"Conservation Grazing" Leaflet (2)

To return to the SWT leaflet in the dispensers. This states:

Heathland has developed through hundreds of years of human intervention including forest clearance and grazing. Due to its origins, management is needed to conserve the open heathland that is valued by people and wildlife.
Blacka Moor has developed a wonderful mosaic of birch & rowan copses, mire, scattered trees, grassland, heather and bilberry; creating richness both aesthetically and ecologically. However, being inherently dynamic, this mixed heathland habitat can be lost through the build-up of nutrients in the soil, and the invasion of birch and bracken.

The impression given here is that what we have got at Blacka conforms to a certain standard of heathland, and that this is a strictly definable entity. This is misleading and I think knowingly so. The distinctive elements which characterize Blacka and which give it the richness described have arisen only during the last hundred years and due to a diminishing and eventual absence of management – not because of the ‘human intervention’ referred to, but more from the lack of it. Conservationists, both real ones and ‘wannabies’ should get together and agree what they mean by the word ‘mosaic’ in these contexts because it gets chucked around irresponsibly to the point it becomes another empty term indicating the user is part of an ‘in-crowd’, but with no clear and agreed meaning.