The dispute about Blacka Moor’s management is fascinating for the light it sheds on the way ‘expertise’ is wielded as a weapon. This usually amounts to promoting your viewpoint by parading your qualifications. At the point that we become aware of how learned they are we are expected to stop thinking for ourselves and bow to ‘superior’ wisdom. These supposed ‘experts’ usually operate in a very narrow field but expect us to accept their judgement over a much wider one. What has become obvious is that quite a few of these people can be very very silly.
We had Mike Harding an ecologist from Ipswich brought in to tell us about the benefits of cattle grazing on lowland heaths – a completely different kind of habitat. He was amazed that we didn’t just accept the ‘expert’ view and that we had the cheek to ask pertinent questions. “You wouldn’t question your G.P. like this would you?” he asked. “Yes we would - even more so” we said.
We had a letter from Dr Simon Queenborough in the Sheffield Telegraph telling us that bilberry and heather had to be managed like SWT proposed when he obviously wasn’t aware of the impact of grazing on bilberry.
Not long ago correspondence in the same newspaper about the destruction of trees on Loxley Common brought a letter from Professor Derek Gladwell O.B.E. (how important these letters after your name are!). He expounded about the importance of the habitat and how it should be managed. It turns out his field of expertise is in the management of hotels and tourism!! One of the arguments put forward by the professor was that trees should be cut down because people are frightened of walking in places where suspicious characters could be hiding!! Perhaps the Friends of Ecclesall Woods and those who walk in Limb Valley and other woods should be on the alert for a mad professor with an axe to grind and one to wield.
We had Mike Harding an ecologist from Ipswich brought in to tell us about the benefits of cattle grazing on lowland heaths – a completely different kind of habitat. He was amazed that we didn’t just accept the ‘expert’ view and that we had the cheek to ask pertinent questions. “You wouldn’t question your G.P. like this would you?” he asked. “Yes we would - even more so” we said.
We had a letter from Dr Simon Queenborough in the Sheffield Telegraph telling us that bilberry and heather had to be managed like SWT proposed when he obviously wasn’t aware of the impact of grazing on bilberry.
Not long ago correspondence in the same newspaper about the destruction of trees on Loxley Common brought a letter from Professor Derek Gladwell O.B.E. (how important these letters after your name are!). He expounded about the importance of the habitat and how it should be managed. It turns out his field of expertise is in the management of hotels and tourism!! One of the arguments put forward by the professor was that trees should be cut down because people are frightened of walking in places where suspicious characters could be hiding!! Perhaps the Friends of Ecclesall Woods and those who walk in Limb Valley and other woods should be on the alert for a mad professor with an axe to grind and one to wield.
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