UKC

Has anyone else read this? It was in the Tavern on Lundy and I idly read it on holiday there last week.

Struck me as silly and tiresome in a number of places. For example, George, let me give you a couple of insights for free.

Number one: the existence of various disgusting online tributes to the repellent and thankfully late Raoul Moat does not teach us that what the underclass need is to be chased about the place by wolves in order to relieve the tedium of their humdrum lives, diverting though the notion is. Rather, what it tells us is that the underclass doesn’t like the police, and that the nastiness and stupidity of a significant number of its members knows no bounds. Have that one on me.

Number two, boasting about killing 150 mackerel in a go and then preaching (entirely justifiably) against industrial fishing makes you look like a hypocritical pillock, which is a shame since of all the ecological disgraces we ought to do something about, banning commercial fishing from at least half of our waters is approximately number one. It doesn’t make a difference that you do it with your bare hands from your kayak and thus get in touch with your inner savage. Really, it doesn’t.

On the other hand, bits of the book were quite inspiring and other bits – the bits dealing with the hypocrisy and stupidity of the government, mainly, and yes, I do know it’s an easy target – were excellent and had me biting the carpet in fury. For example, one of the target species to be helped by Wales’ largest nature reserve is apparently red grouse, and this is to be achieved by letting sheep roam freely through the reserve. What the f*ck?? I mean, seriously, what the f***ing f**k?? I could understand it if the idea was to reintroduce hen harriers and provide a decent food source for them somewhere they aren’t getting poisoned by gamekeepers, but as far as I could tell it, it isn’t.

That last piece of information may hold the key to the single sentence which staggered me to the greatest extent in the whole book – apparently the National Farmers’ Union of Wales maintains that sheep farming is essential in order to ‘preserve ecological diversity’. Now I’m no ecologist, but even I know that an ecosystem with 11 million imported herbivores at its head is unlikely to be one in which ‘ecological diversity’ is preserved to its maximum possible extent. It’s difficult to reach any other conclusion than that the NFU of Wales are a pack of liars who will say anything at all, no matter how absurd, to protect their interests. Surely even farmers can’t believe that sheep are ‘essential’ to preserve ecological diversity, can they? How the **** do they imagine the ecology managed before the Romans?

What did anyone else think?

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Maybe you would like to contact him directly with your views?
http://www.monbiot.com/contact/

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I don't really disagree with you but it's not really a surprise that NFU Wales would say that is it?

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Don´t know the exact circumstances of the Welsh nature conservation area you are referring to, but using sheep or goats to prevent overgrowth of bushes and eventually trees is common conservation practise in many countries.

Don´t forget that most moorland, heathland, or meadow areas are human made landscapes, which indeed support a larger ecological variety (especially if there is a patchwork of different habitats) than the beech and maple forests which would probably be covering most of Britain in the absence of human intervention.

Of course, high ecological variety in those man made habitats strictly requires extensive farming practises, as used to e the case almost everywhere well into the 20th century. I have just visited farmland on the German and Polish side of the Oder river, the difference in plant, insect, and bird species diversity is striking.

CB

In reply to cb294:

maple forests?

In reply to malk:

No, mainly beech forests with a bit of hornbeam and a few different maple species thrown in, often around clearings or forest edges. Composition would change locally, but e.g. oaks would in most areas be rather rare (unlike further south).

Also, there would be shorter time scale successions (e.g. following local wildfires) starting with birch and maple before mature beech trees would eventually compete out most other species.

Anyway, pretty much what would in the absence of human interference grow over most of lowland central and Western Europe from 10ky after the end of the last ice age onwards.

However, I did my botany/ecology classes in Germany 20 or so years ago, so things might be a bit different for Britain. Still my description of the potential endpoint vegetation (or whatever the botanist call this thing, it really has been some time) is not too far off.

CB

In reply to cb294:



They are. There's only one maple species indigenous to the UK: field maple. No native A. pseudoplatanus or A. platanoides here . . . although the first has been introduced and has taken over many woodlands, Stradivarius or no Stradivarius.

In reply to cb294:

Woods in the UK would be mostly oak, beech in some places, birch & pine elsewhere - with linden, alder etc locally common.

But as the woodland cover was reduced to very little, and most of what survived has been managed over centuries its difficult to really know. See works by Oliver Rackham or look at http://www.floraweb.de/vegetation/dnld_eurovegmap.html

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I heard the man the other day on Radio 4 talking about 'rewilding'. It all seemed a bit like a projection of some existential crisis.

The Guardian review of his book makes a similar point; see the paragraph quoting Neitzsche.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/24/feral-searching-enchantment-mo...

He talks about how rewilding could provide 'spectacle' and 'enchantment' for the modern human. As if these concepts couldn't be evoked sufficiently by the countryside of Britain as is.

As to introducing sheep to graze a reserve- sounds like a cost effective way of doing the job.

In reply to llechwedd:

Sheep are going out of fashion in the lowlands at least. Cattle are increasingly the preferred grazier as they don't leave such a uniform short sward, increasingly to the point where no grazing is preferable to sheep In some cases

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I think the idea of the sheep grazing is to get the ticks onto another host(the sheep) which are then dipped(reducing tick population on the grouse moor)The upside of this being that podgy semi retired solicitors and others of similar ilk with deep pockets can part with a grand for a weekend in the country blasting the aforementioned increased population of grouse out of the skies.All wine,all fee.

In reply to toad:

You make an interesting point- sheep vs cattle or ponies etc.
There's the pragmatic approach of using the graziers there already, embedded in local (admittedly subsidised) practice and markets, and seeing if a given grazing regime works to the desired end.
I was thinking of the Glenfinglas estate where the've used a mix of the existing graziers- I'd class this an agri-environmental scheme, and applaud the design for its inclusivity.

Then there's the 'scientifically validated optimal' choice where costs are real and revenues maybe less tangible -unless you count subsidies.
Landholders like the National Trust have subsidised ponies grazing uplands in England and Wales. These may then be transported some distance to overwinter at sites such as coastal heathland of the Pembrokeshire National Park. Here they benefit from subsidies available through other local grazing schemes. In effect, they're no more than strimmers for hire, all within a closed loop of bureaucracy. An (non agri) environmental scheme, bleeding money from the rural economy.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


Well, at least he's highlighting the likelihood of the hyper-critical pollock.

In reply to llechwedd:

>As to introducing sheep to graze a reserve- sounds like a cost effective way of doing the job.

What I'm not following is why the job needs doing at all. We've got plenty of bits of Britain that are well grazed by sheep. We don't need nature reserves which do the same thing.

jcm

In reply to Doug and felt:

Thanks for pointing this out, my botany is really rusty....

However, the points I tried to make to the OP in my first post still hold: Most parts of the country would eventually revert to woodland if unmanaged, most open land forms are human made, the ecological diversity is often higher there than in rather uniform woodlands, and grazing is an established conservation tool for keeping open lands open.

CB

In reply to cb294:


Are you suggesting that land, if left to nature, would tend towards a monoculture of a beech trees?

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

A nature reserve is a human descriptor of a bit of land or water. It gets that descriptor for all sorts of reasons, but not because it's 'pristine wilderness'.

The land management ( or lack of) of the 'nature reserve' is not the optimum one for making money from it. Grazing stock is excluded since the frequency/intensity of grazing to give the farmer a profit may result in ecological impoverishment.
Yet if you're actively managing a reserve for e.g. a species of (grassland) butterfly, you can't just shut the gate and exclude the graziers (even though that decision might in time provide other (non butterfly) ecological and amenity benefits).

Your management is focussed on butterfly grassland. You want grazing.
I'll leave aside for the moment Toad's valid comment (upthread) about the selectivity of different species of grazing stock creating the theoretical optimum. The pre -existing on site (?sheep) herd may have maintained a tenuous foothold for the butterfly- but now it's a nature reserve, the choice might be to reduce the sheep numbers, shifting the balance away from food production, towards butterfly conservation.
But it can be difficult to police the numbers grazing if they're the same breed as the local farmer's. But if they're say a rare breed, a 'special','beneficial' animal (who ever heard of rare breed cattle impoverishing the countryside?), then as a Guardian reading environmentalist working at the offices of Natural England, then they're probably just what you want for your massively subsidised Nature reserve.

Perhaps I'm being a little unfair. Some sites probably do benefit from esoteric breeds. As Toad has said, the fashion is for cattle. But there is a risk of seeing sheep as somehow inherently evil, rather than addressing the way they're used to society's needs.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I've not read the book yet but I do sympathise with Monbiots ideas on this - especially the idiocy of maintaining virtually all of our upland area as sheep grazed deserts at vast cost to the taxpayer.

The john muir trust are already trying this sort of thing here: http://www.wildland-network.org/projects/strathaird.htm for example.

Why not try it elsewhere?

In reply to daWalt:


Depends on latitude and altitude. I can confirm that at 1000 feet in my bit of the Peak, oak wouldn't naturally stand much of a chance against alder, willow, rowan, ash and hornbeam. Conventional wisdom seems to be that beech is at the edge of its range but that's complicated because the warm southern areas it likes are getting a bit dry for it. It certainly grows OK here.

On the rewilding thing generally, I completely agree with the general message that upland grazing is an environmental disaster for meagre agricultural returns. I appreciate that this is understandably an unpopular view among those whose current livelihoods depend on it. As Monbiot discovered personally on some of his local evangelising meetings.

That said, it's also true that we live in an almost entirely artificial countryside and if we want choughs and sand lizards, let alone large blue butterflies and hen harriers, we will need to create and protect specific habitats for them, which involves grazed meadows and cliff tops, and suitable heathland protected from encroaching bush.

I get the 'spectacle and enchantment' thing too. In my experience, nothing spices up a camping trip like having some potentially dangerous megafauna about the place. The frisson of risk is magical, just as it is in the mountains.

In reply to pasbury:


I think it's called globalisation. We live on a crowded island, living beyond our means. by that rationale it makes sense to build houses on the mountains and fly abroad for our mountain holidays. I had an NZ leg of lamb for Easter -£8 from Sainsbury's. Cheaper than it could be producd in Wales, so lets give up on food production in the UK eh?

The way predominantly urban people bleat on about 'the countryside'!
As if it were some sort of holiday home that no one else can live in, or alter, until our family choose to visit, and then project our fantasies about getting back to nature.
That farming farming still provides a sense of community cohesion and cultural identity in the British uplands is nothing short of amazing, given the forces of globalisation, economies of scale.
It's hardly surprising that subsidies are needed- just as they are in many other aspects of life.
All this and only 4 hours from London! Now that the journey time's reduced and there's an out of town supermarket en route, my fantasies about the countryside, fuelled by Mr Monobigot, remain pure and unsullied because I have no need to mix with or question the locals who seem thin on the ground nowadays. Not sure why that is. Maybe they can't afford to live here anymore?
Back to work on Monday and business as usual.




Because, pretty as it is, it won't feed the nation. I personally think the Cuillin are the 'crown jewels' of these islands, and as such deserve special care (and subsidies). The Strathaird manager, Drew, does a cracking job. But I don't think JMT are the answer to the problems of the uplands. The National Trust was founded on laudible principles. Look how bloated it has become today.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


The is a current real-time scenario down here exists for the re-introduction of brown bears. The same genre of pros and cons exist and its easy to see why, but the question is really about balance. Allocate some areas as priority forthe wolf/bear and police them (the pryenean bears are followed by observers) correctly leaving upland farmers their place elsewhere.

Averagely I respect GM's literary expression - wish I had the time to do similarly. One reason we climb because it spices up life - returns us to basic issues of survival in face of danger. But we're the lucky ones. Other people haven't got the same talent for it and turn to all manner of dangerous or wasteful occupation in an effort to fill the empty void.

Doubtless no major changes will come out of this inspiration at a national level. It will need a nuclear disaster or meteorite - which will doubtless come along eventually; the survivors may then look bakc and express gratitude for their unsolicited wilding instead of bemonaing fate.

In reply to daWalt:

Most of continental European lowlands, yes. (However, it has been pointed out further up in this thread that in Britain other species, e.g. oak, would be more important).

Of course there are exceptions, but over time there is a well understood succession of plant communities. This can be easily seen after a wild fire, or in the Bayerischer Wald National Park, where vast stands of fir have been destroyed by beetle infestation (aided by climate change). Fir will of course grows close to the hill tops (or pines on sandy inland dune soil), but lower down any firs are there because they have been planted.

First thing to grow are weeds, then shrubs and bushes, fast growing trees such as birch, and eventually slower growing trees such as beech or hornbeam, which will after a couple hundred of years squeeze out other species, mainly by competing for light.

Today only very few pristine deciduous forests that have never been logged and replanted in Europe. Some patches can be found in Poland and larger areas in the Caucasus (where in drier parts oak forests dominate, but the priciple is the same).

Cb

In reply to llechwedd:

You make some interesting points about farming - it's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what UK farming would be like if it was entirely unsubsidised!
But the point about community and farming - no-one lives on the cambrian plateau or in Glen Affric or even the heart of Dartmoor. It's these places that strike me as the most unsuitable for a type of agriculture that is entirely propped up by subsidy.

In reply to cb294:

And it would never be a 'monoculture of beech' as storms & natural fires would produce a mosaic of clearings of varying sizes where the pioneer trees (e.g. birch) would be found, with grazing animals playing an important role in keeping some areas open /more open even if you don't accept all of Vera's ideas.

In reply to cb294:


that's a vibrant ecology right there.

In reply to daWalt:


Absolutely. Interestingly, the number of insect species you can find in a single tree of a pristine forest is about one to two orders of magnitude higher than in a tree of comparable size and age in a secondary growth forest (not my own area of expertise, but that of my late father in law´s). This holds true both in the tropics and European forests, and over various insect groups including beetles, wasps, and flies.

Coming back to the beginning of the thread (I know, this is against all rules...), most habitats we see are man made, especially most open land forms (coastal salt marshes may be an exception, but even these are often modified by dams, draining, and other engineering efforts).

Since these man made habitats have existed for a long time, they almost define the ecological variety of most European countries. The species diversity that has benefited from the opening of the landscape is now under threat through changing farming practises.

Using grazing to keep open lands open is probably a reasonable and cost effective way to protect such man made habitats.

CB

In reply to cb294:


are these man made ecologies rarer, and in need of more protection, than the ecology that would naturally occupy and thrive in these areas?

In reply to Dave Garnett:


very true,
and leaving land alone won't get you any money from the EU.

In reply to pasbury:


It is. But rather strange to think that the best place to start in stripping away subsidies is the non-trivial sector of our economy that is food production. Food processing and retailing is where the value is added, not at the farm gate.
But we buy into the lies that food is expensive and one stop shopping with unrivalled choice is a good thing.
However, when driving to the supermarket, few will factor in the costs attendant on car ownership needed to get to Tesco. The price on the aisle is all that counts. Neither will they factor in the cost of gym membership, needed now that walking to the shop doesn't happen as often. Or the state benefits needed so that zero hours contract supermarket workers can continue to service 'our' needs.
and yet, there'll be hand wringing and claim/counterclaim about whether those low paid workers are in fuel poverty and need the assistance of foodbanks.
But we'd rather not address the issue by recovering taxes from the corporate retailers. And as far as addressing the issue of 'fuel poverty' by better building design, the construction lobby raise the spectre that adding a very small ammount to the cost of every new build home will lead to a housebuilding slump, so the taxpayers of Britain effectively subsidise the construction industry to build shit houses which are sometimes on flood plains. For the owners of these houses, guess who's going to 'create' affordable insurance for them? You and me with higher premiums.
And so it continues..

Sheep are far from ideal in the already relatively impoverished uplands. Monbiot's appeal to some imagined Garden of Eden is la-la land. The warm glow of knowing you planted a rowan tree is going to do very little for your bank balance.
Marvel at what's there. Get involved in your own community if you feel strongly. But remember that the mountain you walk on is generally someone else's shop floor- perculiar as that may seem in modern Britain.


Because of depopulation as a result of economic pressures, and nowadays maintained in this unhappy limbo by government policy to preserve the 'wild' or unwillingness to invest in infrastructure unless it's for a willy waving project to bolster shonky national prestige.

In reply to daWalt:

Not necessarily, but sometimes. I even strongly believe that Britain could benefit quite a bit from increased forest cover, much more so than, say, Germany or Poland. The Woodland Trust does some really important work to remedy the deforestation that in Britain IIRC mainly happened from the 1600s onwards.

However, many man made habitats do contribute to the ecological diversity of the country, and it would be a shame to lose them to overgrowth. If one decides to protect heathland or moorland, grazing is among the cheapest and most effective options for keeping it open.

Ridiculing the idea that grazing can contribute to ecological diversity (see OP) is therefore uniformed at best.

CB

In reply to cb294:

it would be a shame not to see the benefit of increased natural forest due to maintaining unproductive land in it's current barren state.

In reply to daWalt:

I guess we need to set aside reasonably large areas for both, and protect them from modern industrialized agriculture and forestry practises.

CB

In reply to daWalt:


costs?
benefits?
(monetarised, of course)

In reply to cb294:

Hear hear!


Forests down south, moors up north.

In reply to cb294:



Will you be willing to pay for this 'protection' from productivity, or should 'the government' pay for it?
Will you be expecting everyone else in the UK to pay as well?

In reply to llechwedd:


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/22/price-natural-world-ag...

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:
One of the interesting things about 'conservation' is that everyone has an opinion on what and how to conserve it. The whole industry around conservation evolves too. Yesterday's good idea is tomorrows tosh. Or visa a versus depending on what you believe. G. Monbiot's view is something that has only a recently gained currency. 20 or 30 years ago he would be seen by all conservationists as mad.

I'm old enough to remember when the industry started to promote something called 'bio-diversity' as though it were a natural, normal and somehow good for the environment therefore everything you do should have bio-diversity in it. Another flavour of conservationists and still a mantra today!

To believe that bio-diversity is good really doesn';t matter - not to nature anyway. It seems to matter only to us. In another 10, 20 or 30 years they'll be another mantra and we;'ll all wonder what was so special about bio-diversity.

In my neck of the woods- or should I say, moors a whole industry is geared up towards conserving heather moorland, without much if any, consideration of whether it is natural or not.

As most of you will know this habitat, is entirely man made and managed. It is not especially rich in bio-diversity but simply adds to it, yet it is seen as something to religiously protect, but the very act of doing so produces some farcical measures. Grazing by sheep has reduced in my life time and trees are slowly re colonising the moors in many areas. Some areas have changed within my memory from heather dominated moorland to Scots Pine, Birch & willow scrub. Land where once I heard grouse I now hear black cap & willow warbler for example. Yet the North York Moors National Park doesn't think this should happen, so at every opportunity they, along with the National Trust cut the trees down from moorland areas.

Well thats not the entire truth. Over the last ten years the park has decided there is a distinct lack of Juniper - a tree!! Now, they have spent £££££,000 tracing every single juniper in the park. Along with various other agencies, they now plant juniper at every suitable and in some cases unsuitable site. The joke is I planted juniper i grew from seed in the late 1970s or 1980's long before the park were interested and some of the juniper I planted in very poor locations (beggars can't be choosers), and now at least two of my beloved trees have been supplemented by extra young junipers planted by the park. Less than 200 yards away, the park chopped down three Scots Pine I planted in 1983 on a road side. So moorlands can have trees, but only some and of a particular species, regardless of what would happen if nature was left to manage itself.

Of course I know we'd loose hen harriers - as if we haven't lost them already - along with other birds, plants, insects & reptiles which utilise this species poor habitat. But thats the nature of nature. Nature perhaps should be the one to dictate how the landscape should be and look and be managed.

In reply to cb294:

Perhaps the answer is agroforestry: managed farmland with interplanting of trees. This has been shown to increase production for certain crops/livestock. It would certainly increase biodiversity.

In reply to Dave Perry:

great post. i noticed a few new juniper plantings half submerged in haweswater recently, and don't get me started on the swathes of mature birch that have been recently felled to upgrade the local cycle path..grr..

In reply to malk:


Monbiot asks can you put a price on the beauty of the natural world. He quotes a cognitive linguist 'you cannot win an argument unless you expound your own values and reframe the issue around them'. Because he is on a higher plane than the decision makers/destroyers of beauty, assured of the righteousness of his position he uses deploys limp verbiage to assert his case. Sadly, it's no match for the morals of the consumer society.
The world is imperfect and always has been.
It's like party political broadcasts before an election, with GM as Clegg, pointing out what heartless shits the last lot were, then gaining power, having to accept that this is the way it is if you're to continue promising ever higher standards of living.
He whinges about monetarisation but is content that it is used to attract central funding for nature reserves. For what other way is there to prioritise and apportion limited monies on a regional, let alone national or even international level.
I do find this fetishising of diversity a bit laughable.
It is sad that days of the Snowdon Lily in Snowdonia are likely to be numbered due to global warming. Gone for ever, quite soon. Yet in parts of Canada I'm told they grow like a weed.
Put someone up in the high Artic and they'll likely wax lyrical about the austere beauty of (monotonous) lanscape.
I wonder if some of the less informed who bleat about diversity on the mountains are like the people who look at a river and see just water and rocks, maybe the odd bird. Compare that observation to that of an experienced upland fisherman who'll read the river and tell you what flies are hatching, what will be next week, where the fish are lying,where they're feeding, where the eggs were laid, how the otter population is doing etc. etc.

In reply to Dave Perry:

good post

In reply to LeeWood:

They used to offer an Agroforestry degree at Bangor University at the time I did forestry. Anyone I knew who graduated in agroforestry went into forestry careers.
At the time there were various incentives for farmers to consider an agroforestry component in their practice. IIRC the problems of establishing trees where sheep were allowed to graze was a problem as was creating an age diverse woodland where sheep had cropped all the previous decades of natural regeneration.
Costs and benefits once again..

In reply to llechwedd:

Haha, I signed up for that course but changed to forestry. I loved the name of the course leader at the time, Dr Zewge Teklehaimanot.

When I did the forestry MSc they told us there were no forestry careers at the end of it, something I confirmed.

Agroforestry as I understand mostly takes place outside the UK.

In reply to felt:


I remember him. You must be 1990's vintage?
I stuck it out with sporadic short term contracts in forestry for 10 years in N Wales before reluctantly changing career too.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

If grazing were reduced and more woodland established it would permit increase of certain mid-pyramid species (eg. pine marten, squirrel, deer, woodpecker, raptor) but the battle to be won is for the pyramid-summit species ie. the top predators. But for the UK, this will never be resolved with *any* change of habitat on whatever scale. What is needed is more wild space unfrequented by humans. Only then could we see return of wildcat, wolf etc. Does anyone know how widespread wildcat populations are in Scotland? - not high I'd guess. England's countryside is never going to be as unfrequented as Scotland. With all the 'wild' space available here in the Pyrenees the problem is still largely that of unfrequented isolation.

In reply to llechwedd:

97-8, yes. You?

Some great memories of that course.

In reply to llechwedd:



Sure, as with any other National Park or conservation effort.

CB

In reply to felt:


Yes, popular in certain developing countries where agriculture is not already set in it's ways. I think in the UK & Europe its more often a hobby pursuit.

I wanted to study forestry and was en route until the age of 17 ('77) when I realised I wasn't going to make the grades. Furthermore that there were more jobs in engineering. So, I worked in electronics for 20+ years before coming to France where we are now implementing agroforestry on a small scale. Biodiversity has certainly increased on our land at a plant / tree level; hopefully the new species will attract different birds (the shrike certainly likes the thorny gleditsia tiacanthos). As for mammals, our 4ha is a small oasis in an intensely active hunting scene so I don't hold too much hope.