Bash Ho!

Of the many sins and failings of the wildlife trusts, one that rankles more than most is that they have striven to make it seem acceptable to 'bash' wildlife. Tomorrow on Blacka Moor SWT's Department of Community Engagement (or something) is hoping to gather a party of volunteers together to do some 'birch bashing' and its attendant activity 'coppicing', bashing by an only slightly less offensive term.

"....if you particularly enjoyed the birch bashing, then the next Blacka Moor Community Work Day will be right up your alley, as we're once again coppicing on Bolehill!"

Well, yippee!

One of the aims of those who plan and manage these activities is to present it so as to seem quite a normal sort of thing to do. The hope is that nobody will take a step back to the time when they first heard the term and instinctively reacted against it - a wholly correct reaction in my view. And a primary aim of the exercise is to reinforce a view that nature cannot be trusted and is only tolerable when rigorously controlled like a delinquent child.

I've sometimes wondered if there was also a psychological element in the mix of motives. Is this an activity designed to appeal to the meek among us who in normal social interactions are largely acquiescent but secretly long to assert themselves over those living things that do not and cannot fight back?

But birch is a fascinating tree with immense landscape value in itself and in combination with others. It is never the same twice, being capable of bending and twisting in an infinite variety of sculptural forms. Those who see it as a weed tree would doubtless think the same of all trees that have occupied the near sterile grouse moor that Blacka once was.