Friday 16 December 2016

Do We Need a New Protected Areas Designation?

Many ordinary folk are familar with SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) and some have heard of SAC (Special Area of Conservation) and even SPA (Special Protected Area). All these are administered and supposedly monitored by Natural England and DEFRA in the most opaque and bureaucratic, and I'm sure inefficient manner. A full list of all these ca be found here.

 I'm suggesting we need another one, namely SAD (Special Area of Devastation). This will be an overlapping designation. In other words it will be limited to areas that are allegedly protected such as SSSIs and SACs but are actually a total wreck either because they have been badly managed, inadequately monitored or wrongly chosen for their original designation in the first place.

This idea has been growing in my mind for many years during which I've watched the management of Blacka but I've now seen evidence that the problems are more widespread.

You can see it all on this webpage in which photos are shown of moorland in the north-east Peak District precise position not identified but can't be far from here. It's caused a minorTwitter storm. But it's hardly a surprise, surely, to those of us who know this area.

Everything starts with man determined to control nature.


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