A Manager's Story

The path from Lenny Hill west towards the Hollow, the terrace overlooking Blacka Dyke to the north, is at its best just now. Its extravagant shrubs to either side the path as it meanders between birch and rowan illustrate just what wilder nature can do for us in gladdening the eye and refreshing the soul. It is the lifting of the repression of grazing and livestock farming that releases this delight from the shackles of many years management as grouse moor and delivers the most satisfying of landscapes for miles around. Where else can you say that you are in a place where the natural world is fighting back from malign exploitation? Here the heather has grown tall alongside the bilberry and crowberry whose berries complement the vivid red of the rowans and the green of now declining bracken.

Nobody who has not convinced himself that 'everything must be managed' (that mantra of the wildlife trusts) could fail to be enchanted.

But truth itself is under attack when self interest is identified. After years of putting up with a desultory website SWT has appointed a Communications Manager partly (I have been told) to tell a quite different story to that you will read on this blog. There's no doubt they are touchy and have been told to 'get the message out'. As managers they need to tell people that managing is good for places, while I tell them that places wild and unmanaged are just what we all need and what brings surprise and delight. So the story they have only now got round to telling (or fabricating?) on their website is that all of this has always been managed and it is only as good as it is because of, guess who?, ...Managers! Who would have believed it? Do those nice old ladies who cough up a subscription when SWT knock on doors in suburban streets know how their money is being spent - on putting together this kind of fable (as one reader of this blog commented, it's Ministry of Truth stuff). So while I come here to get away from managers they try to claim that it's only because of managers like them and their boring cattle and sheep that this exists at all.

If they repeat this often enough they may start to believe it.