WILD FELL

By Lee Schofield

Schofield is the RSPB's site manager for Hayeswater, where the charity have a tenancy of two hill farms that they manage using regenerative agriculture techniques. In Wild Fell, he tells the story of the site so far - the past, the present, and how they're making changes for the future.

The picture is not dissimilar to that of Isabella Tree's farm in Wilding (although the landscape and sociopolitical context is very different). When the RSPB took over the farms they had more than 1,500 breeding ewes and the farm made a loss of £162,131 a year. £300,000 in government grants are what made the farms viable.

This extreme dependence of hill farms on public payments was highlighted in a 2019 RSPB report. Wild Fell is an exploration not only of the RSPB's efforts in Hayeswater, but of how influencial agricultural policy is to farming practice, and the ways that policy can support local people and traditions, food production, nature protection, and public goods like clean water and reduced flood risk.

Hayeswater has a heartbreaking history. A village in the valley, Mardale Green, was drowned when the Manchester Water Company built the Hayeswater Dam to supply Manchester with drinking water. Mardale's church, pub, school, homes, roads and bridges were compulsorily sacrificed.

The villagers were evicted from their homes, many of which, to add insult to injury, were blown up by the military as target practice. The church where the villagers worshipped, married was taken apart and used to built a water outflow. The dead from the churchyard were dug up and moved. The water level was raised by 95 feet, drowning what was left of Mardale Green and the lives and history of the people who lived there.

You can understand, then, that locals might be particularly sensitive to outside influence.

Even so, I was surprised to learn how maligned the RSPB is in some circles. Schofield explains how difficult it has been to get people on board with farming in a more nature-friendly way.

The Lake District World Heritage Site Steering Group, for instance, described the RSPB's partnership with United Utilities (one born from common goals of improving water filtration, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity around Hayeswater reservoir) as a 'wart' on the face of the Lake District World Heritage Site because the RSPB are not an 'authentic' presences in the landscape, because they don't fit the stereotype of farmers born and bred in the Lakes.

This, along with other stories of confrontation in the book, demonstrates how some view our land (and 70% of our land is farmed) as belonging to people who fit a certain stereotype, and only those who fit should be allowed to contribute to decisions about the management of the majority of our land.

If the 'intruder' were a multinational for-profit, I'd understand. But the RSPB is a charity with over a million members and many more supporters. Many of its supporters don't have the privilege of living somewhere as beautiful and expensive as the Lakes; they might live in cities or suburbia, which means they don't fit the stereotype, but they use their voice to come together to support this charity in making a home for nature here.

A steering group disregarding the values and contribution of so many people in favour of trying to maintained a closed club of land managers is enormously offensive, and something Schofield has had to navigate since taking up his post.

The book is an illuminating insight into the friction between some farmers and conservation organisations. It doesn't bash the dissenters, and nor does it dismiss the social importance of the farming techniques used in the Lakes over the past few hundred years. The respect afforded to the history of farming technique and policy in the region facilitates a balanced understanding in the reader of the issues at play.

Only one thing irked me about the book. Schofield discusses camping in Norway and how he broke the law twice a day by operating a gas stove in an area subject to an open flames ban due to a serious risk of wildfire because he 'wasn't really following the Norwegian news'. It's a small point, but I'm tired of hearing respected, senior conservationists saying they break rules that are in place to protect nature, with blasé excuses like not bothering to check whether what you're doing is safe or allowed. Mistakes happen, but don't make light of them in a book. If an RSPB site manager thinks it's no big deal to have open flames in a vulnerable habitat during a ban, why should anyone else take those rules seriously?

Overall, though, this book is a great mix of natural history, social politics, nature writing, and regenerative agriculture. The chapters are varied in their structure and I felt compelled to keep reading.

If you're interested in regenerative agriculture, rewilding, farming, conservation, or Lake District culture and history, add this to your list.