http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/floods
It's as if we hadn't seen their management of Blacka Moor allowing cattle to send peat into upland streams, their persecution of birch and bracken, their failure to even discuss the restoration of large areas of the landscape.
Now turn to a wise and balanced article by Mark Fisher on floods densely packed with information about the way this topic has been considered over recent years, good advice rejected and opportunities lost. This piece like all from this source needs careful and concentrated reading; it makes no concessions to the management of public perception (aka 'spin').
One brief quote for now:
On a wider point, I fear the conservation industry has made a cross for itself (and us) to bear in its fetishising of species and habitats in degraded landscapes, such that large areas of the uplands that are Special Protection Areas for wading birds will preclude any loss of open-ness through woodland planting. More proof, if needed, of how the conservation industry has blighted any real debate about our uplands. But it is not just the uplands – the opportunity mapping for woodland in the fluvial floodplain of the Parret River catchment was severely constrained by the presence of a large chunk of the Somerset Levels and Moors SPA and the North Moor SSSI, open wetland sites designated for breeding waders and wintering Bewick swan (26,27). While you would think that the New Forest would be predominantly woodland, over half of it is an open landscape of predominantly heathland (34%) followed by grassland (10%) and wetland (10%) (18). The designation of the New Forest SPA for heathland birds, such as Nightjar, woodlark and Dartford warbler, as well as the presence of waders in the wetland areas (28) will ensure a restriction on woodland expansion there too.
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