wicken vision and wider countryside

These days I can openly write letters to the local paper and put things on Blogger about topics that interest me.

One of those topics is the Wicken Vision, a long term National Trust landscape scale project similar to many others across the country being developed by a range of organisations such as the RSPB, Wildlife Trusts and even the Environment Agency. The need for them has come about after a realisation that smaller reserve areas for wildlife do not offer enough scope or space for wildlife. Why not, well it has become obvious that wildlife in all its forms needs more space to exist and cope with things such as climate change and the loss of habitats outside smaller reserve areas. Larger areas will offer space for wildlife to live and people to visit causing less disturbance.

The Wicken Vision scheme has been underway since the late 90's and almost as soon as the project was launched a campaign against it also sprung up. At one time I wondered if the campaign against the Wicken Vision was just a difference of opinion or a reaction against change, now in this case I am not so sure.

I know that there are voices against some of the other schemes as you might expect and I can understand why. Lets face it for such schemes to take place land needs to be bought and often its use changed from say arable farmland to nature reserve. So people might resent that change, they might lose livlihoods or see any reversion as a waste of hard work and food production space. In this case the campaign appears to be led by one man supported by a number of others who regularly write letters to the local paper.

After the campaigns latest letter in my local paper the Cambridge News in early January, in which the sacking of staff was openly called for and there actions queried yet again I decided finally to write a letter in defence of the project. There has since been an exchange of letters with a recent admission that those against the Wicken Vision are engaged in a "demolition job" against it.

To see such an admission shows comittment to a cause which in its own way is admirable I know but you have to ask, why has it come to this level of bitterness and hostility. I know that the National Trust carried out a lot of consultation from the start and has tried to listen to peoples concerns. Surely though there is a bigger picture here. The countryside in all its forms is valuable, it is also for the most part by farmers and farmed to produce food for which we are all grateful. At the same time it is also used by many other different groups of other people; walkers, countryside sportsmen, naturalists and the general public as a whole. All use it, all enjoy and value it there has to be beter communication and cooperation between the groups and an end to constant bickering and name calling, the countryside as a whole will be a winner and surely that is what we should all be after.