Why I think George Monbiot is wrong about heathland burning.

Last week the environmental campaigner and journalist George Monbiot published this article. I think he is wrong and here are my reasons why.

Where I don't agree with G Monbiot in the article called “meet the conservationists who say burning is good for wildlife”

1. He compares the conservation burning of heathland with burning tropical forest to clear it for agriculture or horticulture. They are not comparable in that way because the conservation burning on Dartmoor is aimed at maintaining the heathland habitat not destroying. Burning the tropical forest is intended to eliminate the habitat completely.
2. He compares burning grouse moors, which are upland habitats with lowland heath. The RSPB and others are against poorly carried out burning moors for grouse shoots because the burning can be deep in to the substrate and cause the vegetation to change, e.g. from heathland plants to monocultures of purple moor grass. Deep burning can also damage peatland, cause pollution of water courses and other harmful effects. Lowland heaths grow on shallow well drained podzolic soils (as a pose to deep wet peat), so may not react to burning in the same way. There is blanket bog in the Dartmoor Nat Park – he shows that on the map, and he also shows it and the heathland are in decline, and says the National Trust say this decline is due to burning and overgrazing. I find this unlikely to be the whole story as heathlands were created by a combination of burning, cutting, grazing since Bronze Age times until about the middle of the twentieth century, the decline could also be to do with drainage, eutrophication, pollution, fragmentation etc. We don't know from the article that the Nat Park own or manage the heaths and bogs that have declined, and if they do ,we also don't know how they were managed up to now. Also, I think, had he asked them , he will find the the RSPB acknowledge that many waders benefit from rotational burning of upland moors for grouse shooting, even if there are also negative effects. Mostly it is poorly carried out burning and installation of grips (for drainage) that they are against, though I expect organisations such as the RSPB would rather that the habitat mosaics were maintained by cutting. And, oh while I'm on that subject, he does not mention that the burning, cutting or gazing would be carried out on a rotational basis, in patches (less than 2ha) thererby not properly explaining to the readers, who may not be aware of it, the rationale behind the burning, cutting and/or grazing regimes. Personally I think that cutting and followed by appropriate grazing would be preferable to periodic rotational burning as I believe that burning can kill invertebrates, reptiles etc. if they cant escape the fire quickly enough, and because it can go wrong and burn too deeply into the soil and/or peat. .
3. He describes Skylarks as being species that are “resilient” to the forms of management that we “deplore” when we see them used in other countries e.g. cutting, burning and grazing. And that conservationists use them (Skylarks) as an excuse when they want to use these destructive processes. In this way he makes it sound like the birds are present during the vegetation clearance and thereby benefit because they survive the burning, cutting or grazing process, when in fact these techniques are used to create suitable breeding habitat, and in the case of burning, cutting and possibly grazing would not be done whilst the birds are breeding. He makes no mention of the other ground-nesting or scrub nesting bird species, and hence their predators (e.g. birds of prey, cuckoos) that also benefit from creating habitat mosaics by rotational clearance of vegetation.
4. He makes no mention of all the other classes of organism that benefit from creating open patches within the heathland or blanket bog. e.g. dragonflies, reptiles, sand wasps and bees, lichen, ericaceous plants and their mycorrhizal partners, insectiverous plants to name but a few.
5. The paragraphs he quotes from the Nat Park Authority are worded in and unfortunate and ambiguous way as they say that the grazing animals will “delight” in the cleared patches. When, of course what they mean is that they can then reinstate the grazing to areas where taller vegetation has been cleared, and this grazing will maintain open areas which will benefit classes of organism mentioned above. He seems to be under the impression that the Nat park people are only interested in producing good grazing land, which they don't, they want to create habitat mosaics! It doesn't suit his case to explain this to the readers
6. Conservationists, as he calls them, who are in fact ecologists, he says have a “mortal fear” of natural processes leading to growth of gorse and bracken. Whereas in fact they just don't want to see huge areas of bracken monoculture as that would be inimical to much wildlife; as uniformly structured monocultures tend to be - this is why they are trying to reintroduce grazing. As for the gorse, it is likely they want to remove that to prevent it from smothering floristically interesting grasslands which will, apart from their own intrinsic value, will in turn provide nest sites, pollen, nectar, basking sites etc, etc, for a range of warmth-loving heathland species. The gorse itself will become less common if George gets his way and the natural succession is allowed to proceed to its woodland climax. And if that happened we would be left with a mature woodland where none of the birds, insects, reptiles etc. that benefit from scrubby areas could exist. Indeed the concept of natural woodland (my term here, not his in the article) would be open to question as, without the intervention of conservationists, the National Park would no doubt be colonised by whatever propagules were able to get there, this would include exotic species, species that are not associated with ancient forest such those that are present in the cairngorms etc. and would not therefore become the equivalent to those woodlands. Of course the development of large expanses of dense woodland with a very sparse shrub and field layer would be prevented if large herbivores and their natural predators where available to create a more diverse and open vegetation structure. But as they are not and are extremely unlikely to be for the foreseeable future, the Nat Park Authority are forced to adopt the interventionist, and somewhat artificial management regime that in some ways mimic the actions of wild grazers and their predators.
7. He makes no mention of the Common Agricultural Policies in the 1990s and early 2000, which paid farmers according to how many livestock they held. These “headage” payments as they were called encouraged farmers to maximise the number of animals they owned, which in turn led to many upland habitats being closely grazed. A practice that is widely accepted to be detrimental to sheep walks and heathlands; it contributes, if not causes heathland vegetation to be dominated by graze-tolerant grass swards.
8. He says upland woodland harbours more important species than do heathlands, and maybe they do. There is more ecospace in them and hence perhaps more niches available. Also if they are ancient woods, as with the Cairngorms he mentions, they are more ancient habitats hence perhaps containing more anciently established species; thereby possibly more complex and hence richer in species. However the two habitats host a different range of species, and that is important if we want to maintain biodiversity in the UK; if all Britain were to become wooded, which may be the case if George had his way, there would be fewer species as there would be fewer ecological niches available. And, I repeat, without the effects of natural grazing produced by the presence of megafauna that roamed the British Isles between the end of the last Ice Age and the start of the Neolithic period, nor any human management which imitate it in Britain all the nature reserves, apart from perhaps, lakes, water courses, eroding cliffs and estuaries, will become covered by secondary woodland, of who knows what ecological value. In addition to this, he fails to mention that the Caringorms National park, somewhere he does seem to value for its wildlife (as he offers it for comparison with the heaths and bogs) he does like, is also managed by wildlife conservationists form the National Parks Authority, Wildlife Trusts etc. who's techniques he so despises!!
9. The habitats and wildlife that the Nat. Park (if it is they who determine what management takes place – it could be Natural England for all we know) is trying to maintain by burning etc. are the habitats that are protected under the EU Habitats Directives. He suggests someone could take the Nat Park to court for failing to meet the demands of the directives. This is what it ways of their website:
   The Dartmoor SAC was designated principally because it is home to the southernmost blanket bog in Europe but also because of important areas of wet and dry heaths. The South Dartmoor Woods SAC displays fine examples of old sessile oak woods whilst the portion of the South Hams SAC within Dartmoor National Park contains the largest known maternity roost for Greater Horseshoe Bats in the UK. So the EU nature directives cover three Dartmoor Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) which include areas of wet and dry heaths and blanket bog. It is these that the National Park and others are trying to improve by their management (which appears to include swaling) the heaths - if they were not looking after them there would be a case to challenge this in a EU court. In fact the charge of neglect would come about if they allowed the heaths to become woodland. Also, in this article he has mentioned three different organisations Dartmoor and Exmoor National Park Authorities, and the National Trust. The first two are not primarily nature conservation organisations, their remit being to protect landscapes and public access to National Parks, and the third a landowning charity. None are the bodies charged with giving permission for activities on designated sites or monitoring compliance with EU nature directives or UK nature sites designations, those are Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage, Northern Ireland Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales. Hence i anyone were to be taken to court it would be Natural England.
10. By all means, George Monbiot should criticise the practice of burning or swaling and other management techniques used on nature reserves if he feels they are damaging to wildlife or biodiversity. And by all means promote his pet project of rewilding. But do it on fair terms in which he fully and honestly explains to the readers the techniques or habitats he doesn't like. Don't just pick and choose the bits of the whole issue to suit your story – that's like what creationists do when they are trying to convince people that evolution never happened!