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Heathland MADNESS - the juggernaut of nature conservation |
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Last updated 14 October 2014 Updated Articles about objections to heathland restoration: The moral corruptness of Higher Level Stewardship, Aug 2013 The neoliberalisation of nature conservation, Feb 2013 The revisionism of the conservation industry – expanding the noosphere in Britain, March 2012 Rare and precious -words devalued by the conservation industry, May 2011 ADDENDUM -Hands Off Hartlebury Common, Jun 2011 The grazing war comes to Kingwood Common, Apr 10 Heathland and the perception and preference for landscape, Mar 2010 The defence of woodland – Forest Neighbours and Gib Torr, Jan 2010 Cutting down trees to restore open habitats – only now a policy emerges, 26 March 2009
High price for
heath - Loxley and Wadsley Commons, Mar 2008 Swineholes Wood - 'Too many trees being cut down', Feb 2008 Take three woodland wildflowers, Feb 2008
Nature
grooming - the killing of wildness in nature, Apr 2007
ADDENDUM -
Changing face of Ashdown
Forest, 14 May Four strands of barbed wire - a Blacka Moor update, Mar 2007 Blacka Moor in Peril from the Conservation Professionals, Dec 2005 |
juggernaut (n) - a force regarded as mercilessly destructive and unstoppable; a massive inexorable force, campaign, movement, or object that crushes whatever is in its path; anything requiring blind devotion or cruel sacrifice The 10th National Heathland Conference took place in York in September 2008 (1). While I haven’t been to any of the preceding nine conferences, or any of those since, it would be a safe bet from looking at the program that rarely is the rightness of the restoration of heathland ever an issue, nor would much time be spent puzzling why the public often disagree with heathland restoration, even though there is plenty of evidence in the public domain to suggest that this disagreement is widespread. Objections often refer to the lack of sustainability; the lack of consultation, or the fait accompli of consultation on a predetermined management plan; and more often than not, the heavy handed management itself. The usual response from conservation professionals is to dismiss this as a lack of understanding, or to besmirch objectors by inferring that they are new incomers or just affluent, or both. It seems to me that a fundamental issue is at stake here. Its not just about the fact that conservation professionals get to have their choice of what nature is conserved, it is that many other people have a different perception and set of values about landscapes – and yet they are routinely traduced. Over the last few years, I have documented individual cases of objections to heathland restoration as they came to light, sometimes being contacted with information by local action groups seeking support, and a few welcoming that I had squarely covered their concerns. The more you look, the more examples there are (and the more that have been sent to me) and it would not be an easy task to document them all in such detail, even if I had the stomach for it. Just sometimes you wish journalists would recognise themselves the extent of the disagreement, and begin to ask the hard questions as to why it is happening. In that absence, I offer here a compilation that gives a measure of the contention, and shows the repeated pattern that reveals just what those hard questions are. As new examples come to light, they also will be added, and perhaps in more detail here than those that have been covered in articles elsewhere. A route map of protest
One of the earliest
objections I can find relates to the proposal in 1996 by Surrey County
Council to permanently fence the perimeter of the North side of
Chobham Common for the purpose of
"conservation grazing" on the open heathland. A Commons Interest Committee
was formed locally to protest the proposal, forcing it to a public inquiry
in February 1998 (2). The decision by the Planning Inspector to refuse
permission was accepted by the Secretary of State, but not surprisingly
English Nature was (3):
In 2002, Surrey County
Council handed over management of the common to Surrey Wildlife Trust. It
was not long before their approach to management galvanized local opinion
against them when objection was taken to the destruction of swathes of
woodland in a plan to drive two corridors through Monks Walk Wood, by clear
felling through to join up the heath on either side. Representatives from Chobham Parish Council, the Chobham Society, the Chobham Common
Preservation Committee and Chobham Common Riders’ Association wrote to the
Trust saying they would have to rethink their continuing with the
consultation on the plan (4): Come forward six years to 2008 and Surrey Wildlife Trust was consulting again on their management plan, but because of the contention of previous years, they brought in a consultant to manage the “Chobham Stakeholder Engagement” (5). It is no surprise that the consultation document presented grazing in a favourable light amongst a range of management options (6). The Countryside Access Forum of Surrey County Council expected to see the draft management plan in April 2009, after which it went out for public consultation (7) before another application for fencing was made to the Planning Inspectorate in 2011 by Surrey Wildlife Trust (8). Thus just over ten years on from the first Public Inquiry on fencing, another row broke out over fencing on Chobham Common, precipitating a second Public Inquiry that took place in April 2012 (8).
By the time of that Inquiry, Surrey
Wildlife Trust had already applied for and received a stonking great Higher Level
Stewardship (HLS) agreement for the Common
in 2010,
of nearly a million pounds over the 10 years of the agreement (AG00272604).
The money will fund the use of their own grazing herd, as well as the usual
scrub and tree removal (7) but why should that agri-environment funding be
given in advance of any decision on the fencing that is required to facilitate the
grazing? The strength of objection to the application
at the Public Inquiry must have left the objectors
crushed when they eventually read the decision of the Inspector, in July
2012, to allow the fencing.
I know some were
also astonished that the Inspector made such a presumption about the evidence
submitted by Natural England, and which goes to the credibility of the
inquiry process (8). Martin Elliott, the Inspector, accepted that any
improvement as a result of the fencing and grazing would be small and
would not bring the site into a favourable condition. He also accepted
that there had been no indication of evidence given during the Inquiry
that could be used as part of any baseline survey or scientific evidence
on which any success could be measured. But then he stepped over the line
of impartiality (8): Chobham Common may be one of the early examples, but heathland restoration very quickly became a bandwagon that many Councils and NGO’s willingly jumped upon. One of the largest areas away from the Surrey heaths were those in Dorset, where the enthusiasm of one RSPB worker in 1999 got the better of him as he felled trees on the Dorset County Council-owned Avon Heath Country Park in five areas that were not covered by a Forestry Commission felling license.
In a rare step, the
Forestry Commission took the RSPB worker to court where he received a
£1000 fine, but this prosecution may have been spurred on by protests from
St Ives and St Leonard's residents who first drew attention to the illegal
felling (9) and by a series of written questions tabled by a local MP in
2000 to the agriculture minister. Mr Chope asked on how many occasions in
each of the last five years breaches of tree felling licences had been
brought to the notice of the Forestry Commission; and what enforcement or
remedial action had resulted (10). He then asked specifically about the
felling licenses issued for the Avon Heath Country Park and whether they
had been breached, before going on to ask what action would be taken of
the RSPB. In a subsequent question he delved further into the felling
licenses issued to the RSPB, and then tellingly asked for a copy to be
deposited in the Commons Library of the preliminary guidance drawn up by
the Forestry Commission as to (11): The scale of the Dorset heathland project - Hardy's Egdon Heath (7000ha) - has led to it receiving more scrutiny than most, especially in terms of its “sustainability issues”. The flaws in the project, especially the wasteful aspects of it, were revealed in an appraisal of sustainability by the Forum for a Future (12). Their report notes that provision had not been made to make use of the tree, gorse and heather clearings, which could have found use in wood fuel systems in community heating schemes, rather than be burnt on site. The language of their criticisms is measured, such as when they advocate a reduction in the use of energy hungry heavy machinery, but even they must have been dazed by the use of helicopters to spray herbicide on the bracken, when with more humanscale techniques, it could have been cleared and composted from some areas. They also noted that the herbicide spray was killing off ecologically important fern species.
Perhaps their most
damning criticism is that the Dorset heaths project appears to have lacked
a shared, locally agreed long term vision and overall plan for multiple
land use and resource protection, in spite of the fact that, as with many
other heathland restoration projects, it received Heritage Lottery funding
and EU Life funding. They allude to the fact that the project had more to
do with the aspirations of conservation professionals than it did to the
local population, and indicate the tensions that have existed (12): Heathland restoration has perhaps been the strongest indicator of why the target driven approach in the UKBAP has, to the general public, been such an arbitrary and contentious issue. I don’t need to rehearse the arguments about whether heath is a natural landscape, or whether it’s intrinsic value is overstated by single interest groups, but the fact remains that the level of destruction in “turning back the clock”, and the often subsequent imposition of fencing and grazing regimes, does not find favour outside of conservation circles. Nor is there any sense of ownership with local people when they are not consulted, even when it concerns land in public ownership, and when the consultation never starts with a clean sheet.
It is easy to document
the contention throughout England – local and sometimes national
newspapers love to report on the plight of people, faced with an unbending
bureaucracy. Thus local campaigner Elynor Gilbert, who listened to the
whole three-day public inquiry into an application to fence
Odiham Common in February 2003, is
reported in the Fleet News and Mail as saying that she could not believe
Hart Council went ahead with the original fencing scheme in 1998 (13):
She went on: In early 2004, homeowners in Blackhills, next to Esher Commons, sought legal advice on what action they could take if a 15-year program for the cutting down trees on the commons was not reined in (14). Dr Julie Llewelyn, a Blackhills resident, organised a petition against the plans going through Elmbridge Borough Council, which proposed clear felling trees on 75ha of the Commons to turn it into open land for heathland restoration. Janet Turner, council portfolio holder for leisure, explained that the council had already wrung a concession from English Nature, allowing the felling to take place over an extended period, when English Nature had originally required that the felling take place over just five years. Cllr Turner added that further negotiations could see the number of trees to be felled reduced, but that the council ran the risk of English Nature reverting to the original plan. Michael Matthews, the Co-ordinator of the Esher Commons Interest Committee, wrote a series of letters to local papers between 2004-06, cataloguing the anger felt by local residents towards the clear felling that had already taken place, of more than 10,000 trees over some 33 hectares between 1997 and 2004 (15) which the local MP, Ian Taylor, had described as “environmental vandalism”(yy) and which had been carried out by Elmbridge Borough Council (EBC) and its contractors without prior public consultation (15). Michael asserted that residents and users of Esher Commons had “been alienated by the way so-called nature conservation has been practiced to date by Elmbridge BC” (16)
Michael explained that
the 885 acres (368ha) of Esher Commons had been bought during the period 1920-24
as “public pleasure grounds” for the benefit of the local
community, and that the grazing rights were extinguished at that time
(15). He pointed out that both large scale Ordnance Survey maps and aerial
photographs showed that the whole area had been predominantly tree-covered
over the last 100 years or so, contrary to the attempt to portray it
mainly as heathland. Thus what was now called Oxshott Heath used to be
called Oxshott Common and Woods (16). He also detailed the cosy
relationship between English Nature and EBC officers, pointing out that
the Countryside Consultative Group in which the heathland restoration
proposals were discussed had no users of Esher Commons or residents, but
that there were several nature conservation professionals serving on it as
well as the chairman of Oxshott Heath Conservators, the advocate of the
restoration plan (17):
In a devastating
indictment of the Surrey Heathland Project, Michael laid bare the lack of
support there had been (15): Restoration of lowland heath receives the most attention, but the contention at Blacka Moor shows that the restoration of moorland heath also continues apace and causes just as much disagreement. Sheffield City Council received a petition in 2005 containing 761 signatures collected by the Friends of Blacka Moor. The petition called on the Council to keep Blacka Moor free from cattle and barbed wire by asking the Council not to seek to alter the original 1933 Graves Covenant with the Charity Commission so that the historical rights to open access for walks and pleasure grounds could be maintained (18). A member of the Friends of Blacka Moor said that previous plans to manage the area drawn up some years ago had not been pursued, that Sheffield Wildlife Trust had still not presented a scheme for managing the land, and had issued a misleading statement referring to objectors as a “small and unrepresentative minority” (18). He asked the City Council to respect the wishes of the users of Blacka Moor.
Sadly, the opportunity to offload Blacka Moor to Sheffield
Wildlife Trust outweighed any local consideration, and it was not long
before trees were being felled, barbed wire fences were erected, and
cattle grazing imposed on the moor for the first time in 70 years. The
dismay of local people was explained at length in a letter to the
Sheffield Telegraph by NA Goodwin in July, 2007. He detailed the futility
of the consultation process where alternatives that were favoured by local
people where ignored, as it had always been the intention of the wildlife
trust to impose fencing and grazing, especially since Sheffield Wildlife Trust had secured agri-environment funding to re-impose grazing
even before the consultation process (19):
Even those who now lived elsewhere were moved to write of
their concerns. Thus Christopher Moreland now living in Devon was shocked
at the changes at Blacka Moor when he returned in August 2007 (20):
This cutting across of the original purpose of the public
ownership of the moor was also the concern of Helen Morton and Joy
Lockwood, who wrote in disgust to the Sheffield Telegraph in September
2007. Their father, Stephen Morton, had been a founder member of the
Sheffield Ramblers’ Association, and his work is commemorated on the moor
by some birch plantings and a plaque (21): The sisters suffered another blow shortly afterwards when the trees planted in memory of their father were felled.
A Daily Telegraph article
from last May reported that local visitors to
Ashdown Forest were reduced to tears by the sight of trees being
toppled and the ground being churned up by bulldozers. The controversial
measures to restore and maintain heathland, including felling mature trees
and fencing off areas so sheep can be grazed, had angered the legion of
forest supporters who had banded together as the Ashdown Forest Action
Group, organised public meetings, and were demanding a public inquiry or
judicial review to change the way the forest was being managed. Gillian
Nassau of the Forest Action Group said (22):
Covering the same story a
few weeks earlier, the Independent had reported the view of Rose Moore,
who lives in Hartfield on the edge of Ashford Forest. She insisted that
those who oppose the felling programme were not "tree huggers" (23):
Eva Waring protested to
the Surrey Advertiser about plans for a second year of felling on
Oxshott Common in the cause of heathland
restoration (24):
Dorothea Jones is a
member of Esher Commons Interests Committee, which also opposes the tree
felling on Oxshott Common. She said
in the same article:
The management for heath at
Swineholes Wood in Staffordshire by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust
incensed Linda Malyon, an Ipstones
parish councillor and a member of Staffordshire Moorlands District Council (25):
An action group was
formed,
the Swineholes Wood
Conservation Group,
and has been locked in a bitter war of words with the Wildlife
Trust, which continued to remove tree saplings and chop down trees.
Tensions
rose when angry protesters held up banners near the entrance of
the wood and confronted workers who had come to cut down trees. Within
days, two representatives of the wildlife trust and an officer from Natural England
took parish councillors on a site visit,
after
which members of the public packed into Ipstones Village Hall to have
their say. Alan
Byatt, who lives at Ipstones Edge, said that, despite the public meeting,
the wildlife trust was not listening to people's views (26):
In a cynical move, when the Trust became aware that the
action group had enlisted the help of
Charlotte
Atkins, the Staffordshire Moorlands
MP, they pre-empted her contact with Natural England by eliciting support
from its Regional Office, and then Helen Gee, the Wildlife Trust's
reserves Manager, paraded that support in a News Release
(22):
Mr Gannon played the SSSI card, which
ultimately underlies the tree felling, and which presents a seemingly impassable
barrier for local people to circumvent, even though it is patently obvious
that the SSSI notification is inaccurate and thus erroneous:
The action group
subsequently invited
Charlotte
Atkins to tour the site in a bid to spur on their campaign. Ms
Atkins said (28):
A war of words has continued in the local
press, but it is Sylvia Plant of the action group whose letter best expresses the warm local regard in
which Swineholes Wood is held, and why there is so much concern at the
heavy handed management (29):
Friends of
Loxley and Wadsley Commons
near Sheffield were in despair at the management of the commons for restoration of
heath by the parks and countryside service of Sheffield City Council. They wrote to the Sheffield Telegraph
in February 2008 (30): My reading told me that conservation grazing was something that was often a threat in the background at Loxley and Wadsley Commons, originating it seemed from those wedded to the management plans of Sheffield City Council and who asserted that it would be the only option if the tree clearance wasn’t to take place. Well, they got their way on the tree clearance, aided by a thumping great pot of money under the English Woodland Grant Scheme, but that would never be enough for these ideologues of the conservation world. Sure enough, an article in the Sheffield Telegraph in mid-August, 2012, announced that Highland cattle could be introduced for conservation grazing at Loxley and Wadsley Common “if the results of a survey currently being conducted are favourable” (31) John Thompson disagreed with the actions of the Countryside Management Service in Hertfordshire when he wrote to the Daily Telegraph that they had (32) “embarked on a strategy of felling hundreds of healthy trees that previously thrived at beauty spots such as Bricket Wood Common and Colney Heath Common. Recently 60 healthy oak trees were felled on Nomansland, Wheathampstead, in order to promote the growth of grasses and heather. Local people are invited to participate in ‘consultations’ on the matter, but the powers that be seem not to care about what they feel”
At least at
Nomansland Common, public opinion has
eventually prevailed on the issue of fencing and grazing, although it
doesn’t bring back the trees (33):
A
series of articles in the Cornishman on various commons and moors in
West Penwith, Cornwall, over the summer has
catalogued the growing opposition to their being fenced off and grazed.
The scheme is being proposed under Natural England's HEATH (Heathland,
Environment, Agriculture, Tourism and Heritage) Project based on their
usual orthodoxy that it would restore the moorland heath. Local protestors
formed an action group Save Penwith Moors.
The group
collected 400 signatures (now 1,100) to a petition that has been sent to the Secretary
of State (34). Ian Cooke, an author who lives near the Nine Maidens
Common, said this of the proposal to fence the commons (35): An article in the Guardian on the opposition to fencing at last acknowledged that at the heart of this protest is a clash of values between professional conservationists and people who use the commons and moors regularly (36). Natural England and its local grouping with the National Trust, Penwith Council, Cornwall County Council and local commoners cite neglect for a spread of gorse and bracken. They are “poised and eager to employ their ‘best practice’ manuals on ‘enhancing’ the moorland habitat”. But the large numbers of people opposed are unconvinced that it is either necessary or desirable to tamper with the moor in this way, and who argue that the value of this landscape lies in its raw and wild simplicity.
Things moved on. St
Just Town Council resolved at the end of September that the proposals put
forward by the HEATH Project of erecting fences, stiles and gates would
have an adverse effect on access and tourism. The council informed the
Secretary of State, Natural England and St Ives MP Andrew George of their
decision (37). Some good news came when Natural England abandoned their
plans to graze and fence the Nine Maidens common - the commoners would not
back an application for fencing on the common. Ian, coordinator of the
Save Penwith Moors action group, said he hoped the campaign had gone some
way towards achieving this result (38)
Ian didn’t have to wait
long before his fears were proved right. Cattle grazing and fencing plans
for three moorland areas were confirmed by the National Trust and Natural
England, with the HEATH Project subsidising landowners to the tune of
£650,000 to fence and manage moorland at Lanyon Farm near Madron, Carnyorth Moor at St Just, and Carn
Galva near Zennor (39). Reaction was swift, with a letter from from Dr
John Butterworth (40): It should be noted that one of these landowners is the National Trust itself, and work began in November on their land with JCBs gouging out channels at Carn Galva, and kilometres of barbed wire going up there and at Lanyon Quoit. Thus land with open access is being blighted, paid for by a perverse use of Heritage Lottery Funds and European Regional Development Funds. For many in the area, it is hard to see if they will ever get their moors back or will they be fenced for ever more?
This was the key issue
at a packed forum meeting of 80 people at the end of November. The forum
was organized as a heathland working group by Penwith Distirct Council
after their Social, Economic and Environment Committee had failed to come
to a decision over the fencing. As one campaigner noted (41:
The forum heard
arguments from both the action group and Natural England, and the debate
that followed included farmers, fencers, commoners, ramblers, walkers and
horse-riders. A vote at the end of the meeting carried a motion (53 to 10)
(42):
This motion has no
authority to bind anyone, but then there is nothing to bind the National
Trust to this course of action either. Their land is not covered by any
statutory designation for heathland, and it is only a voluntary
contribution on their behalf to the Local Biodiversity Action Plan for
Cornwall (43).
Another vote against the fencing work continuing took place
when the
Social, Economic and Environment Committee of Penwith Council finally
resolved in December to take a position, based on the outcome of the Forum
meeting. Concerns were raised in the meeting at the legality of the National Trust works
at Carn Galva where Planning had not been involved, but that a Planning
Enforcement Officer would be tasked to look into it. The Rural Economy
Officer agreed that there had been a failing on the part of Natural
England in effectively communicating the project, which had led to the
present situation. The following resolution was then passed (44):
Turn into the new year,
and the prophesy of the action group became real when the National Trust
had to admit that their groundworks have been damaging and illegal.
A drain, inserted
to deal with ground water at a low point on the Carn Galva moorland
flooded three public rights of way and a track leading to the Nine Maidens
Circle. Jon Brookes, National Trust estates manager for West Penwith, said
somewhat disingenuously (45):
It was not long before
Mr Brookes
had to admit another mistake when the National Trust were
forced to remove a new cattle grid that had covered the width of a
bridleway near Garden Mine on Watch Croft, preventing horse riders from
their right to ride the track. I am not sure how Mr Brookes thinks people
will believe him when he says that it was the result of a "mix up". Ian
Cooke of the action group thinks this just adds to the air of incompetence
of the National Trust, and is demanding answers as to why public money is
being wasted like this (46):
The National Trust are knee deep in the dogma
that is driving heathland restoration, as evidenced by the protest at
their action at another location.
Bickerton Hill is a popular walking
place, mostly owned by the National Trust, and which is on the route of
the Sandstone Trail that links along a red sandstone ridge in Cheshire.
The hill is predominantly wooded on either side of the ridge, and then
there are scattered trees in openings. In late October, 2008, angry villagers
took to Bickerton Hill to confront tree fellers who were clearing an area
of woodland. The Friends of Bickerton Hill had concerns at the
number of birch that were being cleared as part of a program of heathland
restoration. A meeting was held on the hill with the Friends and the
National Trust to discuss a compromise. Afterwards, Tony Ord of the
Friends said (47):
This agreement was
refuted by the National Trust, who claimed that the felling was only
temporarily halted while the meeting had taken place. Thus it is not
surprising that the return without warning of the contractors weeks later
drew the dismay of the Friends (48):
The National Trust said
that the tree felling was supported by Natural England, the Forestry
Commission and Cheshire County Council.
Then
Christopher Widger, Cheshire Countryside Property Manager for the National
Trust,
played the SSSI card (48): This is another example (along with Swineholes Wood and Blacka Moor) of an irresponsible and poorly demarcated blanket designation for heathland that puts woodland at risk. Both units of Bickerton Hill SSSI are notified only for lowland dwarf shrub heath. For this SSSI to be considered in favourable condition, there has to be less than 15% cover of trees and scrub, but this is NOT a statutory figure, just a guideline in Common Standards Monitoring for SSSI! However, the Deciduous Woodland BAP priority mapping shows that about 75% of the area of this SSSI as woodland, and this predominance of woodland cover is borne out by ariel photographs. You can thus imagine the outcry if the National Trust did follow the guidelines and felled most of the rest of the trees.
It’s all just such a
nonsense, with the National Trust and Natural England seemingly defending
the indefensible as they pick and choose what suits them. Thus it is no
surprise that a whacking HLS of £327,637 was put in place in December 2013
(AG00423031) that will fund the proposed fencing and mixed grazing of a
substantial area of the top of the hill where unconditional felling
licences where also issued for deforestation in 2013/2014 - but with NO
Environmental Impact Assessment on this SSSI - a major clearance of trees
"On the advice of Natural England" scheduled to be carried out
between September and November 2014 (49-51). The war being waged on the
wild nature of Bickerton Hill now also includes the use of chemicals,
presumably again at the insistence of Natural England. Tony Ord sees this
use of herbicide as evidence of the overall failure - "the history of
Bickerton Hill is one of mismanagement" (51). He is disgusted at the
use of herbicides, resorted to after
10 years of cattle
grazing had not prevented birch reseeding (51): As Tony Ord says, you only have to follow the money to see what is behind this heathland restoration - the successive Countryside Stewardship Agreements and now the HLS, as well as numerous woodland management grants (51). Wetley Moor is a registered common of 118 hectares near Stoke on Trent, in public ownership since 1927 and jointly managed by Stoke City Council and Staffordshire Moorlands Council through the Wetley Moor Joint Committee (WMJC) (55). A proportion of the moor is enclosed as individual field plots and some residential and business units. The remaining open moor of about 70ha was designated a SSSI in 1955 for lowland heath. There is one commoner registered for grazing. A feasibility study in 1996 first made recommendations for grazing the heathland of the SSSI, and since then a familiar pattern has emerged, including the use of Countryside Stewardship for heathland management. A grazing regime that encompassed all of the the heath of the SSSI was consulted on in 2000 and opposition to the proposal resulted in the formation of the Wetley Moor Action Group (WMAG).
The WMJC
subsequently modified their proposals and made an application in 2002
under the Law of Property Act 1925 for the enfencing for conservation
grazing of a much reduced trial area of just ten hectares. Objections were
received from WMAG, the Open Spaces Society, the one registered commoner,
and many others when a public inquiry was held in 2003. In spite of the
inspector recommending that permission for the fencing be given, the
Secretary of State refused (56). At issue was the state of repair of the
fences around the enclosed parts of the common, and which put the trial at
risk through the potential loss of the grazing livestock. Since these
fences were in private care, the councils had no control over them. The
Open Spaces Society made additional points, one of which was about the
illegal enclosures of the common (54): The councils had inherited this situation when the common became publicly owned, but they should have been aware that the issue of illegal enclosures had been raised in Parliament in 1924, three years before they took ownership (55). The enclosed plots are privately occupied under the terms of various tenancy and licence agreements with the WMJC. It is a perverse situation that the WMJC receives an annual income from these illegal agreements of around £11,500. Shortly after the decision, the Secretary of State met with the WMAG and with Charlotte Atkins, the local MP (see Swineholes Wood above) and in later correspondence with the WMJC (56), he urged the councils to build bridges between the Joint Committee and the local community and by considering how to “to establish a management regime on the site that would command the confidence of all parties” When the WMJC couldn’t find any organisation to offload responsibility for the moor (including Natural England) they eventually pursued agreement on grazing proposals with a new voluntary forum, which significantly the Open Space Society declined to join. This culminated in December 2008 with a proposal for a five year management trial at Wetley Moor that will examine the effectiveness of burning, mowing and grazing management methods on the heathland, using temporary fencing to enclose two comparable seven hectare areas, the fencing needing application to Government for permission (57). The proposal was out for consultation until 5 January 2009.
Natural
England are unlikely to be happy with this outcome since in a revealing
letter to the WMJC back in February 2007 when it first approached them
about a possible period of trail grazing, Tony Percival, Regional
Director,
Natural England West Midlands,
noted his concern
that (58): This deadline is of course on Natural England (and not the councils) in meeting the Government's Public Service Agreement target of getting 95% of SSSls into favourable or recovering condition by 2010. In a naked and extraordinary piece of attempted bullying, the letter reminded the WMJC of the stick that Natural England can wield in these circumstances by virtue of legislation on SSSIs, and the DEFRA code for SSSIs. Hartlebury Common is a “metropolitan” open access space near Stourport, publicly owned by Worcestershire County Council since 1968. This registered commons is a SSSI notified for heathland and woodland, as well as a Local Nature Reserve that attracts 200,000 visitors a year. There are no commoners registered for grazing and it is recognised that the common has not been grazed in over 100 years. External consultants were brought in by the County Council in 2008 to develop a fencing and grazing plan. Following a scoping report in August, the consultants held a public meeting in the September at which 90 people turned up. Detailed proposals to introduce grazing to Hartlebury Common through a Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement were then delivered in a report in October (59). The whole perimeter of the common would be enclosed by fencing, and it would also be divided by fencing both sides of a road that runs through the common. By law, common land cannot be enclosed or divided and thus an application for permission to carry out these restricted works would be needed.
It is interesting to note
that the consultants considered any criticism of the proposals to be a
minority view, but they went further in their comment on the dissent (60):
We should perhaps judge
whether this was an attempt to deflect discontent with their proposals by
considering a verbal report on the public meeting that was given to
Hartlebury Parish Council by County Councillor Maurice Broomfield (60):
The County Council
applied to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
for consent under section 38 of the Commons Act 2006 to carry out
restricted works on Hartlebury Common (61) and then gave legal notice
that any objections should be made to the Planning Inspectorate by 9
January 2009 (62). The Open Space Society is not happy. By statute they are
notified of all applications for works on common land submitted to the
Secretary of State for Environment, and they have certainly objected to
this one. Their local representative, Edgar Powell, doesn't think
the
council can lawfully erect fencing there in any case (63): Other than its illegality, the detail of their objection is that the proposed fencing is not consistently on the boundary of the common and therefore will unnecessarily create 12 isolated parcels of common, and the fencing proposed along both sides of the A4025 will break the common into compartments. The overall effect will thus be to restrict access, and will detract both visually and in spirit the open nature that makes a common a special place. I would add that the proposed fencing line encloses two areas of woodland that, unusually for a heathland SSSI, are separately notified (Unit 2 in the SSSI). The consultants report makes no mention of this woodland, nor whether they have considered the impact that being included in the grazing area will have on its ground flora and on its potential for regeneration. An update on the situation at Hartlebury Common, including the outcome of a Public Inquiry over the fencing proposal can be seen in Rare and precious – words devalued by the conservation industry.
Like hearing the first
cuckoo, Norton Heath Common in
Essex provides an early report in 2009 of protest over the
felling of trees in the cause of heathland restoration. Villagers living
next to the publicly owned common of just over four hectares are furious
that their local (and only) woodland is being destroyed by
Countrycare, Epping
Forest District Council's countryside management service. Rosemary Ellis,
58, has lived near the common all her life, and she speaks for the village
when she says (64) Rosemary has the support of Council County Councillor, Gerard McEwan who believes it must have appeared to local people as “more like a chainsaw massacre and they are extremely angry that public money should be used in this way”
And it is Maggie McEwen,
the District Councillor who lives in and represents the village that gets
to the heart of the problem (64):
The usual weak response
of Countrycare is that the work has received the support of Natural
England and the Forestry Commission, but obviously not that of the local
villagers as the LBAP for Essex from 1999 foretold (65): The LBAP lists the usual targets for heathland management and restoration, as well as an array of heathland sites in Essex. Norton Heath Common is not on that list, nor is it given as a target area for restoration. Perhaps the reason is that there is no remnant heather on the common (66) and it is likely that there hasn’t been for many decades as the age of the oak of 50-70 years and its coverage across the common suggests (67). As is noted in the LBAP for Hertfordshire, heathland restoration becomes less feasible in this situation (68). So why is this happening? Counrtrycare employed a butterfly specialist from nearby Writtle College to advise on a tree felling plan on the Common under the auspices of it being a heathland restoration (69, 70). Thus after a felling licence was obtained that will allow up to 30% of the woodland to be felled (Fell/Thin (Unconditional) 017/190/06 -07) clearance began in February 2007 of “15-20 birch and oak” (69) and “Approximately 50 trees were felled in the winter of 2007/08” (70). This imprecision in accounting, which probably continued with the recent felling this year, makes it hard to see how there will be compliance with the 30% limit set by the felling license. In addition to the felling, soil scraping was carried out and observation plots set up with the apparent aim of monitoring heath recovery. With only two seasons to comment on, the conservation professionals are already parading their success to the rest of the conservation community (71) but this has more to do with the number of butterflies that have been counted as there has been no return of heather, and while it is not admitted in that report, it is noted elsewhere that it may be necessary to reintroduce heather by sowing seed from elsewhere (66). I can only conclude that Norton Heath Common has become the plaything of conservation professionals who want to use it as a test bed for their own pet experiments, especially in bringing into this woodland common insects of open landscapes that are their own particular interest. It is thus their choice to trade off mature oaks in return for insect species. However, this publicly owned wood is a valuable island in a large area of woodless landscape. High Ongar Parish Council have thus asked Countrycare to stop the fellings until there have been further talks with local villagers (64). It would help in this if the website link to the Management Plan 08-11 for the common on the council website actually went somewhere, so that local people could see what is intended to be done in their name (67). (This inoperative link was removed from the webpage, and replaced with a link to photographs of the common taken in February 2009. Thus Countrycare are still not prepared to let people see the Management Plan.)
Within days of the
report in the local paper, the furore that the tree felling had caused led
to heated discussions on site between residents, parish councillors and
Countrycare.
The local residents weren't prepared to compromise and they
wanted their woodland left alone. Rosemary Ellis again spoke for many when
she said (72):
Confirming my suspicions
of why the felling was really being undertaken, Paul Hewitt of Countrycare
manager is reported to have said (72):
However, Countrycare
recognise they cannot continue with the felling in the face of such
opposition, and in a rare instance of contrition, Mr Hewitt acknowledged
the failings of his service (72):
Sutton Heath hit the headlines in May 2011
when local people labelled conservationists as "ecological vandals"
after hundreds of trees were felled at a highly popular, publicly owned
wooded space near Woodbridge in Suffolk. Local resident Nick Day said
(73): Nick Day contacted me and asked whether anyone had successfully disputed a similar assault on woodland. I went through the available information with him, establishing the familiar pattern of a SSSI designation for lowland heathland in spite of the location having a woodland cover of over 60%. I explained to Nick about Common Standards Monitoring guidance for SSSI, how trees and shrubs were a negative indicator for lowland heathland and that to achieve favourable condition, there had to be less than 15% tree and shrub cover – thus putting at risk at least three-quarters of the current woodland on Sutton Heath. We must be grateful though, for this clarification from Adam Gretton of Natural England, who explained at a meeting with objectors that the 15% tree cover relates to open heathland on Sutton Heath, and not to the tree belts or woodland (74). This is of course a nonsense when the woodland of the Unit has no spatial identification in the SSSI designation, and because of the intention of the heathland restoration by Suffolk Coastal District Council that sees the trees there as disposable.
We must also applaud the
clarity with which John Davies, the Countryside & Open Space Manager for
Suffolk Coastal District Council, understands agri-environment schemes
like HLS. When asked by objectors why the publicly owned amenity space of
Sutton Heath is classified as farmland, he replied (74):
So Mr Davies, what is the
difference between managing as farmland or managing as heathland? If you
are in any doubt about the association between HLS and the constant
imposition of a farming pressure, then the proposals for the continuance
of agri-environment schemes after the current period ends in 2013 has this
explicit link on use of the funding (75): It was only through a Freedom of Information Request by the objectors that the details of the HLS funding for heathland restoration that Suffolk Coastal District Council secured from Natural England were obtained, the agreement being signed in 2009 without consultation with local people (76). Yet again, this shows that the lure of HLS takes away the ability of local people to decide for themselves, and puts it in the hands of Natural England. The HLS agreement reveals the 10-year road map for the destruction and loss of freedoms that is being perpetrated on Sutton Heath, the felling and coppicing of trees, the spraying of bracken, the imposition of fencing and the reinstatement of grazing after a gap of many years. Sutton Heath has been caught up in the wider drive to restore heathland in the Suffolk Sandlings Heaths (77). The Sutton Heath Users Group, set up by the objectors, has a clear aim to keep Sutton Heath as an accessible amenity area for local people and visitors by finding a fairer balance between conservation objectives and the amenity rights of a substantial and increasing number of local people and visitors (78). A visitor survey of the Sandlings Heaths area concluded that Sutton Heath in particular receives high visitor use compared to other sites (79). Thus the Sutton Heath Users Group makes the point that Sutton Heath is just 2% of the South Sandlings, but accounts for 40% of total visitors to this area. Forgoing heathland restoration on Sutton Heath would have little impact on the overall Sandlings Heath, but going ahead with it would have a massive impact on the freedoms of local people.
Padworth Common is the classic heathland
horror story. Padworth is a heath-dominated registered common, owned by
West Berkshire Council, which designated it a local nature reserve in 2005
(80). It’s a popular and well used spot for walking and riding. However,
the Council succumbed in 2008 to the lure of filling their boots with agri-environmental
stewardship funding, the HLS covering a number of commons in Berkshire. As
a heathland site, the signing up to a grazing option from the menu of HLS
funding was inevitable, and so it is no surprise that the HLS agreement
foresaw the enfencing of the Common (81):
The first
application by the Council to enfence the common in April 2010 was
eventually withdrawn after significant opposition led the Planning
Inspectorate to conclude that a Public inquiry would be needed to consider
the application (82). The Council, even after revising some of its
proposals, obviously lacked confidence that it would have been able to
address the particular points about access from the objectors (74), nor
show that it had sufficiently consulted with local people. On the latter,
there is a telling section in one of the letters of objection sent to the
Planning Inspectorate, from Adeliza Cooper (83): The Council embarked on a “period of informal consultation” which turned out to be just one “user group and residents meeting” before submitting a second application in September 2011 (84). The second application has also attracted a large number of objections - about 120, and including the Open Spaces Society (85) - so that the Planning Inspectorate again intended to hold a Public Inquiry (86).
There is an
assertion in the application to fence
the common, written by Sara McWilliams, a Countryside Ranger with West
Berkshire Council, which should be challenged for its
bending of the natural reality (87):
This is
unsupported nonsense, as can easily be demonstrated by anyone who makes
the slightest effort to discover the truth. In the particular case of
lowland heathlands, a recent systematic review of the evidence of the
relative impacts of grazing compared to alternative management
interventions came to the conclusion that grazing can drive out heath and
turn into grassland, and that some heathland managers might be reluctant
to admit that (88). Moreover, it was the belief of heathland managers, elicited using a questionnaire, that negative impacts of grazing on some
habitat attributes are widespread. Thus declines in the vertical structure
of ericaceous shrubs, gorse cover and abundance of grass tussocks, are
likely to be deleterious to reptiles. Similarly, the reported declines in
the abundance of tree species, cover of ericaceous shrubs and abundance of
grass tussocks are likely to have negative impacts on invertebrate
communities, whereas the declines in gorse cover and vertical structure
are likely to have negative impacts on some bird species, such as Dartford
warbler and linnet. As the authors noted, while there was a relatively
large literature on the topic, it did not yield much that was conclusive
in the way of supporting the virtue of grazing: The Public Inquiry on enfencing Padworth Common was scheduled to last for two days, starting on 24 May 2012 (89). However, within minutes of the Inquiry opening, it turned into a farce when local objectors pointed out to the Inspector that the length of proposed fencing had been altered from the original, both in the application that was on display in a local public library and which the Council was circulating on the day for the Inquiry. In fact, the Planning Inspectorate’s own official notification of the Inquiry had the wrong length of fencing at 4,032m (90) compared to the 3158.4m of the original application submitted in September 2011 (87). It was reported that Alan Beckett, the Inspector, had only noticed the amended details himself that morning (90, 91). I am told that the Inspector gave the Council the opportunity to withdraw with their barrister and consider their position, only for them to return and assert that the longer fencing length had arisen from a greater accuracy of measurement, and that they would continue on the basis of that measurement. Lana Wood, the barrister speaking on behalf of the Council, said: “What appears to be a conspiracy theory is just a cock-up”
Realising that the
increased fence length had not been part of the consultation on the
proposed fencing application, and thus could be cause for appeal if the
Inquiry went ahead, the Inspector adjourned the Inquiry until 15 January 2013,
when it was scheduled to resume for a four day hearing. As it turned out,
WBC withdrew their application for fencing around the time that the Inquiry
was scheduled to
resume (92). A council statement said: Padworth Common resident, David Fincham, was pleased that the application had been dropped by WBC, particularly he said: “After the very poor preparation by them made at last year’s public inquiry” (93). I would agree. The change in length of fencing that caused the Inspector to adjourn, bears some scrutiny. The 4,032m length had appeared before – it was in the Notice for the application that was published on the common, and the Notice was copied into the original application (87). The wording in the Notice was clumsy, but since elsewhere in the proposal it indicated that there was already existing fences on some parts of the common, then 4,032m could represent the overall length of fencing once the two grazing compartments had been formed. It would include the 3,158.4m of new fencing and, by difference, about 874m of existing fencing to the south and east of the proposed southern compartment. I have measured the latter two boundaries, and come up with a length of 1,020m. I have also measured the overall boundary lengths of the two proposed compartments and come up with a total fencing length of only 3,411m and not 4,032m. Since about 1,020m of this is already fenced, then the length of new fencing that was needed to institute the two grazing compartments was ONLY 2,391m – not the 3158.4m of the original application, nor the 4,032m that the Council asserted at the abortive Public Inquiry. West Berkshire Council has a few questions to answer about its apparently shoddy performance in this process. How did 4,032m find its way into the version of the application on public display in the Library and dated 1 April 2012? More importantly, why was this length given as the proposed works in the Notice of the Public Inquiry issued by the Planning Inspectorate, and which is dated 11 April 2012 (89). Why didn't the Planning Inspectorate Notice have the 3158.4m of the original application from 22 September 2011? Doesn't it suggest that the Planning Inspectorate was sent another copy of the application, that dated 1 April 2012, and from which they took information for their Notice of the Public Inquiry? Why would they need another copy of the application? Why did the Council send them an altered copy of the application? It seems more like an incompetent conspiracy to me, rather than inadvertency. Watch out for areas of annual, temporary fencing on Padworth (exempt from application to the Planning Inspectorate) as WBC bumble on.
The
objectors to fencing at Thursley Common
and adjoining commons
in Surrey have the territorial expansionist ambitions of Surrey Wildlife
Trust and their Grazing Project to deal with. As Sandra Smith, an objector
from nearby Elstead, says (93): The threat of loss of open access to commons due to fencing and conservation grazing is something that just never goes away now, once the conservation industry sees their opportunities. Thus like Odiham (94) and Chobham (see above) where there were renewed plans and an application to enfence, the threat at Thursley Common became tangled up with the aspirations that Surrey Wildlife Trust had for a common they own nearby to Thursley, and which had rumbled on for years. Surrey Naturalist’s Trust (now Surrey Wildlife Trust) purchased Bagmoor Common in 1970, this common being part of a larger area of commons that includes Elstead, Ockley, and Royal Commons as well as Thursley Common (95). Thursley Common was used as a military training ground up until 1965, after which it was entered into a management agreement with Surrey Naturalist Trust. Then in 1977, most of Thursley Common was acquired by the Nature Conservancy Council, which became English Nature and is now Natural England. Surrey Wildlife Trust continued to manage Thursley under an agreement with English Nature until 1985. Parts of Thursley Common are still used under license for military training, while most of it is now a National Nature Reserve (96). Elstead, Ockley and Royal Commons are owned by Ministry of Defence/Defence Estates, and are used for infantry training (95).
Proposals
were first made for conservation grazing on Bagmoor and Royal Commons in
2000, and an initial public consultation by the Surrey Heathland Project
(see earlier) and Surrey Wildlife Trust took place that year, followed by
further consultations and a public meeting in January 2003 (95). Then it
all went quiet until the Wildlife Trust brought out another consultation
between June and August 2010 (97). However, in this consultation, Thursley,
Elstead, and Ockley Commons were included in with Royal and Bagmoor
Commons. The consultation was launched on the back of a background paper,
and this is the kind of bullying lock-in that is thrown in people’s faces
in a so-called consultation about heathland (98): There was also an appraisal of actions from consultants Footprint Ecology (95) who undertook aspects of the consultation. Considering how often this consultancy crops up in relation to heathland management appraisals and consultations (they were also involved at Chobham Common (6)) it must be considered that they are a safe pair of hands in delivering what the conservation industry needs. Sure enough, their recommendations on management in the report on the consultation came out firmly in favour of enclosing the whole of the commons area in fencing, and sticking cattle into it (99). On the back of that, Surrey Wildlife Trust launched a second phase of consultation in July 2011 in which the proposal was to install permanent perimeter fencing around all the commons area, a proposal that will likely require an application to the Planning Inspectorate (100). It is that perimeter fencing and the threats to open access for horse riders, dog walkers, residents, cyclists, walkers and all who currently enjoy the public open space of these commons, which led objectors to set up TERRACE: Thursley & Elstead Residents & Riders Against Commons Enclosure (101).
I was
interested to find out what happened between 2003 and 2010 that encouraged
Surrey Wildlife Trust to have another go, and to seek a much wider area
under which their influence could be spread. It turned out to be the usual
driver of heathland madness, an HLS agreement that the Wildlife Trust probably secured in 2009,
but not only on the common they owned, Bagmoor, but
also on two of the commons owned by the MOD/Defence Estates, Elstead and
Royal Commons. Because the identity of many HLS recipients is withheld, we
only get to know this because Bagmoor Common is Unit 38 of Thursley,
Hankley and Frensham SSSI, and this is what the Condition Assessment for
the Unit in March 2009 says (102): This also reveals that along with the money from the HLS agreement for heathland management, Surrey Wildlife Trust got additional funding – Special Projects funding (103) – for the consultation on fencing and grazing that covered all the commons. It had to be this way since HLS is solely in the gift of Natural England, but they can’t fund themselves from it, nor the MOD/Defence Estates. Notice the inherent bullying threat in the Condition Assessment about timescale. Assume that the application to fence will come in 2012 to fit with the 3-year deadline. The inclusion of all the commons into a large, enclosed area, also means that if and when perimeter fencing is enforced around all the commons area, then Surrey Wildlife Trust can get an HLS agreement on Thursley and Ockley Commons as well, the two commons currently without an HLS agreement in place. This will signal another massive expansion of their Grazing Project, the Wildlife Trust having got into conservation grazing across the county in a big way already, with their herd of belted Galloway cattle expanding from just three animals in 2007 to 243 in June 2011 (104) mostly on the back of HLS agreements, and with an anticipated increase to 330 cattle by 2013 (105). The expanded area is of course consistent with the Living Landscapes approach of the Wildlife Trusts, of large areas under an environmental stewardship management that is predicated on our wild nature being required to exist alongside the cultural use of our landscapes. Thus Surrey Wildlife Trust is no exception in seeing Living Landscapes as central to the objective of the Trust’s Grazing Project “a pioneering site management initiative which has concentrated on building both capacity and flexibility into our county-wide conservation grazing programme” (106).
I suspect
that the Trust may also see the enlarged grazing area as a voluntary
Nature Improvement Area, an opportunity for restoring and connecting
nature on a significant scale, consistent with the Government’s
Natural Environment White Paper (107). It is all so squirmingly
characteristic of the conservation industry’s dogma. As TERRACE says (101):
A group of residents from
around Littleworth Common, near
Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire, held a meeting in April, 2008, to
reconstitute the Littleworth Common Preservation Society that had existed
for a few years in the 1960s (108,109). They came together to oppose the
mass felling of mature trees on the Common, by South Bucks District
Council, which wants to turn the common into heathland. Local residents
feared it would just turn the area into a barren wasteland, as was
graphically shown on their campaign website by contrasting photographs
taken in 2001 and then in 2008 after widespread felling (110). The
reformed group quickly collected 750 signatures on a petition, and set out
to try to persuade the council to stop cutting down the trees while they
got an ecological survey carried out (109). Rob Hancox, landlord of The
Jolly Woodman pub on the edge of common, was forthright in his criticism
(108): Ian Hill, a resident and campaign officer for the group, said "All of the evidence points to wanton and indiscriminate felling……there is no support for the current plan from either the common's residents or its users" (109)
The common is privately
owned, but has been managed by successive local authorities since 1952
through a scheme of management under the Commons Act (1899) (111) Grazing
ceased on the common at around the same time (109). Kate Murray, SBDC,
said the council had entered into a CSS agreement in October 2000 with
English Nature (108):
She added that since the
restoration work had begun in 2001, the Starfruit (Damasonium alisma)
had re-appeared in 2004, after an absence of 33 years. The South Bucks
Heaths and Parklands Biodiversity Opportunity Area Statement says that
temporary ponds on heathlands are important for Starfruit, an aquatic
annual plant of muddy ponds where the trampling and puddling of cattle and
geese occurs at the water's edge (112). Plantlife helped clear vegetation
from around the “BAP quality pond” on Littleworth Common, but this one
success of the restoration certainly didn’t justify the drastic
clearance of the many trees elsewhere on the common, and which only
resulted in mass growth of bracken, and not much of the heather or grass
that was claimed for the restoration (111). Moreover, as is often the
case, a management focus on only one species, which happens with many
projects with Plantlife involvement, ends up putting other species at
risk. Thus Rob Hancox insisted that a rare species of crested newt had not
been seen since its habitat was destroyed 106). Pugit recounted
other losses in a comment below one of the articles in the local press
(113): So what we have at Littlemore is a grazed common when it was first notified as a SSSI in 1951, but which developed through natural succession into birch-oak woodland once the grazing ceased (114). For a supposedly recently self-seeded woodland of downy birch and pedunculate oak, it has a remarkable variety of other trees, such as beech, Scots pine in the south-western part of the common, and scattered hornbeam, aspen, rowan, wild cherry, crab apple and grey willow, and a shrub layer dominated by alder buckthorn, plus hawthorn and blackthorn. It is not surprising therefore that the one Unit of the SSSI is notified as Broadleaved, mixed and yew woodland – lowland (115) and the common is shown as deciduous woodland on Natural England’s mapping of BAP habitats. It is uncertain whether the diversity in tree and shrubs species has been retained through the mass felling that had taken place.
A few months later, in
June 2008, SBDC announced it would scale back the work on the common
(116). A group of councillors had visited the site. Councillor Bill Lidgate was “a bit taken aback on what we have actually done on the
common". Cllr Lidgate, cabinet member for the environment, added: Cllr Jennifer Woolveridge said: "One of the many problems has been lack of consultation with the public. I have been approached by the Littleworth Common residents about what our way forward is" As is so often the case, Natural England put pressure on a local authority about heathland restoration, but were pretty block-headed about the repercussions that result from that pressure, and which they don’t have to deal with. SBDC went on to develop a follow-on management plan for when the CSS agreement came to an end, and which would be the basis for an application for HLS. A draft management plan was thus drawn up (117) and put out to Public consultation in May 2011 for 15 weeks with an accompanying questionnaire (118). According to SBDC, key stakeholders were consulted, and which included The City of London (Burnham Beeches) Bucks County Council Countryside officer; Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust and Natural England (119). Letters were also sent out to approximately 180 local residents, and a public drop in event was held on 18th May 2011 (119). If this is the case, then it is surprising that SBDC received only 20 responses when the consultation closed on 25th July 2011, but with the further offer to local residents to make comments by the 2nd September 2011. I wonder why someone made a Freedom of Information request about Littleworth Common to Natural England in June 2011, asking for all correspondence relating to the common (120) and thus while the consultation was ongoing? In the Summary of consultation responses, there was clearly a substantial majority against grazing the commons, and there was no clear majority for any of the other management proposals (119). However, in spite of this, the Council quickly moved to approve the draft management plan in full council on 25th October 2011 (121) releasing a final version of the management plan without any discernible change of course in its management prescriptions (111). While Natural England apparently approved this management plan on 13 April 2012 (121) a year on and there is as yet no HLS agreement on Littleworth Common. It is likely that grazing is the sticking point. Because of the roads around the common, grazing is unlikely without fencing, which will require an application to the Planning Inspectorate (121). Ignoring their own guidance
Natural England have been
aware of the contention around heathland restoration for a number of years
as they sponsored guidance on agreeing management on common land (where
heath is often found) and also a report on commons management in the SE.
The former, the guidance A Common Purpose: A guide to agreeing
management on common land has been around since 2005, and it
seeks to reduce the potential for contention. One of its Golden Rules says
(122):
It is unfortunate that in
spite of this guidance being available, there is still a heavy hand
involved in most heathland restoration, but worse still there is an
essential dishonesty in any consultation processes – even though this and
the heavy hand is covered in the latter report. Thus South East
Commons and their Conservation Management looked at amongst other
things the controversy over tree clearance on commons (123):
The report highlighted
that one of the main problems that local people have with the conservation
management of SSSI commons was that stakeholders were rarely engaged in
the development of management proposals. Consequently, they can rightly
feel that proposals are being imposed upon them and that their views are
not valued, let alone considered (123):
So ignored is the guidance in Common
Purpose that Natural England sought fit five years later to commission the
Open Spaces Society to produce another guide, Finding common ground,
this one on how to recognise and
take account of local-community interests in common land (124). In its
section on Tree Felling, the guide makes use of the example of
Swineholes Wood to illustrate the situation where felling occurs without
the support of local people, taking its information from the article that
I wrote after reading about objections in the local press ((125 - and see
above). The guide says this (124):
Yet more
guidance was produced when Natural England commissioned A Commons
Toolkit from the Foundation for Common Land, a recently formed commons
grazing organisation (126). In the Guidance Note on applying for consent
to carry out works on common land comes this:
It then
gives this very helpful tip:
Of course it
can also be said that this is the way to isolate people from hearing what
others think, and it is a well-trodden tactic in the fake consultations
that seem to characterise heathland restorations. The tenor of this
reactionary attitude to public opinion was aptly captured in Nibblers,
the self-help discussion group run by the Grazing Animals Project.
Dr. Tricia Rice,
Conservation Officer for the Dark Peak Natural Area asked
how she could counter the
strong
concerns of a pressure
group over public safety near cattle on a moor near Sheffield where
English Nature was planning to reintroduce cattle grazing. One answer she
got was from David Hodd,
Countryside Manager for the National Trust in Dorset (127):
Returning to
the Toolkit, it has this in Guidance Note 9 on the reintroduction of
grazing on a common (126):
Thus to the
pressures applied by SSSI designation, and the targets in the UKBAP (the
national policy) and the various LBAPs driven by the UKBAP, can be
added the lure of agri-environment stewardship agreements as a means to
maintain the conservation status of SSSIs, or to achieve those BAP
targets, such as the original Countryside Stewardship Scheme that is now
replaced by the Higher Level Stewardship scheme. It is NEVER a
clean sheet when communities are
consulted on nature conservation management, if they are consulted at all.
It
would be a naive person anyway who thought that consultation by the
conservation industry would make any difference to the way heathlands
would be managed. Everything that will happen on the heathland will be
dictated by the strands of the HLS agreement that the conservation
industry inevitably signs up to, because it is now their main business
model. As the Toolkit says (126): It is a painful irony that increasing use of Freedom of Information requests is revealing why ordinary people are losing the freedoms of being able to experience nature in the absence of farming. I would also note that in almost all cases – Ashdown Forest, Blacka Moor, Chobham Common, Esher Commons, Hartlebury Common, Loxley and Wadsley Common, Nomansland Common, Odiham Common, Padworth Common, Thursley Common, Wetley Moor, Norton Heath Common, Sutton Heath etc. – the issue of public ownership and thus the public will is at stake. Local people should be included in discussions about the management of publicly owned land. Many of these landscapes were covenanted to the free use by the public that owns them. Now, they are caught up in the juggernaut that is nature conservation that cuts across that open access and denies a right for the public to have any meaningful say in their management, because it will be at the direction of Natural England as sole providers of the HLS money.
There is a map on Natural
England's Tomorrow's
Heathland Heritage website
of the distribution of lowland heath in the UK
(128). In England, it can be
used as a route map of protest over the loss of freedoms due to the autocratic and high handed nature
of the conservation industry. The shaping of a conservation ideology and
practice by that conservation industry without ever seeking a mandate is a
present danger that has to be recognised for what it is
(129): Mark Fisher 5 October 2008 - updated 12 December 2008, 8 January 2009, 22 January 2009, 1 March 2009, 9 June 2011, 26 January 2012, 15 March 2012, 25 April 2012, 21 May 2012, 24 June 2012, 29 September 2012, 17 March 2013, 14 October 2014 (1) National Heathland Conference 2008: Managing Heathlands in the Face of Climate Change, National Science Learning Centre, University of York 9, 10 & 11 September 2008 www.keystone-group.co.uk/heathlands/index.php (2) About the Chobham Common Riders Association www.chobham.com/ccra/about.html (3) Important conservation site under threat, English Nature Press Release 29 October 1998 www.english-nature.org.uk/news/story.asp?ID=119 (4) Woodland dialogue collapsing, Debby Thompson, Surrey Advertiser 6 November 2003 www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/60014_woodland_dialogue_collapsing (5) Chobham Stakeholder Engagement, Countryside Access Forum Meeting 21 April 2008, Surrey County Council (6) Chobham Common report on public consultations and recommendations for future management. Footprint Ecology 2008 http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/files/chobhamreport.pdf (7) Management Proposals – Chobham Common, Surrey Wildlife Trust February 2010 http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/files/chobhammngtproposals.pdf (8) Chobham Common Application Decision COM 231, The Planning Inspectorate 27 July 2012 http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/uploads/pins/common_land/decision/com231_decision.pdf (9) RSPB man fined for tree felling, Dorset Echo 17 November 2000 http://archive.thisisdorset.net/2000/11/17/108631.html (10) Tree Felling Licences, Mr Chope/Mr Morley House of Commons Hansard Written Answers 8 Mar 2000 (11) Tree Felling Licences, Mr Chope/Mr Morley House of Commons Hansard Written Answers 14 Mar 2000 (12) The Dorset Heathlands Projects: ‘Hardy’s Egdon Heath’ and Urban Heaths LIFE Project, South West Sustainable Land Use Initiative sustainability appraisal case study, Forum for the Future, October 2004 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/DorsetHeath2.pdf (13) Victory for the common land campaigners, Fleet News and Mail Online, 8 July 2003 (14) Residents threaten council with legal action over tree felling, Mike Russell, Surrey Advertiser 19 February 2004 (15) Esher Commons: Felling angered thousands of residents, Surrey Advertiser, 26 January 2006 www.getsurrey.co.uk/letters/s/57446_esher_commons_felling_angered_thousands_of_residents (16) Michael Matthews, Commons: Out of touch with visitors, 24 June 2004 http://www.getreading.co.uk/letters/s/56703_commons_out_of_touch_with_visitors__ (17) Michael Matthews, Unreasonable that we had no access to plans, Surrey Advertiser 24 February 2005 http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/letters/s/57020_commons_unreasonable_that_we_had_no_access_to_plans (18) Petition concerning cattle grazing on Blacka Moor, Public Questions and Communications, Sheffield City Council Meeting 5 October 2005
(19) Which minority
rules on Blacka Moor? NA Goodwin, Sheffield Telegraph 27 July 2007
(20) What's happening
on Blacka Moor? Christopher Moreland, Sheffield Telegraph 24 August 2007
(21) Time to fight this
moors restriction, Helen Morton and Joy Lockwood, Sheffield Telegraph 2
September 2007 (22) Anger over management of Ashdown Forest, Paul Eccleston, Daily Telegraph 25 May 2007 www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/05/25/eaash19.xml (23) Oh bother! Nimbies do battle with council over Pooh's forest, Jonathan Brown, Independent 21 April 2007 (24) Protesters outraged at commons tree felling, Surrey Advertiser, 7 August 2007 www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2013540_protesters_outraged_at_commons_tree_felling (25) Too many trees being cut down, Roger Houldcroft, The Sentinel 7 February 2008 (26) Trust turns deaf ear to protests, Matt Beeson and Danielle Harrison, Ashbourne News Telegraph 7 May 2008 www.ashbournenewstelegraph.co.uk/ashbournenewstelegraph-news/displayarticle.asp?id=313125 (27) Top Conservation Expert Backs Wildlife Charity, Staffordshire Wildlife Trust News release 30 May 2008 www.staffordshirewildlife.org.uk/downloadcol.asp?fileid=2658&detailsid=33 (28) MP gives backing to Swineholes protest, Burton Mail 27 August 2008 www.burtonmail.co.uk/burtonmail-video/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=343519
(29) Balance has been
ruined, Leek Post and Times 17 October 2008 (30) Tree felling goes against green tag, Sue Laing and friends of Wadsley and Loxley Commons, Sheffield Telegraph 15 February 2008 www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/letters/Tree-felling-goes-against-green.3782479.jp
(31) Grazing
cattle could protect priority habitat in Sheffield, Sheffield Telegraph 17
August 2012 (32) Oaks being felled to make way for grass and heather, John Thompson, Letter, Daily Telegraph 15 March 2008 www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/03/15/nosplit/dt1501.xml#head11 (33) Cattle-grazing plan for Nomansland Common is thrown out, EDP24, 31 July 2008 www.edp24.co.uk/news/cattle_grazing_plan_for_nomansland_common_is_thrown_out_1_289176 (34) Petition against cattle grazing signed by 400, Cornishman 20 August 2008 www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/news/Petition-cattle-grazing-signed-400/article-280864-detail/article.html
(35)
Group forms
to stop cattle grazing on moorland, Cornishman 9 July 2008 (36) Conservation: Running the wilds, Alex Pitt, Guardian 17 September 2008 www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/17/conservation.activists (37) Council against Heath scheme, Cornishman 1 October 2008 www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/homepagenews/Council-Heath-scheme/article-366696-detail/article.html (38) Joy as cattle-grazing plans abandoned, Cornishman 2 October 2008 (39) Plans to graze cows on moor confirmed, Cornishman 22 October 2008 (40) Gloom and anger at grazing, Cornishman 29 October 2008 www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/homepagenews/Gloom-anger-grazing/article-436731-detail/article.html (41) To graze or not to graze in rural Penwith, Cornishman 4 November 2008 www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/homepagenews/graze-graze-rural-Penwith/article-448108-detail/article.html (42) ‘Will we get moors back?’ Cornishman 3 December 2008 www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/homepagenews/moors/article-520842-detail/article.html (43) Heathland – Cornwall, Volume 2, Cornwall’s Biodiversity www.wildlifetrust.org.uk/avon/www/Habitats/Low_heath/low_heath_cornwall.htm (44) Minutes of the Social, Economic and Environment Committee, Penwith District Council 10 December 2008 www.penwith.gov.uk/media/adobe/g/1/101208msee.pdf (45 ) 'We'll repair moor damage' This is Plymouth, 14 January 2009 www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/ll-repair-moor-damage/article-614833-detail/article.html (46) Trust admits 'mix-up' over cattle grid, this is Cornwall, 26 February 2009 www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/news/Trust-admits-mix-cattle-grid/article-729672-detail/article.html (47) Deal struck over Trust’s work on hill, Crewe Chronicle 29 October 2008 (48) National Trust ‘dawn raid’ angers Friends, Chester Chronicle 21 November2008 (49) Bickerton Hill, Frequently asked questions, National Trust (50) Bickerton Hill, Areas for Heathland Restoration, National Trust (51) Trees have to go to save heathland, David Holmes, The Chester Chronicle 5 March 2014 (52) About Wetley Moor, Staffordshire Moorlands District Council www.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=120&pageNumber=1 (53) Proposed works on Wetley Moor Common, Common Land Branch, DEFRA 29 April 2004 www.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk/downloads/Decison_letter_29th_April_2004.pdf (54) Wetley Moor Common saved from fencing blight, Open Spaces Society 6 May 2004 www.oss.org.uk/news/local%20news%202004.htm#Wetley%20Moor%20Common%20saved%20from%20fencing%20blight (55) Wetley Moor, Staffordshire (encroachments) – House of Commons 27 February 1924 (56) Ministers reply – letter from Alun Michael Minister for Rural Affairs to Wetley Moor Joint Committee 31 July 2004 www.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk/downloads/Minister-s_Reply_31st_July_2004.pdf (57) Details of a management study for Wetley Moor SSSI, Wetley Moor Joint Committee, www.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk/downloads/Wetley_Moor_Managment_Trial.pdf (58) Wetley Moor SSSI- letter from Natural England to the Wetley Moor Joint Committee, 14 February 2007 www.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk/downloads/Item9a_AppG.pdf (59) The introduction of grazing to Hartlebury Common: issues and options for livestock management, Land Use Consultants October 2008 http://worcestershire.whub.org.uk/home/wcc-countryside-hcfencingissues_options.pdf (60) Minutes of the Meeting of Hartlebury Parish Council, 7 October 2008 www.hartlebury.org.uk/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Oct%2008%20PC%20Minutes.pdf (61) Hartlebury Common - Application for consent to construct works on common land, Worcestershire County Council 14 November 2008 http://worcestershire.whub.org.uk/home/wcc-countryside-hcfencingapp.pdf (62) Hartlebury Common, Worcestershire County Council 25 November 2008 http://worcestershire.whub.org.uk/home/wcc-countryside-hcfencinglegalnotice.pdf (63) Concern about Hartlebury Common fencing plan, Open Space Society 7 January 2009 www.oss.org.uk/news/Local%20news%202009.htm#Concern%20about%20Hartlebury%20Common%20fencing%20plan (64) NORTON HEATH: Your favourite trees are being cut down, This is Total Essex 20 January 2009 (65) Heathland, Essex Biodiversity Action Plan – A wild future for Essex www.essexbiodiversity.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/GalleryImages/pdf/Essex%20BAP/HABITATS.pdf (66) Restoration of Norton Heath Common, Epping Forest District Council (67) Norton Heath Common, Epping Forest District Council http://mailhost.eppingforestdc.gov.uk/Council_Services/planning/countrycare/norton_heath.asp (68) A 50-year vision for the wildlife and natural habitats of Hertfordshire, A Local Biodiversity Action Plan, 1998, Revised March 2006, Hertfordshire Environmental Forum http://enquire.hertscc.gov.uk/qol/2006/50yearvision.pdf (69) Norton Heath Survey, Tim Gardiner, Epping Forest Countrycare Survey 2007 (70) Restoration of Norton Heath Common, Tim Gardiner, Epping Forest Countrycare Survey 2008 (71) Responses of ground flora and insect assemblages to tree felling and soil scraping as an initial step to heathland restoration at Norton Heath Common, Essex, England Tim Gardiner & Andrew Vaughan http://www.conservationevidence.com/ViewEntry.asp?ID=1306 (72) Residents win a halt to oak tree 'massacre', this is total Essex 2 February 2009 (73) Sutton Heath tree felling questioned by locals, BBC News 5 May 2011 www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-13298812 (74) Sutton Heath Oct 3 Public meeting notes, Suffolk Coastal District Council (75) Article 5(4), Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on support for rural development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 19.10.2011 http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/cap-post-2013/legal-proposals/com627/627_en.pdf (76) Response to FOI request CMS 30048, Freedom of Information Group, Suffolk Coastal District Council, 30 November 2011 www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/financial_information_regarding?unfold=1#incoming-231549 (77) Rare and precious – words devalued by the conservation industry, Self-willed land May 2011 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/rare_precious.htm (78) Sutton Heath Users Group www.suttonheathusersgroup.co.uk (79) Cruickshanks, K., Liley, D. & Hoskin, R. (2010) Suffolk Sandlings Visitor Survey Report. Footprint Ecology/Suffolk Wildlife Trust. 10 February 2011 (80) Padworth Common Local Nature Reserve and Wildlife Heritage Site, West Berkshire Council www.westberks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=5824 (81) HLS AG00264577 - management of environmental features. Specific options, prescriptions and indicators of success. Part 3 www.westcombe.org.uk/infodocs/ELSHLS-Part3.pdf (82) Riders fear the future of Padworth Common will not be a pretty picture, Horseytalk.net www.horseytalk.net/ROW/PadworthCommon.html (83) Padworth Common: Letter of Objection to the Planning Inspectorate, Adeliza Cooper www.horseytalk.net/ROW/pdfs/PadworthCommonLetter2.pdf (84) Padworth Common - s38 Application to Erect Stock Proof Fencing www.westberks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=23546#cn14880 (85) Fighting fencing on Padworth Common, Open Spaces Society, 20 October 2011 www.oss.org.uk/fighting-fencing-on-padworth-common/ (86) Public inquiry to be held into plan to fence off part of common, Jane Meredith, Newbury Weekly News 9 February 2012 http://horseytalk.net/ROW/pdfs/PadworthCommonNewspaperArticle.pdf (87) Proposal to fence Padworth Common, Application to Planning Inspectorate, Sarah McWilliam, Padworth Common Countryside Ranger, West Berks Council September 2011 www.westberks.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=29120&p=0 (88) How Does the Impact of Grazing on Heathland Compare with the Impact of Burning, Cutting or No Management? Newton, A., Stewart, G.B., Myers, G. Lake, S., Bullock, J., and Pullin, A.S, CEE review 05-008 (SR14), Collaboration for Environmental Evidence 2009 www.environmentalevidence.org/Documents/Completed_Reviews/SR14.pd (89) Proposed works on Padworth Common (CL 32) The Planning Inspectorate http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/uploads/pins/common_land/hearing_and_inquiry/com_292_padworth.pdf (90) Inquiry adjournment due to “cock-up not conspiracy”, Jane Meredith, Newbury Weekly News 24 May 2012 http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/2012/inquiry-adjournment-due-to-cock-up-not-conspiracy (91) Padworth Inquiry put off until 2013, Jane Meredith, Newbury Weekly News 31 May 2012 http://www.aldermaston.co.uk/images/stories/news_may12_3.pdf
(92) Padworth Common fencing plan shelved,
Jane Meredith, Newbury Weekly News 26 January 2013 (93) Thursley/Elstead/Ockley/Bagmoor and Royal commons, Horesy Talk http://horseytalk.net/ROW/Thursley_Elstead_Ockley_Bagmoor_Royal_commons.html (94) How to stop the continual fencing of open commons and heathlands -Residents of Odiham Common explain how they did it, Horsey Talk http://horseytalk.net/ROW/OdihamCommon.html (95) An appraisal of actions for future management of Thursley, Ockley, Elstead, Royal and Bagmoor Commons, Footprint Ecology May 2010 http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/files/actionsappraisalpubconsul.pdf (96) Thursley National Nature Reserve, Natural England http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designatedareas/nnr/1006148.aspx (97) Thursley, Ockley, Elstead, Royal and Bagmoor Commons – We want your views on their future, Surrey Wildlife Trust June 2010 http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/files/bagmoorconsul.pdf (98) Thursley, Ockley, Elstead, Royal and Bagmoor Commons -A background paper, Surrey Wildlife Trust June 2010 http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/files/backgroundpaperbagmoorcons.pdf (99) Thursley, Elstead, Ockley, Royal & Bagmoor Commons: Report on public consultations with recommendations on management. Footprint Ecology April 2011 http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/files/report1stphase.pdf (100) Thursley, Elstead, Ockley, Royal & Bagmoor Commons: The next stage of consulting on their future - A background paper, Surrey Wildlife Trust June 2011 http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/files/phase2backgroundpaper.pdf (101) TERRACE: Thursley & Elstead Residents & Riders Against Commons Enclosure http://www.surreycommunity.info/terraceaction/ (102) Thursley, Hankley & Frensham Commons - Unit 38, SSSI unit information, Natural England http://www.sssi.naturalengland.org.uk/special/sssi/unit_details.cfm?situnt_id=1019971 (103) Special projects, Higher Level Stewardship. Part C: Options, Capital items and Management Conditions Handbook. Second Edition – October 2008, Natural England (104) Progress, The Grazing Project, Surrey Wildlife Trust http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/grazing/progress (105) The Future, Grazing Project, Surrey Wildlife Trust http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/grazing/future (106) The Grazing Project, Living Landscapes Projects, Surrey Wildlife Trust http://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/conservation/page/19 (107) Nature improvement and restoration areas - are they a step towards rewilding? Self-willed land June 2011 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/nature_improvement.htm (108) Woodland looks like it's been 'napalmed', Bucks Free Press 4th April 2008 http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/2171296.Woodland_looks_like_it_s_been__napalmed_/ (109) Resident's campaign to block heathland, Hannah Williams, Bucks Free Press 10th April 2008 http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/2186488.Resident_s_campaign_to_block_heathland/ (110) The Rape of Littleworth Common 3 February 2008 http://www.littleworthcommon.blogspot.co.uk/2008_02_01_archive.html (111) LITTLEWORTH COMMON SSSI MANAGEMENT PLAN 20122022, South Bucks District Council (112) South Bucks Heaths and Parklands Biodiversity Opportunity Area Statement (113) Posted by: pugit, Burnham on1:21am Sun 6 Apr 08 (114) Littleworth Common SSSI Citation http://www.sssi.naturalengland.org.uk/citation/citation_photo/1002741.pdf (115) Littleworth Common, Condition of SSSI units, Natural England http://www.sssi.naturalengland.org.uk/special/sssi/reportAction.cfm?report=sdrt13&category=S&reference=1002741 (116) Heathland plan scaled down, Hannah Williams, Bucks Free Press 24th June 2008 http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/2362044.Heathland_plan_scaled_down/ (117) Littleworth Common SSSI management plan 2011-2021, Draft for consultation, South Bucks District Council http://www.southbucks.gov.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2011/d/draftforconsultation.pdf (118) Questionnaire. South Bucks District Council Consultation on Littleworth Common Draft Management Plan 2011 - 2021 (119) Summary of the Littleworth Common Management Plan Public Consultation 2011, South Bucks District Council http://www.southbucks.gov.uk/council_democracy/consultations/results_and_reports/draft_plan.aspx (120) Access to Information Requests Received in Natural England 2011 – 2012 Q1, 01-06-11 All correspondence relating to the Littleworth Common Site of Special Scientific Interest EIR 1154 http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/disclosure-log-Q1-11-12_tcm6-27675.pdf (121) FAQS for Littleworth Common Management Plan for 2012-2020 http://www.southbucks.gov.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2012/f/faqlittleworthcommon.pdf (122) A Common Purpose: A guide to agreeing management on common land, Short et al (2005) sponsored by English Nature, RDS Defra, Open Spaces Society, The Countryside Agency and the National Trust http://naturalengland.communisis.com/naturalenglandshop/docs/CP1.pdf (123) South East Commons and their Conservation Management, Entec (2005) English Nature and the Countryside Agency www.english-nature.org.uk/about/teams/team_photo/CommonLandReport.pdf (124) Finding common ground. Integrating local and national interests on commons: guidance for assessing the community value of common land, Open Spaces Society March 2010 www.oss.org.uk/_pdfs/Finding%20common%20ground%20for%20web.pdf (125) Swineholes Wood - 'Too many trees being cut down', Self-willed land February 2008 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/swineholes_wood.htm (126) Commons Toolkit, Natural England NE285, 2010 http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/92037 (127) David Hodd, Countryside Manager, National Trust, Public Safety and Cattle Grazing, Extracts from Nibblers online discussion group, Grazing Animals Project http://www.grazingadvicepartnership.org.uk/nibblers_archive.html?download;72 (128) Tomorrow's Heathland Heritage, English Nature supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund http://collections.europarchive.org/tna/20081212154207/english-nature.org.uk/thh/ (129) Holmes, G. (2011) Conservation’s Friends in High Places: Neoliberalism, Networks, and the Transnational Conservation Elite. Global Environmental Politics 11: 1-21 http://www.academia.edu/attachments/7378053/download_file url:www.self-willed-land.org.uk/heath_madness.htm www.self-willed-land.org.uk mark.fisher@self-willed-land.org.uk |