Management by Default

If you had the chance to restore rain forests which had been compromised by exploitation would you say no because the human intervention has created something that a number of species of birds or insects have discovered they can thrive in?

That question has been prompted by a reading of the official Sheffield Moors Partnership justification of their planned role in moorland management.

The managers have isolated a thread from the public contribution to their draft and quote it thus:

"the current document is a missed opportunity to take a more ‘rewilding’approach."

SMP's response is hardly new:

The habitats which occur on the Sheffield Moors are largely the result of human activity, albeit centuries ago. For example, the upland heaths are the result of historic clearance of natural forest thousands of years ago, followed by burning and grazing. If a “re-wilding” approach were taken across the whole of the moors, then in time all but the wettest and deepest blanket bogs would eventually return to woodland. Whilst an increase in woodland cover is desirable and indeed forms a major part of the masterplan, the open ground habitats now support many rare and unique species and their importance is recognised by the national and international conservations designations for the majority of the Sheffield Moors and key species. At the same time, the maintenance of these habitats does require some degree of habitat intervention. Ideally, this should be light touch, for example, extensive grazing using both wild animals (red deer, rabbits, hares) and hardy breed livestock.

Once again they focus on 'habitats' which have become a human construct once defined always to lead to justifying human involvement in maintaining and developing them. At no previous time in history has there been a concept that habitats or landscapes should be kept through human force as they are, in the face of the will of natural processes and there has been no reason for that to happen apart from the self interest of one group or another. Exploitation by those intent on taking gain from the land has always been the driver. The chance was there to end that but instead another kind of self interest has replaced the exploitation of past ages.

To allow natural wild animals to affect the shape of the landscape is not management. Bringing in sheep and cattle is. The problem here is that of default. Should we have 1) a default natural landscape or should the land be 2) by default 'worked', managed, exploited, part of the economy (of whatever kind including the conservation economy). If you say the first you may not totally exclude the prospect of some agreed intervention but the spirit of the land changes and becomes less predictable and less conforming to a human construct of what is in the view of a select group desirable. If you say the second, default management, all sorts of man made interventions are harder to criticise and therefore easily justified within that vision. It simply opens the gate to ugliness and desecration of nature in order to accurately conform to your blueprint - though in practice we get something that claims to be a compromise but makes nobody happy except the bureaucracy that takes on its role of 'balancing' conflicting interests. They have failed to show a picture of their ideal of what the places should look like and kept themselves away from venues where the question might be asked - something that clearly indicates they don't know what it is because their role is seen as an ongoing process - just the ticket for managers: Resist as far as possible defining your objectives in ways that can be pinned down leading to a holding to account. No wonder the Blacka Moor lot are dithering and wriggling about their next steps.