Telling it Like it Isn't

Picking over the puff piece in the Sheffield Telegraph referred to in the previous post one comes across the same tired old self justifying themes that regularly crop up. These exculpations are rotated mechanically when anyone suggests that nature should take precedence over exploitation and trousering farm subsidies.

The first is the oft repeated dogma that

"Heathlands such as Blacka Moor are recognised as being of international importance,” said Nabil. “There have been considerable losses of heather moorland in recent times, with 27 per cent lost in England and Wales between 1947 and 1980.”

What has really been lost is the upland woodland that was destroyed and the land kept treeless for sheep and more importantly for the entertainment of wealthy aristocrats who used it for shooting birds that favoured open areas. And wooded uplands are  many,many times more valuable for wildlife than heather moorland. Sheffield Moors Partnership's whole approach to managing these hills and moors is based on a complete misconception to which they have made themselves wilfully blind. The promotion of grassy deserts in sheep pastures and the attacks on trees amount to a refusal to accept that these ecologically impoverished areas would be dramatically improved if they would simply allow them to become more wooded. All over Europe there are natural areas categorised as far more valuable for wildlife than anything in Britain and that is largely because there the hills are likely to be wooded rather than the bare deserts we get here. Most of the hilly land in Britain is in National Parks and our National Parks are classed as of the lowest possible wildlife and biodiversity value compared with those you're likely to see in Europe.

Then we have another reference to the fact that livestock was kept in part of the moors by monks in the middle ages.

"Blacka Moor nature reserve, which for 800 years served as grazing land for the monks of Beauchief Abbey until Alderman JG Graves took over the land"

Nonsense historically as Thomas Cromwell's commissioners saw to the closing of Beauchief Abbey before 1540. But this absurd narrative of 800 years etc. is supposed to give a very flaky historical justification for continuing to graze now, while we all know that the real reason for doing so is, as it always is with SRWT, money. Farm animals bring in dollops of farm subsidy as the land then gets to be classed as in agricultural condition. But what does accuracy matter to folks like these. They hope enough people will read it and not check. But even if it were true and grazing had happened for over a thousand years, how can that possibly be an argument against allowing the land to return to nature, at least the best part of it after centuries of exploitation. Time surely for ecological restoration?