Satisfying Everybody?

Yes I do hear people say they like the moors as they are, treeless and monocultural. It's what they're used to seeing and one shouldn't underestimate the shock to the system when preconceptions are challenged and misconceptions exposed. The propaganda has its effect as well. The fact is there are many views and some of them clash. Can they be reconciled?

It can't be done but managers like to try to do it or rather try to look as if they're doing it. It's another part of their role in life and the economy and justifies their salary. Nothing is more managerial than their well-rehearsed pose of patient suffering as they tell you they agree with you but just can't do this or that because of pressure from those who want something different.

The true position is less obvious. They have already decided what they want to do and welcome the confused messages as evidence of the need for them to take a clear path. You can't please everyone so we'll do "what we think is right". And that's the problem - because "what we think is right" usually turns out to be remarkably close to what's in the interests of the managers and their organisation. It is after all what they've already decided on.

There's an interesting take on this in the row about fences on Wimble Holme Hill and the tree cutting on Bole Hill. Some people have said they don't like the fence because it is an eyesore across the moor.So it is but do those people really not see that t he moor itself is an eyesore? `It is an utterly wasted space of over -exploited land, kept like that not because it looks good but because it conforms to a certain landscape type that favours the shooting industry. The scandal of it is not the fence but the addiction to maintaining it as treeless when it's public land where shooting does not happen. The overwhelming responsibility for this is Natural England's, an organisation that is controlled by those who support game shooting and believe that the public must be conned into accepting that its favoured landscapes are somehow precious. That of course is why the shooters and the moor owners choose to live somewhere else which is more attractive - i.e. with a more varied aspect including many trees. They like to visit the monoculture wastelands every so often to play with their guns, wear their tweeds etc. and drive their landrovers but have enough sense to know the moors would bore them if they had to live on them.

Those who like the 'open' moors need to reflect. Are they prepared to take the whole package? That includes sheep and a uniformity of view 11 months of the year. It means persecution of predators and it means fences and burning or cutting. It means killing trees by cutting and/or poisoning. It means management and we should all know by now that the quality of decision making among conservation managers is mostly dire. It means agri environment subsidies paid by our taxes for projects that are overwhelmingly anti-nature. You can't have it both ways except in the propaganda put out by the managers.