FRIENDS OF BLACKA MOOR

 

Last year (2006) Sheffield Wildlife Trust abandoned its Advisory Group meetings for Blacka Moor amidst concerns that the local users of the moor had organised a petition. The petition of some 761 sigantures signed on Blacka Moor itself was presented to Sheffield City Council in 2005. It called for an abandonment of plans to make changes to the official legal status of the land. The petition also called for the land to be maintained free from farming livestock as had been the case since the 1930s.

 

In some disarray the wildlife trust considered what to do. Their instinct was to soldier on with their plans but they did not like being unpopular. Their solution was to commission a company, Icarus, to run 'facilitation' sessions involving local people and users of the moor and also sundry professionals with an interest in conservation and land management. They were confident that the local people, ignorant as they were of ecology, would have to concede that right was on the side of the 'experts'.

 

Serious difficulties surfaced in the second meeting. It was discovered that the conservation lobby, representatives from the National Park Authority, English Nature, SWT, Sheffield Council's Ecology officer etc. had held a closed meeting at which they had decided to stall the consultation process by refusing to 'negotiate' on their key management strategies. Yet they had not seen fit to mention this to the others participating who were left drawn into the process and the commitment of time (some 21 hours) under the impression that everything was open. In addition the minutes of the closed meeting made it clear that the 'independent' facilitator would be given instructions about what was to be covered! The revelation of this outrageous subterfuge very nearly wrecked the whole process and has left a legacy of even less trust between public and conservationists.

 

Nevertheless some progress was made, more than could have been expected perhaps until at the very end English Nature and Sheffield Wildlife Trust drew back from what could have been a very worthwhile agreement and decided to go back to their original plans. This made a mockery of the whole exercise leaving other participants furious that their time had been wasted.

 

The reports of the meetings written up by Icarus need to be read with some degree of scepticism due to what had happened before but our impression is that they became more balanced as the process evolved.

 

 Here is the FINAL REPORT of the Icarus facilitator.

 

The First Icarus meeting report.

The Second Icarus meeting report.

The Third Icarus meeting report.

The Fourth Icarus meeting report.

The Fifth Icarus meeting report.

The Sixth Icarus meeting report

The Seventh Icarus meeting report

 

Please refer to the After Icarus page to see what happened following the Icarus process.