Anti-Nature and Anti-Democratic = Sheffield Wildlife Trust

..... about sums them up.  The Sheffield Wildlife Trust management of Blacka Moor is now tied to a Higher Level Stewardship agreement that continues their policy of treating the land as farmland. This is on public land with no discussion with the public in a national park which is already dominated by farmland and where there was an opportunity for a genuinely natural landscape to emerge: that represents a gross failure of imagination and lack of ambition for a charity that claims to put wildlife first. It is also cynically anti- democratic: Several years ago, in 2006, when the previous management policies were decided on, against the wishes of many regular users, they contrived to leave us with an understanding that the previous policy was to be subject to  public examination and evaluation after a period of 5 years. That commitment has been swept aside by people who have no interest in the site apart from the job it gives them because they simply do not want to subject their policy to any degree of public scrutiny. They hate being put on the spot to defend their self interested decision making because they know their own guilt like children caught sticky fingered from the sweetie jar.To call this shameful is to be more polite than any of the local conservation managers deserve; because something similar is happening across all the local tree starved environments of the Sheffield Moors. Elsewhere this has been called immoral and corrupt and it's hard to disagree. But the deepest guilt should be with those who should be holding these people to account. Politicians locally and nationally are just not up to the job of scrutinising the behaviour of managers in the conservation industry; they are either too gullible or afraid to ask obvious questions because they believe nodding gormlessly makes them appear well informed.

Why is this 'anti-democratic' rather than 'undemocratic'? For the reason that these conservation managers try to deliberately to deceive large sections of the public by claiming that a bona fide consultation has been held. Yet they never engage in meaningful discussions at all. In some cases they make deliberately false and misleading statements. In other words they claim to be democratic while being anything but. To me that is anti-democratic.  It has to be said that anyone taken in by this deception must be easily fooled or reluctant to speak out because they themselves have been engaging in a similar game in another field. There's no argument in their book to beat "they're/we're all at it "; the ultimate corrosion. It follows therefore that those in the conservation industry are not the only holders of public money and public office who are guilty of these tricks; it is getting increasingly common throughout public bodies who play on the gullibility and apathy of the majority. Why do they do this? Our local and national politicians and the national and local media who should be holding these appalling people to account have been silent and uncritical on this scandal seduced by a constant stream of wildlife charities' press releases and media management which the politicians swallow gruel on a baby's spoon.

Now at last this year there has emerged the beginning of a debate we've waited for far too long. This is a quote from the latest contribution in a national newspaper.

"So why does Britain lag so far behind the rest of the world? Why do our conservation groups appear to be so lacking in ambition and aspiration? ......................................................................................I cannot emphasise this strongly enough: the entire basis of upland conservation, as pursued on most of the upland reserves owned or managed by the Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB, the National Trust, Natural England, Natural Resources Wales, Scottish Natural Heritage and other bodies, is based on a misconception: that in keeping them open and largely devoid of trees, they are best protecting wildlife. This belief, which is largely unexamined by the groups that propound it, is diametrically wrong. It explains why many upland reserves are about as biodiverse and ecologically inspiring as the average car park.

(For more on British conservationists' obsession with keeping habitats open, see the devastating set of slides compiled by Mark Fisher. Some of the policies he has unearthed are so strange you hardly know whether to laugh or cry.).

Our conservation groups are obsessed with the vegetation that results from repeated deforestation: primarily heather moorland. Heather thrives on burnt ground and depleted soils. Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB, the National Trust and Natural England all advocate "cutting and burning" to maintain these ecological disaster zones and prevent the restoration of the cleared forests. Need I point out that a conservation movement which believes that cutting and burning is the best means of protecting the natural world, is one that finds itself in a very strange place?"

George Monbiot,   The Guardian

So Sheffield Wildlife Trust in common with the other conservation and wildlife charities is not simply being timid and lacking real commitment to making more nature happen. It is guilty of that, prioritising farming management practice where there is a wonderful opportunity to develop a wildlife friendly self managing landscape with little intervention. But it is worse than that because it does not consult: this year there has been no attempt to engage people in discussion even in their unsatisfactory RAG meetings; none have been held. And yet to read their website, their documents and publications and reports presented to council and other bodies you would receive the message that consulting is just what they do. And this, it has to be repeated, is on public land. They are anti-democratic.