Power Tool Madness.

It's hard to say what's more likely to send us into despair. Everywhere we walk up here we come across more evidence of the chain saw culture of SWT. Not content with the many previous ill judged interventions in this delightful landscape they have sent out a power tool addicted individual to cut mature trees. The dead timber is then piled up and left. I have no hope they will dispose of the wood. Their usual practice is to leave it in a a heap. It's easy to cut trees down but a nuisance and hard work to clear up the remains. So they invent a spurious reason for leaving it. Usually it goes something like this: small creatures can shelter in the woodpiles. As if small creatures previously had nowhere to go. In a genuinely wild landscape they find plenty of potential refuges.

We pointed out the clear grassy ground under these birches, one of the few places free from bracken. Now they've cut the birch and two to three years hence it'll be covered with bracken. The problem is that when you point all this out to them it's hard to adopt a suitable tone. You feel you're being rotten to children and taking away their toys, or like criticising a class of thirteen year olds who've been allowed to choose a project of their own on a quiet Friday afternoon. Responsibility doesn't seem to be part of their world.

At the Icarus consultation it was made clear that local people want the place to be managed with minimum of intervention. And part of this is to be able to walk about it as we always have, free from constant reminders of men meddling with nature. SWT seem bent on putting up two fingers to this perfectly reasonable wish.