oldharry
Well-known member
YM has picked up the Studland story and given BORG a full page in the current edition (April 2014) on our recent success in showing up the poor science behind the Studland recommendations. DEFRA announced that Studland, along with Priory Bay, Osborne Bay, Alum Bay and Bembridge are on the list being considered for the next ‘Tranche’ of 37 MCZs to be considered next year. We are working closely with RYA to ensure that the importance of these places to the Leisure Boating community is taken fully in to account in any decisions about their status.
YM has given a very fair account of the ‘bias and errors’ DEFRA found after we pointed it out, in what was being hailed as a benchmark report about Studland, and demonstrates once again just how important it is that the scientific arguments being put forward are based on fact and reality, and is not just what the conservationists want us to believe. It also highlights just how high handed some of these recommendations are, with decisions and policies being pushed through on the flimsiest of evidence, and with a blatant disregard for the needs and wishes of local communities.
We see this very clearly in Studland, where a large body of evidence which could have been supplied by local residents who have lived by and used the Bay every day sometimes for 60 years or more was not only ignored, but dismissed as ‘serendipitous’ - the actual word used in the reports. Had that been allowed it would have become abundantly clear that the eelgrass in the bay and the wildlife it supports has co-existed with the visiting boats for over 60 years, and is in fact now in better health that at any previous time. However this does not fit the claim that boats are destroying the eelgrass environment, so it was disallowed, and apart from isolated aerial photographs of the bay at odd times since 1953, there is no permitted data to suggest that the current claims are spurious.
How convenient! And how typical of modern conservationism which seems quite terrified that nature can not possibly survive unless it is ‘managed’, and preserved. Or maybe they are frightened that unless they parcel it all up in neat carefully controlled reserves where it can be supervised, managed and controlled, it might all get out of control and develop in to something new… rather as it has done for the last 400 million years.
Of COURSE we need to be responsible in caring for the environment, and ensuring that we do not damage it irreparably, but it seems to me that modern conservationism goes way beyond this and seeks to actually modify the environment so that it can be controlled and preserved quite unnaturally.
Consultation on the next Tranche of MCZs will not happen until 2015, but BORG will continue to be busy examining proposals, and exposing the kind of disgraceful pseudo science we have seen in the Studland reports.
Thanks YM for highlighting this battle.
EDIT There are three major reports on Studland: The Seastar Survey which concluded quite categorically there was no evidence of a link between anchoring and the condition of the Eelgrass bed. This was promptly discrdited by natural England (although they were involved with producing it) as being 'insufficiently robust'. The MAIA report published last spring, which was seen as the benchmark report on Studland and which because of BORGs complaint has now been withdrawn for re-assessment, and BORGs own report available on our website http://boatownersresponse.org.uk/Eelgrass-recolonisation.pdf and supporting evidence. Two of the three reports deny any link between anchoring and damage, and the third which set out to prove it has been withdrawn. Interesting the Seastar report still stands in spite of attempts to discredit it.
YM has given a very fair account of the ‘bias and errors’ DEFRA found after we pointed it out, in what was being hailed as a benchmark report about Studland, and demonstrates once again just how important it is that the scientific arguments being put forward are based on fact and reality, and is not just what the conservationists want us to believe. It also highlights just how high handed some of these recommendations are, with decisions and policies being pushed through on the flimsiest of evidence, and with a blatant disregard for the needs and wishes of local communities.
We see this very clearly in Studland, where a large body of evidence which could have been supplied by local residents who have lived by and used the Bay every day sometimes for 60 years or more was not only ignored, but dismissed as ‘serendipitous’ - the actual word used in the reports. Had that been allowed it would have become abundantly clear that the eelgrass in the bay and the wildlife it supports has co-existed with the visiting boats for over 60 years, and is in fact now in better health that at any previous time. However this does not fit the claim that boats are destroying the eelgrass environment, so it was disallowed, and apart from isolated aerial photographs of the bay at odd times since 1953, there is no permitted data to suggest that the current claims are spurious.
How convenient! And how typical of modern conservationism which seems quite terrified that nature can not possibly survive unless it is ‘managed’, and preserved. Or maybe they are frightened that unless they parcel it all up in neat carefully controlled reserves where it can be supervised, managed and controlled, it might all get out of control and develop in to something new… rather as it has done for the last 400 million years.
Of COURSE we need to be responsible in caring for the environment, and ensuring that we do not damage it irreparably, but it seems to me that modern conservationism goes way beyond this and seeks to actually modify the environment so that it can be controlled and preserved quite unnaturally.
Consultation on the next Tranche of MCZs will not happen until 2015, but BORG will continue to be busy examining proposals, and exposing the kind of disgraceful pseudo science we have seen in the Studland reports.
Thanks YM for highlighting this battle.
EDIT There are three major reports on Studland: The Seastar Survey which concluded quite categorically there was no evidence of a link between anchoring and the condition of the Eelgrass bed. This was promptly discrdited by natural England (although they were involved with producing it) as being 'insufficiently robust'. The MAIA report published last spring, which was seen as the benchmark report on Studland and which because of BORGs complaint has now been withdrawn for re-assessment, and BORGs own report available on our website http://boatownersresponse.org.uk/Eelgrass-recolonisation.pdf and supporting evidence. Two of the three reports deny any link between anchoring and damage, and the third which set out to prove it has been withdrawn. Interesting the Seastar report still stands in spite of attempts to discredit it.
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