The Campaign for National Parks wants us to have a big conversation about the future of our National Parks – what a good idea.
It’s a pretty good survey and doesn’t take very long to complete.
The survey has useful questions such as:
Q What, if any, changes would you like to see to National Parks in the future? Please tick all that apply:
My answer: banning of driven grouse shooting and heather burning
Q What, if anything, stops you from using National Parks? Please tick all that apply:
My answer: They are dominated (NY Moors, Yorkshire Dales and to some extent the Peak District) by unsustainable management for intensive grouse shooting. This is not enhancing and protecting natural beauty – it’s industrialising our uplands. National Parks should be for peaceful recreation and wildlife conservation.
Q Do you think any of the below should be prevented in National Parks? Please tick all that apply
My answer: there are several options but because they are alphabetically ordered, top of the list, and top of my list, is ‘burning of moorlands’
Our National Parks are 80 years old and many of them are living in the past. This is a good opportunity to express a view and to point out that when one stands in a UK National Park one rarely feels one is in a hot-spot for nature. These areas should be showcasing the very best of nature conservation and sustainability – instead our upland National Parks tend, too often, to be degraded for nature and are massive wildlife crime scenes.
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Countryside Users Association’s position statement (minus expletives) on the upland Parks:
Give local government statutory powers to triple council tax on second/holiday homes.
Ban driven grouse shooting.
Divert all farm subsidies into an Ecosystem Services budget that would democratise and ‘biomocratise’ the way the whole landscape is used (or left) from mountain top to valley bottom.
It would be ashame if the national parks that are managed for grouse shooting turned out like the baron Lake District National Park.
Dan – it would. But if they all put a lot more effort into natuyre cosnervation then they could all be exemplars of best practice – a standard from which they all fall far short at present.
Mark, fully agree re more money for nature conservation or the alternative much less money and very large scale re-wilding.
Dan, setting aside the differing geology, altitude, rainfall etc. why ? particularly as there are well visited parts of the Lake District which clearly a lot of the public enjoy it, so lets get those uplands in receipt of landowner subsidies opened up in a similar way for the public to enjoy? Not forgetting the public benefit through improved water quality and flood alleviation etc.
Conversely if you want grouse moor mono culture for private parties then no problem but repay all the public funding received? If they [grouse moors] are SSSI or Natura 2000 then it is landowner responsibility to manage to Favourable Condition Status, help available if appropriate management undertaken …. shades of Wuthering?
Maybe, but at present I know where I’d rather visit. This time of year with all the waders and passerine’s arriving back to the managed moors to breed is fantastic.
Dan – ah yes.
I’ve just finished mapping bird distributions on managed moors (a combination of private and National Trust ownership) that fall within Sheffield Metropolitan Borough 1975-2013. It doesn’t match the picture that you are painting Dan.
Extinct: Black-headed Gull, Twite. Reduced to sub-annual breeding: Teal, Hen Harrier, Goshawk, Redshank, Dunlin. Severely declining: Wheatear. Doing well: err, Red Grouse (when they aren’t dropping from disease). Care to explain what is so fantastic about that?
Would you also care to explain why the main change in Golden Plover distribution has been a southerly extension onto moors that aren’t managed for grouse (e.g. the Eastern Moors)?
Sorry, we’re talking about different area’s. The moors I like to visit in the dales are alive with curlew plover etc, but this is just my observations.
I’m sorry everyone feels the need to jump on me but I do love visiting the moors this time of year and it never fails to impress.
I’ll leave you all to it, good by.
Don’t feel put off from commenting Dan and, of course, enjoy the birds. However do dig a bit deeper and have a look at some of the data over a reasonable period of time. I don’t know the Dales well, so will happily defer to others to comment, but I’d be surprised if many of the issues I’ve highlighted for the Peak District don’t apply there too.
I visited part of the Dales last year (Upper Swaledale) with a friend who had recently retired as seniorNE conservation officer. We did see a lot of overburned moor but the Golden Plovers seem to be ok with that. They were abundant. I was also concerned about the floristic impoverishment of what should have been biodiverse grasslands. They were heavily sheep grazed, some thistle-infested, then the quad-bike sprayer was seen out in several places. Some people using the sprays may believe the herbicides are thistle-specific, but we know they are not. The only really good limestone pasture we visited was at Tom Lord’s farm near Settle. Tom would be my farmer of the year! It uplifted our spirits, which had been rather dampened by what we saw happening elsewhere, including spot-spraying of dock on road verges in Keld, by someone whose plant ID skills were wanting. Melancholy Thistle, Twayblade Orchid, Field Scabious, Sweet Cicely all hit by the sprayer in what is one of the finest areas still for flower-rich verges and meadows. Tragic. Where we were staying the sheep were basically free-ranged and the fields stank of sheep ***t and **ss. Not what I would consider good pasture management for land, wildlife or sheep. Some meadows at Muker had been improved since going out of ESA agreement.
A chance to change things for the better.
Excellent point above by Dan, on which I couldn’t agree more. It’s simple, if you want to see a diversity of bird life this spring go to a managed grouse moor. The barren and overgrazed Lake District national park, with no rest from visitor disturbance, will never be as attractive or productive for wildlife.
Tom – welcome to this blog and thank you for your comment
But where do you have the best chance to watch Peregrines? And I’m not disputing the heavily overgrazed aspect of the Lake District (and other National Parks).
Keith – Londonnid pretty good these days. And the Nene Calley is beginning to have its moments too.
Yes no grouse moors in London, like the Lake District NP.
Cathedral Close in Salisbury
The Lake District has been wrecked by far too many sheep and the pernicious and enduring effects of artificial nitrogen application.
Divert sheep farming subsidies into ecosystem services: it’s win win for farmers and public alike.
What’s wrong with people in the countryside?
See reply above. I’ve tried not to make it too sciency for you.
-the above is for Tom.
I made sure to mention, too, that national parks should be the nucleus of wildlife reintroduction schemes. There is no reason they should not be used to restore our missing wildlife, it seems one of the perfect use for them. I also suggested they should have their own dedicated law enforcement office with a direct mandate to focus on wildlife crime.
National Parks need to change. They need to be more wilder and more natural. Less intense management, and subsidies reduced or changed to benefit wildlife and habitat conservation. Survey done!
Done…and to the above comments about managed grouse moors and waders and passerines..do you really think thats the only way we can attract and keep these birds? Grouse moors were only invented in the Victorian era and area totally artificial habitat with all the boom and bust cycles for wildlife that that entails. Think long term and sustainable.
The sad fact is that these birds arn’t doing as well in other areas so surely we should be encouraging the well managed moors and help these red listed birds. Even if they are artificially high in numbers at least it helps compensate for for the lack of them in the rest of Europe.
Dan – which birds? Peregrine? Red Kite? Hen Harrier? Golden Eagle? Black Grouse? which exactly do you mean?
Like I said the red listed.
Hen Harrier, Black Grouse, Twite. Do keep up Dan.
I must try to keep up, I wasn’t aware Hen Harrier was red listed. Sorry.
Easy mistake to make, it’s only been on the Red List since the first Birds of Conservation Concern in 1996.
Here’s a couple of my answers for what they are worth!
What, if anything, stops you from using National Parks? Please tick all that apply
A lot of the remote parts of our national parks are bleak, featureless wastelands of no interest or wildlife value. The parks are still dominated by farming and landowning interests that are completely at odds with the idea of a ‘park’. Upland sheep farming, for instance, is so economically unviable it is heavily subsidised but nevertheless wrecks the hills to the point where they support very little else.
Equally, the burning of grouse moors is an abomination, producing ghastly charred strips of stunted heather that are jarringly at odds with what one might consider a ‘natural’ landscape. Grouse shooting also creates a nasty atmosphere of elitism whereby one is made to feel an unwelcome intruder on ‘private land’. These areas do not feel like ‘National’ parks for all to enjoy. And how is the management of land solely for the purpose of killing birds consistent with any kind of rational concept of a park?! And surely all that lead shot is contaminating the land and water courses? And what about all the killing of birds of prey and other mammals by game keepers?
These things are abhorrent to me. Sheep-wrecking and grouse moors are the principal reason why I don’t visit more often. Not only do I not feel welcome in some of these areas but why would I want to go and visit a barren wasteland where hardly any kind of wildlife or ‘living landscape’ survives?
Is there anything else you would like to add about National Parks or this survey?
I think our whole concept of National Parks needs looking at. What and whom are they really for. Some are pretty much just rural areas which are preserved in a kind of cultural aspic with farming locked in a mythical, neo-Edwardian rural ideal. But these are not ‘parks’ they are just preserved landscapes where there is no presumption of general access for recreation. They are effectively the same as privately owned ‘listed buildings’ that one could not enter as a matter of course.
‘Open access’ is inherent to the concept of a park. They are supposed to be places we can go to enjoy the outdoors, have a picnic, get some fresh air and sunshine, walk the dog, fly a kite, paddle a canoe. One doesn’t expect to be told to ‘get off my land’ or see the landscape being burned and grazed to nothing, and all the wildlife shot and poisoned by nasty, furtive little men in Landrovers.
The upland areas at the very least should be compulsorily purchased and managed for wildlife and native forest. Predator species (birds and mammals) need to be reintroduced, beaver encouraged back to manage water courses naturally and a far more holistic ecosystem positive management style introduced.
I strongly feel that there is far greater economic and social benefit to be had in these areas were they to be stripped of the kind of narrow private vested interests that dominate the parks at the moment. We could see far more visitors, with a knock on benefit to retailers, accommodation providers, pubs, campsites etc. were the parks aimed at providing recreation for the many rather than the few. Our National Parks could become thriving economic centres and beautiful landscapes at the same time. There needs to be a presumed right to roam, greatly improved access and a sense of common ownership.
As an incomer of only 30 years’residence, with some experience before the Cairngorms had a Board, and having been a Community Councillor for about 20 of these, may I put in a plea for the continuing presence of perhaps the lowest survival rate of one species? That is Homo sapiens ssp. Deesidiens. Some H.non-sapiens managed dispersal ‘over the hill’ var. official, and there are some ssp.chefs ex Scotia, but there are fewer native-occupiers and fences now proliferate. Non-hefted sheep yes, but education involves losing 5 daily hours in travel. Thus fewer people with local practice and entertainment of the field sports which increase observation of natural sciences and actual measurement of species and their mutual reactions. The increase in buzzards, the reduction of passerines, loss of ordinary plover, the apparent reduction in taxonomic botany and variations in reports, are not helping true discussion. Can we stick to facts? Jane Angus