Yes,I suppose people are always partial to owls."

Is the ebullient, apple-cheeked manager of conservation and forward planning at Ryedale Council in North Yorkshire. "But the real pin-up is the badger," he continues. "No one can resist a badger, can they? And fair enough, they're beautiful animals. I just wish we could somehow sprinkle a bit of that badger magic on water parsnips, or diving beetles. Or even bats! Would you like one of these pork pies, by the way? They're gluten-free. Absolutely amazing things."

Mr is eagerly leading me around the Ryedale Biodiversity Fair, a Saturday-long event that he has helped to organise in the market town of Malton. The fair is intended to promote biodiversity - it means all living things, essentially, with an implied emphasis on variety - in a region that, in case you need a pointer, is the one in which Heartbeat is filmed. It seems like a rather pioneering sort of idea for a town whose best pub used to feature in 1970s Tetley ads and whose local newspaper defiantly remains the size of a small dining table but, despite the dark dankness of the spring morning, the 18th-century meeting-room venue is extremely busy.

My guide, who himself grew up in the nearby countryside and, at the age of 41, has been working for the council for 16 years, has just shown me the owl group stand, at which you can dissect owl pellets in plastic bowls. He has to shout over the noise of nearby men who, with saws and hammers, are helping children to make hedgehog boxes; the smell of their freshly-sawn wood mingles in the air around us with the rich, salty scent of the pork-pie pastry, and the wet-coat smell of British indoor public spaces in the spring.

As we ease through the crowd, there are so many kids that I feel as if I'm at a McFly album signing. Gervase Phinn, who has come to open the fair, and who is to rural Yorkshire what John Lennon is to Liverpool, is being mobbed. Someone from a local plant nursery is handing out free saplings, and ladies at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust are painting bees on people's faces.

We pass stands for bat groups, badger advocates, natural history societies, wild flower projects, conservation volunteer trusts, cake bakers, pie makers and recycled-wood candlestick makers. A few years ago you'd have expected something like this to feel a bit tweedy and geeky, with a guitar-playing vicar lurking ready to sing at anyone having fun, or wearing man-made fabrics. Today, though, the atmosphere has that same righteous indulgence you get at farmers' markets.

I ask, as I stop to buy bag of organic cakes, if this sort of thing could be the long-term future for the country fte? Mr says probably not, different things entirely, and then ushers me to the North Yorkshire Bat Group stand, where a kind-faced lady is showing a hushed group of people a pipistrelle bat in her hands. "And people say British wildlife isn't exciting and exotic," says Mr, in an awed whisper. "Utter nonsense! Look at that beautiful creature." I look at it again, for a long time.

We share the cakes and go back to talking about trendy species again. "Obviously all this is having a bout of fashionability with people at the moment," says my cake-chomping companion. "The thing is to translate all this into long-term results outside."

"And then you're back to the badgers vs diving beetle issue again," I say. "Some animals being more equal than others."

"Exactly," he replies, as Jill, the Ryedale Council Public Relations Officer comes up and greets us.

"Did Mr tell you about his badger outfit?" she asks. I look blank, and Mr rolls his eyes.

"We've a badger outfit for council officers to wear at events," she says. "It helps gets people interested. I think Mr 's worn it, haven't you?"

"Anything for the cause," he laughs. "Let's go and have another look at those bats."