Encounter in the Murk

"Now, now, if you can't be friendly then at least leave me alone. Anyway I've been coming here for many more years than you."

"Oy there, I'm not sure of the intentions of this lot. I may need assistance"

Most groups of heifers contain at least one awkward character. The horns are a kind of 'power dressing'. At least I hope she sees it as merely that. If they were actually used there would be serious trouble.

Murky

A downpour in the night has filled the streams.

"Conservation Grazing" Leaflet (1)

SWT’s new leaflet about ‘Conservation Grazing’ Available at site entrances.

SWT have tried several times, I reckon at least seven, to put together a strong case for importing fences and farm animals to Blacka. It is a question of trying to make something fundamentally flawed sound coherent by virtue of improved 'presentation'. They have strained sinews and brain cells to come up with explanations which appear credible. The latest of their efforts is now freely available in small, green, rather disreputable-looking dispensers at several gates onto Blacka. As you read the text you can hear the creaks and hard breathing as efforts are redoubled to produce something which sounds convincing. The leaflet is not directed at the hardy types who have followed this saga for 5 years but at the occasional visitor who might be more easily persuaded by superficial plausibility and has little time to query the details.

So let us query some of the details on this handout, starting from the very first words

1 “Blacka Moor Nature Reserve”. Well I dispute this. Yes you can call anything a nature reserve but it carries no weight if it’s not properly designated and this one just ain’t. That’s why SWT are so determined always to refer to ‘the reserve’. It’s uncanny. Clearly they’ve a policy on it. Don’t call it Blacka or Blacka Moor. Always say reserve. Why? Because they know it doesn’t stand up, so use the old trick of repeating something often enough and eventually it catches on. Sheffield City Council has a list on its website of Nature Reseves in Sheffield. this is not one. Natural England has a list of Nature Reserves in South Yorks. Blacka is not on the list. So why call it a Nature Reserve if it's not, especially as it clearly IS a public open space - quite a different concept.
Chief reason for harping on the Nature Reserve thing and the ‘Welcome’ thing is to give people the idea that their visit is ‘approved’ by someone in authority. In other words it’s not ‘as of right’.

2

“During 5 years of consultation and research a number of options to conserve the moorland have been been investigated and cattle grazing has been found to be the better option”

There has NOT been ‘5 years of consultation and research’. This is simply untrue. SWT decided in 2001 (if not earlier) that they were going to do this and have stuck rigidly to their plan. Since then they have introduced no procedures to examine the strategy but have been forced with increasing desperation to respond to the questionings representations and challenges mounted by other people principally the regular users. But in no way has this amounted to consultation on SWT’s part. In fact they have constantly tried to impede proper scrutiny of this decision. In March this year an SWT manager addressed a group of us and said “We’ve never intended to do anything else”, saying in effect it was only our fault if we were gullible enough to believe they would reconsider. So the statement above is nothing more than shameless spin.

More analysis/deconstruction of this leaflet to come.

The Pleasure of Paths (6)

This path beside a wall is crumbly but firm underfoot and the grasses flowering add interest. Bracken is kept down by the mature birches shading. Let's hope that the recent soiling by cattle is not repeated or it could be ruined.

Every root crossing this path was scarred after a recent bovine expedition.

More fluffy than fuzzy. Willow seed beside the path.

Incidental News:

Strangely the orange feed bowl for cattle has now disappeared.

Things Fuzzy

Cotton grass looks more fun when it's been around for a while and been allowed to get untidy.

From a spider with more energy than design sense.

Not much untidy about the workmanship here, quite as far away from the fuzzy as you can get.

Debate Paused?

Today’s Sheffield Telegraph has nothing about Blacka Moor. This could be for any one of a number of reasons
1 The editor has decided the story has run its course and there are plenty of letters on other subjects, or
2 The people who didn’t like my letter last week were away on holiday and may respond in next week’s edition or
3 They judged it to be beneath them to respond to someone who clearly has no qualifications in the subject, or
4 They decided they couldn’t win and it was best to keep quiet.

For the record the letter in last weeks Telegraph is below. It responds to this letter from the previous week which in turn responds to this article the week before. (I think that’s right)

Simon Queenborough’s prescription for Blacka Moor (May18th) may not be as manicured as a well weeded flowerbed. But it’s not ‘wild with minimal intervention’ either - as preferred by those involved in the recent consultation. Wildness is not consistent with spending vast sums of public money installing barbed wire and other intrusive barriers. Nor with the poisoning of scores of mature trees which are then left standing - as a lesson in what might happen if nature does not behave itself in future.

I am happy to plead guilty to his accusation of inconsistency because that, along with contradiction and unpredictability, is what helps give nature, left to itself, the special magic which Richard Mabey has described more eloquently than I can:

“Don’t we all want revelation, surprise, inspiration from the wild?........But conservation orthodoxy is beginning to resemble the credo of a business studies course. Everything must be managed.”

On Blacka nature, going its own way has produced a heartening change on what had previously been an over-managed grouse moor. It is still a changing landscape and, left largely to itself, will continue to evolve unpredictably. Sometimes this will annoy and sometimes it will delight but I’m happy to take the rough with the smooth. The tendency to woodland and the spread of bracken eventually produce a response from other areas of nature. He refers to deer as a phenomenon of the past helping to “manage” our countryside. Does he not know that red deer have increasingly returned to Blacka responding to the greening of the moor and that they spend much of their time quietly and unobtrusively browsing. The heresy of this is that these wonderful animals, our largest wild mammal, came unpredictably without any prompting from a management plan.

The bilberry pie issue is a (well-disguised) red herring. All who walk the moors know that bilberry does not fruit in abundance where farm animals have grazed for years. So the idea that grazing preserves the bilberry is a ‘heads I lose tails you win’ situation. And in certain parts of the Peak they put fences around the plants so that livestock cannot get to the fruit, thus leaving some for the ring ouzels and other birds.

But let’s not beat about the bilberry bush. Both Dr Queenborough and I know that this is really about control and the conservation economy. ‘King Nature’, as he dismissively terms it, cannot be allowed to have its own way. People may actually like it and ask questions about the need for so many managers paid from public funds.

I simply and moderately ask for one or two places like Blacka to be largely left alone as has happened in recent years. This wish is widely shared among the general public and some conservationists but seems to be anathema to those professionals who insist on top-down control on all countryside everywhere.

New Month

Mist rolling back and forward, leaving drops of moisture on everything. When the early morning sun does come it brings strange light effects.

But even under the mist the humblest vegetation is at its best at this time of the year.