Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2002, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a conservationist. Her subject, geography and her

interests the countryside, have always been combined in her career. She's run two of

Britain's leading green pressure groups, the Council for National Parks and the Council for

the Protection of rural England. A stint at the Cabinet Office as head of the Women's Unit

led to her present job, Director General of the National Trust. In just over a year in the post she's

set about trying to change her organization's somewhat elitest image indicating

the trend new policies would take by saving Sir Paul McCartney's former Council House in Liverpool for the nation.

But the foot and mouth crisis has dented the trust's finances.

Its Director General remains positive and passionate.

What gets me out of bed in the morning she says is my

unquenchable curiosity about the long intimate relationship between people and

the land. She is Fiona Reynolds. But there has to be some straightforward money making I suspect

Fianna because the National Trust has a large hole in its coffers as a result of

foot and mouth doesn't it? Yes we do I mean last year was a dreadful year and during the

first few months after the

foot-and-mouth crisis hit us in other words from late February to about May we did lose

over 10 million pounds and the extra costs for example of fencing many of our deer parks off to separate people

from animals, were absolutely huge.

But, you know, thanks to both our staff and their extraordinary efforts, but also the fact that

the public was just dying to get back out

...