Bad Species

The job comes first.

It's vital for the landscape manager to be able to define certain species as undesirable. Most management, certainly around here, comprises aggressively attacking those trees plants and animals whose faces do not fit their agenda, or their 'forward plans'. They get away with it by persuading those who are easily persuadeable that this ugly process is necessary to remove the 'threat' that the undesirables pose. It's one of the purposes of this exercise that people get used to seeing ugliness and accept it unquestioningly. That's when perversion becomes the norm. If the managers succeed, and this why they use marketing techniques to manipulate public perception, a proportion  of the public will accept that what they originally thought was appealing and attractive is actually bad enough to deserve an ugly fate.

The less pliant among us suffer, alongside the wildlife, for the acquiescence of the others.

So here are a few of these bad species that are sacrificed for the salaries of the professionals. Birch, Bracken and Beech could be a firm of less than scrupulous lawyers retained by the conservation mafia. They're actually some of the  targets of those who attack natural forces.

A large area of land untouched by humans for many years has now had to suffer the indignity of weedkiller spray ostensibly to clear bracken. What has happened is that tracks have appeared where the tractor's been driven. There has been no overall spraying, just in the vicinity of the tracks leaving the appearance of a road across the vegetation.

It fits in nicely with the barbed wire and piles of felled timber. So much for the natural. But it provides employment for those presumably in need of it. The natural control of bracken by allowing birch and other trees to shade it out and lessen its impact is ruled out. Birch after all is another target bad species, so it gets felled. That makes more work for the sprayer and for the industry that manufactures spraying equipment, the wholesaler, the retailer, the distributer, the packaging facility, the fuel supplier for the diesel etc. We can't have nature doing things its own way. It's bad for the economy.

Much the same can be said about the plans for sycamore and beech. Justifications are given for the removal of these trees almost always laden with half truths and distorted pictures. Sycamore is non native, we're told. Yet it  has been around for the last 500 years and was present in inter glacial periods.

Some fine specimens can be easily found and play host to lichens fungi and others - much more so than barbed wire. But think of the workers who use, maintain, repair and manufacture chain-saws, the industrialists whose factories depend on them etc. Think of the economy.

Beech does not allow much to grow beneath it we are told. They do not tend to reply to the argument that it keeps the undesirable bracken at bay. Nor does it seem appropriate to mention the fungi associated with it ......

........ including  Ceps, Russulas, the Tawny Grisette and Beech Sickener. Nor mention in this context the calculated management of the sheep pasture land to stop things growing in the grass - the latest justification of which is the wellbeing of certain mushrooms. At what point does this speciesism tip over into the unacceptable alongside ethnic cleansing?

Now we should remember the threats proposed to the manufactures and retailers of weapons. Those people who use guns must be supplied with ammunition and the correct clothing and assorted gear. Without the shooters what on earth would be the value to the economy of this useless item .......