A resident of Strathewen, ravaged by bush fires, said the Greenies issued a statement that nought had to be touched. That is none removal of dead wood because a little mouse might be living under it. Now both people and the mouse are dead.
Travelling the Yorkshire Dales and other rural areas it soon becomes evident our Countryside is being ruined by misinformed factions who can’t see the wood for trees. Hedges were planted in the main to keep stock in and/or people out. A well laid hedge also provides much needed cover for nesting birds, insects and smaller animals. Leaving a hedge to grow open and as book environmentalists are apt to say, natural, defeats the object of a hedge.It is also open to pest, disease and rampaging peasants. There are many examples close at hand where the book environmentalists have held sway.
The woods over by Middleton are arboreal scrap yards. I warned Ilkley Parish Council and Bradford Metropolitan District Council what would happen if they didn’t clear felled timber. Fifteen years ago I warned them.However they took the book environmentalists attitude and what have we now. Erosion like you’ve never seen before in the bluebell beds. Erosion which should never have happened, if those supposedly in power had listened to people trained in woodcraft and the like. Sometimes folk interpret what they see as a hedge, when in fact it is not, which leads to all kinds of misinformation.
The same goes for the Victorian Landscape Garden some are apt to call the lower reaches of Ilkley Moor. When Man disturbs Nature all hell breaks loose unless a degree of careful management takes place. Look at The Tarn for instance. Look closely. Look at it’s banks, look at the carriageways, look at the footpaths which lead to it. What are natural about those? One could say what indeed is natural.
There’s been talk of late about putting fences on common land. Why did no-one oppose the fence Leeds Diocese put up in front of the four hundred year old way marker at the junction of Langbar Road, Slates Lane and Hardings Lane, beside Bridlepath 1. What about those trees planted along the edge of the moor by the former Darwin Gardens Trust.They are as much out of place as those spreading across The Moor and will, eventually, block any view of White Wells from below, or the Millennium Green from White Wells.
In the year celebrating Charles Darwin’s birth and publishing of his monumental book one does wonder what he, a botanist and scientist, would think of Ilkley Moor and neighbouring countryside today. Equally the attitude to the environment by those so-called experts, the book environmentalists.
