1. Every year, large areas of gorse in Dartmoor and Exmoor national parks are deliberately burnt. It’s an appalling act of vandalism, killing wildlife, preventing regeneration of crucial habitats, releasing toxic smoke and carbon. This thread is about why it’s happening. Pic from this weekend. 1/7
2. It's called “swaling”. Extraordinarily, it’s not just permitted by the national park authorities, but actively encouraged. Dartmoor is now on its 3rd justification. #1 “it creates grazing for sheep” #2 “it’s traditional” #3 “it stops wildfires” dartmoor.gov.uk
www.dartmoor.gov.uk
3. The practice comes first, the justifications follow. Given that gorse is a crucial successional stage on the way to temperate rainforest, which burns about as readily as wet asbestos, the latest justification is yet more self-serving bull. Photo of Wistman's Wood, Dartmoor, by Neil Burnell
4. While the ecosystem recovers, fire risk can be managed with firebreaks and other measures. The gorse shelters young trees as they grow, allowing rainforest to return. But by keeping the ecosystem in its early successional stages, through repeated burning, the swalers *make it fire-prone*. 5. So what’s really going on? The value of any grazing created is minimal – arguably negative, as sheep-farming here is loss-making and survives only through subsidies. I believe the real reason it continues is the same reason the far right attaches flags to lamp-posts. It’s a territorial marker.
6. What it says is “this is our territory, culturally as well as geographically, and we’ll keep it looking the way we want, which is one big sheep pasture, regardless of what those blethering eco-nuts with their binoculars and anoraks say. We dominate here, and the rest of you can eff off.” 7. Well, the rest of us should remember that we are paying for this, and we should decide how our money is spent. No taxation without representation – and that should apply in the countryside as much as the town. Thank you. The thread on one page: skywriter.blue
skywriter.blue