Message

Christmas 2013 is the tenth anniversary of seeing red deer on Blacka; at any rate it was the week before Christmas 2003 when I first saw them walking over Cowsick towards the woods and nobody has come forward to say they had seen them earlier than that. It would be idle to deny the importance of this event in changing our perception of Blacka.

Before then I had opposed the increasing management interventions on this longtime unmanaged space, instinctively feeling it was not just undesirable but actually deeply wrong in what was supposed to be a place reserved for nature. Men trying to control nature and getting money for doing so seemed a kind of exploitation out of place here. Everything that had changed during the years since management wound down was the best of Blacka.

Then the deer arrived, our largest wild animal, earth-born with beautiful hinds, innocent calves and magnificent stags. At a stroke we could see what Blacka should really be – a haven for genuine wildlife in which the birch and oak encroaching on the moor were at least as important as the birds and beasts. I refute any suggestion that this is sentimental; there should be real predators out here too. 

From 2003 on we would never have any patience for managers with office driven targets whose first thoughts about anything wild were “how should we control it?”.