REELING off problems from rising rural crime rates to young people driven out their home villages - Richard Burge believes the countryside is in real crisis, and on the brink of catastrophe.

He cites soaring house prices and access to basic services such as health and public transport alongside the need for urgent reform of the CAP and a radical new approach to farming and land management.

The former British Council assistant director talks of the "frustration, anguish and fear" felt by people living in countryside communities, and warns without sweeping changes to policies and attitudes, rural Britain will become a place where local people will struggle to afford to live and work.

"I think we will find the countryside increasingly populated by people who use it as a daily dormitory at best, and a weekly dormitory at worst."

He foresees a countryside where services are delivered by urban firms with fewer and bigger farms ever-more dependent on subsidies.

In order to avoid a full-scale economic collapse Mr Burge believes rural communities need

to become sustainable, with a new approach

to encourage people to make a living off the

land.

He argues that the CAP needs to be scrapped, and money coming into the countryside seen as an investment in rural development so that urgent and rapid change can take place.

At the forefront of this drive for change is the Countryside Alliance, formerly called the British Field Sports Society, which now with a wider aim to provide a voice for rural Britain.

Mr Burge, 44, has been the chief executive of the campaigning organisation for three-and-a half years since he was headhunted from his former post as director general of the Zoological Society of London.

Born in Hong Kong, Mr Burge studied zoology at Durham University and, after three years

as a biology teacher in Surrey, won a research scholarship which took him to Sri Lanka to study water buffalo.

After tiring of academic research, he joined the British Council, becoming one of its youngest senior managers at the time.

He worked in Nigeria and the Middle East specialising in setting up aid projects in war-torn countries.

And as much of the countryside continues its recovery from foot-and-mouth, Mr Burge thinks Britain has much to learn from Third World countries.

He sees an opportunity to create a diverse rural economy, with a landscape where a real profit can be made from not just the production of food, but a range of products from flax to bio-fuels.

"We've got to get to the stage where these types of products can contribute to the profitability of the land," he said.

But to the intense frustration of the alliance and many of its members, instead of focusing on the real problems in the countryside, the Government remains distracted by the hunting issue.

The alliance has tirelessly lobbied ministers that there were more pressing rural concerns, but while hunting continues to be raised by Parliament, Labour party member Mr Burge

said the Alliance will endeavour to defend it.

Liberty and Livelihood is the theme of the September 22, with protesters marching to defend their right to live their lives responsibly, including the right to hunt should they choose.

Mr Burge said the protest aims to give all rural dwellers the chance to express their frustration at the problems they face, and the lack of solutions being suggested.

"For us the big issue now is what the countryside is going to look like for the people who live and work there and, at the moment, I think the jury is out on that," said Mr Burge.

"The rural problem is a complex one, there's never been any political motivation in sorting it out in the past, now I think a host of things have come together which will mean the rural dilemma has to be addressed."