Cherished Controlling and Culling Landscape

The SMP managers want a "Cherished and Working Landscape", or so they say.

Managers are there to crush the delight in the happy accident, the free spirit, the serendipitous. They want to control everything and kill off the pleasure we get from discovery and replace that joy with their own artificial enthusiasm for the artificial.

They want to kill the thing they claim to love so as to replace it with something they’ve created or recreated to their own pattern. They then go out and claim that there’s something new and wonderful they’ve manufactured. This sums up the attitude of the conservation managers.

The message is: Wild red deer must not be allowed to stay wild. They must either be culled/killed or harnessed to the plans of the managing class, reprogrammed to fit their purpose. Their appeal to the visitors who see them is exactly that they are free from a management agenda. But to the managers that will not do. Wild animals coming to the land of their own free will is a threat to the top down instincts of managers like those in the Sheffield Moors Partnership.

It’s been evident in their whole approach from their tentative uneasy acceptance of the deer when they first appeared, from their virtually ignoring them as if they wished they would go away, their organising a shooting party to rid themselves of them, their failure to acknowledge them in their literature, for some time concentrating on promoting their imported cattle instead. It’s been written on their very faces, until finally they had to accept that the public regarded the wild deer with delight. It’s been amusing beyond measure to watch them. Now they want to manage them and squeeze out as much of the pleasure we get from them as they can.

Quote from the Master Plan that has been concocted by this Master Race:

WHAT WE ARE PLANNING TO ACHIEVE – THE STRATEGIC OUTCOMES BY 2028

Appropriate grazing to achieve conservation objectives

Extensive grazing including appropriate livestock and the resident red deer herd is the primary land management tool on the Sheffield Moors.  

Notice that word ‘herd’. It’s a stage in the control process. Just saying it has an impact. It immediately makes us think of controlled herds of farm livestock which is what the managers want.

Next look at this quote from 

THE KEY ACTIONS IN THE FIRST FIVE YEARS

Develop an overall deer management policy for the Sheffield Moors and adopt by 2015

Think about this. It means controlling and culling. It's playing to the paranoia about wild animals that has been fostered by the farming industry many of whom see all wild animals as vermin. But what the managers want to have is something akin to the deer in large estates which are regularly controlled. The free roaming animals that decide for themselves don't fit in with the world of management planning and office based tasks where they feel at home.

Underlying this blog is the belief that we need in our landscape places that are free from managers and the curse of managerialism. One function of these posts is to exercise a kind of Managerwatch in one place. The managers invade and wreck the charm and beauty of places that would get along well without them. They are corrosive of the natural integrity of places because it is in their nature to intervene and stamp their own will on them. Managers are a class apart driven by needs of their own quite distinct from the place or the organisation they find themselves in.

Now they are out to manage the remaining free–spirits in the natural world. All in the interests of a " Cherished (!!) working landscape" and plenty of grant money to keep their office roles ticking over.