Down on the Farm: Up on the Hills

So what is farm land and where does it stop?

And following from that where do wild animals go when farming takes over most of the countryside? Who decides which wild animals are compatible with farming and how much say does the public have in the process?

One might think that it’s the badger cull issue that is behind these questions. But they are just a few of the questions that arise from the ongoing Blacka Moor grazing saga. And to give fair acknowledgement there were well qualified people asking similar questions very eloquently before this blog was started and before I began this journey stumbling inarticulately towards the present position of bemused incredulity.

It now surprises me to reflect on just how naïve I’ve been. Inevitably there’s been disdain from the professionals considering the lack of knowledge of someone daring to comment on an area in which he’s totally unqualified. But then what use is qualification if you flounder by the most elementary criteria and have to resort to blustering through ‘insider talk’?

Much of last year and the first half of this deer were often to be seen in the early hours grazing the slopes to the south east of the Cowsick Bog.




They were seen elsewhere as well but they had a special fondness for this spot in the hour or so around sunrise. Before SWT brought cattle here this had never been considered as farm land. Once the cattle came (subsidised by farm grants) they replaced the deer and quickly assumed occupation of the same spot. Out of the 154 hectares of the enclosure the cows spent a disproportionate amount of it in just the same spot that the deer had favoured. Again they were there today.



The deer themselves promptly moved on, they were less frequently seen, numbers were smaller and they were well away from the cattle and their own previous favoured spot. So where had the deer gone? One possible answer to that question comes from an observation this morning. The photo is of cultivated farm land to the east of Blacka and much lower down.




The irony of this is hard to escape. With the help of tax funded grants farm cattle are brought onto the non-agricultural hills previously grazed by wild animals - and the wild animals then take themselves off to the farmland down below. Any further comment seems superfluous.