Conservation Tangles

How pleasant it must be for those who come across a tree and say, as Winnie the Pooh or Mr Bean might, "How nice to see a tree". The manager, in conservation and landscape, doesn't have the luxury of such innocence. He has to navigate around the tangled strands, complex analysis and mixed messages of management plans and warped vision statements. And among those messages is one that's increasingly intolerant of trees in 'the wrong place' challenging the purity of their vision - a vision in which diversity and biodiversity struggle to reach a comprehensible accord.

Just one or two of these tangles came to mind on this morning's walk. All started well and straightforward when meeting the newly emerging flowers of Rowan, that amazingly successful species which outperforms even birch and produces stunning floral displays as well. So "How nice to see this tree" was appropriate.

But the managers have some decisions to make nearby, not referred to even in their hundreds of pages of plan documents. When the Ramblers planted some memorial trees on the moors in the seventies they chose several non-native species including one that is similar to Rowan but with clear differences. There are signs this is spreading into other parts. In the picture below it's poking over the top of a native rowan on the north side of Blacka Dyke.

Another tree planted here was Whitebeam, again not referred to in SRWT's plans. That can be seen spreading into areas where it was previously absent. In this picture it, too, is poking above a Rowan.

It's also visible on the other side of the gorge.

The Red Oak, if that's what it is, lives up to its name when leaves first show.

One or two of these seem further off than the initial planting so one wonders if these were planted more widely. References suggest that acorns are not produced until the trees are some forty years old and I've not yet found small seedlings.

Striking though the red is I much prefer the colouring on this beautiful young native oak.

So what does the increasingly interventionist and species-conscious conservation industry plan to do with the aliens? We know they are getting more ruthless in wiping out those species they don't like or which don't fit their character assessments and habitat criteria for each zone. Witness the removal of mature Scots Pine from the open areas. Shouldn't we be told about this? Or will this be discussed in the dark rooms where their secret conservation group meets?

Then again, this avenue of sycamores was planted obviously as a roadside border. It's therefore both a recreational and a conservation issue. Yet they will decide to remove them on conservation grounds alone.

Adding to their own tangles are the cows presently grazing on the inby land in precisely the spot where I found orchids in a previous year. For them this is easily resolved by answering the question "which brings in funds - orchids or cows?"