Wool Is Being Pulled ..

If we don't allow ourselves to look and see and believe what our eyes tell us then there's no hope left: here, it's only our own fault if we let the wool get pulled over our eyes.

There are many miles of railway embankment, roadside verges and abandoned wasteland with more value for wildlife, the environment and ecology than this section of Blacka. Yet this gets the managers lashings of public money in the form of grants all justified by the most spurious environmental designations. Don't take my word for it. Just look. It's plain to see. But do believe your eyes - not the wideboy stories that are told by the 'professionals'.

Of all the issues around the management of Blacka as a nature reserve nothing shows up the phoniness of the local conservation industry more acutely than the deplorable state of this sheep enclosure.

Not even the chain-saw obsession with clearing native woodland.
Nor the crass anti-democratic policy of excluding from consultations those who have an alternative view.
Nor the cowpat-and-barbed-wire infestation they choose to call conservation grazing on the heathland.

No, bad as these are, it's the failure to even begin to think about whether they should continue to have sheep grazing on these upland slopes that marks out the conservation agenda as being utterly bankrupt. I just say come and look at it.

Any genuine nature reserve would allow and encourage natural vegetation to thrive, not import the woolly slugs to scoff every wild flower before it blooms and deposit the waste liberally so as to make it near impossible to keep your shoes out of it. And is there a coherent policy which explains how this management impacts on  flood protection strategies in the valleys? Management of this kind creates serious soil compaction on higher land leading to water running off rather than being absorbed.

And if the conservation mafia had not got control and the site was restored to the original and legal purpose of a 'public walks and pleasure ground' it could be a venue for many enjoyable recreational activities including kite flying and family picnics: five years ago paragliders who used the site just two or three times a year were told they could no longer use the site  - for 'conservation' reasons! We have to put up with the impact of sheep 365 days a year and huge amounts of public subsidy for fences, stone walls and agri-environment grants. Nothing could be more perverse.

If anyone's tempted to believe that the local conservation industry is on the right track they should visit here and see for themselves.

But as a taster see this link:

https://picasaweb.google.com/102888525503996952067/WhatSheepDo?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIywgNqAvqLTUg&feat=directlink

Saut and the Bog Flower Saga

The publication by SRWT of minutes of the "Blacka Moor Users Forum" meeting of 17th May reminds me of what I said at the time about the bog flowers and the path across Cowsick Bog. The minutes are not 100% accurate about what I said but probably as good as one could expect. SRWT's manager had brought up their intention of using large flagstones on the paths to prevent habitat damage. I had pointed out that the work of installing had already caused damage itself. He pointed to some small shoots which he claimed to be newly emerging asphodel shoots. I didn't argue with this, not being sure that what looked initially like coarse grass shoots might turn out to be just what he said.

I had previously pointed out that in several recent years cows had wandered across the bog and made a complete mess of an area which once displayed a wonderful array of bog flowers. My message was clear: that management in various forms had done nothing for the natural beauty here and often quite the reverse.

Well, I've been watching those shoots to see how they will develop. Cows have wandered over as in past years, have left their distinctive appetizing marks over the path itself and have put their heavy stamp on the soft boggy ground to the side (something the trust likes to claim is good for invertebrates).

Evidence of cows' presence is not confined to waste products and ground upheaval. Their attention to grasses and other vegetation can also be seen especially on the edges of paths.

But in this case it is the shoots I've been told are of the bog asphodel plant that have been cropped.

I'm still not absolutely convinced that these shoots are as claimed as I usually await the appearance of the stalks before identifying these flowers from mid July. It's certainly possible. **

But if they are as told then perhaps we should be concerned not just for the flowers being damaged but also for the welfare of the livestock. Lambs are these days often kept off land where bog asphodel is present because of Saut. This is a poison caused by the plant that affects the kidneys. Lambs ears and wool are affected and it also causes problems with cattle.

More information in the links below.

http://farmnw.co.uk/news/saut_disease_are_you_affected_and_looking_for_answers


http://www.nfu-cymru.org.uk/business/environment/bog-asphodel-and-saut-lamb/

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** 29th July
A small flower stalk has now emerged confirming the identification. See picture and evidence that cows have been eating the leaves.

Return of Cr*p 'n Cr*p

CROPPING

CR*PPING

Also known as 'conservation grazing'.

Ghetto

The heather was cut using farm machinery. You can see the margins clearly. This was to give cows grass to eat giving the lie to the tale that they were here to manage the land - the truth was that the land was managed for the cows. The explosion of cotton grass is not in any way natural. It follows from the management as surely as a herbaceous border in a park. Pretty as cotton grass can be this just looks false.

Contrast with this area where cotton grass aficionados may  see a more 'natural' colonisation of cotton grass - looking less like a ghetto. Once again the lesson is less management is better.

Questions Being Asked

Why do such demonstrably silly ideas get accepted so easily? The upland conservation grazing nonsense is supported by supposedly responsible bodies like Natural England and National Park Authorities.

I have a theory which goes like this: the more people tell you something is right and go on telling you it's right the more you should question their reasoning and their motives. And when they tell you that it’s ‘obvious’ start looking around for vested interests. Every time I hear a BBC radio programme about the countryside or see a TV programme I get told the story that our landscape has been ‘made’ by certain farming practices and that it will only survive if it is managed in a certain way. And a key component of that management is grazing the uplands with livestock; the implication is always made clear that some sort of catastrophe will ensue if we don’t encourage sheep and/or cattle to graze on our hills moors and mountains. For God’s sake, we are implored, if you take away the grazing the whole of our countryside will ‘look different’. And people come to the countryside to experience the countryside looking the way it does now.

But at no time in the past has anyone sought to make this point. All the years that the look of the countryside has been evolving and changing it has done so as economic forces and as natural change have dictated. There’s never before been a top down dictat from unaccountable people telling us that it must look just so. Now I would hate our countryside to be ‘spoiled’ in any way, but the funny thing is that I’ve seen many things that have partially spoiled areas of countryside which don’t get anywhere near as much publicity as I would like. One example is the excessive amount of plastic sheeting around farms, another is the yellow flowered oilseed rape fields, another again is the mess made by herds of livestock on footpaths and around access points; and there are many more. But I don’t understand the aesthetics of those who claim more native trees on our hills will significantly reduce the appeal of the landscape. I love trees and I don’t see a natural regeneration of broadleaved woodland doing anything awful to ‘the look’ of the countryside – unlike for instance industrial forestry.

Hill farming subsidies contribute £15 or so from our taxes towards each sheep. Sheep farming is completely uneconomic. The job the sheep are doing is to eat young trees to keep our hills and moors looking the same. This is nonsense and expensive nonsense. If trees were allowed to grow or even planted it would help to prevent fast run-off of rainwater which contributes to serious flooding problems in the valleys. So Environment Agency funding is contributing to Environment Agency expenses!!

In places like Blacka Moor where a previously groomed grouse moor has been allowed to go its own way without sheep the beauty of the land has been shown to increase and wild animals have returned to take advantage of the less managed situation. Yes, there are issues around how open or how wooded we want it to become but those are easily resolved with a routine cutting of unwanted growth; and none of this needs specialist input, just good sense.

Stop The Mad Grazing Agenda

According to Professor Tom Coulthard, of the Department of Geography at the University of Hull we could help to prevent the worst effects of lowland flooding as seen this year by growing trees in the uplands.

Planting trees in the uplands that drain into rivers could slow down the transfer of water into rivers and thus reduce flood risk. Much of the UK (over 90%) used to be forested, and this has a far greater sponge like capacity to absorb water and then release it more slowly. By studying sedimentary records of how rivers have changed over the last 10 000 years, we can see evidence of flooding being reduced when forest levels were much higher. (BBC 13th November 2007)

Yet Defra who have some responsibility for subsidising conservation grazing in the uplands, thus preventing trees from growing, are currently short of funds due to the floods of the last year! Time for some joined up thinking!