Poor Prospects

These are poor times for the wild animals that have made their homes in our public land. Red deer are being targeted by farmers and other landowners on the fringes of the national park and by the Sheffield Moors Partnership and their stakeholders within. This fellow, seen on a gloomy morning towards the end of British Summer Time has been spotted on his own several times recently; and there's no clear evidence yet whether other deer are still around. But we should be seeing more of them.

What has happened to the three or four roe deer that were here in Spring? It's beyond belief that they get away with attacking these animals but they do. Is it that Sheffield people have absolutely no spirit at all? That they leave it to other people to make a protest? It's sometimes seemed so in other fields. The managers themselves do their bit of course. They've managed to establish in the public mind that deer are unwelcome, an agenda they've picked up from the equally self-serving farming industry. The truth is that there are nowhere enough deer in the Sheffield Moors area. No parallel at all can be drawn from places like the Scottish Highlands where artificiallly high numbers of deer are maintained by the shooting estates. Here we need more of them. Killing them here is shameful.