Excellent article. The conservation industry is yet another example of the institutionalised leftism which has infected our entire society, whose solution to every problem is more public money, more regulation and more control. It’s exasperating and depressing in equal measure.
I think a good example of the way the "conservation industry" works, and bulldozes all the inconvenient local people (who really don't matter), was the summit to the sea project in mid Wales. It ran into the problem that all those who actually owned the land in question didn't want to be told how to farm by some conservation bodies (such as rewilding Britain, WWF, Woodland Trust etc).
It's a tired hobbyhorse of Monbigots....that upland sheep are the 'least productive' farming, so are a waste of space.Yep, yet again the bleeding obvious is correct and other claims are not. The simple fact that we're on islands and not part of the continental landmass, and that meant post-glacial re-population by any species was difficult, has been consistently ignored. As has our geographic location.*
The correct datum for 'biodiversity' being measured here in these islands** should be a point before the industrial and agricultural revolution. Anything else is irrational and dishonest.
None of this means that we haven't harmed our environment nor that we haven't reduced what biodiversity we have. But it does give the lie to what is being claimed regarding how awful we are compared to others.
*Why don't they compare the biodiversity of a virtually untouched Hebridean island with that of, say, the Sussex Wield or a pleasant valley in Dorsetshire? Self evidently because they can't be anything but disparate; and the same applies to the British Isles and a vast country containing the greater portion of the Amazon Basin.
**Oddly, both Ireland and Iceland rank lower than Great Britain...
It's a tired hobbyhorse of Monbigots....that upland sheep are the 'least productive' farming, so are a waste of space.
It never once seems to occur to him that they're the least productive, cos they're eking a life from the least productive land. and that land would, left to it's own devices, support the least bio-diversity irrespective.
Poor land is poor land is poor land.
(I had meant to include this in last week's guff, but got sidetracked)
I see another contributor to Scribehound - my old pal 'Fecker Fulford' -is asking whether the forestry commish should be spending £50k + a year appointing a 'wellness advisor'.
(actually, should be a dismal emoji faces.......)
Sums up the public and third sector completely. Meanwhile their main objective (management of a public forest asset) falls completely to the wayside and it becomes an industry-wide joke.View attachment 1163773
What degree do I need?