In Place

One of those special mornings.

About right, cattle in the farm field in the distance and wilder beasts up in the wilder land. Free spirits and unrepressed.

He's the current dominant beast on the moor impressive in his fine headgear.

His entourage are near at hand.

A younger stag looks on from near the top of the hill.

Desire and Possession in the Gloom

Not easy to see anything at 7 am when the mist and drizzle occupy the moor. But the advantage is that you get some idea of what's been going on during the hours of darkness. Seven stags were moving to the south, but in the other direction one larger beast was on guard. The camera makes it look lighter than it was. He had possession of five hinds and any attempts from the rivals to infiltrate had obviously been seen off in the night. No bellows but some heavy breathing.

Tenancies

It seems that SWT are planning to put the cattle, now in the pasture land, onto the moor shortly along with nine others making 15 in all. Now this is entirely contrary to what we've been told -those of us who have attended their RAG meetings, making a mockery of the consultation, yet again. It is however consistent with what we have come to expect from SWT. Those who have taken the trouble in their own time to engage themselves with the process of contributing to the alleged consultation are largely ignored when it comes to the decisions which matter most. Cattle on the moor at this time of year are likely to cause even more damage to the network of soft paths as was acknowledged when the original decision was taken to graze cattle from April/May to September. It is also contrary to the clear commitment in the management plan. It’s hard to escape the obvious conclusion that this is being done now to suit the convenience of the grazier rather than for what is good for the land and for the site. The links between the conservation economy and the farming economy are strong. It’s worth wondering what the situation would be regarding subsidy payments from the Rural Payments Agency if there had been no cattle grazing on the moor this year. Do inspectors from the RPA check these things? And if public money, however misguidedly, is being put to this purpose how is the situation justified when cutbacks in other areas are hurting? This blog now understands that the same farmer who puts his sheep and cattle on Blacka is being used for grazing the whole of Burbage and Houndkirk and the Hathersage Moors (owned by SCC) and also the North Lees Estate (owned by PDNPA). That is a huge swathe of public land and it would be interesting to know the subsidy he is receiving from the public purse for getting his sheep to stop trees growing on the moors. This is farming that makes no real value profit but simply puts a few sheep on the moor ostensibly for some conservation benefit – a benefit some of us strongly dispute. Historically these old shooting estates were burned and grazed to create a lawn of low heather liked by grouse so that there would be a plentiful supply of game birds for the wealthy who came up for the shooting. No shooting now takes place so there’s no reason that the land should continue to be grazed in this way unless conservationists think that the boring heather monoculture is better for wildlife than a richer mix of vegetation (which it isn’t). So what is the point of all this grazing? Certainly it can’t be explained as being good for the rural economy if only one farmer, living in Bradfield, remote from the site, is benefiting.
This grazing arrangement has been described to me recently as ‘agricultural tenancies’ by a council officer, the words suggesting somehow that several farmers are living on farms with the council as their landlord. This is clearly not the case. There is something defensive about the reaction when one asks about this of the conservationists, council officers and other land management professionals. It was at the end of March this year that the previous ‘tenant’ was ejected. He did not live on the site either. He had an Environmental Stewardship Grant giving him some £400,000 plus for putting a few sheep on the Sheffield Moors and getting prosecuted twice for mistreating his sheep – animals that were often to be seen wandering in and out of the speeding commuter traffic on the main road. Perhaps he avoided prison because he had money to pay his fine by courtesy of Unnatural England.
Now that ‘tenancy’ has been taken up by the National Trust to help out SCC who were then without a ‘tenant’ - as we were told when attending the consultations in August. But now we learn that the new tenant is not the NT itself but a sublet arrangement and the farmer is the same one who puts animals on Blacka. Regular readers may remember me asking questions about the sheep and cattle on Blacka last winter. Incidentally this morning there were sheep again on the main road.

Foggy Thoughts

Walking in poor visibility focuses us on the near at hand. The part-wooded landscape comes into its own. Advocates of grouse moors talk about openness as if it's a great virtue. What it tends to mean is that people may be not noticing their immediate surroundings so much as what is far away (the power stations along the A1?). Blacka's mix does not preclude that but the presence of trees singly and in groups is even more welcome in mist.

The thought of walking in mist on Burbage Moor is not at all appetising. Even today new things are seen - another unknown fungus with intimidating Latin name, a small yew tree in the copse and a young oak thrusting through the now decaying bracken.

Colours

White on the grass this morning, and on the sleeper bridge. The cold-scorched bracken on the hillside looked ginger in the morning sunlight.

Around the trees more and more fungi appear as if at a festival. This creamy one is well shaded by the low plants.

Meanwhile, outlined against the morning sky, up on the grassy top of Thistle Hill, a characteristic of the seasonal local fauna was browsing at 6.45 am. This is the Magic Mushroom searcher, usually seen bent double. He would have shown no interest in the magically bright colours of the red waxcaps pushing through the grass, not far away from where he was inspecting the ground.

Opposing Visions

A further blast of domestication has returned to Blacka with a group of six cows plonked in the pasture land. It is interesting that the cows were first seen this week on a morning that also brought us a beautiful, early-morning view of real wildness the sort of thing that gets one out of bed in the morning.

Sheffield Wildlife Trust has contributed a short piece for the local Dore to Door publication, part of their commitment to getting that message across in the face of the alternative vision put forward by others including this blog. From it I extract this paragraph:

"The heathland of Backa Moor has a wonderful mosaic of dwarf shrubs (heather bilberry and cowberry), birch and rowan copses scattered trees, mires and grassland. The development of the heathland is due to human intervention - mainly forest clearance and livestock grazing. To conserve the valuable habitats and the landscape, management is needed to prevent the encroachment of bracken and birch scrub that would displace the heather bilberry and other heathland plants. Cattle grazing is a traditional form of management that ensures that the heathland mosaic is conserved for future generations of wildlife and people to enjoy.”

It has taken SWT quite a number of years to come up with a coherent defence of their management plans for Blacka Moor. It’s possible that they have only now done so because they have been challenged by local people including this blog and been found wanting. The passage quoted above was submitted for the Autumn edition of Dore to Door and is carefully worded, testament to some hours of heartsearching to justify their own role.

The first thing to say about this is that they are intent on making a connection based on management. They have correctly identified that the coherent view of their critics is based on the simplicity of our vision – that this is not any longer land that has an economic purpose so it should be allowed to go whatever way nature wishes. Our position is a little more nuanced than that but I’m happy for it to stand for the moment. The problem for SWT is that once they concede our view that nature’s choice should be respected, then their own role becomes redundant. What do you do (outside the tasks associated with access maintenance) when all the key decisions are out of your hands? So their propaganda tactic revolves around denying the validity of our position by claiming that the land has ‘always’ been managed therefore they are simply continuing in that age-old and highly respectable tradition of land management that has made the countryside what it is today. So they say that “The development of the heathland is due to human intervention”. The trouble here is that the human intervention did not make Blacka what it is today. It contributed of course because it’s undoubtedly true, as they say, that forests were cleared and livestock was grazed. But much of the condition of Blacka today that people so value owes little to that process and a great deal to the random unplanned wilding that has occurred over much of the last century. Anyone who walks here with eyes open can see that. It also needs to be pointed out that the land management of the past certainly was not setting out to be benign, simply to exploit what the land had to offer, with no concern for wildlife or natural beauty and it rarely left the land in an attractive state. A grouse moor is probably the dullest and most monotonous landscape known to many people a purely utilitarian affair designed to exclude anything that worked against the production of birds for shooting. So, when you actually start to look at it, using the management of the past to justify management today hardly seems wise.
We should also query the assumption implicit in their position that because something has always (or continuously for a time) been managed in a certain way then that must necessarily continue. Once you are into artificial landscapes like grouse moors then you would need stronger reasons than they can muster for simply doing something because it’s been done before. That other artificial landscape - the industrial and desolate area of eastern Sheffield - was wiped away with few regrets over the later part of the last century. In relation to the industrial past and its pollution I look upon the desolate, over -exploited moorland of the grouse moors as the reverse side of the coin. The early ramblers enjoyed the moors for a complex group of reasons, maybe principally for the remoteness and because they represented an escape from the smoky industrial city. But the chance for these moors to regenerate as genuinely wild natural and romantic landscapes was not taken as it should have been when the urban regeneration happened. Now these areas are targeted by conservation groups who see their potential for everlasting management and job opportunities for the expanding numbers of graduates coming from land management courses. In the passage above I love the use (twice) of that favoured word of the wildlife trusts – ‘mosaic’. They use it at moments of stress when desperate for a weapon to counter the arguments of others - as a magic word, a talisman before which all bow down and all critical judgement is suspended.

Climbing Corydalis

Discovering new wild flowers that have escaped your attention for a lifetime is a source of delight. Mark kindly identified the delicate flower in yesterday's post as the Climbing Corydalis. Despite its small scale it is flowering in September so the lack of competition should have made it more noticeable. Looking at my books I see Rose has it as being locally common though there was but a small patch here. Corydalis claviculata, according to Phillips, is also called White Climbing Fumitory.

Like many delicate flowers it's not easy to photograph effectively and others have also struggled as evident in illustrations on the web. All the better in this respect that those dedicated artists in botanical illustration should have a chance to show that the camera is not everything. My photos today at least had the advantage of better light but the sunlight on the tiny white flowers is a minefield for contrast problems.

Searching the plant's name did bring up one item that (irrationally) depressed me. It seems there is a species of weevil associated with the Corydalis that has become a target for the biodiversity people. It now has its own Action Plan. Why do I suddenly feel rather tired?