Heather on south Shropshire beauty spot the Long Mynd harvested by National Trust without consent

Video: Tom Lloyd

Transcript

00:00Hello everyone. Brought you here to the Longman Common in South Shropshire. It's an actively

00:05grazed heathland, an active common and a site of special scientific interest. It's recently

00:12been assessed by National Trusts as a broadly favourable condition and currently the major

00:19habitat threat is the Mount of Bracken. It is out of control but that is being addressed

00:27through National Trusts' own finances and obtaining FIFL funding. As commoners we've

00:38known that the Longman has been in favourable condition for some time. We've noticed it

00:44with the quality of the stock drawn down from here and just the general look of the heather,

00:53the grass and the heathland in general. Clearly in great condition. There's a lot of good views

01:01from up here. We can see east into the Midlands in that direction and looking round to the west

01:10we can look into Wales from the Pole Bank, the highest point. There's a 360 degree view. It

01:20really is quite a special place. I've brought you here today specifically to see some damage

01:28that was reported by a walker who visited in recent days. The individual posted what

01:38he thought was reckless 4x4 damage by off-roaders and for a moment people thought this might also

01:47have been caused by commoners travelling the common here with their 4x4s. But as the Secretary

01:54of the Longman Common Association I can confirm that there was no commoners involved or in any

02:01way responsible for the damage that I'm going to show you. Rather this damage that's been

02:09confirmed by Natural England was caused by the National Trust team from Dudmiston Hall.

02:17Apparently without any reference to Natural England or the commoners here the team from

02:24Dudmiston Hall travelled up the A49 approximately 20 miles and harvested heather seed with a tractor

02:39and trailer for a landscape recovery project. A project that is funded by government and tax

02:48payers money and has no connections to anyone here involved on the Longman. Despite the wet

03:01conditions on the Longman and early signs of damage that would have been apparent during

03:09the harvesting operation the collection was continued over several days. So in order to

03:17improve one site for nature they were quite happy to severely damage another. Have a look at the

03:25extent of the damage that they caused. Quite breathtaking really for what is supposed to be

03:36Europe's largest conservation organisation. You can see rats, you can see pools of water, you can

03:46see areas of vegetation, heathland, some of Britain's most vulnerable habitat wrapped up

03:54into piles of what's now just dead heather bushes. So we're really really disappointed to see this

04:08happening on land that we've contributed to the management of for generations and has been

04:19actively managed under an agreement for over two decades. Really quite shocking.