"Conservation Grazing" Leaflet (1)

SWT’s new leaflet about ‘Conservation Grazing’ Available at site entrances.

SWT have tried several times, I reckon at least seven, to put together a strong case for importing fences and farm animals to Blacka. It is a question of trying to make something fundamentally flawed sound coherent by virtue of improved 'presentation'. They have strained sinews and brain cells to come up with explanations which appear credible. The latest of their efforts is now freely available in small, green, rather disreputable-looking dispensers at several gates onto Blacka. As you read the text you can hear the creaks and hard breathing as efforts are redoubled to produce something which sounds convincing. The leaflet is not directed at the hardy types who have followed this saga for 5 years but at the occasional visitor who might be more easily persuaded by superficial plausibility and has little time to query the details.

So let us query some of the details on this handout, starting from the very first words

1 “Blacka Moor Nature Reserve”. Well I dispute this. Yes you can call anything a nature reserve but it carries no weight if it’s not properly designated and this one just ain’t. That’s why SWT are so determined always to refer to ‘the reserve’. It’s uncanny. Clearly they’ve a policy on it. Don’t call it Blacka or Blacka Moor. Always say reserve. Why? Because they know it doesn’t stand up, so use the old trick of repeating something often enough and eventually it catches on. Sheffield City Council has a list on its website of Nature Reseves in Sheffield. this is not one. Natural England has a list of Nature Reserves in South Yorks. Blacka is not on the list. So why call it a Nature Reserve if it's not, especially as it clearly IS a public open space - quite a different concept.
Chief reason for harping on the Nature Reserve thing and the ‘Welcome’ thing is to give people the idea that their visit is ‘approved’ by someone in authority. In other words it’s not ‘as of right’.

2

“During 5 years of consultation and research a number of options to conserve the moorland have been been investigated and cattle grazing has been found to be the better option”

There has NOT been ‘5 years of consultation and research’. This is simply untrue. SWT decided in 2001 (if not earlier) that they were going to do this and have stuck rigidly to their plan. Since then they have introduced no procedures to examine the strategy but have been forced with increasing desperation to respond to the questionings representations and challenges mounted by other people principally the regular users. But in no way has this amounted to consultation on SWT’s part. In fact they have constantly tried to impede proper scrutiny of this decision. In March this year an SWT manager addressed a group of us and said “We’ve never intended to do anything else”, saying in effect it was only our fault if we were gullible enough to believe they would reconsider. So the statement above is nothing more than shameless spin.

More analysis/deconstruction of this leaflet to come.