a decent living.

The buzzing of tourists around the honeyed sweetness of the New Forest is a phenomenon to test the patience of even the most tolerant resident. On a summer Sunday, the Lyndhurst one-way system is choked with traffic while its people choke on the fumes. Unlimited free access to the countryside comes at a price. In many nations, admission is charged at the park boundary. But unlike Yellowstone or Yulara, Britain's not-so-wide open spaces lack gushing geysers and massive monoliths. Would a pounds 5 or pounds 10 fee deter people from turning off the A31 to explore the New Forest? If they did, our countryside could be a greener and more pleasant land.