Brownfield Site

This part of Blacka has now become a brownfield site. As a description that may have no relevance to the normal planning definition but it's hard to argue with it when you actually see it.

A gate onto what was a few weeks ago a green pathway with natural greenery to either side has become a depository for cattle induced mud and brown excrement. Already the cows have returned to their habit of previous years of spending much time around gateways. Not far away another feature is the patches of barren and eroding brown peat where poison was applied killing the vegetation cover that once grew there.

What kind of mentality accepts and even encourages the management that results in the degraded browning of a prime green space? And what kind of impoverished vision in the political establishment grants it public money coming from taxation encouraging this institutional ugliness? And where are the people calling out "scandal"?

Part of the explanation has be that the mentality is one that's becomes frozen in an uncritical mindset, a kind of inertia that is these days nurtured by sham ideology stating that cultural landscapes (i.e. exploited and farmed landscapes) have to be imposed everywhere even when it is known that these very farmed landscapes have led to the decline in the variety of wildlife throughout the country and a a similar decline in landscape value across much of the nation's farmland.

So let us be unequivocal: the local conservation industry's chosen colour is not the purple they always predictably choose to show in their publicity pictures (only visible for a few weeks in a good year). It is the brown that colours the monoculture sheep-grazed heather moors and hillsides for month after month when other places may be lucky enough to have trees changing with each season. It's the brown of mud, the erosion and cow splats that are there because of their obsessive addiction to conservation grazing and the Common Agricultural Policy funds that result from turning recreation land into farm land.

The green path is now a trail of faeces and the area around the access gate has been transformed into a typical farm gate mudbath. Brown is indeed the defining colour of conservation grazing and agri-environment schemes.

No wonder that an unauthorised sign has appeared on the gate. A comment not just on the ground on the other side of the gate but also the content of the notice from SWT trying vainly to justify their discredited policy?

It's worth remembering that Blacka Moor is subject to a Countryside Stewardship Agreement between Sheffield Wildlife Trust and Natural England running for ten years and ending in September this year. Considerable sums of public money have been used on this, supposedly to ensure that the land is well managed and delivers 'public goods'. A fair bit of the focus on the need for this CSA was about specifically this part of the land and the 'need' for cattle grazing which ia a key element. For our investment it's only fair to expect to see something that's an improvement on what it was like before. Ten years is not too short a period for the public to see benefits. Instead it is undeniably a great deal worse. I defy anyone who walked this way ten years ago and remembers what it was like to return today and say it's better.

Natural England took on the old Countryside Agency in 2006 adopting its role of helping "everyone, wherever they live and whatever their background to enjoy the countryside and share in this priceless asset more". Well we know the places we know and visit regularly. The advantage of getting to know one thing and one place really well - something this blog has tried to do - means you're in a better position than most to evaluate the result of work done here using our public money. But will anyone in any official position listen?