Selling the Family Silver?

The suggestion (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/13/plan-sell-nature-reserves-austerity-countryside) that the UK government is considering selling off nature reserves sounds, to me,  very dodgy. I appreciate that austerity seems to be the current 'buzz word' but commerce and conservation rarely fit very happily together. It also seems likely that the short-term gains will be more than counter-balanced by long-term losses. Will there be a single square metre of space that is not built upon? I also worry about the related (in the account) plan to 'privatise' the Meteorological Office at a time when 'unprecedented' (like the floods in Pakistan) climate change events may becoming the norm.