ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines the nature and importance of amenity societies and conservationist groups from the point of view of pressure-group theory. It seems characteristic of the study of politics that its terms and concepts remain or become ambiguous and controversial. Two problems of pressure-group theory are closely related in practice, but most be kept analytically distinct. The potential for pressure can perhaps best be understood in terms of the different kinds of political resource which groups can have. Conservation is political or social action in defence of the physical environment and levels of social benefit determined by the state of that environment. The Conservation Society is a creature of a different age from the cpre. The environmental fears and preoccupations are different, too. The preoccupation with population rather than other aims has increased with the development of the Society; at the 1971 Annual General Meeting, eight of the twelve resolutions were about population policy.
