The always interesting (and never more so than when he is admitting he got something wrong) George Monbiot writes in the Graun this morning attacking the National Trust's attempt to get the Lake District listed as a World Heritage Site. Far from being beautiful, Monbiot sees it "as one of the most depressing landscapes in Europe", bemoaning the extent to which sheepfarming has stripped the landscape of its trees and flowers, denuding the landscape and wrecking habitats. "You'll see more wildlife in Birmingham", he concludes.
Notwithstanding the fact that last week in the Lake District I saw buzzards, a peregrine, dippers, linnets and stood in a river to find an otter looking quizzically up at me from a distance of about ten feet, I have some sympathy with Monbiot's view. The hills beloved of Wordsworth and Wainwright would originally have been far more forested, and had much more wildlife. I believe that Scafell means "bald mountain" in Norse, which rather suggests that the other hills were more hirsute.
How recent is their denudation? The many dozens of hut circles on the moor near our family house suggest that the area has sustained a human population for at least three or four thousand years. It is suggested that the occupants were forced to move on because their forest clearances destroyed game habitats, so the problems of sustainability are nothing new.
I don't find the Lake District depressing. First, although he's right about the mountains, the valleys are much more wooded than Monbiot suggests. Secondly, the beauty of the country lies partly in the evidence of its human occupation. It's not just the green patchwork fields and the way in which the buildings huddle into the landscape. Those buildings, made from the same stones that outcrop around and about, were devised and built by people whose instinctive feel for what would be appropriate and practical just happened to result in some of the most beautiful human settlements ever made. Architects please note.
Actually, the remarks Monbiot makes about the Lakes and sheep farming are much truer of Scotland and red deer. But that's another post. In the face of the ruination of most of the rest of Britain, the Lake District offers a vision of how man can live in harmony with the environment which is deceptive and imperfect, but it may be about the least worst we've got.
