Priorities

To Sheffield Wildlife Trust Blacka is valuable as a farm site. Their interest in wildlife is marginal if it exists at all. When have we ever seen them out here actively protecting wildlife? * Hence their determination to remove much of the manifestation of wilder vegetation and adapt it to be useful to farm livestock.

Twice this year they've been out with cutting machinery adapting areas of land to be suitable cattle pasturage. It's quite likely they will be grazing cattle at different times of year to the summer months they've tried before - probably winter. That is one explanation for the ecological warfare they are waging on the moor, attacking the natural regrowth of vegetation that had been restoring the land from the exploitation previously endured. Their dogma is a simple one - that all of the country should be farmed. They dress up their plans in sophistic justifications relating to bracken clearance and bilberry protection but actual reasons are never declared: the dogma of farmed landscapes and the temptations of farm subsidies.

If they were really troubled by invasive species, instead of attacking birch and bracken, which are both native species they would have been dealing with the alien invader Himalayan Balsam which has been spreading in recent years and which they have ignored - assuming they have registered that it's here at all. (I did tell them)

* And how many times when they are on site are they promoting farming and livestock?