Conservation Through The Looking Glass

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' ...

(from Alice Through The Looking Glass)

Absolutes should be avoided. ‘Wild’ and ‘Artificial’ when applied to landscape are best qualified with ‘more’ or ‘less’.

Once Blacka’s largest section was an artificial grouse moor with heather burning and sheep to keep it under control. Over the 70 years since it was given to the people of Sheffield it has become more natural and more wild a change much welcomed by those who choose to visit it.

Sheffield Wildlife Trust’s website is http://www.wildsheffield.com/ A key outcome of their recent consultation with local people was that Blacka should be a ‘wild landscape with minimal intervention’

So what does this wildlife trust and its backer Natural England decide to do? They decide to enclose it with fencing and other eyesores, to poison scores of mature trees and leave them dead or half-dead yet still standing (as a lesson to other natural phenomena that they must behave or meet a similar fate?), and they institute a farming regime to bring the whole site to heel.

Wild?

I think we are into postmodernism here where words are deemed to mean their opposites. Humpty Dumpty was probably the original postmodernist.