Too Deer a Cost

The final one of the series of consultation meetings about the Eastern Moors (and Sheffield Moors) was on Tuesday. Again it was in Totley and again it seems difficult to understand why no effort had been made to attract interest from the local people, there having been no posters displayed in the neighbourhood. I have mentioned this several times and the organisers know my view but I think there is something wider than simply about this consultation. It is endemic among most officers and managers of publicly funded and supposedly publicly accountable bodies. And it's something our elected members, councillors and M.P.s, feel no urgency about addressing - at the same time as they are telling us that the people should be 'put in the driving seat'. Those words are from the title of Sheffield's Community Involvement Strategy, a 46 page document rather too full of vaguely aspirational prose and large glossy photos of jolly people, altogether amounting to 2.25 Mb and accessible from this page.
The point here is that 'stakeholders' are identified to be consulted and the way that the selection is made is rarely transparent. Similarly this particular consultation had 150 posters printed but who from the general public saw one while stakeholders probably saw them and received other forms of notification. The good communication of this sort of information is not something that should be left to office juniors but I'm sure it often is. An example of how this matters came from the last meeting. Local people are very fond of the deer that roam this area and love to see genuine large native mammals in our countryside. The Tuesday meeting's attendance list contained a high proportion of farmers who of course understandably were stakeholders. Several of them mentioned that they wanted to see a cull of the red deer claiming among other things that they were a danger on the roads. This would not go down well with many non farming local people but they were not there to express a view nor had they been there at other meetings. It was incidentally quite deplorable (!)and disreputable for one person to react by proposing that if any cull went ahead there should also be a cull of sheep as they are often on the roads too. This person actually went on to suggest that there might be a cull of sheep farmers. Outrageous. Quite irresponsible talk, and the man should have been thrown out. Tut Tut!
Some may think that proposing the killing of deer comes easily from farmers who after all earn their living from the killing of animals. But in truth I believe that many farmers like the deer and themselves would be disappointed if they were not there. Anyway many farmers today earn a fair proportion of their income from holiday lettings and know that those they wish to attract also have a view. The badger cull proposal for Wales did not have universal support from farmers for similar reasons. Some holiday cottages had cancellations because people were afraid that the week they were there might be just when the thing happened.
I suspect that one reason that this was raised was to put the authorities on the spot, something of a sport with groups of farmers and not just farmers. Anecdotes are another weapon in the war against 'them'. Country folk can say what they like about things they've seen or say they've seen, with little fear of contradiction especially if it supports their point of view. And whatever statistics the conservation managers quote can be scoffed at by those closer to the ground who spend less time at desks and more outside. Though I've noticed that they are very sceptical about other people's anecdotes indicating they know how easy it is to exaggerate

For what it's worth my suggestion concerning deer and traffic is that it's not the deer that need to be managed but the people who use the roads. If that means culling motorists it might work but better would be to lower speed limits and cull their licences if they won't amend their behaviour.