Dinosaurs

Sheffield and the Peak District still has its dinosaurs. The various landowners and their servants over the centuries may have killed off nearly all of the distinctive mammals that should be roaming this land but if you know where to look you may find evidence of prehistoric activity still going on not far from Blacka.

Try here first. It's where you will find links to the minutes of the Local Access Forum for Sheffield. Resistance to change in particular natural change, and refusal to accept new ways of looking at our landscape are easily found here. These are people whose names can be seen at the top of the minutes. Most of them have swallowed wholesale the propaganda from the conservation/moorland landowners/grouse shooters who love 'open landscapes' because they give jobs to managers and privilege ground nesting birds that shooters like to shoot.

This from the item on Wadsley and Loxley Common. As a forum restricted to access these dinosaurs have no remit to comment on conservation matters. Nevertheless they do and the public servants who should know better exceed their remit by recording their ill-informed comments

TB stated that there was a misunderstanding that neither the community or local councillors have been consulted and that SCC were going to face the same problems it has in Blackamoor. He stated that the Common is a very rare lowland heathland and the council is required by NE to protect it. TH said cattle are the best way to manage this area, it is the best way forward and RO seconded it. RK said with no management this area would resort back to woodland. The advantage of the grazing scheme means that fencing would be paid for by grants available whilst manual works could not be funded.**

One has to have compassion and understanding and it's clear these people have no sense of perspective, never having thought about the wider implications. But they have no authority to talk about 'rare lowland heathland' a concept that is totally phony anyway, invented as it was to give grouse shooters a chance to justify their anti-wildlife practices.

You have to understand too that some people spent many years of their lives believing that the moors were a natural landscape and it's hard to change your mindset once you're beyond retirement age. And these members of the Sheffield Local Access Forum have been around for a long time and are self- satisfied enough to believe they don't need to reconsider their views. Just as previous generations doffed their caps and tugged their forelocks to the gentry these dinosaurs kowtow to the spurious authority of landowners and Natural England dominated by the same landowners. 

Oh for just a dash of intelligent scepticism.

** It should also be noted that this Local Access Forum is about access and has absolutely no authority to make declarations about the management of land outside this specific area.