Perpetrations at Pirbright

The news about deer being released at the MoD site at Pirbright, Surrey, had a number of odd things about it. It has taken another perceptive article from Mark Fisher on Self Willed Land, to unravel the issues. As Mark says, the decision to use red deer was nothing to do with any conviction that wild animals like these are an essential part of a wilder landscape. More in fact that none of the other options would do. Mark also exposes the phony invocation of wilderness in some of the absurd staements coming from conservationists about this project. Having succeeded in confining the deer inside a barbed-wire-topped fence the army can now happily go back to spraying the range with high tech weapons safe in the knowledge that they won't be killing farm animals. The deer are certainly not free spirits as are those we love to see on Blacka.

Maybe conservationists have a liking for explosives? There was an item on the Today programme recently in which an academic striving to get his name known claimed that Breckland was comparable for biodiversity to Brazil. He went on to say that it wouldn't make any difference if you bombed it! Does something happen to people who work in this area that makes them feel they can say anything because the public are stupid and will believe whatever they say? Maybe they have a point. Talk to a number of people walking in the Peak District and quite a few will tell you they like the heather moors 'cos it's a wilderness!!