Outdoor Life

It's been mild and not a proper winter, they are saying. Hardly refutable statistically, but yesterday's continual heavy rain followed by a cold night was hardly the preferred choice of those who spend their lives outdoors.

Overnight a group of hinds and young deer had moved over from the more exposed parts and were occupying a part of Blacka that offered some protection from the keen morning breeze.

The conditions had affected the corvine commute in another way. Gone was the frenetic soaring and diving of small and moderate sized groups we've seen battling the winds in recent days.

Today the jackdaws were gathered in immense numbers always moving west in calm and stately progress. I find this a spectacular and thrilling sight.

One thing alone detracted: It was hard not to be reminded of newsreel coverage of the massive bombing raids at the end of world war two as the allies tried to settle things once and for all. Wellingtons against the previous Stukas I suppose.

The regulars at the bird table were as keen as the wind.

A roll call showed good attendance although blackbirds, having satisfied their sharpest hunger pangs soon had other things on their minds.

Renewed Persecution

 

The war waged against native trees continues in the same demented fashion.

No frenzied religious fundamentalist is more obsessional. The dogmatic refusal to allow nature to seek its own salvation amounts to manic control-freakery.

The worst of it is that it's so easy to do yet leaves them with a satisfying sense of power over nature, a fatal combination aiding the addiction.

These are mainly hawthorns, wonderful native trees in a near roadside position axed and mutilated.

To comprehend the philistinism here we should be aware of hawthorn's biodiversity value - and biodiversity value is what conservation organisations themselves refer to when trying to bamboozle the public. We should note that among UK trees hawthorn has the fourth highest number of insect species associated with it, coming only below oak, birch, (both also persecuted here) and willow. And the older it gets the more important it becomes. Hawthorn can live to a great age. No comfort at all to the trees destroyed by those anxious to add to their chain-saw hours.

Vigilance or Dereliction

The subject of trustees has cropped up a number of times over recent years and continues to be a matter of concern.

Yesterday a report into the problems at the major charity Kids Company highlighted the failure of trustees to hold the Chief Executive to account. It seems there's no shortage of senior staff in public and charitable institutions prepared to do all they can to evade robust scrutiny of what's going on. At times it seems the public should trust them no more than they would profit making private businesses. Now there are questions about Age UK. Have their trustees been vigilant?

Blacka has two sets of trustees with responsibility for what goes on here. Sheffield City Council  holds the position of charitable trustees for this land gifted to the public by Alderman Graves in 1933. Having leased the land to SWT another set of trustees became involved, those of the wildlife trust. But that did not mean that SCC could walk away from responsibility. It has a legal and moral duty to see that the terms of the governing document are respected in all that happens, obligations that are by no means simple therefore in need of careful consideration. All efforts on my part to determine that due consideration is given have met with a response best described as a fobbing off. It's left to someone else to do, therefore it doesn't get done. At one time the trustee duties with respect to charitable land and assets were delegated to a council committee or a scrutiny board; there would be an annual agenda item on the committee's programme, giving the duty a public face. One feature of that was the opportunity it gave to members of the public to be present and possibly raise points to be considered. In recent years something odd happened to this practice. While being on a scrutiny committee's programme it stopped appearing on any agenda. Somebody unknown had made a decision that the council's duty would not be observed. Later, when this anomoly was raised  it came to light that the duties of charitable trustee had been taken 'upstairs' and the Cabinet more specifically the appropriate Cabinet Member had now taken over the role. But there was no evidence provided that she/he had at any time sat down and considered the details of the charitable documents in relation to what was happening on the ground. My money is on nothing being done at all. That is the present situation: effectively nothing happening, so duty not being performed.

The other trustees are, of course, those of the wildlife trust. We know their names but they operate in secret so we can't know if they do their job properly. Apart from what's on their website we have to rely on hearsay, intuition and what we can pick up from other sources. I've posted about them here and here. The new Chair of SRWT's trustees has recently moved into the role having been only on the board for a short time; that seems unusual. It may, but how can we be sure, have some relationship with the greater ties between the National Trust and SRWT, who now share a reserve manager with the charity. NT is seen as a strong and impenetrable organisation; local people are likely to get nowhere with them unless extremely wealthy and already very influential with access to the media. It may be that the conservation industry's big project, the Sheffield Moors Partnership saw SWT as the weak link and needed some support. The new chair has held senior roles with NT locally. One can over-read things into this but what else can we do when nobody in these organisations is signed up to the principle of transparency. I've not yet met the new chair of trustees so will have to reach tentative conclusions based only on what I can read and what I've been told. His board-membership of organisations like the CPRE and PDNPA will have seen him sit alongside those within the conservation and landowning establishment in company with those having a certain quasi political purpose which may remain at a tactical distance from party allegiance.

The new chair of SRWT's trustees has now it seems gained a foothold not just into SRWT but also into Dore Village Society on whose behalf he's been manning the barricades to defend the rights of condemned street trees in and around the locality. That's very worthy I'm sure and the tying of ribbons around village trees must take up a deal of time. It would take a lot more time to tie ribbons around all the trees on Blacka Moor under threat from the SRWT chain-saw enthusiasts. Yet from my perspective the brutal killing of trees arising naturally from land totally suited to such native vegetation is an infinitely greater crime, especially on a nature reserve, than the planned replacement of street trees already in an artificial setting. Has this argument had anything like a hearing in the decision-making meetings of trustees of SRWT? Or do they pretend it's not an issue? Anyway these street trees are in the council ward of Dore and Totley. They constitute an avenue of sycamores planted along the roadside to adorn the approach to the city. Needless to say their future is in doubt as they await the chain saw treatment despite some protest from regular users. Now where's a trustee and some yellow ribbon when you need them?

Postscript, 10th February

See this article in The Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2016/feb/10/charity-trustee-terrified-being-next-alan-yentob

No Towel

This usually happens when you take the family dog on a camping holiday

Family are still in bed and the early riser returns from a refreshing morning dip.

Selective Indignation

In Sheffield's streets the chain-saw approach to trees is the subject of bitter controversy, some of which is a sincere and heartfelt indignation from residents appalled at the removal of familiar roadside trees; some is also cynical jumping on  a bandwagon for reasons of publicity and party-political point scoring. Among those organisations joining the fray are some who had opportunities long ago to comment and express concerns when the council first announced the Streets Ahead project; at that time they were notably silent.

Where are these people when beautiful woodland and upland trees need protection? These woodland spaces are favourites with those of us who love to get a little away from the beaten track. But hardly a tree in these pictures is safe from the robotic approach to woodland management: 'the more you cut the better'; the better for whom?

 Presumably it's jobs again.

If you stop felling trees what does the tree feller do?
If you stop grazing sheep what does the sheep grazier do?
If you stop using barbed wire what does the barbed wire manufacturer do?

If you stop planning intrusive interventions what does the landscape manager do?
And if you reduce the prescriptive management what does the university department do when we need to train fewer qualified managers?

No Sleeping

They can be seen in any weather at any time in winter, not being one of the small animals that hibernate.

We might think they are hungrier when it's cold but this morning was nothing like yesterday.

Levels

From ground level the highest clouds look to be a haven of tranquility and stillness as the low cloud hurtles by. It may not be that simple. Appearance, as ever, is deceptive.

Today's jackdaw commute, as it approached Stony Ridge took the other route, reserved for stormy mornings as the birds dived steeply from height to skim the ground dramatically. Potential circus performers.

Going down:

Skimming: