Ring Out!

Let's celebrate the good fortune that has given us a lengthy stretch of non-management. The mess that SWT has got itself into over grazing on Blacka Moor has given us a welcome taste of wilder land, that which has gone its own way, distressing to those who wish to prove our countryside is the better for being managed but heart warming for those of us who know it's much improved for going without.

No it's not intentional. SWT want to have all those intrusive and messy farm animals eating voraciously all those delightful wild flowers and then defecating all over every space you thought might be the spot to sit down in. But their farmer friend has gone AWOL and taken his smelly animals with him.

The result is the kind of visual treat I've always enjoyed - nature taking over. Just a minute, isn't that what naturalists and conservationists and wildlife course graduates are supposed to like? But no, we're in the age of biodiversity tick boxing when 'subjective' things like beauty and anything defined by value rather than numbers is strictly out of court.

Up on the top of Thistle Hill, the heights of the historic pasture land the absence of the farm live stock has enabled a spread of harebells, clover, spear thistle and yarrow to thrive across a huge area of the grassy slopes. Let's be clear: these things would not be here if sheep and cattle had been grazing.

I can hear them now the apologists for conservation grazing telling us that it's only because of the manure previously left by the cows and sheep that it is now as we see it and, even more insidiously, that if they don't bring the livestock back the whole ecology will collapse in some kind of doomsday scenario. Such soothsayers can stay in their offices and chew their pencils while those of us who actually walk in and use the countryside ring the bells for wilder land.