Cattle, Sheep and Deer

Sheep and cattle have not been on Blacka Moor for more than two months now. This time has been so welcome and such a refreshing change from SWT's dogmatic and obsessive farming regime that I feel almost well disposed towards them. Unfortunately the message seems to be that this is not intentional but instead due to the grazier having problems. According to the manager soon the cattle will be back on the central section and I assume sheep will be back in the pasture as well. I have always opposed using this very special wild and romantic naturalising site for livestock farming. To me it dimishes its appeal in so many ways. Here was a rare opportunity to allow a piece of land to do what nature decided, come what may. And come they did: the deer grazing in a way this land was grazed hundreds of years ago with wild animals, free spirits. Again one has to say, what an opportunity - one that would just have to be grasped by anyone with a tiny measure of imagination and sense of a place, and of a landscape and of the unimpeded interraction between wild nature and the land. Deer have returned to Blacka, red deer, our largest native mammal; and day after day they are doing the job that SWT kept telling us had to be done to halt the growth of woodland which they and their target-fixated masters at Natural England said must be stopped at all costs. The deer are here all night and are frequently seen in the morning intensely grazing the land and doing so in a totally unintrusive way. They are beautiful animals and light-footed causing scarcely any impact on paths unlike the cattle. The sight of them is heart warming and of great appeal to visitors. I have seen some mornings as many as 21 deer and regularly 10 and more. This morning there were 13, close together although the smaller group of hinds kept partly separate from the stags. It surely must be acknowledged (by anyone who is not trying to prove a theory that they unwisely adopted years ago) that this is the way forward. But even now from talking with SWT I get the impression that they are preparing to turn the most outrageous mental and bureaucratic somersaults to find ways of justifying a continuation of cattle grazing. This is desperate stuff.
Why? Only one reason suggests itself: They have staked so much, both in public money and in reputational capital on this in the face of opposition - an opposition that they have an institutional tendency to discredit- that they just can't bear to climb down.