THE world's attention over the last month has been on the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

Much has been said about whether it was worthwhile, will anything good come out of it, and will it change anyone's life.

Nobody knows as yet but it has to be good for the world to think about its future.

The first summit in Rio has changed the way we think about biodiversity.

We all care about rainforests and tigers but Rio has taught us that we all have wildlife on our doorstep and we all have a responsibility to save it.

The Cumbria Biodiversity Action (BAP) is a direct result of the Rio Summit.

It is our contribution in Cumbria to looking after our wildlife.

The Cumbria BAP is the most important document ever produced in Cumbria about Cumbria's special environment.

The Cumbria BAP describes the ' rainforests and tigers' of Cumbria, for example our most important habitats, like oakwoods, peatbogs and limestone pavements, and our most threatened species such as the barn owl, song thrush and water vole.

We tend to think big when we think of wildlife, tigers rather than toads for example but there are many fascinating and rare species that are so small that even a toad would barely bother to consider them a meal.

For example the Cumbria BAP priority species Geyer's Whorl Snail is only two millimetres long.

That's as long as you might let your finger nail grow before you decided it needed cutting.

Despite its small size Geyer's Whorl Snail is very interesting.

The shell only has four and a half whorls, but its pale brown glossy shell has very fine and delicate growth rings if you happen to have a magnifying glass when you find it.

It only grows in wet lime-rich grassland high up on the fells between Tebay and Kirkby Stephen.

Why it's so special to us is that as well as being rare in Cumbria it is only found in two other places in England in very small populations.

In Cumbria there are quite large populations.

Therefore from a conservation point of view we have the best populations in England and a special responsibility to look after them.

It needs very special management if one of Cumbria' s rarest animals is to survive, and that is exactly what the Cumbria BAP is all about.

People come to Cumbria to enjoy the diversity of our landscape and our wildlife.

Those people are vital to our local economy as foot-and-mouth has proved.

Looking after Geyer's Whorl Snail is therefore just as important to the 8,000 members of Cumbria Wildlife Trust as it is to the people who are planning Cumbria's economic recovery.