A series of linked threads which are all true, but in my view skirt around the central fact. This is a discussion about land, land in the UK has an owner, it is seen as an investment. This is a discussion about money, historically it is a an issue of power.

For sure, there are very real disagreements on the future of the countryside, and of places like Dartmoor ... but these don’t amount to a rural–urban culture war.

These polls don’t settle every dispute. But they challenge the idea that rural residents are inherently hostile to nature recovery or that voices of opposition speak for the whole countryside

And this went beyond liking wildlife in principle. In the same survey, 81% supported changes such as restoring wildflower meadows, reducing grazing animals and increasing broadleaf trees, even where these would change how the landscape looks.

We’re often told there’s a rural “culture war”. That nature recovery and rewilding is an urban agenda imposed on an unwilling countryside. But what happens when you ask people what they want? National Parks polling offers some striking evidence. 🧵

Well, how some people feel - but this is only the first episode, so we'll have to wait to see how/if others are given a voice - I hope they are. And my point here is more about belonging and legitimacy than farming methods.

Thank you, Edward

So perhaps the future of our uplands shouldn’t be framed as insiders versus outsiders. The harder questions are: What does the evidence tell us the land can sustain? What do the places we belong to ask of us? And how do we negotiate the remaining choices fairly, together?

Ecological carrying capacity isn’t just another interest group to be weighed against others.

Yes, scientific evidence can’t tell us everything about what we ought to do. Questions and choices around culture, livelihoods, economics and values remain. But evidence should still try to ground decision-making within planetary boundaries.

And where, in all this, is the voice of the land itself? Its soils, water, vegetation, wildlife and ecological processes. The physical realities that ultimately constrain what any of us can responsibly ask of it.

To: “What responsibilities does my relationship with it place upon me?”

Perhaps, then, we should reverse the proposition. Rather than saying the land belongs to us, say, "We belong to the land." Simplistic, perhaps. But it changes the question from: “What am I entitled to do to this landscape?

This cuts both ways, of course ... Belonging becomes hugely problematic when we use it to assert one group’s authority over a place. Dartmoor doesn’t belong exclusively to farmers. Nor does it belong exclusively to conservationists, government, landowners, visitors, or anyone else.

If an ecologist shows that peat is deteriorating, calling them an outsider doesn’t refute the evidence. Likewise, if evidence shows that particular grazing intensities prevent heather recovery, a farmer’s generational attachment to the place cannot, by itself, make that evidence false.

... but “outsider” describes someone’s relationship to a community. It tells us nothing about whether what they’re saying is true.

Another Country repeatedly describes outsiders imposing change in the uplands: people with more money, louder voices, and different values. For sure, this is something we need to be conscious of ...