Berried Treasure

The reason for this notice has so far escaped us. We don't think it has anything to do with SWT. It points the way towards the pasture land where magic mushrooms are to be found at the moment; but they are not buried are they? It could be said that all fungi are really underground, of course, as only the fruiting body is actually seen. We've always thought that Blacka would be great place for a treasure hunt so maybe some organisation have had similar thoughts.

Whatever the truth we are truly blessed with easily found berries on Blacka at the end of August, yet another tribute to the value of unmanaged sites.

Most obvious are the bright reds of rowan berries, so prolific that they are inseparable from the defining character of the moor.

Competing in vividness is the hawthorn, though well behind in numbers of trees. As children we gathered these before pea-shooting battles as the most available ammunition in the hedgerow.

Blackthorn was the first to flower in spring and now gives us sloe berries turning from white to purple. The tradition is to wait until after the first frosts before harvesting.

Bilberry is still to be found for those prepared to wander off the tracks. Many have been greedily devoured by wood pigeons, mistle thrushes, foxes and blackbirds not to mention certain black labradors who started guzzling when they were no more than red flowers in April.

But this very desirable healthy fruit can still be found in large numbers if you are persistent.

The cowberry is bright red and close to the ground and delightfully we can see flower and fruit at the same time very close together.

Later than the others is the blackberry, never quite getting to be as fat and juicy as at lower levels but still the tastiest of all when picked at its best.

Elderberry is beloved by home winemakers but is also grand in a fruit pie alongside bramley apple. The berries come last of all and are not yet ready but note the position carefully to make sure others don't get to them first.

African Visitor?

During summer months Blacka Moor has many visitors who've come north from Africa. Despite its name the elephant hawk moth is not one of them, although its range does stretch to the Far East. The caterpillars are often found like this one on the stems of willow herb .

Wall Life

The lizard was motionless for ages. The cold north wind does not penetrate here and the early morning sun bakes the stones on the wall. He suddenly turned round when a fly alighted nearby. What followed was unexpected. The fly's next stop was on the back of the lizard!

It brought to mind the recent newspaper pictures of the leopard and the crocodile. The lizard here was luckier than the crocodile although perhaps a bit surprised.

A Manager's Story

The path from Lenny Hill west towards the Hollow, the terrace overlooking Blacka Dyke to the north, is at its best just now. Its extravagant shrubs to either side the path as it meanders between birch and rowan illustrate just what wilder nature can do for us in gladdening the eye and refreshing the soul. It is the lifting of the repression of grazing and livestock farming that releases this delight from the shackles of many years management as grouse moor and delivers the most satisfying of landscapes for miles around. Where else can you say that you are in a place where the natural world is fighting back from malign exploitation? Here the heather has grown tall alongside the bilberry and crowberry whose berries complement the vivid red of the rowans and the green of now declining bracken.

Nobody who has not convinced himself that 'everything must be managed' (that mantra of the wildlife trusts) could fail to be enchanted.

But truth itself is under attack when self interest is identified. After years of putting up with a desultory website SWT has appointed a Communications Manager partly (I have been told) to tell a quite different story to that you will read on this blog. There's no doubt they are touchy and have been told to 'get the message out'. As managers they need to tell people that managing is good for places, while I tell them that places wild and unmanaged are just what we all need and what brings surprise and delight. So the story they have only now got round to telling (or fabricating?) on their website is that all of this has always been managed and it is only as good as it is because of, guess who?, ...Managers! Who would have believed it? Do those nice old ladies who cough up a subscription when SWT knock on doors in suburban streets know how their money is being spent - on putting together this kind of fable (as one reader of this blog commented, it's Ministry of Truth stuff). So while I come here to get away from managers they try to claim that it's only because of managers like them and their boring cattle and sheep that this exists at all.

If they repeat this often enough they may start to believe it.

Modest Ambition

Things do sometimes get distorted when newspapers report them. So it could be that SWT's Chief Executive was not altogether responsible for the indigestible and convoluted sentence quoted in this article. As quoted it reads

We're looking to actively restore the forest to create an inspiring, climate change resilient and people friendly, wildlife and heritage rich centre for woodland and heathland-related things in the north (of) Sheffield for the people of Sheffield and Barnsley.

As it happens an informant with good inside knowledge tells me that what he actually said went somewhat further even than that, viz:

We're looking to actively restore the forest to create an inspiring, climate change resilient and people friendly, wildlife and heritage rich centre for woodland and heathland-related things in the north (of) Sheffield for the people of Sheffield and Barnsley and their husbands and wives (and partners) and their children and grandchildren where they can feel safe from unpredictable and worrying experiences and secure in the knowledge that someone at our HQ is busy at a desk writing a Management Plan, compiling a Risk Assessment Strategy and filling in a Grant Application form which will be instrumental in delivering happiness and wellbeing to the people (not forgetting our 15.3 managers) in perpetuity.

I wonder what happened to SWT's claim in relation to Blacka Moor and Loxley and Wadsley Common that women do not like walking in woodland because they don't know what might be lurking behind the trees? But of course ..... when you read further on you discover that they will be thinning the trees and also selling timber for industrial use. As the comment below the article points out wildlife trusts have become just another industry and they can't leave those chain saws idle when they're not being used to destroy birch and pine on Blacka.

Uprising?

The closest thing on Blacka to a village rumour mill is the bird table. Our informant (the nuthatch above) reports that a rebellious mood is stirring among the native bird population. Somehow word has got out that the Eastern Moors Partnership dominated, so the local birds say, by meddlers from the RSPB will be pinning a lot of its efforts on getting the Dartford Warbler to settle here*. As usual with these managers the interests of the locals have not been considered nor their views sought. Some of the comments being reported over the sunflower seed suggest the regulars are less than chuffed (or should that be choughed?).

"They've done nothing for us native residents all my life. Who wants bl***y Southerners around here anyway?"

"They'll take all our food and jobs."

"Send them back to Kent."

"All this talk about habitat creation. What about the destroying of our habitats by killing off of our birch trees?"

(to confine ourselves to those that are printable)

* From Eastern Moors Partnership Draft 2025 Vision "Management will help combat some of the effects of climate change, whilst providing conditions which enable new species from the south to colonise the area....species from the south – such as Dartford warbler – will have colonised the area."

What's Good for Them

Empire Building

Sheffield Telegraph’s front page this week is about SWT trying to buy Grenoside Woods. For SWT this is an important move because they like to get in the news and it fits in with their general strategy of expanding their empire. SWT are about as managerial an outfit as could be found outside Tesco’s and Walmart with the added ingredients of questionable competence and not being accountable to their customers or the market. Every move SWT makes is about trying to impress people with whatever image they are wanting to project. When they first persuaded a group of sleepy councillors 10 years ago that they should be given Blacka Moor and various other sites on a 30 year lease it didn’t take long to discover that ‘on the ground’ in practical terms they had little idea of what they were about. As someone with knowledge of the inner workings of Sheffield City Council said to me at the time (rather generously) “They are on a very steep learning curve”. Places like Blacka suffered because of this with outbreaks of destructive management of which typical examples were extensive tree poisoning and barbed wire installation. It was as if the governors of a large comprehensive school had handed over the maintenance of buildings and grounds to a group of Year 9 pupils. What they did seem to concentrate their energies on was building up their organisation by appointing managers for everything from public relations to putting out the office cat; each time we blinked there was a new manager.
To a puzzled observer it hardly seemed to matter what their business was. It could equally well be an agency delivering hot meals to the housebound; the core business was management itself. Being called a 'Wildlife Trust' was quite good for fund raising because you could always find a few nice old ladies to become subscribers after they had watched those lovely wildlife programmes on the telly. But the reality was they would accept grants from more or less anybody and there were plenty such about often from government departments with new job creation schemes. SWT's expertise was form filling - in particular forms of application for grants. They knew how to inflate claims of their own ‘achievements’ to impress those with fat cheque books. If money had been available for employing school leavers to perform sundry chores with nothing to do with wildlife they did not hesitate to apply for it.
Some of us had, rather naively, hoped that anyone taking over Blacka would start from a position of knowing and enjoying the place and wanting to spend time there doing what they could to keep it special. This was not the way SWT saw things. People arrived with no previous experience of the place with an air of "Here I am, your new manager!" For them Blacka was a resource to be exploited for the benefit of their organisation. Their managerial approach was at odds with the value that ordinary people placed on Blacka. As for work on the ground such as the maintenance of access, things were done (often badly) if grants were available to fund them. If grants were not there.... nothing was done. If grants were available they still did the work even if local people pleaded against the project.
So those who know and use Greno Woods should be warned that the current move is not about the woods and the wildlife. It is about SWT and what is good for them.