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HIGH PRICE FOR HEATH - LOXLEY AND WADSLEY COMMONS Robert NEW 26 April 2008 John sent me a link to your website, particularly the article about Loxley and Wadsley Commons. Here's a copy of my letter sent yesterday to the chairman of Harpenden Town Council's (HTC) Environment Committee. This chairman is also a councillor on the superior authority St Albans District, who granted permission for the tree work. HTC have bought into (literally) the Countryside Management Service philosophy because after all they are the experts (and they need the smaller councils' money). There are four trial heather patches on the golf course, which occupies about 40% of Harpenden Common's 96 heactares. They have been fenced off and monitored for three years. Result - no sign of any growth. If you can take the excitement go to www.hertsad.co.uk and search either 'Nomansland' and/or 'Harpenden Common' and/or 'cherry trees'. We have been at it for several weeks; the editor will continue to give publicity until the campaign fizzles out or the councils back off. By the way, your website is fascinating, lots of work and knowledge, thank you very much. I am but a portly 57 yr old dog walking resident of Harpenden, where my front door opens straight on to the Common and should be treating me right now to a spectacular feast of cherry blossom. Now there's only one. I have forwarded links to your website to other members of our group. Mark 8 April 2008 I am entirely in agreement of your arguments both about allowing nature to evolve the countryside and in your comments about the abysmal "conservation" practices in this country. I think it would be accurate to say that in England conservationists are people who destroy the natural in order to create the artificial. I live in Surrey and we have seen a staggering amount of deforestation in the last decade. It is difficult to know how much for sure, but I would estimate that at least 3,000 acres or about 4% of Surrey woodland has been destroyed in that time. Nearly all of this is naturally regenerated secondary woodland, only a small amount is plantation. Amongst the Surrey sites ruined by this environmental travesty are:
Hindhead
Common & Devil's Punchbowl - National Trust Just across the County border are:
Lynchmere
Common (W. Sussex) - The Lynchmere Society The worst deforesters include (in order of most destructive):
MOD
(Government) All these sites - and many other locations in all three counties. - have been partly or almost completely deforested to create "heathland". In the case of Blackdown, I have seen a painting dating from 1824, which indicated even then it was a Scots pine Wood. The trees felled included some of the biggest Scots pines I have ever seen. They appear to have arisen from natural regeneration, possibly from pines planted in the 18th century, when it was common to plant pines on hills as shelter for travelers and landmarks. Lynchmere and Chapel Commons are grazed by cattle owned by a hobby farmer. The MOD has agreements with Surrey & Hampshire wildlife trusts to carry out grazing of MOD land. So far they have had problems with getting enough cattle, fencing and finding local people to help, and some sites are not yet grazed. But both organisations have received large sums of money for this purpose. The NT is rich enough to have it's own herds of cattle and ponies. My main source for the acreage deforested in Surrey is the "Surrey Heathland Project". It's website (www.surreyheathlandproject.org.uk) was slightly out of date when I last checked it, hundreds of additional acres of The Ash Ranges have been destroyed the winter just gone (which I included). In addition a warden of the NT at Hindhead admitted the destruction of (or intended destruction of) 400 acres of woodland there a few years ago. The Surrey WT claimed that it was only cutting down plantation trees at Wisley. I saw lorry-loads of birch trees being removed and, as someone who worked in the woodworking industry for 15 years, I know birch has never been used as a plantation tree here. This kind of misinformation is commonplace. There have been very few consultations with local people about these activities. At Esher Common (Forestry Commission), there was huge local opposition to the deforestation, but the protesters were ignored. The same thing happened at the Bourne and Tilford woods (a plantation bought by the RSPB and renamed 'Farnham Heath'), local people were ignored. The attached letter, sent to a newspaper by a local person about Witley Common, sums up very well how most local people (who have an opinion) feel about the policies of "conservationists". TAKE THREE WOODLAND WILDFLOWERS Jon 11 February 2008 I am one of those conservation vandals you guys seem rather keen to attack. I dislike the fact that consevation has become an industry. I agree that it would be lovely to see just one piece of wildland but the only way to do that is to go abroad pehaps - but even in the wildest corner of the world we "manage" the land-by polluting it from afar, by changing it's climate or simply visiting it. It is all management, just degrees of. I have to work within the common standards framework, and yes, put effort into getting sites into favourable condition. The system is somewhat rigid and naturally goes against the grain of us old hippy types. It is not inflexible though and If I have a site that is knackered I wont burn tons of carbon and pump endless money into trashing it, I can simply recognise it as too far gone and either remove its designation or find new interest in it. If however I have an elderly lady trying to continue grazing with her herd of traditional cattle on an ancient common (which I do) I will certainly try to help maintain the history and wildlife of such a place to the best of my ability. To let such a place go to willow, birch and gorse scrub and eventually to who knows what when little effort can help maintain it seems little short of stupidity to me. I worry about what we would see in Britain as our landscape in your ideal scenario. As you are aware for most of Britain woodland is the natural climax community and there will always be large scale intensive farming. Do you propose islands of poor secondary woods and a few ancient (i.e anciently, intensively managed) woods in a sea of improved farmland? Do you propose we allow all of our traditional hay meadows, downs and heaths to scrub over? Do we allow those small, old fasioned farmers go pack up and sell up to posh horsey types? I dont wish to be confrontational but in these crowded islands how do non woodland species survive in your vision? HARTING DOWN - OBSESSION WITH CONSERVING MAN-MADE LANDSCAPES Dom 30 November 2007 I always read your articles with interest, but you always make so many references to "artificial" and "natural" landscapes. I'm sure I'm not the first person to raise the question of how human interference with the landscape is so much more "unnatural" than animal interference with it - we are animals too at the end of the day, and I find it hard to see why our behaviour (however abhorent and self-defeating it might be) is classified as "unnatural"; if anything, this is an anthropocentric approach that elevates us above all other living beings. In any case, everything we do to destroy our environment will come back and bite us in the form of extinction, eventually - as is the natural way. My article Are humans a natural disturbance? was written to address this question. STRATEGY FOR ENGLAND TREES, WOODS AND FORESTS - A COMMENTARY Peter 26 June 2007 This a refreshing change. I agree with just about everything you say. I am particularly interested in the cultural questions you ask in the last-but-one paragraph. I am not sure those issues will ever be addressed through strategies and plans, but through experience and small scale 'projects'. I'll give you an example. My second teenage son had a chance to go on a BTCV Millennium Volunteering weekend a week or two ago. They did all sorts of 'green' activities including woodworking. Tuition was done by a couple of local lads (early twenties) who are making a (small) living from doing these courses and a variety of other activities. They sit way under the radar of economic development, protected area management and other national, regional and local strategies, but they're getting to grips with those questions you're asking. My lad came home buzzing and I would be only too happy if he and his mates have the courage to continue to explore those ways of living 'lighter' than I manage to do. Thanks for raising the issues- standing back from day to day officialdom is much needed. A SEA OF CHANGE - A RESPONSE TO THE MARINE BILL WHITE PAPER Blaise 15 June 2007 I have just stumbled across your website - with some delight - and am not sure how I have missed it before now. I was particularly interested by the amount written about the Skomer MNR and marine nature conservation and the strength of your advocacy - the reason why should be clear from my attached response to the Marine Bill White Paper and the new website at www.wwmc.org.uk. As you report discovering the Skomer MNR petition at Martin's Haven in your article on the Marine Bill White Paper, I assume you signed it (?) and therefore you are disqualified from submitting on-line via this website! ... but if not? However, should you be writing about the MNR again and you feel inclined to mention the wwmc site, and include a link, we'd be delighted. NATURE GROOMING - THE KILLING OF WILDNESS IN NATURE Al 17 Decermber 2007 In your article on Ashdown Forest you criticise the RSPB for its plans to turn Broadwater Warren into a mixed heathland/broadleaf woodland reserve. Have you ever visited the place? Do you think the serried ranks of conifers currently covering most of the estate somehow preferable? Or perhaps you approved of the previous plans to turn it into a landfill site? I understand from reading some of the other articles that you come from a position where any human intervention in the landscape is bad, and you seem to hark back to an imagined pre-agricultural golden era where noble savages roamed the primeval forest. It seems rather foolish to imagine that Bialowieza Forest could be re-created on a 400 acre site one mile south of Tunbridge Wells, don’t you think? The RSPB will manage the reserve to develop wildlife diversity, including the endangered Nightjars and Dartford Warblers you are so dismissive of in your article. A whole new range of habitats will be opened up, access will be enhanced, and if any of the other RSPB reserves I have visited is a guide, it will become a truly exceptional place to visit – a real resource for locals and tourists alike. Plans are already well in hand to boost habitats for the widest possible variety of insect, mammal, reptile and amphibian life, as well as birds. A special trail will lead visitors to some of the exceptional archeological remains on the site. Dog-walking and horse-riding will continue, in flora- and fauna-rich surroundings. Yes, as on Ashdown Forest, some grazing may take place to maintain the heathland, but so what? You’ll still have far more access to a far more inspiring site than the dank and gloomy tracks under the non-native spruces and firs that currently cover most of the estate. You asked in another article what RSPB members think of the organisation controlling foxes and other pests by shooting. Both I and a majority of my local RSPB group are totally supportive of the organisation’s stance on this issue. Predator numbers can get out of balance. To anyone other than an animal rights extremist, of the type who thinks it OK to release minks into the wild despite the catastrophic effect on the local wildlife, it’s a complete non-issue. If you want to persuade anyone as to the wisdom of your ideas, I advise you to be a lot clearer in your reasoning, and rather than taking sour side-swipes, give us a reasoned alternative to the scheme being carried out by the RSPB at Broadwater Warren. Peter 19 July 2007 I was checking out the Heritage lottery grant for the Forest Ridge project etc. etc. and came across your piece on Broadwater forest and then BAM!!! Ashdown Forest. When I read it I was surprised to see your view and that you don’t even live here. If you can see what is going on, it confirms what we think: that there are none so blind as don’t want to see and none so deaf as those that don’t want to hear! Please look at our website. www.ashdownforestactiongroup.co.uk you will also see we are running an e-petition on the Prime ministers website and a paper one which has over 1200 signatures so far. Please get in touch as it is brilliant to hear from someone who is not so involved locally as we are, and can also see the folly of so called conservation which has such a heavy price on existing wildlife and habitat. All of which are ignored to benefit some academic’s idea of what nature should be. Norma 12 May 2007 I enjoy your site very much. I came across it looking for Roger Lovegrove’s book Silent Fields, having only remembered the vaguest details -which did not include remembering the author or the name of the book. I haven’t read it yet but I intend to do so. Whilst having nothing against farmers, it sounds to me as though this book will help me develop my hunch that it is not true that farmers and the shooting lobby are the guardians of the countryside. I think it is important to be able to tease out different vested interests and my underlying concern is that no-one speaks up for the land or other species unless they can be described as having a use for the human species. So population control is also a hobby horse of mine. However, the reason I am writing to you is that I have a comment about your observations on urban ecology. I wonder if living in cities need break the connection with the natural world? I love the countryside and wild areas but I don’t have a car and hope never to have one. The countryside will not be enhanced if I visit it, rather it will benefit (in my view) if I stay away and leave it to get on with its own existence. Here in London (where I was born and brought up) I can walk to where I need to go and to buy what I need to buy. Ideally I would co-operate with others to produce food and to dispose of waste material in the same area. I’ve just been down to the canal to get wild food for my rabbits (skirting the dog mess) . If people travelled less and worked more to produce in their own areas, wouldn’t that be better and wouldn’t we be more aware of the natural world around us? Believe me, while I hope one day to live outside London, we do have wildlife and plants here and if these were encouraged – and at least noticed - more for their own sake and if people were more involved in this and aware of the effect of what they do, I like to believe that the wider, untamed world would also benefit. It’s not the self-willed land of which you write but it could be a way to support it.
WILD LAND OR REWILDING? (See under Scotland and Wales, Heroes and Villains) Rob McMorran 26 April 2007 Firstly you make the point that zonation isn't emphasised within the report as a possible future approach for NPs etc. Firstly zonation in certain areas is actually a key recommendation (see section 6.2.2 No. 5) of the report. Admittedly it s not fully explored as a concept, although it s value is alluded to by respondents a few times in the management review section. Interestingly zoning was not an issue raised by many respondents in relation to their management and as the report was primarily a review based on interviews of key personnel it only came up as often as it was stressed by respondents. To my mind it's not a practice in place in the way you mean it on a lot of sites. (i.e. surrounding wildest areas with low intensity land uses). This possibly being related to the fact that surrounding owners would need to be involved as JMT etc obviously want all or most of their sites as wild as possible! That's not to say I personally think it s a bad idea. I think it s a good one, but more importantly it was recommended because visitors are on the increase and land management in Scotland doesn't t seem to have used zoning seriously in the past. Second point - you mentioned that you think the typology looks to the past rather then the future. I think the typology was meant (and I think this is mentioned in there somewhere) as a tool which could provide a snapshot of a landscape in time. Linking management type with it could certainly change the rankings a bit, no doubt. However, what I do say in the report is really sort of in agreement with you as I specifically state that restorative management could over time move sites up the typology (like Carrifran). So it s not the past so much as a moment in time - so applying it in 10 years would provide different results. I hope that makes sense. Thirdly - you say that I was ambivalent about the vegetative state of landscape cover, which reflected a feeling in the room that a barrier to understanding of wildland is the untutored perceptions of the public i.e. that I didn't understand the importance of vegetation within the wild land concept. This is a key point and crucial really to everything ! It should be noted that the report was on "wild landscapes", as I stated at the meeting, not wild land. This is important because I then went on the explain that wild landscapes is a broader concept (like wildness) and wild land was only really considered as certain wild landscapes which exhibit all the various attributes strongly like Mar Lodge or Glen Affric. The idea behind the typology being that applying it would show up the attributes which could be most usefully managed to increase a sites relative wildness. This approach is used to manage wilderness in the states although a lot more detailed axes are used ! The idea behind wild landscapes and wildness in the report was to develop recognition that wildness is something that goes well beyond the confines of wild land. As I said at the time wildness is, from my perspective, like wilderness a primarily social construct. So I was effectively saying that areas can be wild landscapes (not necessarily wild land!) so long as people feel they are having a wild experience within them and this is important just as wild nature is important intrinsically and for so many other reasons. This doesn't have to dilute the concept of wild land, just recognise that people can have wild experiences outwith wild land and that this deserves protecting too. So taking the sociological (wild landscapes are a mental construct) view vegetation is, as I said, only important to the concept of wildness in terms of how it shapes a viewers perceptions. That is what I meant. In the report I also say (within the typology) that an areas wildness is also a product of the degree of natural interactions - specifically labelling ecotonal habitats as key to wildness (and some other ecological criteria). But fundamentally the report takes the sociological view to the concept of wild landscapes, simply because wildness was considered as something predominantly developed in Scotland from that perspective i.e. related to remoteness and solitude and so on. Groups like the SWLG and various other recreational groups have been lobbying for wild land on this sort of basis for along time. That of course is the real debating point. The NTS for example do not consider deer control as being management for wild values but for conservation values, with wild land management being more about removing buildings, limiting visual impacts and tracks and so on. I think practically core wild land areas should be managed as much from an ecological viewpoint as a social one, but because wild is such a sociological term, particularly in Scotland with all the cultural landscapes we have, this sort of management should to my mind also be strongly concerned with terms like natural habitat networks and so on. This is exactly why Toby has adopted the term "natural habitat areas" because it s less fraught with all the sociological issues of what's wild and what's not. Finally you mention that I appeared supportive of the idea of incorporating cultural land uses within the wild landscapes concept but you point out the danger that private landowners may not recognise that land being used for sporting reason (or whatever) is land at a place in the continuum and far from being the most wild. I would agree with that. But my point was that using the concept of wild landscapes and saying a landscape can be wild even if sporting or crofting or productive forestry is going on may bring more landowners on board, this doesn't need to destroy the idea of core wild land but just recognise that a landscapes relative wildness can be enhanced (to bring it at least some way up the continuum), by removing tracks for example, without necessarily banning any form of land use other then conservation. So I was really saying that we can enhance wildness on private estates without going the whole hog - which could actually lead to the creation of buffer areas for core wild land ! It is of course all such a debateable contentious issue and I tried to recognise that a variety of viewpoints exist. I sincerely hope that in the future all those concerned can come together and create a more unified front on what constitutes wild land AND wildness more generally because if this doesn't happen it seems likely that the Scottish executive is unlikely to support any moves on the whole issue. I would reiterate that there are very different views on what wild land and wildness are out there, but that sociologically wild areas (where people can experience wildness) are important to many, just as areas closer to wild nature are. So I hope that maybe clarifies a few points. I look forward to seeing how the whole debate moves forward in the future ! James 8 January 2007 I have sympathy with Sandy over her defence of Rannoch Moor from your disparagement. Apart from the fact that creating woodland on it would significantly contribute to global warming, there is no evidence that the moor is an artefact - it is probably one of the most natural areas remaining in Europe! In my view, whether we like (or love) an area, or not, has nothing to do with its wilderness quality - the miles of flat, Arctic tundra, Greenland icecap, Caithness flow country or Sahara desert are probably pretty boring to most people. It is the fact that we like trees that, in my view, is causing a reduction of wilderness quality in upland Scotland: we are converting (or trying to convert) large areas of a relatively natural landscape to woodland in order to fit in with our preconceptions! The fact that you found the moor wet and miserable to me shows it really is a wilderness! Scott got pretty miserable on his way to the South Pole! SHOOTING GREY SEALS OUT OF SEASON Mick 24 September 2006 Nice article. The protected areas unfortunately are not at all protected - parts of the SAC are about to be licensed for oil exploration. If an idiot on a jetski was buzzing a dolphin, call the police! It is illegal under the CRoW act - I'd love to see a prosecution. Pembrokeshire is a special area, and with the degree of protection and sympathetic ownership, it should be safer than most, but unfortunately this does not seem to be the case - with the recent granting of permission for the large holiday village within the NP, and the oil issue - shows that protection is a label not a reality. Is seal shooting actually happening in Pembrokeshire? I must admit I didn't realise that the law was so open on seal shooting. I agree with your conclusion that protected areas should actually be protected. LOOKING FOR WILDLAND - DEVELOPING A VALUE SYSTEM FOR WILD NATURE Andy 22 April 2006 Very pleased to see your site and the network. Back in the early nineties a couple of us tried to set up a thing just called 'The Wilderness", the idea being to buy land and leave it alone. We called it 'an idea whose time has come' but I think we were probably wrong. We got some good response, in particular from Richard Mabey, but it all fizzled out. Looks like maybe the time has come now, and anyway you seem to be doing a better job of promotion than we did! All the best to you in your efforts. I never heard anyone else use the term 'self-willed' but I'm glad you are and I hope a lot more start. To me that is what wild means. Thanks, Andy, for the file of quotations. Here's one for you:
Senator Frank Church, the floor manager of the Wilderness Act, said that the Forest
Service: “…would have us believe that no lands ever subject to past
human impact can qualify as wilderness, now or ever. Nothing could be more
contrary to the meaning and intent of the Wilderness Act. The effect of
such an interpretation would be to automatically disqualify almost
everything, for few if any lands on this continent—or any other—have
escaped man’s imprint to some degree” MOUNTAIN LIONS AND EAGLES - THE PLACE OF HUMANS IN NATURE Tim 3 March 2006 I am troubled by your unqualified use of the word 'freak' - do you have any rational justification for such a description of your own species? BLACKA MOOR IN PERIL FROM CONSERVATION PROFESSIONALS Neil 4 January 2006 The following is a response to the comments from John on your site about Blacka Moor. The comments from John could not be made by anyone who knows Blacka Moor and its situation. I have known Blacka Moor for over 30 years and I have observed closely the present dispute. John says all nature reserves he knows are preserved because of rare species. Blacka Moor was not made a nature reserve because of rare species. Occasional rare species do visit but that is because this site is on the edge of an 8,000 hectare expanse of open moorland. Those birds will not be endangered if Blacka Moor continues to be left alone as it has been for many years, which is what we want. The story of why Blacka was made a nature reserve takes some believing. The people who designated it a nature reserve three years ago, the city council and the local wildlife trust, were very open as to why they did so and their reasons are on record. The reason was to give the wildlife trust some land to manage. Again they were very open: they wanted the land because it would enable them to apply for a substantial grant from the HLF and their ownership of the land would qualify them for that. You can imagine that obtaining a large site like this of over 400 acres was a coup for the wildlife trust and it has led to them enjoying a much higher profile, helped them to persuade other funders to part with large sums and perhaps also in one way or another helped to pay the mortgage on their new smart headquarters and fund the largely deskbound management jobs of those who work there. The trouble is that the land should never have been given in this way. This land was given to the people of Sheffield by a benefactor in 1933 as charitable land stipulated to be used only as a public pleasure ground. He did this to protect it from development and the regular walkers on the hills have thanked him ever since. Now the first thing that the wildlife trust has done is to cross it with barbed wire to help them farm the land with cattle. This will bring in several more thousands of pounds from DEFRA which otherwise would not have been available. If I were a conservationist I would be demanding the heads of these people for bringing my trade into disrepute! As for dogs, yes there is something of a dog-walking issue here. Some people do allow their dogs to walk off the lead here, having always previously taken the conscientious decision not to do so on all other comparable nearby areas which have a longstanding designation for wildlife protection or are places where livestock graze. Those people had considered that Blacka, a wild area giving nobody a livelihood, was the one place where they could walk with their dogs responsibly. The wildlife trust’s first arrogant attempts to impose dog restrictions have now been withdrawn because of the strength of the anger felt against an obvious injustice. As regards management of land being necessary, well this is another thing which has me scratching my head with disbelief. A man on his own used to maintain the paths and take up the small birch saplings until the 1970s giving complete satisfaction. Then a moderniser in the Town Hall got rid of him in an economy drive. Now the place is being managed with the help of considerable public sums by people who spend most of their time at workstations devising ways of getting fund providers to cough up for their next management plan!! When they run out of ideas because they rarely visit the place they ask the local walkers for suggestions so their jobs can continue. As the saying goes you couldn’t make it up! John 20 December 2005 I can not agree with your point of view Mark, although I am certain your point is popular. You want to give something to everybody, You seem even against restricting free running dogs in a nature reserve. I have worked in nature reserves myself on the continent of Europe and have never noticed that landscapes were "preserved" as farmland. In all cases that I know of a nature reserve was preserved in the first place always because a number of rare to very rare species were to be found there. Whether plants, amphibians, insects and very often even mostly birds. When you leave a piece of land to it's own devices it will eventually evolve into the climax state, mostly oak-birch wood at our latitude and very often the species for which the nature reserve was set up in the first place will not be able to survive there. In almost all cases wetlands and open water will disappear if one does nothing and it are those that have by far the highest species density and diversity. Often the rare species are the only reason an area is not build up immediately. Scrubland may be valuable as a place to relax and walk in but it is not as diverse as the landscapes it originated from. If rare species are worth preserving then management work is essential. In fact it is horribly sad that a well meaning person like yourself finds it necessary to attack other well meaning conservationists because there is so little of value left. Of course woods and scrubland are also important. But these are not disappearing in the first place because of agriculture! They are disappearing for motorways and factories and new suburbs; concrete and noise and pollution until there is nothing left and we have a real silent spring. The despoilers have nothing to fear as long as well meaning naturalists fight one another like you are doing. A Friend of Blacka Moor 19 December 2005 I love the article. It's just what we needed 2/3 years ago!!! But I think it could still have a useful impact if it became widely read locally. The trouble is we've been finding out about these things, the issues, the context as well as the information that was being carefully shielded from us as all the time the conservation bandwagon was rolling along. If there was a way of getting the article widely circulated beyond the web I think it could have quite an influence. Maybe it would also generate more interest in the general issues. We must think how we can best use your excellent article. BEAVERS AND BOARS: A WILD ANIMAL UPDATE John 11 September 2005 In another life I did autopsies and was involved in Tb research. At present I am a small farmer in SW Ireland. I have taken a look at more than a hundred badgers killed in traffic and I have not seen one single case of Tb. This is in West Cork where supposedly one in four badgers is infected. In the case of bovine Tb there are special factors working through the research. It has become a minor industry in it's own right, with quite a bit of employment depending on it so it is in quite a few peoples interest to maintain a status quo. Any animal can carry Mycobacterium bovis bacilli and even farmers are not free from it. In the 60's studies were done in Poland that indicated that more than 30% of all infections of cattle in that country came from the farmers that tended them. That possibility is never even mentioned here. Once we had an embarrassing outbreak of bovine Tb in a herd of Wisent (European bison) in the zoo where I was working at the time; the victims were slaughtered in all haste and the carcasses were fed to the carnivores in that zoo. Half a year later several lions died from bovine Tb. I know for a fact that sheep, goats, horses and sheepdogs can be carriers and all these animals are kept together with cattle on many farms and the department of Agriculture refuses point blank to do any testing of these animals. In fact I think the one animal most susceptible to bovine Tb is the Guinea pig. Not ever tested. Take this together with the fact that many condemned cattle still enter the human food chain when no lesions are found and that there are indications that there exist some inside lines to this cheap meat. And that I have never seen even one sign of Tb in road killed badgers makes me think that the whole affair is a bit of a scam. Since I have not much trouble in being tolerant to wild animals and their depredations on my crops, I suppose it is possible to develop this in others. And believe me that some of these depredations are serious. Last year I let my attention wander away from a plot of peas for a few weeks. Rats ate the lot. We harvested just 14 whole peas. This year we got our usual 60 kilos of dried peas from the same plot. I have otters and cormorants in my fish pond and bull finches have killed several expensive trees by eating every single last bud. In the past we had foxes and mink nearly wipe out lambs and poultry. I have had to take action to preserve our existence. I killed quite a few foxes up to the point that they learned not to take what is mine. Mink as an exotic that does very serious damage to wildlife I will take on everywhere and we have a continuous war going on with rodents. However, I will not use rat-poison so has to do no damage to natural predators. And any stoat that wanders into a mink trap is released. I think it is necessary to take up our role of apex predator seriously though. At one time we had so many foxes here that very few other creatures survived. I agree completely that we have created a landscape whereby we have become intolerant of the predations of wild animals and I do keep almost 30% of our land as truly wild space. Gordon 26 June 2005 I was disappointed to read about your comments on Whinash being unremarkable farmland. I take it that you have not actually walked through the remarkably beautiful Bretherdale (includes ancient woodland) and Borrowdale valleys where you would not even know there was a 6 lane motorway fairly close and you get a great sense of remoteness. See pictures @ nvmdigital.com There are also superb panoramic views of the Whinash area and its virtually unspoilt fells particularly from the Howgills, the fells above Haweswater and North of the Whinash Ridge. The visibility impact of the Ridge to a large part of Cumbria, North Yorkshire and North Lancashire would affect fell walkers and those people who get away from the likes of Manchester and Liverpool because they've had enough of looking at industry and built up areas. I was fortunate to have been able to visit the public enquiry and listen to the expert witnesses regarding landscape and invite you to look at the evidence at www.persona.co.uk/whinash I am for renewable energy, although wind is a very expensive (heavily subsidised) and not very efficient option and would like to see a substantial investment in green coal, biomass and tidal technology. It would be very sad if we had to desecrate some of our finest scenery in order to provide a relatively small amount of power and the have the very expensive task of decommissioning the wind turbines in 15 to 25 years time. We could never replace the 260 tons of peat or restore the Whinash Ridge to its former glory. In my opinion wind turbines if we have them are more suited to plateaus and offshore. Dick 9 March 2005 Fascinating account, Mark. Raises lots of issues that are germane to any discussion of "sustainable agriculture" (or more properly, sustainable land use). Although I recently retired from the University, I am still doing some odd consultancy work for them, one aspect of which is rewriting our p/g Environmental Decision Making course. If you don't mind, I will copy your article to the course team for this, because it is such an excellent example of the way that perceptions of environmental issues can distort the decisions that get made. Adrian 2 March 2005 COPPICING R.I.P. Thanks Mark for interesting stuff on crofting. I've just finished doing a pilot OCN2 in coppicing at the green wood trust, which was very good. The week started off with a very gloomy look at the way it was. Many people lamenting the passing of the good old days and livelihoods of coppicing. This is not quite the way I view it. The wide scale practise of coppicing as it was, did represent sustainable and economic management of woodlands. Less wood was imported from overseas. Lots of skill was built up and handed down over generations. Woodlands were well integrated into the local economy and way of life. Wildlife was happy. But coppice workers were poor and landless, wages low, living conditions rough and the work repetitive and physically hard. Coppicing was a successful system because it addressed the economic and social needs of the time. People simply wanted a good deal for their pea sticks, fencing and treen etc. The economic and social climate has changed and coppicing largely given way to mass plantations and industrial methods. This situation must change but there is no way back and maybe that can be a good thing. What is the way forward now for society and woodlands? I reckon our greatest needs are personal and ecological health, education, recreation and spiritual well being (what ever form that takes). This represents a social product for woodlands, social forestry. In terms of economics for me, wanting to make a living from sustainable management of woodland resources, this can be a good thing. It presents more varied work, social challenges, is people oriented.....and quite possibly lots of other benefits yet to be discovered. The main obstacles are slow development and low cash flow for many years, planning, bureaucracy and the mindset of people against you. Maybe the question people like me need to find an answer to is......In true Permaculture style, how can these problems be turned into solutions? Any comments anyone? Adrian Leaman , Wholewoods Environmental Arts www.wholewoods.co.uk Robert Macfarlane 3 April 2005 (abridged) Mark, I understand that you come from an anti-anthropocentric position, and that one of the prime motives in your involvement with rewilding initiatives, and the wilderness debate, is to induce a larger-scale viewing of land use, which sees human involvement in certain types of landscape, or areas of landscape, as neither necessary nor generally desirable. My approach is from a less radical, more community-focused angle. I am interested in the "good" which certain types of landscapes have done for people, often large numbers of people, and I am also interested, as you point out, in the strata of cultural memory which get laid down on and around certain types of landscape, and certain specific landscape forms, and determine the ways we as individuals, cultures, and governments, behave towards them. I see the clear water between our positions, but I do not see that we have to be sworn enemies. You talk about "true wildernesses" as offering "richness and beauty from which to draw knowledge and inspiration from". I am in complete agreement with you. This is the central tenet of my approach to these ideas. And I think that our respective moral compasses, to use your term, are both set by the same lodestone. Certainly, I think we have the following aims in common, although we are pursuing them in different ways 1. to contribute to and heighten the awareness of the debate over the nature and value of wildness. 2. to prevent, for various reasons, the spoliation of what "undegraded" landscape (however comparatively one understands undegraded) there is in the British Isles by ill-thought out and short-sighted policies of land use. 3. to move towards rewilding initiatives which do not simply set aside land for use and recreation (preserving "bleakness" etc) but in fact reduce the "dominant human influence" and allow the land to run/be itself. 4. to historicise our understandings of wilderness, and its associate concepts, the better to understand where they might lead from here, and how they might be reshaped (actually, perhaps this is not what you wish to do, as inexplicably you sneer at ideas of "state of mind, cultural context", as though such factors are somehow irrelevant to "wildland initiatives"). 5. - and this is the biggie - to help people to "see a future for our landscapes past their own lives." Having these five (or at least four) aims in common seems to me to put us firmly on the same side. You then kindly take it upon yourself to predict the content of the book I'm now writing. I am interested in the book [in] ways in which humans have historically, and do today, react to certain types of landscape (coastal, moorland, mountainous, island, headland etc.). I'm also interested in abolishing the ridiculous idea of the "pristine" wilderness (which Muir so harmfully espoused in Yosemite) as having any purchase in Britain. So I will be writing historically about The Clearances, the Irish Famine, the decline of heavy industry in places like the Calder Valley, the deforestation of Scotland and Ireland, the arrival of agribusiness - about all the processes which have, historically, brought the British Isles to its current landscape state. I will be writing about how - your phrase - "the emptiness and bleakness of the artificial landscapes that can be found in the British Isles" came to be. You admit towards the end of your piece that you "may have to give Macfarlane some due as he has put a finger on something that does need addressing eventually - a literary canon for a wilderness view in Britain." This is in fact something I'm working exceptionally hard on. First of all, I'm putting together a course here at Cambridge on Literature and the Environment to be taught to English undergraduates. There is currently NO course here which offers any kind of ecological slant, or environmental approach to writing - the future opinion-makers and policy-makers of Britain go through their Tripos without. Secondly, I'm compiling, for no money, and over five years, a major anthology of wilderness writing, which will compare and contrast the British tradition with the American and Australian and Nepali etc. etc. traditions. It'll be the first such anthology (though lots of "green" readers and "environment" readers exist) and I hope it will prompt the establishment of even more courses on the environment in this country - and get people thinking hard, in non-anthropocentric ways, about the way we treat our "nature". Lawrence 12 March 2005 I was completely re-assured when I recently discovered your website. I am a countryside warden for the National Trust. I have been working there since the age of 16 and I have been building a foundation of knowledge for this vast and important subject. Over the last five or six years, I have become more and more frustrated with the way that conservationists and associated organisations seem to operate. I love your terminology 'mindscape' and 'anthropocentric conceptualisation'. I fear that the people that we need to recruit are many of the so called conservationists and they would most certainly need a definition of your term! I also know people in my field that I feel are keen to promote re-wilding but easily become frustrated with the very real problems with doing this, particularly because of our large population (I'm sure I don't need to tell you that!) So why am I emailing you? Well, for a number of years I have been pestered by an idea in my head. It is to embark on an environmental quest that would hopefully create the right culture to accept re wilding or creating the 'wildwood' as I refer to it on my website. I have created a small gardening business which seems to be unique. I call it Wildwood Gardens and I actively encourage people to create their own tiny pieces of the wildwood. I have had interest from people with small holdings and this has triggered an idea that I would like to pursue through WWG. I would like to see a television programme that follows the creation of this habitat ranging from gardens to arable reversion. I would be actively seeking out areas of land to revert. I would focus on linking the surviving areas of habitat (the best we have left) and connecting by proactive advertising and community involvement. The programme would be controversial and depict the destruction of wilderness over the last 5 thousand years. It would show people how we were connected to this special habitat and that in the last 5 mins of time it has been turned upside-down by our actions. It would tug on the heart strings of the public by showing CGI Aurochs, Tarpan, wolf, lynx, boar and bears being pushed to extinction. The draining of Britain's marsh (fens) the Highlands that appear to be a wilderness but are not of course. I have learned that television can be such a useful way of reaching people.I would hope that this would be an opportunity for the public to be educated and reflect on what effect we have had as a species. Mathew 3 March 2005 Just read your article on your web-site - fantastic stuff, and I probably agree with most of your points. I find the caution within the nature conservation sector unbelievably frustrating; as much as the tendency to garden nature reserves rather than let nature just let rip a while. Wilderness is the one good trick up our sleeves, in my mind, and yet many can't seem to find it or are afraid to show it to the wider world. Meanwhile I still find myself being drawn into pointless arguments as to whether sycamore is a 'valid' species for this country... . Paul 27 September 2004 Once again, your rhetoric has me mesmerized and I was with you on the walk in the mountains. I do not know how the plants you describe look in real life, but my mind made the connections nevertheless. The peace and tranquillity and oneness with nature you describe must be part of our psyche (or mine, at least) along with feelings of deja vu. I contrast this with my many trips to the east coast along flat or undulating monotonous arable land stretching seemingly forever, which could be so much more interesting and varied. Yesterday, the roads were foggy with topsoil, dry and lifeless after years of neglect being blown away, past the yellow monsters dragging their offspring behind. Perhaps on my next trip, I will imagine, as you do, a different landscape filled with variety and mystery, woodland and meadows where people know and interact with nature rather than destroy it.... but not when I'm driving!! Regards and happy day dreaming. John 16 March 2004 Apparently humanity is destroying the planet through overpopulation and pollution. Therefore the two-pronged message to get across to the people and our political masters is to reduce birth rates ( increasing death rates has a sinister ring to it ) and reduce our polluting activities. May I suggest we criticise those ethnic and religious groups who promote large families , and in turn > promote education to help emancipate ( specially) women - who , given the choice would often rather have small families. Promoting tolerance of homosexuality would also be helpful - they tend to have fewer children than heterosexuals. On the pollution front, challenging car use ( the media seems to think it a positive sign that Iraqis in Basra are buying more cars ), and promoting the separation and recycling of household waste at source e.g. composting kitchen scraps, dry sewage systems . We all know we are killing off our home planet. Please can we have more practical and proactive advice and help, and a bit less theorising and philosophising. Stella (Canary Islands) - In response to John Turner 17 March 2004 The problem with criticising as a design strategy is that the only thing it is reliably effective at is creating more misery. And the destructo-culture very heavily relies on our unhappiness: it is always some form of misery - like poverty or feelings of deep hopelessness - that makes people do all sorts of illogical things (eg. breed, or buy cars, or consume too much when this is obviously not helpful for the planet or person). So you may get some short-term change by criticising (like managing to manipulate someone into a behaviour you want) but the likelihood is that this is far too painfully reminiscent of the mountain of criticism we have to endure all our lives to actually create anything life-affirming in the longer-term. Singling out ethnic or religious groups for special criticism (or praise) is particularly unhelpful, as the destructo-culture also very much manipulates our very deeply rooted knee-jerk responses in this area in order to keep things as they are (eg. to provide the temporary relief - but lingering distraction - of feeling superior to others, to separate & divide us, & ultimately help towards justifying great massacres & continuous wars in places where 'life is cheap' - & our fuel resource in danger of becoming too expensive). In a world where 20% of the population consumes 85% of the worlds resources we have to do our 'overpopulation' maths a bit differently, anyway. And when tackling a design as complex & all-encompassing as today's version of an expanding global economy, it is essential we put our compost toilets firmly in context. Supporting each other in thinking for ourselves (including theorising and philosophising lots) is one of the most practical and proactive things we can do in this era of turbo-capitalism - where the majority of us are so caught up in panic and survival-mode to be extremely vulnerable to neatly packaged simple-sounding solutions (if we climb out of the deep funk caused by all the bad news of our dying mother earth long enough to care). Vicky 16 February 2004 Wild boar in New Zealand can be very savage, and wild pigs eat newborn lambs and can root up a lot of pasture. However, I do agree that all living things should try to share resources as much as is practicable. I don't like to see animals or people having to live like zoo animals. OUR COSTLIEST EXPENDITURE IS TIME Stefania 24 January 2004 THANKYOU! This is great... love your article, and the website is wonderful. Last weekend I had a wonderful insight into timescales whilst on a long & very still walk through the English countryside... I saw a pixie! It was in a young oak thicket, and a broken log suddenly looked like a face of a pixie... I did a double-take because I nearly missed it... What flashed through my mind was that even at such a slow pace (the early morning and slow meditative walking had stilled me into a blissful state) I was still going too fast to notice most of these very still things... Playfully I just thought "of course, there are pixies all around but they live in another time-scale. Time that passes much, much slower than ours, which is why we only very rarely notice them". Then I got images of those speeded up films with traffic... and imagined the countryside around me changing a lot faster, but with the human bits like a blur. Moving very fast. Had a lovely email from Jamie yesterday and saw his website, where I downloaded a great presentation... attached one of the pix that really caught my eye So... seems to be a theme for me at the moment, all this is why I loved your article :) Anita 26 January 2004 Hi Mark. We met briefly at the convergence in Leeds a wee while back - I've been reading Holmgren's new book too, haven't got to the end, but have also been thinking about his ideas about how we spend our time. Anyway, I really just wanted to say, thank you for this, these little bit of inspiration carry me through the frustrations of daily life and this seemingly endless winter in bonny Scotland. All the best to you Jamie (www.futuresedge.info) 27 January 2004 Stewart Brand seems pretty cool to me and the 10,000-year 'clock of the long now' formed a substantial backdrop of the MA in Foresight and Futures Studies, and in continued efforts to develop Permaculture and futurity in my mind and in conversations. The difference I think between an 'art/politics/science' of Permaculture and its much needed application by 'technicians' perhaps? (Ref: Dancing Wu Li Masters) On the pixies issue - have you read Philip Pullman's His Dark Material's trilogy? Maybe resonance with 'daemons' and with the 'windows in the air'. The 'tyranny of the present' often overloads our senses and the capacity for clear observation, critical thinking and sound ('future-proofed'?) interventions. The 'culture of immediacy' driven by acceptability and expediency does human civilization down, and serves as an injustice to future generations. SELF-WILLED LAND – THE REWILDING OF OPEN SPACES IN THE UK Nigel September 18, 2003 The Brazilian Kayapo people have managed their landscape so that most outside observers thought it "natural". Their knowledge of animal behaviour and associated plants and soil types, enabled them to create ecological "zones" within the forest and spread useful species between them - focussing on the edge between forest and savannah. Sound familiar? It’s from A Resurgence article Nov 2000, "Beyond the big lips". A key feature was the creation of Forest islands or apete. So European forest after the ice ages could well have been managed by early man. Paul 20 September 2003 I think what is important in the debate about wild woods is not the fact that it was static or moving but that we will very soon have no woods at all, in this country or anywhere. Man has been the biggest influence in our environment and the effects of his handiwork are to be seen throughout the world in loss of forests and woodland, thereby creating desertification, soil erosion, landslides etc. and a few examples are Iraq, Pakistan, Greece, Crete, South America and Southern Africa. I have just read "Far From Paradise - The Story of Man's Impact on the Environment" - 1986 version. A little out of date now but I will suggest a new category of man to be added when it's updated... that of Homo erectus. You know the sort, who has a 2-inch forehead, who typically work in call centres and speak Gumby. It's a potted history (sorry about the pun) of man's evolution and his interaction with the soil from the beginning of time when we were part of the natural world and took our place among the other living creatures. It takes us back to the original hunter-gatherers and through time to early farmers and how early civilisations failed due to their over-exploitation of forests and woodland such as the peoples of Mesopotamia and the Minoans of Crete. These early peoples lived in a fertile land with many forests, which were all hacked down with no provision for regeneration. The poor hillside soils of Crete today are lightly clad in the sort of trees that grow in poor soil: olives, carobs, almonds, figs etc. and drought resistant shrubs. The sheep and goats are the scourge of all soils when left to their own devices and especially so in the Mediterranean lands. Plato as long as 2400 years ago in his book "Critias" was concerned about loss of soils.."...And, just as happens in small islands, what now remains with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left...and it had much forest-land in its mountains.. many lofty trees. Moreover, it was enriched by the yearly rains from Zeus, which were not lost to it as now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea.." It's not all doom and gloom. The authors point to peoples using terracing on hillsides and where manures are returned to the soil and rotations used, soil quality can improve. They also mention the Chagga peoples of Mount Kilimanjaro who do fell some large trees but under the open canopy plant banana trees and below this plant coffee bushes and at ground level a wide variety of vegetables to sustain their small communities. They do return manures to the soil and enjoy the benefits of living and maintaining a sustainable lifestyle in harmony with nature and not at conflict with it. Man was born into Paradise but is destroying it. "Who can deny that in the final analysis, humans are creatures of the soil? We are reminded of this with each meal we eat every day." (Unless we visit a McDonalds) Bob 20 September 2003 I was interested to see your paper via Scottish Environment LINK. It's great to have further support for these arguments. You're pushing at a door that a small number of us have been struggling to open for some time now, see for instance www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/conferences/wildbritain/seminars.html Those seminars (rather like the recent Scottish LINK one and the useful collection of essays published last year by the Scottish Wild Land Group) if anything demonstrated a great diversity of definitions, valuations, and approaches to the conservation of wild land rather than any solid conceptual consensus. I believe Paul Evans of BANC is working on a book on rewilding issues at the moment. I'm also undertaking a review of wild land in Europe for SNH, but that majors on recreation and landscape values rather than on ecological ones. However I would have to say (as you may have picked up from the SNH policy paper) that for us in Scotland at least, "wilderness" is a hazardous terminology which produces automatically negative reactions, particularly in Highland communities, and that the arguments you're advancing are regarded in some quarters as no more than a new manifestation of cultural genocide against fragile rural communities. Current efforts to advocate even "wild land" values to resist hydro development in one of our finest wildest areas have generated extreme responses arguing against the imposition of elitist external perspectives over local interest. We are not at all optimistic that the wild land argument will cut any ice with the Minister in the Scottish Executive when this case comes to him for decision. So we have a long way to go to win even a modest degree of political and popular support for the value of wild land, and your prospectus for large-scale wilderness conservation with lots of reintroduced predators is just a wee bit over the furthest horizon - out there in Yellowstone in fact. Rick 22 September 2003 I think you need to be careful about the human exclusion angle - what about the livelihoods that could be gained by a wide variety of people from crafts and different forms of visitor experiences in such places (inc Beaver watching!?) url:www.self-willed-land.org.uk/your_cont.htm www.self-willed-land.org.uk mark.fisher@self-willed-land.org.uk |