So far no sign of extra cattle on Blacka. The six cows remain in the grassy pastures but the word passed round recently that nine more were to come has not been confirmed. That message claimed the fifteen would then be released onto the moor, obviously a daft idea but when has that prevented a decision being made? Local people are almost certainly unaware that there is a strong possibility of more cattle than that in future. Nigel has indicated as much in a recent report to the council. The farmification and consequent compromising the essential atmosphere of the site will not trouble him as he rarely, if ever, visits Blacka. He did not respond to my recent request even though I graciously allowed him to post his comment in reply to my post last week - without editing, tempting though it was.
As I was saying, there is no evidence that SWT as an institution has any reservation at all about farmification. In fact all the signs point the other way. The significance of my pointing out their failures to mention deer in their published guide and various other articles and paperwork relates to the way they see the site. To them it is primarily a managed site. The emphasis is important - not even so much a wildlife site that needs some management, but a site for which management is the essential characteristic. The distinction is vital. Managed sites like this are places, in SWT's view, where the natural features and the wildlife must be controlled and kept in their place. And farming is the industry which does this alongside their only slightly modified conservation aims. Wilding is tantamount to a threat. All of those naturalising tendencies that this blog has tried to celebrate in recent years run counter to SWT's objectives which are not far removed from a kind of gardening in which the forks and spades are replaced by cows and sheep*. Nigel's words claiming the emphasis on cattle are 'only this' or the lack of mention of deer are 'only that' are just not believable. The production of literature that is meant to inspire people about the place, failing to mention even just one word in passing about deer or other mammals and underlining over and again the importance of grazing and farm livestock - well that 's either utterly incompetent or cynically disingenuous. Because what really inspires the locals who visit is wildness in the form of the wild mammals and the unmanaged sections of landscape that they seem most at home in, not the cow-pat factories on legs that need barbed wire and plastic feed and lick buckets and which wreck the paths.
The truth is that there is a vision of the place that they have wished to implant in the minds of the reader which goes like this - that the English countryside is as nothing without management. Always emphasising farming and the uses in the past of woodland for coppicing and various other ways in which parts of the countryside were exploited while never talking about those other places and times when and where such intervention was minimal or absent, has been an underlying theme, and its promotion has been calculated. They almost certainly call it 'education'. Unsurprisingly I call it propaganda.
Some years ago an article in the Sheffield Telegraph drew attention to my personal sadness that this land was to be turned into farmland and my wish for it to be left alone. A letter came in the paper's next edition from an ecologist who supported the wildlife trust pointing out my ignorance and commenting on the inevitability that the land would become dense woodland if I had my way. Did I not realise that in the distant past the land was 'managed' by deer who maintained a balance between trees and open areas? He had not even bothered to find out that deer were an important factor on Blacka having returned some years before! A Natural England officer commented that Blacka is nothing without conservation - presumably meaning farm management. Our minds tried to grasp the vision of a kind of vacuum, or the universe before the Big Bang - nothing!?
Nigel's missive bewails my failure to 'recognise the common ground between us'. Well frankly on these subjects I'm afraid there is very little. Is it necessary to say we are both repelled by cruelty and barbarity? But on his area of professional interest I have less common ground with him than with my postman (he agrees with me on Blacka Moor). Sheffield Wildlife Trust's foot soldiers may be another matter, but I guess they are expected to stick to the party line.
To summarise, institutionally Sheffield Wildlife Trust sees its job and its future as managing. It's entirely consistent with this that they highlight all evidence they can find to justify that choice, and ignore or dismiss or are indifferent to anything that tells an alternative story. There is little room in that for the complexity and untidiness of real situations. Our view is that what matters is what is not managed. SWT have considerable resources to put across their story and serve their own interests. I wonder why he should worry so much about us and this blog? I suppose it could be that he fears we are right?
* plus of course the chain saw and not forgetting the weedkiller!
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