Echos between landscapes

In North Yorkshire, there are complaints about a grouse shooting talk at the top of the Dale. Reports of the talk are not forthcoming but the argument is as follows: the land has to make money; thousands of pounds a day in shooting season means less intensive farming; this increases bio-diversity with fields set aside hay meadows, more bird life, better soil and more bees.

One listener was not impressed.

“Didn’t appreciate the impromptu lecture given in the churchyard by local landowner extolling the “benefits” of grouse shooting!” were their exact words.

No-one put a name on their comments. It would be interesting to know if they lived in the area and tried to make money here. Cue the memory of a visitor to the National Park where we were jungle trekking about fifteen years ago…

We were in mainland Malaysia, an area which was then in the midst (and now at the end) of intensive palm oil cultivation. She was on the way in as we were leaving. She wanted to know about accommodation. I told her about the simple huts with showers and electricity. I think mentioned they were not there five years before, because she said she would prefer it like that. She had a disapproving look on her face.

Now, I don’t know who she was. I don’t know if she was aware logging and palm oil plantations do to a jungle, and whether she had read those twenty page newspaper pull-outs advertising shares in palm oil plantations. I don’t know if she talked to the middle class Malaysians they targeted, whose goal was to go into a restaurant and order from the left (description of the food) rather than the right (the price).

I don’t know if she had talked to people who had grown up in the forest. Or heard them say logging is bad but plantations are worse, that plantations suck the nutrients from the soil longer-term, and the land takes much longer to recover. I don’t know if they had heard their plans for retirement: back to the longhouse with satellite television, with the fervent hope that the forest would still be there then…

I don’t know if she had weighed this against a second scenario, where the land was economically exploited in a more sustainable way, with tourist dollars from her and me. I don’t know if she understood the view that visitors in one portion of the forest fund the preservation of the rest of it. Carve a path through the wild and you shield it. Make the land pay and you protect it from other development. Or at least that is the plan.

I don’t know about her background knowledge, but I did hear her say would have preferred it before the huts. She said something about “when it was natural”.

Then she saw my ankle, which was bleeding heavily.

We had been walking in a forest thick with leeches. These worm like creatures weave to and fro on the forest floor waiting to latch on. When that happens, they inject anesthetic, along with a blood thinner to get out as much as possible before the host notices. Wounds bleed profusely after the bloated bodies come off.

“What’s that?” she asked, eyes wide, disgusted.

“Leeches,” I said, with relish, “They’re everywhere.”

She paled, apparently no longer so enthusiastic about her experience of the natural world. I waved her goodbye and wandered just how long it would be before she was looking forward to air conditioning, television, fast food and, dare I say, other first world luxuries she thought had no place in the jungles of Malaysia.

There are no leeches in North Yorkshire. You have to spend a bit longer here to see the downside of being so close to nature. But if you live here just a little while, you learn that it is actually quite hard to make a living from farming sheep. Margins are low. The greatest ambition of a sheep is to die, as anyone will tell you, which cuts down on income still further. And there are very few jobs that pay well enough to enjoy disposable income that the urban professionals enjoy.

So when I read comments like this visitor feedback, I feel my own prejudice kicking in. I don’t know whether that person lived in the country or in the city. I don’t know what kind of job they have. But I would give you odds of 100–1 they haven’t brought their family up in this economic environment unless their income came from elsewhere. Which is where the patronizing privilege raises its ugly head.

When people are successful, they tend to extrapolate on their own success. They feel entitled to lecture the rest of the world on how to behave… even if they don’t understand much about it. They are at odds with the idea of society on some level. They deny that ownership of a culture goes two ways. If you want to direct a system, you also have to engage with it, be a part of it, join in, make it work.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” said Edmund Burke.

Fair enough. But we’re not talking about evil here; all we’re talking about is making a living.