The Conservation Prison - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 210

'management' or 'stewardship'. More often than not, this involves
clearing trees and using cattle and sheep to suppress the vegetation.
To a lesser extent, the same belief prevails in several other parts of the
rich world. Some of our conservation groups appear to be not just
zoophobic but also dendrophobic: afraid of trees. They seem afraid of
the disorderly, unplanned, unstructured revival of the natural world.
On a cool, blustery day in June, I travelled up the mountain road between
Machynlleth and Llanidloes to visit the nature reserve that is said to
exemplify the delights of the Cambrian Mountains. Glaslyn is described
by the group that owns it as 'Really Wild! . . . not only is this the biggest
reserve currently managed by the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust, but
it is also the wildest and most regionally important site.'1 I expected to
find an oasis, a fecund sanctuary in the Desert. Four years living on the
edge of the Cambrians had not yet taught me to curb my enthusiasm.
As I parked the car beside the road, I heard a skylark pouring its
song from the sky. Clouds scudded across the sun, catching the cold
north-westerly in their sails. I set off down the track towards the lake
at the heart of the reserve. I could see it gleaming amid the dark hea-
ther, like the water in the bottom of an old copper bowl.
Before I reached the path that would take me down to the lake, I
vaulted a fence and struck out across the heath. Nowhere was the hea-
ther more than a foot high. There were a few tufts of bog cotton, like
white blusher brushes, mounds of moss and cropped bilberry, some
sparse constellations of tiny bedstraw flowers, scrappy little stalks of
ling - and tormentil everywhere. That, in this 'really wild' reserve, was
all. I was astonished, but the clues were not hard to spot: sheep shit, all
over the heath. I reached the fence on the far side of the reserve and
stared down the dreadful plunge of Glaslyn's ravine, to the green pas-
tures and woodlands far below. Clinging to the steepest slopes were a
few young rowan trees. Otherwise the sides of the gorge were torn by
erosion gullies. The bare rock and soil looked like the hills of Afghani-
stan. No crows or choughs winged the midway air; a solitary gull battled
down the updraft towards the mild hedged fields of the South Dulas val-
ley. The bitter, battering wind funnelled up the ravine and over the heath.
I strode back to the path which led to the lake. I soon found myself
among a flock of sheep, grazing the low heather even lower. They