Winter Coats

The gloom of December afternoons does not encourage walkers to look carefully to either side. So the five stags off to the side of the bridleway were missed by several who passed by.

Their colours blended well with the surrounding bracken and birch branches. In previous years wandering groups of stags have appeared following the rut but these are the first I've seen this year, looking for the more sheltered parts away from the strength of the west winds and the bite of the northern. The thicker mane is now clear to see and a general build up of the coat has prepared them for the cold in the longest nights of the year.

Cascade

Not more than a couple of feet from the spring discovered recently is another presently disgorging a cascade down the slope into the dyke.


There's something reassuringly mysterious about the way that water bursts out from the ground like this leaving you trying to imagine the cavities below where it gathers before saturation leads it to pour out.


This year the fieldfares seem to have made Blacka their home to an extent not seen before. There's a constant series of restless short flights usually circling above the woodland followed by watchful periods in the tops of birch trees.

All in a Year

Please note that if you can spare time next Wednesday the meeting advertised below is open to the public.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Friends of Blacka Moor

The Year on Blacka Moor

Wednesday 9th December 2009

Totley Library 7.30 p.m.


The meeting will be in two parts.

PART ONE:
A presentation showing scenes of Blacka Moor, its landscape and its wildlife, including red deer, through the course of a year month by month.

PART TWO:
The main purpose of the meeting will be to review and discuss aspects of the current management of the site this year including the impact of cattle grazing.



All welcome. You may wish to attend for the first part only.

Regular users of Blacka Moor are particularly welcome.


friendsofblacka@btinternet.com

May I Consult You?

In recent posts I've drawn attention to the strange ways of bureaucracies and the power they wield over our landscape, our wildlife and indeed all areas of our lives. Some talk about this and get into a rant about the public sector and usually bring in pensions and tax as well. I don't tend to get drawn into this sort of thing because I have even more reservations about much of the private sector and the power of giant corporations; but that's by the by. My worry about Local Councils and quangos like Natural England is their warped accountability. Blacka Moor is simply a bit of countryside which can happily get on with life largely on its own but there are an amazing six different bureaucratic institutions that have been involved (and some are still involved) over recent years. This goes some way towards explaining my jaded attitude.

The thing that really annoys me is the attitude to consultation. To understand this you have to know that any council officer or similar jobsbody has to show these days that projects put forward have been subjected to consultation. Bureaucrats have the gift of perpetual renewal. It's some time since the previous practice of ignoring the public and just getting on with what they've decided amongst themselves, so they have to claim that the public has been consulted. So when the plan or policy is published you will read in it somewhere that the policy or strategy has been widely even extensively consulted on. They will even give the names of groups who have been part of the exercise. All looks pretty watertight until you start to ask questions. Such as : who exactly are the people in this focus group they talk about? and how many of them turned up to the meeting? and who controlled the questions they were asked and made sure that certain questions didn't get asked? and how come I never found out about this supposed consultation even though it affects an area or facility I use more often than anyone else I know? All these and others are relevant to decisions taken that I've found out about in recent times. So what's left to you is to raise a stink afterwards leading the powers that be to publicly imply you are unrepresentative because a bona fide process determined that the council's initial idea is overwhelmingly supported.

Gods of the Countryside

One of the perks enjoyed by those working for Natural England is they get to play God. They decide what kind of landscape we have in England. In my wildest imaginings I never thought of God as a being sitting at a desk creating masses of self justifying paperwork and going to meetings but maybe that’s what we’ve come to in this secular world. So if you ever wondered who decided we’ve got to have mile upon mile of bleak treeless moorland while other countries have woods and forests the answer is the unaccountable NE.

But now there’s to be a planned campaign to plant trees all over the country to help deal with excess carbon emissions. So where does that leave the programme of tree felling and poisonings that SWT and their Natural England allies continue to defend on Blacka Moor? This is to return to a theme I’ve raised before. My point has little to do with carbon and climate change which I am not qualified to talk about. I prefer to trust the judgement of the majority of scientists partly because it chimes with my lifetime suspicion of the value of burning energy to create more and more disposable consumer goods, leading to more and more waste. Even in the nineteenth century John Ruskin was warning that the planet could not survive the impact of industrialisation the ugliness and violence of which denied all that a lover of beauty valued.

Our country, compared to others, has such a small area covered with woodland. So why do the conservation mafia insist we must retain vast tracts of artificial treeless waste in our uplands for supposedly ‘cultural’ reasons? This is the theme of Mark Fisher’s latest article. It is to Mark’s site that we must look for an intelligent discussion of these issues and once again he does not disappoint. And there is confirmation in his article of what I have always suspected: that it’s the vested interests of the Moorland Owners and Tenants with their grouse shooting businesses that determines policy which is then visited upon even areas in public hands by NE enforcers who consider that local councils are an easy touch.

Secret Places

There still remain parts of Blacka where the modern and philistine world seems far away although this section was tragically cut through with barbed wire four years ago by conservation forces.

The mix of beech and scots pine, bracken and larch is part of the appeal, and surprises even on the ground bringing delight as with this new spring shooting out from the the roots of a beech.

The group of three deer were here too this morning, stag, hind and young always mostly hidden by the trees.

Stalking to get a better picture is tricky, the ground being covered with hazards like fallen branches and cracking twigs while the steep slippery slope means you spend more time on your knees than your feet. And your clumsiness is constantly being inspected by critical eyes above.

Bureaucrats Retrench

According to the BBC, Sheffield City Council is beginning to shed jobs. It is a fair bet that the jobs to go will be the wrong ones. It is said that four senior management posts are in the firing line. I wonder if this means the job of Director of Parks and Countryside will be amalgamated with another post. I guess that would not be a complete surprise to the current incumbent. But the problem is that nobody, beyond their spouses and other desk workers, loves a bureaucrat so it's hard to get a body of people motivated to lobby for retaining council jobs especially management ones.

After all are we not all perpetually infuriated with the time and money spent on papers and procedures and meetings and policy documents as opaque as a stone wall. Examples of these are the recent Green Spaces Strategy and the Public Rights of Way Improvement Plan and now the Pedestrian Strategy. All of these are fine, even splendid, in their way but who can have any faith that they really take us forward to where we want to be with any degree of urgency?