national park and the environment

We've been out to the national park visitors centre today. We go quite often, to two different centres within the north yorks moors national park.

I've noticed increasingly on their information panels, that they praise the sheep a lot for maintaining the moors, and also now openly admit what's been obvious all along, that the annual arson attacks on the moorland is nothing to do with encouraging new growth (which used to be the public reason), but actually to make life easier for rich folk to find the grouse to shoot for sport.

Today I noticed that they've even changed the tone of the language they use, for example, apparently the sheep help to, I quote, "keep those pesky trees at bay".

So I now find myself wondering, with what we know now about the need for trees to mop up excess carbon from the atmosphere, and to lock up excess water to help prevent flooding and surface erosion, how can an organisation responsible for such a massive expanse of land justify burning it and preventing trees from growing on it.

 

So why don't they encourage herds of Deer or even ....

 

Must admit I've never understood maintaining man made landscapes, ie. using grazing animals to maintain what is really not natural.

They will argue that it allows often rare species to flourish that would otherwise disappear.

So I'm guessing its a balancing act.

I think its true to say that Britain should actually be covered in trees, its mostly man's activities that have created these places.

I really hate it when the so called environmentalists start banging on about "managing" landscapes.
Its mostly based on them wanting to control nature.

 

I see no contradiction between conservation and land management. I know that left entirely alone, nature will sort it out, but at the same time, we've messed with nature so much over so long that nature's way would take decades or centuries to put it all back, and inevitably, some species would suffer along the way. Carefully thought out, minimal intervention can be beneficial to the environment. After all, us humans are part of nature too. Perhaps we're built to meddle.

What I do dislike though is that often the national parks are classified as AONB, which means area of outstanding natural beauty. As you say @pete there is often nothing natural about them. The land was stripped by the church, then filled with non-native, destructive species. Then all the large predators were hunted and killed, so that the introduced livestock could thrive, then every year the area is torched. There's nothing natural about it. AONB should often be AOUB, or area of outstanding unnatural beauty.

 

Money