Geography teacher - you not me! I’m just a map’o’phile

As a geography teacher. A) that looks like heaven for you and b) have you checked the area on the peat map? You may easily be standing knee deep in invisible peat known about only by Natural England?🤣

Ah!
Maybe word is getting out!

All I can do now is make sure enough people know it’s terrible, because natural England aren’t that bothered with it, so they won’t be making it better!

A ewe and lamb in a lush field of grass

A ewe and lamb in a lush field of grass

Important Update:

There are more!

And they are cute!

A wide eyed newborn black lamb

It’s ingrained by now. A tradition! First Lambs mean tell Ashley!

Hope your well. (Or at least holding up!)

Two black lambs in a barn.

A lamb. And a ewe look g straight at the camera

Two black lambs and a black Hebridean ewe in a barn

A small black lamb giving me the side eye!

@smashfizzle.bsky.social

Important message:

First lambs today.

That is all.
Stay posted for more news as we get it (them!)

It’s bound to be fine…

After all they have a podcast and invite absolutely everyone in that world to chat about nature and business and natural capital.

So they must be fine mustn’t they, what with all the important people chatting to them! They can’t possibly be wrong can they? 🤦‍♀️

A locked gate on the path where open access remains according to their. Plans

A screenshot of their application saying # mer.markit.com Woodland Benefits Tool Reporting Characters remaining: 1691 Woodland and community Permissive access remains as open space along the Becka brook below Hound Tor providing low-key recreational opportunities. Wild camping spaces have been set up with Camp Wild. Leighon will form part of the wider East Dartmoor Landscape Recovery scheme, partnering many other landowners striving for joint conservation outcomes across the landscape. Tree-planting with volunteers will strengthen community links.

And their social benefits…
a example…

Their forestry commission EWCO grant applications dosen’t quite align with on the ground actions…

Permissive access remains open (only if you know the key code?)

And as for the high ecological benefits that come with an oxygen conservation carbon credit… well as they can’t tell the difference between a dunnock and a meadow pipit (or why that might matter to a cuckoo) and are concerned with HARE damage to trees on Dartmoor…

Yeah… That’s not ‘quality’ work!

My neighbours

The ones selling extra special carbon credits, that are worth so much more because (and I quote their ceo)

“wealthy private and institutional investors would pay much higher prices to store carbon in new woodlands or peatland if they included high environmental and social benefit”

Recognising …. open grown trees | Ancient Tree Forum Picture a tree in a woodland. What does it look like? I am going to guess that you are picturing a tall tree, with very few branches until the top canopy where it reaches the light.

What a wonderful tree

But, (sorry) that tree was an always open land oak. You can tell by the shape of it. Closed canopy oaks are tall and straight (reaching for the light) and in more open land oaks are broader, reaching out rather than up.

www.ancienttreeforum.org.uk/recognising-...

Write to the Foreign Secretary: Oppose Israel's new death penalty law

Israel has just passed a racist law introducing the death penalty to Palestinians.

Demand the British government takes action & call for sanctions.

It only takes 2 minutes to message your MP & Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.

Here’s a template:

palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/opposedeathp...

EU expresses deep concern over Israeli approval of death penalty bill Brussels /PNN / The European Union has expressed strong concern following the approval of a death penalty bill by t

EU expresses deep concern over Israeli approval of death penalty bill
#palestine #pnn

A meme of the peat map saying The Natural Englandpeat map Where Accuracy is not important

If the people who made the map had owned up to their mistakes at the start the data would have been treated differently. A work in progress instead of a done deal.
The bad data would have been contained and the errors fixed.

But now it’s out there and spreading.

What a ridiculous mess.

The forestry commissions map which now had the peat map as a layer

The forestry commissions map which now had the peat map as a layer

Then the map is added as a layer on different map… one that people access online, and that doesn’t have the disclaimer.

So there is the bad data. Now looking as if it’s fine (as it did on its launch, before the shouting got it flagged up as dodgy)

Ready to be used, even though it’s rubbish.

The England landscape framework with a reference of the peat map

The government’s environmental in improvement plan with reference to the peat map

Now the map sits on the website ready to catch the unwary. But the landing page message at least gives people a fighting chance.

All fine (if a bit low level stupid) so far

And then the map spreads. It gets used in all kinds of ways. Referenced in documents, added as a link, it data creeps out…

The disclaimer in the peat map saying it’s not 100% accurate…

The original media from the peat maps launch with added notes by me saying limestone pavement is not peat

The disclaimer is basic but necessary, especially as the reaction to the map was pretty brutal. Almost all the layers of data on the map are in some way bad

The mistakes in the map mean it’s unusable for its stated use, so you backtrack fast and say it’s not for that anyway

the map stays online⬇️

The original media from the peat maps launch

The original media from the peat maps launch

The original media from the peat maps launch

The original media from the peat maps launch

A short and faintly farcical story about how bad data gets embedded into systems…

First you make a map

The map is not accurate (you didn’t test it properly) but because you have spent time and money on it you launch it saying it is fine…

It’s so wrong that three days later you add a disclaimer…⬇️

A screenshot of the forestry commission map with the peat map layer shown as purple.

Ffs
The forestry commission map has the peat map of doom embedded in it, with no disclaimer saying ‘map is rubbish’

And this is how bad data becomes normalised

The hours that will be wasted as people have to find out what’s actually peat and what’s not…

Ta @naturalengland.bsky.social great job…🤦‍♀️

Blackthorn blossom, white and frothy with small green flower buds as well as open blooms.

A poem saying: Blackthorn winter The blackthorns frost the warm spring air You think they lie, no cold is coming now Not as the insects rise and celandines open to the clear blue sky The white drifts like smoke along the hedge, telling it's cold old stories That myth of past times cannot be for this changed world, There is a daisy. Tomorrow you will know the blackthorns truth The cold still comes with soft white flowers As winter gives its dying kick. C Frampton 23/3/26

The blackthorn is out.

I love the stuff, even if I am wary of it!

A poem written by me About my dead mother Grave goods Around her neck a silver lion. A gold ring on her hand Into the pockets of her bright red Guernsey cardigan go A penknife freshly sharpened With oil on its hinge A full box of matches for the bonfire or the swale A neatly tied up piece of baler twine. Shocking pink against the crimson. The other pocket holds A graphite pencil, sketchbook and travel watercolour tin. Sweets to share with dad.

My mum with her enormous rambling rose in her garden in the summer.

Mother’s Day.
Bitter sweet.

Not a mother, motherless, yet still pretty ok tbh. Just a layer of sad under it all that’s worth acknowledging.

The more I think about this the angrier I get.

I hadn’t fully thought about the ‘needs an adviser so it must go’ bit… the simplification of every bloody thing, the walking away from the complicated.

Surely the more something needs an adviser to make it work the more it needs to be paid for? Ffs

I wrote a piece about this and how deeply unfair and ill thought out its removal was from the new and ‘improved’ SFI.

bsky.app/profile/catf...

A summer grassland full of easily identifiable wild flowers .

The same pasture in early spring. Less identifiable plants…

Priority grasslands, species rich and rare, penalised because not enough people took up a scheme open only during the autumn and winter, when the required advisors couldn’t survey the land.

It’s deeply unfair and damaging to both biodiversity and those that have cared for the pastures for years.

I’ve picked apart the mess of subsidies for species rich grasslands in England…

It’s not a feel good story…
In fact it’s a betrayal of careful old fashioned farming and biodiversity by the uk government.

Makes me very sad tbh.

www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

Specs with added ick = Sp’icks

Misread that

Had visions of the Oxy-con crew on one of their ‘adventures’* being chased by a PE teacher…

*’Adventures’ such as using the deli on Bute rather than the spar shop after getting a bit lost for example… but with added track-suited whistle blowing teacher!

And understory density too.

Open but thick, closed but hollow….

Mind you, that’s hard to model from a satellite so I won’t hold my breath for that to be thought of!

Sorry if I was not clear.

I am not a rewilder, I find the word toxic. It’s used as a cover for very damaging practices far too often

I am a farmer who respects and responds to habitats and ecology

I am on team bird, bats, waxcap and dung beetles

And team ‘notice and respect people’s hard work’

Ummm

That’s NOT the point I was making

I was asking why the human effort was pushed aside in your post and you just focused on ‘one easy step’ instead

Especially when that ‘one easy step’ is a huge issue And very site specific And plays into the ‘us v them’ tribal nonsenses we have to deal with