The Cow and the Stag

Looking at my recent rant about cows on Blacka I've decided it was intemperate yet still can't regret a word of it (apart from a missing capital letter).

It beggars belief that there are those who see these animals as having a place on land supposedly set aside for nature and wildlife -while all around we can see under-used farmland. If you particularly like cows then there's a plentiful supply of them all over Peak District's farmland. And given the scale of funding that has been used (public money) shouldn't we ask why a similar or greater sum should not have been put towards ensuring that real wildlife has a home here unhindered by farm management? Because we know that wildlife flourishes greater where there's no farming agenda getting in the way.

I'm reminded that I've not been seeing the majestic stags that I was seeing a few years ago - animals that had made their home here and which were undoubtedly the sort of animal that should be here. of course there are people with guns around and the RSPB, allies of the wildlife trust, have killed some for reasons I've never understood. The really big animal here was an inspiring sight in the dim light of early morning more than a year ago. What, I wonder, has happened to him? Shouldn't this be a regular sight that a wildlife trust does all it can to encourage instead of occupying Blacka with dull-witted farm cows?

I've used this quote before from the famous Victorian naturalist and columnist on The Times, Richard Jefferies.

The land is his, and the hills, the sweet streams, and rocky glens. He is infinitely more natural than the cattle and sheep that have strayed into his domains. For some inexplicable reason, although they too are in reality natural, when he is present they look as if they had been put there and were kept there by artificial means. They do not, as painters say, shade in with the colours and shápe of the landscape. He is as natural as an oak, or a fern, or a rock itself. He is earth-born— autochthon—and holds possession by descent. Utterly scorning control, the walls and hedges are nothing to him.—he roams where he chooses, as fancy leads

In this continued rant I am particularly intolerant of the behaviour of certain groups who give tacit or active support to this discredited management simply in order to get favours for their chosen activity. They know who they are and they doubtless think they are being clever in forwarding their own single interests by giving support. Some of the comments I have heard have been beyond parody in their sycophancy from a position of ignorance of an organisation that scarcely achieves adolescence. We know how this is received. It leads to gross complacency through absence of scrutiny.