Hard Times

Opinions expressed here on the bureaucracy of landscape designations and directives from the EU and elsewhere are definitely not from an anti-nature or anti-wildlife perspective but from a desire to see more landscape untrammelled by management’s self-serving preoccupations.

Not so Mr George Osborne, who this week said: "We will make sure that gold-plating of EU rules on things like habitats aren't placing ridiculous costs on British businesses."

Interesting that whatever stands in the way of the agendas of very rich people gets referred to by them as ‘gold-plated’. Something to do with an inborn distaste for anything less than 24k?

It’s in hard times that we see if there’s any genuine commitment to the health of the planet and the natural world. Those who go along with green policies only when they don’t impact on the ease with which they, and their friends, can make lots of money as do many of our political leaders, are fine-weather environmentalists and opportunists.

What a pity that the protests of the conservation industry sound so hollow coming from those who have for so long had their fingers in the EU farm-subsidy till.

Sectors

Do you or did you work in a sector? A lot of talk by politicians about sectors lately, usually public and private. Much of the comment seems to be highly questionable but that subject’s not what this blog is for. Another sector talked about is the charities sector which takes us closer to home. Charities are promoting themselves as managers of Blacka and surrounding spaces, though, as I’ve regularly said, more thought and energy seems to go into the promotion than into the management itself. Eastern Moors Partnership have secured control over the Eastern Moors and they are proudly putting their insignia on sector boundaries and access points. Once you get through the gate here and onto their land you come into a problem that I’ve often suggested was a priority: the mountain–bike created mess that was once a favourite enjoyable footpath going up to the Bole Hill/Wimble Holme Hill saddle. This is worse than ever now and still no sign that anything useful is being done to stop the deterioration.
It is now unusable by walkers and a shameful indictment of all those who responsible for managing these areas. What can you say about them apart from that they are apparently unwilling to do anything that might irritate the mountain biking lobby? Or should I say the MTB sector?








Incidentally, I’m not sure whether utilities are also identified as a sector but following yesterday’s post about the power lines and suggesting things would happen quickly all has stopped. At one point early on 6 vehicles arrived and spent quite a bit of time with engines running and workers inside. By lunchtime no work had been done and the activity was confined to winching out a heavy vehicle that had been driven onto soft ground. This morning nobody at all. Unless they’ve had second thoughts and gone to the other end of the line.

Power Play

The latest news is the much awaited beginning of the power line removal. Several YEDL vehicles this morning were positioning themselves as the sun came round the woods. Will this be a good opportunity for spectators? We are taking bets on how long this will take. They can't afford to go slowly on the cable removal for reasons reported before. But the poles could take longer. The other question is about the extent of the damage to the ground. Discussions on this have taken place with Natural England. I suspect that less consideration may have been given to the appearance of the site during and following the removal than to any perceived impacts on biodiversity. That despite the fact that the whole reason for us asking for the exercise was to enhance the appearance. Still, we shall see and very soon.

Managing for Money

In yesterday’s Guardian once more the issue of farm subsidies is raised, making the point I’ve often made about wildlife charities and their reliance on handouts from these subsidies that keep them tied in to managing our landscapes as boring farm land.

Among the top blaggers are some voluntary bodies. The RSPB gets £4.8m, the National Trust £8m, the various wildlife trusts a total of £8.5m. I don't have a problem with these bodies receiving public money. I do have a problem with their receipt of public money through a channel as undemocratic and unaccountable as this. I have an even bigger problem with their use of money with these strings attached. For the past year, while researching my book about rewilding, I've been puzzling over why these bodies fetishise degraded farmland ecosystems and are so reluctant to allow their estates to revert to nature. Now it seems obvious. To receive these subsidies, you must farm the land.

Let’s hope this may at last be getting more of a national airing. If that happens it had better come before the Sheffield Moors Partnership gets such a stranglehold on all our local moorland that it will be another 20 years before we are able to discuss the issues again.

Fair Comment...?

Now on first sight I thought this interesting attachment to one of the many Sheffield Wildlife Trust papers pinned to gates around the moor meant something like “No Cowpats Here, Thank You”. Doubtless the person responsible thought it amusing. It is. But following a little research I think that there could be more to it:

When buying men’s socks over the internet you may come across this.

An identical symbol is labelled on these socks as ‘No Bullsh*t’. I imagine this line is very popular with those who are obliged to attend meetings at which they may have to listen to some material that's hard to take. At a suitable point the wearer nudges his neighbour and lifts his trouser leg hoping the reaction will be a suppressed guffaw and a welcome distraction from the tedium of the meeting.



So to return to the appearance of the symbol on Blacka Moor it is a comment not just on the defecation of cattle but also on the content of the notice itself. Neat.

Bullsh*t is an interesting concept and from here on please take the asterisk as read. And I think it’s fair to say that much of the spurious self justification used by the local conservation industry could be described as bullshit.
The Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Harry G Frankfurt once wrote an essay ‘On Bullshit’ which is printed in a collection published by Cambridge University Press called ‘The Importance of What We Care About’. The whole book is worth reading but this essay has become famous. Chambers Dictionary describes bullshit as a verb meaning simply ‘to talk nonsense often with the intention of deceiving.’

But Frankfurt goes further than this, spending some time in his essay unpicking the various meanings of lies, humbug and bullshit. While lies and bullshit are similar in seeking to mislead they have important differences. A key one, according to Frankfurt, is in the relationship with the truth. As he says, the bullshitter
‘does not reject the authority of the truth as the liar does and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.’
So the liar at least acknowledges truth to the extent that he tries to conceal it. The bullshitter misleads because he doesn’t give a damn about the truth being intent only on communicating what suits him; he is self-serving.

More quotes from the essay:

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.”
“For the essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony.”
“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter however all these bets are off. He is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all as those of the honest man and the liar are, except in so far as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”

How much of what we read from the local conservation people can be called bullshit is arguable. Certainly much of it can, but a proportion of the nonsense may just be excusable because they or some of them actually believe it. Which, in its way, is equally depressing.

"The Importance Of What We Care About" by Harry Frankfurt. Cambridge University Press 1998.

Choices

Seeing them through the mist standing by choice in the middle of a very large patch of thick bracken, with head down most of the time, it makes sense to believe that there is more to bracken as a habitat for deer than simply a great place to hide the young calves in summer. Deer are often to be found just so. Cattle are not often seen in the large patches of bracken or heather. When cattle have gone through the tall shrubby growth it has been to get to water or to a patch of grass where the wildlife trust has cleared all other vegetation to make a grazing area specially for the cows. In order to do this the cattle will rarely plough through unless there’s already a discernable route and this, as often as not, is a pre-formed deer track. Sadly once this happens the evidence of the deer track is gone and with it a chance to see the pattern of deer behaviour as distinct from that of the cattle. The cows roam over the paths eating the grass to either side while deer are just as happy, happier even, in the natural spaces inside heather and bracken stands. This is puzzling. Why would a deer not prefer to walk on paths? It must be easier going and less trouble even for as athletic an animal. But the number of times that you find deer on paths is very few indeed and the sightings of prints on the paths is nowhere near as many as one would expect to see. You have to conclude that there is a deep seated resistance to spending time on ground that’s associated with people (and dogs?). Interestingly having turned away from the hinds I saw a stag just visible in the middle of a large area of heather. This was not a pretty morning.



Today was much colder and the cows were in tall heather, but there is an explanation: the night had been the first genuinely cold one and they had gathered below the wall that sheltered them from the south-west wind. They were using the heather to give further insulation. Perhaps they had placed themselves in this spot knowing that they would be in a position to see the first sight of the grazier come to remove them to more hospitable quarters? ***



Deer had come up with an even better idea and I was not at all surprised to see them on the well sheltered east facing slopes ready to greet the sunrise (about 7.40 am.). Again they were using bracken as both a feeding ground and shelter from the cold.


This leads once again to the question what do cows do and what do deer do? Do the cattle in fact perform the conservation tasks claimed for them? When deer are obviously having an effect on the land why are cattle needed at all, even if you accept the management agenda and desired outcomes (which of course I do not)? Apart from scuffing up paths and ruining stream banks, the cattle spend a great deal of time grazing on land that is already grassy, the edges of paths and land prepared by managers to create grazing areas for them. They certainly do not set out to search within large heather stands for young birch and other saplings. Nor do they do that in bracken. Any time spent in these areas is when passing through to larger grassy areas. I’m wondering what SWT’s evaluation will come up with? It’s hard not to be sceptical. Will there be an independent assessment of the grazing? Pretty unlikely.



*** Some may wonder why the cattle are still there when SWT's many A4 notices all round the access points indicate that they will be removed in October. I had the temerity to ask this question of SWT last week and was told that they would not be removed until a gate had been repaired and that could not happen before this week. So why..... (contd., wearily, at some later date).

Underground, Overground (3)

.....wombling free.

The dreary turd-infested grassland of the sheep pasture has one redeeming feature best seen in an extended mild autumn such as this year’s. It becomes home to various fungi including examples of waxcaps over which mycologists have been known to get excited. Not that they are all edible, though some are. The lengthy dry spell in early autumn was not so productive on the grassland but more recently fungi have been seen in abundance. The more colourful waxcaps themselves were better last year and it could be they prefer the wet weather to arrive earlier. In the woods fungi generally were doing well some weeks ago but now the damp and mild November days have brought a flush of fungi in both woods and grassland, not always the best examples and specimens but plenty of them. There are some waxcaps ...



...and a fine ring was found on the lower slopes. Horse mushrooms are not often found as late as this ...



... but some collected yesterday made for a fine breakfast. One yellow mould type fungus is plentiful.



I've seen this before and spent much time looking it up without success. It wraps itself around blades of grass; I imagine there's a Latin name that would be forgotten when the season comes round again next year.

But the most common of all fungi on this sheep dominated land are those that the keen fungi lovers care little about.

They are the less favoured dung mushrooms. They are everywhere as is their host the dung itself which adds nothing to the appeal of the site.



This of course raises the issue of management again. Apologists for conservation grazing will claim that you must have sheep grazing or you wouldn't have the mushrooms. I've questioned this before. Sheep destroy the other potential appeal of the land - they eat all the wild flowers before they get to bloom. See the pictures from last year. I fully accept that stopping all management for good would eventually lead to many changes including more trees and less short grass. It would also lead to many other attractions and benefits - not all of them easily predictable. There are other ways to keep the waxcaps than having continuous sheep grazing every month of the year and some of them would enable a more interesting and natural vegetation to develop which would have to be an improvement on what we have now. A little focused management in certain defined parts of the site done quickly at a chosen time of year - say early September - and preferably by hand and by the keen fungi enthusiasts themselves would not have the same devastating effect on the landscape produced by the present policy of default sheep crop-and-crap management. It also would have another benefit: it would lead to a more honest association between modern man and the man-made landscapes. If certain humans want to conserve those attractive aspects of artificial landscapes then they should show their enthusiasm directly using their own labour - not by handing responsibility over to a clumsy inefficient and unfocused farm subsidy bureaucracy that brings all sorts of negative impacts both on the land and generally on the national life.



An edition of BBC Radio 4’s Open Country programme this week revealed that some of the waxcaps were nowhere near as scarce as had been thought. Once it had been put about that the Ballerina waxcap was rare and endangered lots of people went out and found them happily growing. That says something about the biodiversity and ‘saving species’ agenda – one that usually results in calls for more management. The over use of fertilisers is, of course, one feature of management shown to harm these mushrooms. It was also interesting to learn that the nutrition in the soil is not necessarily the key factor for them and that may be an association with the roots of grass.