BY BEN O’ROURKE The fuses have been lit. Does Bruce Willis still have time to save the countryside? There’s a popular trope in films where authorities are convinced of one thing and people in the know telling them they’re wrong get ignored. A good example is Die Hard. In the 1988 blockbuster, terrorists take over a building in Los Angeles and their leader, Alan Rickman, … Continue reading Shamefully Burning Taxpayers’ Cash
BY BERT BURNETT While the UK boasts pockets of natural beauty, much of its terrain has been shaped by centuries of human activity. From the stone-clad mountains to the managed grouse moors, the idea of a ‘natural’ habitat is often elusive. The Illusion of Natural Habitats in the UK In the UK, truly natural habitats are rare. Even the most remote areas, such as the … Continue reading The Complexities of Habitat Management and Rewilding
BY BERT BURNETT Rewilding, a concept that promotes restoring ecosystems to their natural state, has gained popularity in the UK as a solution to environmental degradation. The current government is apparently fond of it. Advocates herald it as a means to combat climate change, enhance biodiversity, and reconnect people with nature. However, the reality of rewilding is often far more complex and fraught with challenges. … Continue reading Another Rewilding Failure
BY VALERIUS GEIST Wolves mustn’t be coddled if we hope to balance them with modern ecosystems—and to avoid becoming prey Nothing convinces like personal experience! And I too am a slave to it. As an academic, I confess to this with some distress, because by training, experience, and attitude I should be above it. The fact that I am not alone in this habit is … Continue reading Wolves: When Ignorance is Bliss
BY BERT BURNETT First, have a read of this article (a link to the original can be found here): So, we have a nature crisis, caused by farming and bad land management according to such sources. These people, in this article, are the very people who are going to fix the crisis so they say …. REALLY? I’d say, looking at the efforts of the … Continue reading Getting to Net Zero Through Land
BY PAULA NUNES Dear Editor, I read with interest Calum Campbell’s Blackgame Dewilding article of April 30th in your magazine. I see that rewilding has become a focal point in environmental discussions in the UK, with proponents highlighting its benefits in enhancing biodiversity and helping ecosystems adapt to climate change. Rewilders’ idea seems to be to allow lands, often previously used for grazing, to revert … Continue reading Dewilding?
British farmers are fed up to the back teeth of forever getting it in the neck from armchair townie luvvies of the shrill Packham and Monbiot variety who bang on about the desperate need for overnight Net Zero and other policies with unintended consequences, claiming that British farms are massive polluters. They try to force rewilding on the UK which will achieve nothing for global … Continue reading Amazon Greened
BY BERT BURNETT This is the likely scenario when or if some of the newly proposed National Parks come into being: Meanwhile this is an example of the glorifying of rewilding by armchair experts: The rewilders shouldn’t feel proud, they should be ashamed. This is land on which waders and birds like skylarks should be thriving yet they are all struggling to stave of local … Continue reading Carnage in the Countryside
BY BERT BURNETT This is a picture put up by the Cairngorms National Park. Beautiful isn’t it? But what this photograph fails to reveal is that this is what the area looked like before the Park Authorities took over. It’s looked like this for decades if not longer, thanks to the management that was in place before not the management that we have now. Such … Continue reading Real or a Postcard?
BY MURRAY F HUNTER Our much-loved Borders landscape is under attack from three directions by forces that someone sitting in an office – never having been to our area – could easily sign off as ticking all the boxes, as if that is the best we could do for the environment and global warming. The first is from wind. As I understand it, with permission, … Continue reading The Hills and Fields of Eskdale
BY RORY CRANSTOUN In an episode of Chopper’s Politics, I was unfortunately reminded of Boris Johnson’s plan to usher in a so-called ‘green industrial revolution’ in Britain. Obviously another crypto-globalist fever dream poorly wrapped in Conservative paper, the Tory drive towards ‘net-zero’ is nothing more than another example of the all familiar promises to greenify our society. ‘Green’ public transport. ‘Green’ electric vehicles. ‘Green’ buildings; whatever … Continue reading The Scouring of the Shires
BY IAN COGHILL Back in August I failed to notice that Steve Carver had written a lengthy attack on my book Moorland Matters, using Country Squire Magazine’s ‘right to reply’. He started with a complaint that the oft repeated claim that the UK holds 75% of the world’s heather moorland is incorrect and that saying that there is less heather moorland in the world than … Continue reading Moorland Does Matter
BY NIALL MCCRAE AND ROGER WATSON Protests and protestors do not have a good reputation in the mind of the public, being characterised by self-righteous agitators pursuing marginal and possibly subversive causes, while causing disruption to others. This image suits the authorities, but it is not always sustainable. People attending massive demonstrations, like that against war in Iraq in 2002 and 2003, could not be … Continue reading Covid Rule Sceptics & the Countryside: Different Battles, Same War?
BY ROCHELLE BLAKEMAN In late December, it appeared that Dr Seuss’ Lorax had a man after his own hairstyle and heart. Ed Sheeran, one of the world’s most popular singer-song writers, announced his plans on BBC Radio London to buy up “as much land in the UK as I possibly can and plant as many trees as I can”. Revealing a penchant for green fingered … Continue reading Ed Sheeran ‘Ever Green’?
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN We are told that: ‘good uncles take an active part in their nieces and nephews’ lives. They spend time with them, offer valuable perspective on the family, and help resolve conflicts. They’re people who children and parents can both trust with difficult subjects and to advocate for their interests.’ By this definition an uncle who cannot even recognise most of his nephews … Continue reading Silos & Narrow Definitions
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN After a good run up the M1, I was early for a meeting up North a few weeks back and so pulled into a tiny village off the A19 called Birdforth, where I parked in front of a beautiful old church. St Mary’s Church – also known as Birdforth Old Chapel – is a former Anglican church in the village of Birdforth, … Continue reading A Grave Matter
BY ROCHELLE BLAKEMAN “Toil mastered everything, relentless toil And the pressure of pinching poverty… Everything by nature’s law Tends to the worse, slips ever backward, backward.” Virgil, the Georgics As a farmer’s daughter, I was blessed with a bucolic childhood. With only 1% of the UK population being farmers, it is a lucky stroke to have lived my younger years with a closeness to the … Continue reading A Country Girl’s Reflections on Environmentalism
BY DR STEVE CARVER Steve Carver replies to Dominic Wightman’s review of Ian Coghill’s book “Moorland Matters”: It matters for a whole host of reasons including carbon storage, water supply, flood mitigation, biodiversity and wildlife habitats. For Ian Coghill it matters for grouse, and though he rarely shoots them himself (he’s not a rich man and is at pains to point this out) he has … Continue reading Moorland DOES Matter
BY KEER LONSDALE I love the English countryside and have done from a very young age. Even as a tiny tot the ramshackle mud-heap of a farm yard, or the smell of muck-spreading, or the racket of a twilit rookery, or the gentle patchwork of fields and hedges stretching to a misty distance, were to me signals of my proper habitat, my rural home, the … Continue reading Countryside Culture Wars
BY SARAH BATES A dramatically changing climate is threatening to destroy natural ecosystems, risks species extinction and the collapse of complex food webs. For some, the concept of “rewilding” is key to a sustainable future. They argue for changing landscapes to uncultivated states and introducing or re-introducing plant and animal species that should thrive in a biodiverse environment. A global project of reforestation would help … Continue reading The Case for Rewilding
