OVER recent weeks Castlemorton Common site of special scientific interest (SSSI) has been open-cleared, disrupting the soil fauna and flora, creating essentially flat scarified earth, and creating the appearance of a managed parkland (quite a harrowing sight).
The remarkable ant hills and general soil topography and wildlife have been ground down, presumably in an attempt to mimic the impact of cattle grazing.
I may not be privy to all the important meetings surrounding the problems of insufficient (or uneconomic) grazing on the common. However, according the rulebook for this SSSI, what has been done is the very opposite of what is required to protect it.
If it seemed important (to the authorities) to utterly invert the rules and regulations imposed to protect its SSSI status, one might have thought the local population might be given warning, or even perhaps a voice of concern?
Perhaps it has been decided in dusty corridors that we should give up on the SSSI status? It appears public hypocrisy to cause such damage due largely to the inability of the custodians to maintain it.
If the problems of generating more grazing are simply too difficult, perhaps we could at least then have the more honest status of Castlemorton Park.
Dr Alan Turnbull
Castlemorton
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