The Lake District is indeed a sheepwrecked landscape | Letters
Robin Milton, chairman of the NFU Uplands forum, and sheep farmer Louise MacArthur (Letters, 13 May) completely misunderstand the point George Monbiot is making (The Lake District as a world heritage site - what a disaster that would be, 10 May) in resisting the designation of the Lake District as a world heritage site. This landscape is totally artificial and manmade: it is a "sheepwrecked landscape" which could not be resurrected if designated as a world heritage site. Louise MacArthur's "glorious fells" should, except for the highest ground, be partially forested, and would be but for the depredations of free-ranging sheep which prevent natural tree growth. Hence the relative paucity of forest in the British Isles, compared with almost all of our European neighbours. Of course, it is not all down to sheep. In the highlands of Scotland, deer are also significant players (as is heather-burning to sustain grouse). A major problem is that most Britons have no idea that the bare upland areas that dominate Scotland, much of Wales and the higher Pennines were once extensively clothed in trees. Our Neolithic stone-axe-wealding ancestors started the tree felling, a job that was completed during the industrial revolution.
If anyone doubts this scenario, just take a look at the richly forested countries of northern and eastern Europe or Canada. You will be hard put to match the huge expanses of bare moorland that characterise these British Isles. If sheep in Lakeland were confined to the lower valleys, where most are concentrated anyway, but excluded from the higher, steeper slopes, the landscape would revert to its true ecological state and beauty.
Alan Woolley
Weybridge, Surrey