Blogs and vlogs

Gareth Dockerty worked for Natural Resources Wales as a Conservation Officer and Reserves Manager, and has qualifications in woodland, conservation grazing and ecology. He has also worked in North York Moors National Park on small rural business development and is currently Regional Officer for BASC in North Yorkshire.  The uplands face an array of often … Continue reading Guest blog – Gareth Dockerty

Farm tenancies for a pound, controversial views on farming subsidies, ‘pricing out’ upland farmers – the National Trust hasn’t held back from headlines this year.                    (Updating Aug 17, Sept 19, Jan 20 infinitum) A quarter of a century ago, I worked for the trust as an … Continue reading Trusting times

Smarter engagement and co-design with more land managers could deliver more wildlife. Sometimes at little public cost. The collective skills, ‘public goods’ to use the modern parlance, of which farmers and land managers hold, have huge untapped environmental benefit. “I wonder if we recognise the tens of thousands of farmers in our own country as … Continue reading Collective skills

My article in The Field was one of the toughest pieces I’ve written to date. Does an unhealthy thirst for adversarial positions feed conflicts in conservation? Pitching the proposal was hard enough. Editors commission stuff that keeps their audience coming back for more. Whether to entertain, to reinforce views, to challenge (but not too close … Continue reading Harnessing tension

The more we explore different land uses, the more complexity we discover, the more we must accept elements of change – especially in the uplands. Much of the UK land area is upland, home to a sliver of our population. Of which a tiny slice actually work the land within industries from farming and forestry … Continue reading Upland enquiry

A sense that two farming conferences are getting closer together; although it’s fun to ‘spot the difference’, we can harvest more common ground. I caught two people hung between the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) and the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC). One had been ‘suggested’ by his boss to go to the OFC but his … Continue reading Fabulous farming

This post is not about flooding.  Well, not entirely. Perched on my ‘fence’, I see knotty problems that require us to swallow our partisan positions to work together while being more realistic about our needs. Perhaps I try and cram too much into blogs that conflate a number of issues but I’m going to take the liberty … Continue reading Knotty water

Ravens tumble over hills as I travel north for a novel workshop and south to Parliamentary meetings on biodiversity. The corvid family are well known opportunists. Optimistic even. Like the vision behind the ‘Understanding Predation’ workshops set up by Scotland’s Moorland Forum (29 organisations including RSPB, Scottish Wildlife) to ‘build a shared evidence base that critically … Continue reading Crow politics