More of the Same

It's a sad reflection on the lack of ambition and failure of imagination within the land management industries that the management plan from the Eastern Moors Partnership will be built on farming and the role of farmers rather than a genuinely new approach that allows the land to express itself. Even in saying this the danger is in understating the calamity this is for landscape, and the failure to grasp opportunities that do not crop up often in a lifetime. On Blacka that opportunity came in 1933 and it was taken by nobody consciously; the opportunity was grasped by nature itself which created a wilder and more natural feel to an area that had been utterly repressed and shackled by the exploitation of farmers and gamekeepers. And the result should be an inspiration to those who can influence the course taken by neighbouring moors. But sadly you cannot make those see who wish to remain blind.

It was farmers to the fore at the workshop organised by the Partnership and the PDNPA following up from the five 'consultation sessions'. The farmers and their wives were not to be outnumbered by any other group or combination. Some of us had accepted meekly the polite request that

"due to the limited spaces, organisations limit the number of representatives attending to a maximum of two people."

Of the five groups our group discussion contained at least four farmers (for some reason they were not keen to wear the tags identifying themselves) and altogether there were probably at least ten - the estimate of one farmer; it was not easy for others to judge. These were graziers who live at some distance from the moors but provide animals to repress the landscape in case it decides to go its own way and produce trees. Of course the interests of the RSPB managers will not coincide exactly with that of the graziers but my impression is that there will be little difference between them. This will anyway be down to the way that farm subsidies are now calculated and the way that NE hands down its requirements on tablets of stone.

Perhaps the lesson of Blacka is that revolutions happen only by accident when management is asleep or ignorant or otherwise occupied. That's certainly happened here this year when lengthy periods of no implementation of grazing management improved the place in many ways.