Managing for Money

In yesterday’s Guardian once more the issue of farm subsidies is raised, making the point I’ve often made about wildlife charities and their reliance on handouts from these subsidies that keep them tied in to managing our landscapes as boring farm land.

Among the top blaggers are some voluntary bodies. The RSPB gets £4.8m, the National Trust £8m, the various wildlife trusts a total of £8.5m. I don't have a problem with these bodies receiving public money. I do have a problem with their receipt of public money through a channel as undemocratic and unaccountable as this. I have an even bigger problem with their use of money with these strings attached. For the past year, while researching my book about rewilding, I've been puzzling over why these bodies fetishise degraded farmland ecosystems and are so reluctant to allow their estates to revert to nature. Now it seems obvious. To receive these subsidies, you must farm the land.

Let’s hope this may at last be getting more of a national airing. If that happens it had better come before the Sheffield Moors Partnership gets such a stranglehold on all our local moorland that it will be another 20 years before we are able to discuss the issues again.