Wednesday 12 March 2008

CPRE


It’s interesting just how narrow are some people’s ideas of landscape and the countryside. In general the CPRE are a worthwhile outfit, if rather tame, and the country would be the poorer without a lobby of its kind. Many times I find myself wishing they were more outspoken but instead they give the impression of being quite happy to sit back and wait until some overwhelming disaster is looming before making any pronouncements.

But my real complaint is about the local branch of CPRE also known as Friends of the Peak District. This group had noble beginnings with many vital campaigns to its credit. But the current bunch from my own experience are woefully conformist and lacking the imagination to see the countryside as having anything much to contribute beyond farming. Not that I’m against farming. But the upland moors of the Peak District and beyond cry out for a more diverse approach than the wall to wall aesthetic desert of treeless heath. Yet here on Blacka where there has been a chance to develop an alternative approach CPRE has simply fallen in behind the dead self-interested view of management led by Natural England and the landscape managing industry.

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