Any doubts as to the future management intentions of Sheffield Wildlife Trust will have been dispelled by observing this week’s RAG meeting. They wish to have no proper discussion between FoBM and other non SWT users of Blacka about the fundamental strategy. They wish to continue doing just what they have been up to so far. If anyone had hopes that we would see a turning back from farm management with farm livestock and an emphasis on a more natural landscape they will be sorely disappointed. The scepticism of FoBM will be confirmed but not with any sense of satisfaction.
2006’s Icarus outcome had appeared to be that SWT would manage with cattle grazing for 5 years with the clear assumption that the alternative would happen afterwards. Now SWT has abandoned its original assurance that a consultation would happen on what comes next. They now claim that Sheffield Moors Partnership are to produce a Master Plan and that it would be no use SWT consulting until that’s agreed. This means that alongside their own private negotiations with NE over Higher Level agri environment grants, input from local people will be emasculated. At the RAG this week the advisory role of the Reserve Advisory Group was interpreted as “We SWT will advise you what we are going to do on a strictly timed agenda. There may be time for the odd question” Discussion was strictly ruled out even to the extent of going down the post-it note route to avoid unwelcome debate and scrutiny. There you have a new definition of an Advisory Group. While most people would have no doubts that an advisory group would have a role in advising an organisation, SWT intend words and phrases to mean what they want. The advisory group here is a group of people brought together so that managers can have an opportunity to advise some of the public as to what they intend to do.
So many surprises.
2 comments:
This sounds like a sad development, given the openness of your previous discussions with SWT and the possibility that anyone could attend meetings and express their views. I'm not that surprised, though, if what you say is true. After all, it is a rare organization that will voluntarily encourage comment and criticism from someone who is as openly hostile to them as you are.
Aside from the cow and sheep dung, the fence, the shrinkage of a few patches of bracken and the felling of a few trees, what else has changed at Blacka Moor since the Wildlife Trust has been running it?
What is the story here? The misconduct of an organisation or the opposition of those who expose it to public scrutiny? You have to make your mind up. But I detect a reluctance to align yourself with the criticism. A recent report on whistleblowing noted the trepidation of the majority leading to a culture of ‘see no evil’ and those who speak out being damned as ‘negative’. All part of the calculations of the manipulators.
Given what we have seen before with SWT this latest ploy is unsurprising. Since you ask, it was obvious from an early stage that they were not a listening organisation even when they were busy trying to pass themselves off as such. The RAG meetings were held and were open to the public but only after we insisted a) they were held at a time that the public could attend and b) after we insisted that the public were actually told about them. They wrote minutes of their meetings but added items that had not been discussed. They omitted items that reflected badly on themselves. They used their meetings to inform people about the work they were to do but carefully neglected to tell about the most controversial things, e.g. barbed wire and the mass poisoning of a huge number of trees which were then left standing in the hope (astonishingly) that nobody would remark upon it! The 2006 consultation was only agreed to by them reluctantly after considerable pressure brought on by a very well supported petition carried out on site and the fear of the bad publicity which could have impacted on funding. Even then they tried to arrange with the supposedly independent facilitator that certain things (the most controversial) would not be discussed at the consultation.
But chiefly they show their disrespect for wild nature by valuing the land more for its agricultural and management potential rather than its natural integrity. Bringing farm animals onto land to be part of a policy of top-down control of vegetation means more than them turning plants and flowers into the brown stuff that comes out the other end and covers the pathways. It is about a fundamental dislike of natural processes. It is farming and gardening land, weeding, pruning, spraying and burning and then going on to affront truth itself by calling it wild! SWT have tried to implement a moribund national policy of conservation by intervention so clumsily that they’ve managed to bring its ridiculousness into high focus. Why would you want to cut or poison trees on a nature reserve or set a herd of sheep to stop flowers blooming?
Think about it and its nonsense becomes apparent.
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