Surviving Management

The number of unimaginable cockups committed by our anti-nature, desk-occupying conservation officials continues to escalate. To go through them all would risk bringing on serious depression and threaten our normal sanguine temperament pitching us into pessimism and negativity. But as Becket had it "You must go, on, I can't go on, I'll go on"

Of all the disasters resulting from Sheffield's handing over the management of Blacka to SRWT nothing beats its approach to the 85 acre treeless grassy sheep enclosure. Why sheep in the first place one might well ask? After all there's little disagreement (apart from within the self-interested farming industry) that sheep destroy nature - it's in their nature to do so.

Along with the spineless (un)Natural England they have gone through more mental contortions to justify disfiguring this land than the number of superfluous executive officers in SCC.

Such beauty as exists in this desolate space is testament to the resilience of nature and its capacity to fight human insistence on exploiting the land (Natural Capital anyone?).

One takes a deep breath before venturing onto the sheep-managed wasteland. Through the gates and trying to ignore the management notices. Trying also to rein in indignation at the amount of tax-payers' money that has gone into the construction of the barbed-wire topped stone wall (about £40k) to keep the woolly plague in. You make your way so carefully over the deep farm vehicle wheel ruts, through the turd-tonnage and up the severely compacted track made by the management  vehicles and look around with little confidence for fungi. Yes, this year there is one, just one, example of the Ballerina Waxcap mushroom resourcefully fruiting a few inches away from the vehicle tracks. It's doubtful that one in a hundred visitors would persist as we did to find this pretty example. I've never seen more than one in any year.

Is the effort and the journey through desolation and defecation worth it? I also looked for the red waxcaps seen in previous years. There were only a few, but kicked over and crapped over.

We must remember that these few mushrooms occupied perhaps two square metres of the sheep infested land. Overall the land is some 85 acres. They claim that sheep crap is vital for the existence of the fungi. I don't believe it. Any unmanaged grassland where the grass is kept fairly short produces a good variety of fungi including waxcaps including my own lawn, and they're a good deal more attractive than Blacka's grassland.