Raw

The keen north west wind and low cloud combination wins few prizes for hospitality. If you have to be in the north west corner of Blacka then get into the woods.



A new management carve up initiative is launched today with a joint vision published by the RSPB and the CLA (Country Landowners Association). This is good news for managers. Diversity is the magic word for those who want to pursue a career in landscape management. From what I've seen this profession conducts its business largely from offices and produces paperwork with occasional ventures outdoors (when it's a nice day) to do surveys. With diversity there's always going to be a new project to plan and a new policy to devise. Lots of lovely deskwork.

Biodiversity in Britain presents a fascinating contradiction: per hectare of land, Britain must have more conservation based university courses and produce more conservation graduates looking for employment opportunities and management jobs than any other country in the world. It is the more weird when you consider we have less 'natural' or 'wild' land and more artificial vegetation than anywhere else. Meanwhile other parts of the globe are losing natural biodiversity at an alarming rate with very few conservationists. So what do all these British potential biodiversity managers do? They should perhaps be engaged in missionary work abroad and doubtless some do. Or do they make for places like Blacka and engage in Blue Peter like habitat creation schemes ? The Sheffield City Ecology Officer, during the Icarus consultation, was insistent that nature must not be allowed to go its own way even in this limited area. We must have as big a variety of habitats as possible, she said. You just want to control and manage everything, I said. She conceded.