Response (2)

Further Comments on the Anonymous Letter

The anonymous letter writer defies credibility when he tries to draw tears in his personal account of a favoured picnic place where he took his five days old child (five days?? It’s permissible to make the best case you can but doesn’t he mean weeks? or even months?). His story is that this spot was at that time qute idyllic but is now sadly overgrown. He presumably thinks that the cattle will take time off their other conservation duties – when they’ve eaten all the grass and scoffed all the bilberries - to clear this area by removing bracken and bramble and the odd sapling or two.

Has he ever seen an area of ground where cattle have spent any time? Does he really want a small baby to share a picnic in such a spot?

Really this is as spoof a personal story as any I’ve heard. We have already seen what cows do on Blacka. I see it every day. If Mr ?? wants to see it he should come here and leave his blinkers at home and be prepared to observe using some intelligence.

There is only one way that such picnic sites can be restored to Blacka and it is a way that the Friends of Blacka Moor have been constantly recommending. That is by the use of a regular on-site worker whose activities can be focused to just such recreational needs rather than bringing a few cattle onto the site and hoping they will get round to such work against all evidence and basic common sense.

This is the solution that the Icarus consultation was favouring when SWT and their inflexible allies pulled the plug on the process last year.

But will anyone write to the Telegraph saying this?