Heavenly Prospect? - or More Conservation Industry Phoniness?

It's been amazingly difficult to get the conservation industry people to commit themselves to what they expect the  landscape of the Sheffield Moors will look like after they've been managing it for, say,  ten, twenty or however many years. I've asked them on numerous occasions but they are reluctant to say. Is that because they don't really know or, worse, haven't even given it much thought? Neither would surprise me. I once pressed them and was told they were developing something using some talented computer person. But that didn't happen. So is it unreasonable of me to ask when they spend a lot of our money on a consultation in which they claim to be asking people what we think of their plans that they should provide us with some kind of visual response. After all, in a way that's what I've been doing regularly here with photographs when I promote the value of more natural landscapes - and that costs the public nothing at all. But the point is it isn't difficult to show people what you would like the landscape to look like.

Well, from the pages of The Times we can get some idea of what the conservation people would like to claim their management will do for Burbage. That is if you assume Burbage might be comparable in some way to the top of Kinder Scout. Both are pretty bleak and over exploited. The National Trust.has released a mock-up of what they want that landscape to look like.

Looking at the desired result I'm intrigued. I expect Capability Brown would be interested though whether he would approve of a treeless prospect I'm not so sure. Because landscape gardening is what we're talking about here. The first time I challenged Nigel Doar of SWT about their prescriptive approach to Blacka he was desperate to insist that they didn't go in for landscape gardening, even implying a certain contempt for that kind of land management. There we have it again: these people never stop telling themselves and others that they are managing wild landscapes; while at the same time they're planning all sorts of management interventions designed to turn it into a farm.  As if it can be anything remotely comparable to wilderness when its farmed with new stone walled and barbed wire sheep and cattle enclosures. It's as if someone set out to live purely off the land  like primitive man, without any modern comforts while openly acknowledging his tent had a tumble drier and ironing board and fine wine cellar.

The picture of what Kinder Scout might look like under their management is another example of the conservation industry's fairy stories. This landscape should have trees on it. Where are the animals that stop the trees growing? They perversely allow trees down below but not on high. And they choose to portray an idealised vision that cannot represent a true picture. More likely it will be dull brown for most of the year. Bring back Capability Brown; at least that would be honest - we don't pretend his designs are anything less than artificial.