How Wild?

Our friend with the orphean lyre headgear was watching this morning. He was on his own. This little scene says something about the quality and value of wildness on Blacka and elsewhere. Much of what's growing here is "overgrown", that is going its own way rather than being forced into a pattern prescribed by those who've never been here. The deep shrub layer and the spreading young trees look to be just the surroundings for a young deer, much more appropriate than short heather moorland. The natural beauty that we find here can never escape the influence of exploitation in the past but managed witha suitable light touch we could get a balance that satisfied all but the least flexible. That would mean a more open mind from the managers and one more engaged and  with more sensibility, so is sadly very unlikely.

But meanwhile there are still isolated views which show what can be achievedwith a wilding and partial wilding approach. Here that's likely to be unintentional on the part of the conservation charities whose failure to prioritise natural beauty over a dead handed biodiversity agenda diminishes our landscape experience.

Just Perfect

Those people who love to see our native deer can't wish for a better place to see them in natural surroundings than at Blacka Moor.

There's no shortage of managed deer parks often attached to stately homes where deer are semi domesticated. It's quite possible to see stags lying at the side of a road in such places as Hampton Court in London. They are of course fed in winter. To hear people talk of these animals as 'wild' is a travesty. Far away to the north of the comfortable surroundings of the home counties are the Scottish highlands. Many people see the deer on those mountains as being in natural surroundings. In fact they are just as managed, being kept in an artificially high numbers to serve the shooting industry. this results in an overgrazed landscape almost devoid of trees. It's possible to see deer in absurdly large herds; at that level numbers destroy the natural ecology and lacks visual appeal.

Our good fortune at Blacka has led to us seeing deer just occasionally perhaps and in small numbers. Any talk of 'damage' is nonsense when put alongside the impact of farm animals. And we just need to see them to know that this is how we should experience wildlife. The beauty can stop you short.

The spots on the back of the young deer have faded and are now barely visible even to those who can get close up. But the intense affection of the hind remains, the calf sometimes backing away from the nuzzling. This scene needs the trees and scrubby surroundings yet it's comparatively rare to see photos like this. Like the deer themselves the vegetation has not been managed. This is as close to  real experience of wild nature as we are lucky enough to get.

Our young Orphean lyre stag is not far from the hind and calf.

Scuttlings

The floor level of this woodland is densely crowded with bramble and various ferns and others. This makes great shelter for wildlife, rarely seen but sometimes heard.

During and after rain it becomes even more private and impenetrable. Just the ticket for animals seeking refuge.

This morning the sound was a desperate scuttling as something was trying to escape. My guess was a roe deer or two, unseen in the very deep bottom layer leading into the rhododendron. It was confirmed shortly afterwards by a group of prints, one of which was tiny.

Tweed Lobby

As expected, in the days leading up to 12th August the grouse lobby floods the media with phoney nonsense in press releases. They tell everyone that shooting grouse is the very best thing we can possibly do for wildlife in the uplands.

But this is more fun:

Return of the Wild

Slowly the pine marten is returning to parts of the country where it was previously wiped out.

Fantastic news in from @ForestryCommEng about sighting of a rare pine marten on camera in #NorthYorkMoors https://t.co/dE5cqBiw38

— Natural England (@NaturalEngland) August 7, 2017

Now let's have them in South Yorkshire.

Bright

.. but threatening. Some of the loveliest fresh green summer views come in the intervals between downpours.

Well-Earned Embarrassment

I wasn't involved in the consultations around the National Trust's management plan for its High Peak Estate. But I'm sure it was tackled in much the same way as that for the Eastern Moors run by the partnership of the NT and the RSPB and also that for the Sheffield Moors Partnership.

So  for that reason I have no sympathy with all those managers and others responsible for the mess they are in regarding grouse shooting on the High Peak moors. They deserve their embarrassment.

All the key decisions will have been taken at private meetings of people employed as public servants, the main elements carefully crafted to get difficult issues sidestepped before the *glossy brochure*. That was to be presented for approval by the national park's to those in political committees with a duty to say it should go ahead. These managers would not accept that there could be another perspective that needed to be worked through before any plan was to be sanctioned with a legal agreement lasting decades. They came before the public, or the small number who knew that some process was afoot, with their plan fully formed convinced that they could contrive to push it through with just a few minor adjustments to demonstrate they were "listening".

And there were reasons why this manipulation was necessary. Not just the large funding arrangements that needed to be sorted out with DEFRA, but the fact that all this land had already been designated in various ways with an absolute minimum of public involvement, if that is there was any at all. Those designations include Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation. All these pre-ordained classifications are just the job for taking away any influence the public can have even in public land. Until an upsurge comes along in the form of justified indignation such as the petition against grouse shooting. Hence the embarrassment.