Summit to Sea, who’s behind it?

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR

The piece below comes from a source that has always proved reliable, an astute observer of the Welsh political scene, particularly as it affects our rural areas.

The suggestion being made is that, while I have focused on George Monbiot and his associates, these arrogant and avaricious colonials may in fact be working for or are being manipulated by serious money. In fact, enough money to virtually buy Wales!

Our guest writes . . .

A politician once said that ‘today is a good day to bury bad news’ and got in a bit of trouble for it.

Brexit seems to be a driver for this within public life at the moment. Firstly we had the Brexit and Our Land consultation that provided a proposed shift to public goods, having already moved from agricultural payments based on head count, to land payments (with a bit of environment) to what could be described as a half and half position.

Alongside this, Summit to Sea turned up. Without wishing to impolite, it was a class act in how not to engage with a group of stakeholders absolutely critical to the success of the project. This has continued with the chronological account provided by Jon Coles.

Click to enlarge

When you look behind Summit to Sea at its funders at the Endangered Landscapes Programme you’ll see a recipe used, and highlighted by Jac many times over. Identify an ishoo (even embellish it a bit) propose the resolution and get the money together. The problem is that this time, they’ve met with some serious resistance. Instead of the proposed beneficiaries being passive, rolling over and having their bellies rubbed, the shearing clippers are out for the dreadlocks.

The crux of the matter is that Summit to Sea never really got into a true engagement exercise with the farming, forestry and fishing community or their representative organisations and paid the price. Aside from doing a bit of work with its NGO partners, it’s going nowhere. The danger is now that as with other forms of stakeholder engagement work, they will go the rent-a-crowd route to validate this and carry on regardless.

When you look deeper into the structure of this initiative, it becomes a bit more interesting, for the funder of the Endangered Landscapes Programme is Arcadia. One of the co-founders is Dr. Lisbet Rausing who in turn is a Director of Ingleby Farms and Forests.

Now, the important piece of narrative here is that Ingleby ‘owns and farms over 100,000 hectares in nine countries.’ They are the largest single land owner in Romania and the largest foreign owner of pastoral land in New Zealand. If you really want to scare yourself shitless, have a gander at the Wikipedia references for the business.

So, rewind to the farmers meeting in Talybont and it was stated, by representatives of the Summit to Sea, that the project is not interested in buying land. Absolutely correct!!!! It isn’t. It is about creating the conditions by which this could be facilitated. The Ingleby trading portfolio contains the very products within the Summit to Sea area – lamb, wool, beef and timber. I haven’t quite worked out the link with the sea part of the equation, but maybe they have ambitions to move into shellfish.

I almost feel a sense of smugness that Monbiot and his cohorts are being used or even exploited for commercial gain. One thing I am sure of is that there has to be a co-ordinated, forceful opposition to this project in its current guise. We’re missing the bigger picture and if our Government is unable to recognise and reject this type of scheme in Wales, it may as well tear up the Well Being of Future Generations Act and turn the lights off on their way out.

My real fear however is that this type of scheme provides environmental and food production policy outcomes for Welsh Government with no or little impact on the public purse. It’s a win-win for them and their weaknesses in natural resource management leaves the door wide open.

In the context of a loss of EU structural funds and farm payments, instability in the food processing sector and of course Brexit per se, we are heading into a perfect storm and towards that day to bury bad news.

UPDATE 21.10.2019: The BBC reports that Rewilding Britain has withdrawn from the Summit to Sea project. I remain to be convinced. But if if it’s true, then it’s due to the almost total rejection of the scheme by local people.

Which is why it was strange to read Plaid Cymru leader on Powys county council, Elwyn Vaughan, say, “I am hopeful that (Rewilding Britain’s withdrawal) marks the start of a successful partnership between the people of mid Wales and Summit to Sea.”

But then, Plaid Cymru has always had a soft spot for ‘environmentalists’ from over the border.

♦ end ♦

Jac chips in . . . I consider Summit to Sea part of a package with the tasteless forms of tourism spreading across the land like a plague; the colonisation being encouraged by house building (coupled with the refusal to tackle second homes and related matters); and then the latest ingredient, the National Development Framework, that I wrote about here.

Combine them and a clear picture picture emerges of a countryside emptied of its indigenous population serving as a recreation and retirement area for England. The only ‘farming’ allowed will be granny farming, in care homes under the zip wires flying over land rewilded by Monbiot’s backers.

And look! – there beneath the canopy, it’s Bore Grylls leading a party of accountants from Milton Keynes who’ve spent six hours stalking a squirrel! With those blacked up faces I just hope they don’t run into any Leannistas!

Joking aside, I can’t help but notice that Ingleby Farms and Forests has sheep farms (stations?) in Australia and New Zealand. Wouldn’t it work out just dandy if Welsh competition for the UK market could be eliminated?

Alternatively, Ingleby might want to take a slice of Welsh farming. A big slice.

Either way, it will be done with the grovelling assistance of the ‘Welsh Government’. Our quisling regime down Corruption Bay.

 

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Joe B

And now it raises its head again this project was funded by the Rausing family (Tetrapak single use plastic manufacturers) which is why Monibot never spoke out about single use plastic.

Rausing also heavily donates to our new Environment and agricultural Minister Steve Reed. What will he have to say about single use plastic and will he now be moving these rewinding projects forward?

https://members.parliament.uk/member/4268/registeredinterests

Brychan

The BBC tell us that Rewilding Britain, reported as the ‘lead partner’ in the Summit to Sea project, has today withdrawn their support.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-50117566

Yet, according to the published accounts for year ended 31st March 2019 of Rewilding Britain (1159373) had £479,283 in donations from companies and their financial involvement in the Summit to Sea Project was as follows.

A. Endangered Landscapes Programme.

01/04/2018 £0
Income £127,404
Expenditure (£24,795)
31/03/2019 £102,609

B. Summit to Sea Project

01/04/2018 £24,578
Income £37,500
Expenditure (£62,078)
31/03/2019 £0

https://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends73/0001159373_AC_20190331_E_C.pdf
Page12

Both funds relate to their project in mid Wales [A] is what they spend onsite under the brand Rewinding Britain. [B] is funds specifically handed over to the Summit To Sea project.

The numbers tell us that Rewilding Britain had already abandoned that specific support for Summit to Sea as far back as March of this year, and this year just decided to maintain it’s funding, probably on a missionary salary, to wait and see what developed. The more cynical would conclude that the £165k that passed through Rewilding Britain was just a failed ‘greenwash bribe’ to get some eco-botherers onside in a project that has other motives.

Dafis

The Wigley dame said “While Summit to Sea held a series of face-to-face meetings and consultations locally, we should have communicated more widely that the project was to be community led and owned. ….”

Utter bollocks.

This was originally planned as diktat by those who considered themselves superior to the communities they intended to disrupt. The wheels came off when they realised that local farmers and communities backed up by farmers’ unions and spiky characters like Jac and others on this site were going to tackle them head on.

They couldn’t handle that kind of heat, but be alert, very likely the bastards may come back in another guise especially if there’s Welsh government loot sloshing around for such deserving cases. They just can’t resist it because that is their covert goal, grabbing assets and shifting public funds into private wealth.

Dafis

Jac The day we stop being spiky, prickly or whatever will be the day those fuckers will feel free to roam. Until then they are fair game.

Mel Morgan

Ably helped by the Welsh ‘Government’s’ money-on-wheels service.

Dyn Gwyrdd

The proposed ‘Summit to Sea’ or ‘Re-Wilding of central Wales’ is in my personal opinion, according to my own personal beliefs, one of the greatest threats posed to Wales and its language and culture. It is the GREENS in general who are promoters of this”Green Extinction” of the Welsh way of life I note on their main Green Party web site they falsely claim to have a :- “Wales Green Party” and a “Swansea & Gower Green Party”. No such Parties are registered with the Electoral Commission. Jac has touched on this before. All Welsh Patriots should complain of these false “Green Party” claims to the Electoral Commission (Google for details) and in particular complain immediately to local Election Returning Officers, at your County Councils, if any local Green candidate in any Welsh locality, in any Welsh election at any level, claims to be a member of these non-existent Green Parties. It will be an electoral offence to give false descriptions. Nail them !

Mel Morgan

Good thinking – there is already enough electoral fraud in this country.

CapM

To be effective those making comments on re-wilding being a potential or actual threat to Cymru/Cymry must focus on criticizing the specific problems it brings (and there’s plenty of scope for that) rather than indulge themselves by getting their opinions/frustrations on wider environmental issues ((never mind a precocious schoolgirl) out there.
Otherwise valid criticisms will be dismissed due to your association with what are increasingly being seen as a reactionary and state of denial mind set.

An analogy for you might be (where “environmentalism” is the sea)
– if you want to argue for why a coastal community should not be flooded you should avoid including blaming the incoming tide.

CapM

Nothing to do with Fairbourne the analogy will only help you if you think about it with reference to your strategy on criticizing rewilding .So resist the urge to elaborate on the anology or assign it to a specific or literal situation of your own choosing.

CapM

It’s the inherent problem with analogies.
If people don’t wish to understand and accept the concept they usually don’t wish to understand and accept the analogy either.

Mel Morgan

Exactly. We need chapter and verse, nuts and bolts, brass tacks, glo mân. Boorish misogynistic ranting will win no support.

Mel Morgan

It’s hard to see how the specific environmental problems of Fairbourne could become an obligation of Cyngor Gwynedd. Nevertheless, doubtless more litigious Fairbounians will give it a whirl.

I shouldn’t be surprised at all if one of the more involved cases arising earned an entire chapter to itself in the textbooks.

Mel Morgan

As a corollary of your second paragraph, it’s worth noting that, in a matter of months Greta Thunberg’s age cohort – and those of like mind with her are numerous in many countries, including ours – will have the vote. They will “not” grant their support to tendencies that have responded to serious concerns with bluster and abuse.

Mel Morgan

I have a very modest proposal.

Let us designate the area in question Parc y Cynfyd. With the help of specialists from the National Museum and the Universities, let us clone as many as we can of the plants and creatures that have graced this land at some anterior epoch. Having surrounded Parc y Cynfyd with robust high-tension electric fencing, let us reintroduce the Giant Fern, the Woolly Rhinoceros, the Jackal, the Bison, the Sabre-Tooth Tiger, et hoc omne genus. We can then charge telephone numbers to those who like that sort of thing to spend time in Parc y Cynfyd – once, of course, they have signed a comprehensive waiver of all liability by Parc y Cynfyd.

Mel Morgan

Au contraire, I’m following the ‘rewilding’ project to its logical conclusion. That’s why I took a leaf from The Dean’s book and called it a Modest Proposal.

Dyn Gwyrdd

Last week the people of the East End of London let the Extinction Brigade bullies know what they thought of their hyped up green needs of Planet Earth and their exaggerated claims of Climate Change. The working East Enders were outraged at attempts made by so called “Green People”, who do not seem to work by choice, trying to stop grafting London people commute to work.
It’s the same or similar brigade of “Greens” who are trying to “re-wild” central Wales from “Summit to Shore”. Their intention is to strip out Welsh hill farms, and to cull all our herds of beef cattle and flocks of sheep, and force out the stockmen and shepherds from the hills together with their language and culture. This will be another Tryweryn or Cileini on a massive scale heading for ‘green extinction’. The question is, where are the people of Wales? Once central Wales is cleared from “Summit to Sea” the land will fall silent for a while until it becomes so cheap that those running “Grylls type Adventure Holidays”, mostly “Vegan Saxons”, will move in and take over, in a mass land grab, to form a huge new West Midland’s Safari Park. This is where the more devious “Extinction Brigade” bullies will profit. They have no feeling for Wales and its language and toiling hill people. Plaid Cymru’s Petticoat Clique is too busy cosying up to Labour on trendy issues in the Cardiff Bay Bubble. There is nobody left like Rhys ap Gethin to defend the once proud nation we call Cymru. Possibly the last defence of Wales will not be against New Zealand in rugby in Japan, it will be in central Wales against the Greens, but by the look of it Wales will simply not turn up for that contest when they realise the ‘referee’ will be some prejudiced clone of Corbyn and Drakeford with people like Adam Price and an obscure Lib Dem running the line with a white flag.

Mel Morgan

Hostility from some of the public … shades of Pont Trefechan!

Mel Morgan

There should no need for me to repeat the evidence concerning the initial response to, inter alia, the campaign for the status of the Welsh language and the rights of its speakers.

Thank you very much for your interest.

Mel Morgan

If you’re interested in the history of campaigning for the Welsh language, you’ll find the relevant passages of the English version of John Bwlchlan’s Hanes Cymru enlightening.

Should you wish to discover what the issues are in the matter of climate change, I can recommend your reading New Scientist regularly.

Thank you for your interest.

Brychan

Glad to hear that Monbiot has been arrested. This is how to deal with the posh doomsday cult known as extinction rebellion…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P1UXYS6Bmg{removetoplay}

The people of Wales have the right to work, the right to go about their lawful business, the right live their lives unhindered, and to protect the communities which they cherish.

If the working people of east London are not prepared to put up with them, why should the people of Wales?

Mel Morgan

Modern Welsh history shows that arresting people for demonstrating in favour of ideas not meeting with one’s approval is liable to backfire.

Mel Morgan

The ad hominem fallacy is a common expression of a grudging admission that one can’t refute the other side’s arguments. Its currently-popular ad puellam subset adds boorishness to intellectual dishonesty.

The Extinction Rebellion activists are receiving the statutory first response, undergone previously by every campaign since before women sought the franchise. You and I might believe that the Welsh language and its speakers deserve equality, but this was most emphatically not the general view before the response to ‘Tynged yr Iaith’.

This first trope brands the protesters as all the clichés rehearsed above. It justifies verbal abuse, physical assault, and heavy-handed actions by law enforcement.

The second trope brands them as terrorists and a threat to civilization. It justifies surveillance, mass arrests, and conspiracy trials.

The third trope involves what dear Oscar described as vice’s tribute to virtue. One agrees with the campaigners’ aims, but deplores their methods.

The fourth trope is deployed when the campaigners have won the argument. One tacitly does one’s utmost to frustrate the implementation of any measures resulting from the campaign. At the same time, one moves to divert any body set up for implementing the measures from its task and into the creation of a job creation scheme.

Plus ça change, plus c’est uncomfortably like déjà vu all over again.

Brychan

Greta Thunberg is the daughter of opera singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg. Her paternal grandfather is actor and director, Olof Thunberg. She is the troubled child of pushy millionaires, having being diagnosed, in 2014, with Asperger syndrome, obsessive–compulsive disorder and elective mutism (aphasia voluntaria).

In Sweden, prior to being launched onto the international stage, she was the ‘star’ of a documentary television programme, after obsessively sitting outside the parliament building in Stockholm with a placard with the slogan Skolstrejk för Klimatet, having refused to attend school. She is promoted by a social media company (Company 559126-1994) called “We Don’t Have Time” which is highly profitable.

https://assets.website-files.com/5c9b9655ce348575963a7f06/5d8dc8700168a9d9c77b7af0_WeDontHaveTime%20AB%20(publ)%20170921-181231%20VER%204.pdf

She has since gained international notoriety, most recently with a trip on her dads ocean going yacht to the United States. It is for these reasons I am very sceptical of the motives involved. A troubled child from a rich family being exploited by start-up media company. The key to the success is that it provides the opportunity for white middle classes of a certain generation to feel affinity with teen culture. Of course, with school strikes the posh people can always get private tuition to make up lost education, something not available to most families.

There is a certain degree of arrogance involved. It’s a bit like travelling to Africa, not taking your anti-malaria medication available from the NHS, and then contracting the disease out in Africa and then requiring admission and recourses of an over-stretched hospital in Kenya where the native population, particularly children, die of the infection. Lucky for George Monbiot he was flown back to London.

Mel Morgan

Your point being … ?

Brychan

My points are expressed using the words, troubled, motive, exploited, affinity, profitable.

Mel Morgan

These words indicate anxiety and anger on the part of their user. Absent relevant facts and logical reasoning, however, they do not constitute a persuasive argument.

Brychan

Mel – I express no anger, but do have anxiety. The same anxiety as my Swedish work colleagues. It relates to the exploitation of a vulnerable young girl by the British media who also attribute a false international stereotype about Sweden to promote an ‘ishoo’ for their own motives. Alisha from Croydon also has concerns for the environment, but in the world of ‘eco-campaigners’ it’s unlikely to have the same resonance. I see ‘extinction rebellion’ as a doomsday cult that is promoting and then exploiting unfounded fear. For profit, status and influence, at the expense of most ordinary working people.

Mel Morgan

You’re still avoiding the actual issues raised by this young person and her associates. Clearly, we shall have to agree to differ. But thank you very much for your interest.

Mel Morgan

Not only ad puellam, but ad stirpem as well.

Trist iawn feri sad.

Don’t they teach them anything in these schools?

Mel Morgan

Your last paragraph non sequitur.

Brychan

I’ve always been amused by Anglo-Saxon culture. The use of Latin or French phrases when perfectly adequate English vocabulary is available. It’s a cultural expression of presumed superiority. It has its origins two phases of English history. Firstly that of assumed inheritance of the Roman empire, the invisibility of the preceding Brythonic culture. Secondly, the reflection of the subsequent Norman-French invasion. Both resulted in the language of the upper class being other than English. The user of these phrases seek to position themselves in a superior position within English cultural norms.

Mel Morgan

I bow to your superior knowledge of Anglo-Saxon culture. But non sequitur nevertheless.

Dafis

Just noticed the tweet about the new Link Road down the Bay in Cardiff. Well hardly a “Link” as it just runs from the Bay across to the roundabout where Rover Way meets Ocean Way and then you are back in Pothole Creek ! Shabby piece of window dressing. If they want to make it work it will need extending with dual lanes all the way along Rover Way and that eastern bit of A4232 to A48 Eastern Avenue. Then it might just work.

Mel Morgan

I disagree. Cadwalladers’ ice cream emporium functions with exemplary efficiency.

Dafis

Media is heavily biased in favour of the re-wilding idea often without realising what utter nonsense they are regurgitating.

I watched a recording of some BBC talking head tripping down through the American continents in a series. This episode, recorded recently, showed him in Montana then down the Rockies to Colorado a really good bit of the USA. He visited a rewilding project, big by UK standards but a minor dot in a state as big as Montana. Some guy who’d made a fortune in the American ultra materialistic marketplace must have had a fit of conscience and wanted to “do good”. So he buys up a large tract of land and gets into rewilding. Essentially he was replacing cattle ranching with bison and other species. All these have one thing in common. They either eat grass, plants or each other ! then they burp, fart and shit and when they die their carcasses rot away or get eaten by other species. So what’s different ? Is it because there’s no farmer making a living ( and a tough one at that despite all that space ) or is growing choice vegan munchies in intensive conditions in South America somehow more morally acceptable ?.

I’m looking forward to the episode where they describe how these intensive conditions have played havoc with water supplies, but somehow I suspect these righteous bastards will avoid that bit of the truth.

Brychan

Why does the BBC put forward David Attenborough as a ‘scientist’ in these matters? He is not. He scraped a lower degree at Cambridge and subsequently dropped out of a masters at LSE. He did not qualify. He’s just screen candy for the BBC and no more qualified than I am. All his other ‘degrees’ are ‘honorary’ and are ceremonial and should never be used as a badge of academic achievement.

Brychan

Exactly. Science relies wholly or criticism. To question, to disprove, to scrutinise, to offer alternative explanation, to provide data, to prove a hypothesis. Without it there is no science. We are left with religion. I can’t help noticing that the BBC demote Prof Alice Roberts to ‘niche’ documentaries and then use Carol Vorderman as eye candy on game shows, now a DJ on Radio Wales. Too working class? Too female? Too Welsh?

Mel Morgan

The first three sentences are pretty much right.

Mel Morgan

This is the ad diploma fallacy. David Attenborough’s propositions, like everybody else’s stand solely by their evidence and reasoning.

Brychan

I disagree. It’s a trait on the BBC that the presenter is portrayed as the expert, which Attenborough is not. A more articulate and better informed process is for the presenter to interview the real scientist. I noticed this anomaly many years ago. David Attenborough would always lecture to footage but Jacques Cousteau tended to use round-table discussion footage to illustrate a scientific point.

You can even see the difference today. Bore Grylls is where the presenter is the star, in comparison to Ray Mears where the natural environment is the star. Mears interviews an expert when needed to illustrate. Understanding concepts is more important than script agendas.

Summit to Sea is a collection of landed gentry and third sector executives led by Monbiot’s latest fluff. Had it been a science led initiative by the School of Ocean science at Bangor University then it would have credibility and would not be “a class act in how not to engage with a group of stakeholders absolutely critical to the success of the project” as our guest poster describes.

Mel Morgan

Non (mea culpa!) sequitur.

Big Gee

It’s nice to have romantic visions of wilderness, a flashback to what some ignorant ‘townies’ consider to be the fairy land illusion of forests, wild animals, all nice things from the imagination – based on fairy tale books – just to look at – with the occasional fairy castle with damsels and charming princes.

The reality is that humans need food, they also need a living. You get that food by either agricultural means or by hunting. The latter has proved to be rather difficult, as attested to by centuries of starvation and misery amongst the impoverished people of Wales. Hence the reason that agriculture developed in the first place, in order to feed people. I would however agree that there is a need for more organic type farming with mistakes from the past regarding pesticides and herbicides taken as lessons in how it shouldn’t be done, with no sympathy for the environment.

I was born and raised in a small homestead on the desolate uplands of Ceredigion. We were too poor to afford artificial fertilizers and intensive farming techniques. Instead we had sheep mostly, that grazed the mountain, with a few domestic animals on the homestead to provide meat (a fattened pig) milk and butter for the table. My father had to work during the week as a stone mason to be able to make ends meet. My mother and us children did the work at home in his absence, he worked like a slave on the smallholding on the weekends. Idyllic? Possibly – hard work? No, it would be better described as slavery. We had no running water in the house – it all came from a well, no heating apart from peat and a bit of coal as we could afford it. No central heating and no indoor toilet. It was bearable, but if the mountain was ‘rewilded’ it would be starvation time. We saw hippy good lifers try to do the same in the sixties and seventies, when the first hard winter approached, they fled for their lives, or got their privileged mummies and daddies to provide dosh to bolster their Giro so that they could go to the shop to get food.

Those who promote this rewilding dream are mostly found in towns and cities, without a jot of knowledge or experience of the real countryside. Their visions are based on dreams, cooked up from what they’ve read as children in story books. Many think that meat is produced in a factory along with milk and for the other goodies they can pop down to the supermarket to get their hands on it, because as the food comes off the shelf, it’s magically replaced – just like in a Walt Disney cartoon film.

Wakey wakey smell the coffee folks!

Brychan

An example of disastrous ‘re-wilding’ can be seen in the pacific islands of French Polynesia. The French had introduced some big European farmed snails, as a food source many hundreds of years ago. These snails escaped to the wild and did some, but not catastrophic, damage to the native forest.

In the early 1990s along came a re-wilding project, a new type of colonialist, from France. They not only displaced the native human population, but they deliberately introduced a type of carnivorous micro-snail parasite that feeds on farmed snails. Unfortunately these ‘wolf snails’ also feed on the smaller snail species that were native to the islands.

Now, all but a few of the native snail species are extinct. The native undergrowth of the forest is not being naturally eaten, resulting in massive damage to the eco-system. The re-wilders removed a relatively benign native population who had gladly farmed escargot, but in doing so, they did catastrophic damage to the previously co-existing natural environment.

The French government now make grants to slash and burn projects of forest undergrowth, which would otherwise have been eaten by the native snails or cleared by farmers. There is an American financed species rescue project working to rescue the last of the native snails.

https://www.zsl.org/conservation/regions/oceania/partula-snail-conservation-programme

The mistake the re-wilders always make is they did not understand the real habitat and had a fake wide-eyed view of what a forested environment should look like. They had distain for the knowledge and experience of native farmers, and in the case above, forgot that Pacific islands are not some paradise to be manipulated to a non-existent idyll described in French tourist brochures.

It’s already started in Wales. Introducing non-native horses from Poland and Belarus which will eliminate our own natural welsh mountain pony. They also plan to release Lynx, native to Scotland and Scandinavia that could have catastrophic impact on native small mammal species which co-exist with the farmed landscape. Summit to Sea is a corporate land grab operation using proxy enablers made up of a group of environmentally autistic misfits.

Mel Morgan

A maritime ‘re-wilding’ ploy was one of the stratagems deployed in order to prevent the evicted Chagossians from returning to their native islands.

Mel Morgan

If lynx proliferate, this could be remedied by the introduction of a suitable predator – wolf, for example.

Mel Morgan

A superfluity of wolf would require the introduction of an even larger predator – bear, for example.

Mel Morgan

When they get out of hand … a larger alluropod, perhap?

Mel Morgan

And when too many huge bears are on the rampage, reintroduce that well-known endangered species Homo cambrensis in order to predate them.

Mel Morgan

Ah.

Back to the drawing board.

Brychan

Humans are unique in that we perspire to reduce body temperature and communicate as a group. Essential when stalking prey over long distances on the African Savannah, where we evolved. The wolf has a similar niche. They also communicate as a group and they pant to reduce body temperature. Both are able to pursue great distances, to the point of exhaustion of a prey animal considerably bigger than the hunter. A lynx, like most cats, cannot do this. They rely on pounce and ambush to kill prey. There is only one cat that hunts in packs, the African lion, a nocturnal hunter but it still relies on ambush and cannot pursue for any great distance.

Their range only rarely naturally overlap.

The environment where the both the wolf and the Lynx co-exist is Scandinavia, and formerly the Scottish coniferous forest. The wolf is out perusing elk over long distances, the lynx up a tree or in a rock crevice waiting for squirrels, foxes, goats and occasionally a small deer to pounce on. They key to their co-existence is where there is no dense forest due to grazing of large herbivores, but conversely enough forest for the lynx to hide and ambush. Only in this environment, usually at the forest margin, can both coexist, which is exactly what we see today, at the northerly margin of the boreal forest when it peters out into tundra.

For the same reason, cats sleep by day and hunt by night. Wolves sleep by night and hunt by day.

Mel Morgan

Right.

We introduce wolf and lynx at the same time, and wait to see how they get on.

Brychan

The European wolf is a ground based “pack” predator native to tundra, and both deciduous and coniferous forest. The Lynx is a ‘from a tree’ lone pounce predator naturally native mainly to coniferous forest (camouflage and long retractable claws). This can be demonstrated by putting Aled up a tree with a Lynx. I think you’ll find that Teifi, a derivative of the wolf, will not be able to climb the tree to the rescue.

Mel Morgan

How long before their, er, peaceful co-existence breaks down?

Mel Morgan

What’s the worst insult one can fling at a wolf or a lynx? Could we engineer a bust-up between the two species?

Mel Morgan

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Since ‘rewilding’ is an eminently human enterprise from start to finish, what harm could there possibly be in tweaking the situation just a little bit more?

Mel Morgan

I think I know what you mean. Humane, feasible, and beneficial.

Brychan

There are three types of ‘corporate entities’ who do philanthropy in the ecology sector.

(a) Genuine belief of entrepreneur.

This type of business rarely encounters difficulty in getting stakeholders onside. This is because the entrepreneur understands, lives and breathes, the market and has clear boundaries of corporate responsibility. An example would be ‘Body Shop’. Buying from them always protects the environment.

(b) Greenwash, to enhance corporate image.

This type of business may or may not be ecologically damaging but see an opportunity for enhancing it’s corporate image by greenwash. An example is Unilever who make a wide range of chemical products including soap powder. They will launch a eco-friendly product ‘free from’ product range to access a specific market, sometimes at a loss, to enhance its overall green credentials. Choose the green items in their product range.

(c) Side show to disguise ecological damage.

This is where damaging the eco-system is inherent in its operations, has no corporate consciousness, who’s very existence is damaging. They will devastate the ecology of parts of the world which are desperate for jobs and prosperity, while at the same time set up eco-enterprises in parts of the world where their corporate image is important to their existence. Never buy from, or into, them.

The Rausing/Tetrapak/SummitoSea extravaganza is very much in the third category. A family of Swedish tax exiles, who part own bauxite mines in the Amazon rain forest to make cheap aluminium film for their packaging, claim a product is recyclable by setting up a separation plant in India paying staff a dollar a day to process only a fraction of their landfill product, a company who substitutes their plastic by cutting down trees to grow sugar cane to make a ‘bio-degradable’ plant based polymer. Their whole corporate entity is destructive to the environment and they only throw a bit of cash at flawed eco-projects if they can make a profit on the result.

My message is quite simple. TetraPak invented the plastic, aluminium and cardboard layered composite carton and got a patent on it. No amount of dubious land acquisition disguised as eco-project to fill the cartons with perishable product will make the business good for the environment. Planting a tree to offset cutting one down is a no-gain operation. I don’t think EcoDyfi, or the Green Party withdrew their support to save the farmers, just that the intelligent among them will know that Summit to Sea is one of those bogus propositions which do more eco-damage than good. Best avoided.

I suggest Rausing should get on the next flight to Stockholm and pay some taxes.

Ellie Wales

I watched the Rausing clip with interest. She said absolutely nothing of any importance in 5 minutes of saccharine speech.
I’m unable to access wiki where I’m currently based as a semi-paranoid government beyond Europe wont allow it, but would ask if there is a potential conflict of interest with her husband’s position in the university and a possible position in the Ingleby group?
I’ll be looking at wiki when I return to the Celtic fringe on Cardigan Bay next week.Thank you for exposing this.

Dafis

She’s a chip off the Rausing block, that impoverished Swedish mob that launched Tetrapak and have struggled to make a modest living off it ever since !! Enjoys telling the rest of us how to organise our miserable lives and actively engaged, with others, in pulling as many strings as she can grasp. One to watch .