The problem is that officialdom makes it up as they go along, and the people doing the ‘making up’ may be out of their depth or unqualified in the domains they are working in: be it a 'map', what 'open-air' or 'land' or an 'Occupier' mean legally, or in scientific nature conservation documents. All of this has been going on quite a while.
SSSI SMS documents (Site Management Statements) according to NRW “have no legal force”. They document how the Statutory Conservation Body (i.e. NRW) envisages the SSSI being used and looked after. I would say that if their content cannot be relied on by visitors and landowners becuase it has no logal validity then they should not have been produced or published.
SMS documents are often copy-pasted, for example the phrase “Once disturbed, hibernating bats tend to wake up fly around, using up precious fat reserves…” which is quoted in an earlier post on this thread also appears verbatim in the SSSI Citation for Gilwern Hill too.
SSSI Citations define the local scientific interest, i.e. listing the specific conservation aims, and the public documents state they have no legal force (you have to consult NRW to get a definitive version which is equivalent to make-it-up-as-you-go-along). Their content can be copy-pasted as well. The various SSSIs up the Wye Valley obviously have copy-pasted content: in other words they were a generic desk exercise and were not based on actual survey work.
Many original SSSI conservation surveys (assuming they ever existed) have been lost. An NRW staffer commented “they probably ended up in a skip in Bangor”. In fact they went into a skip in Yorkshire but that’s another story.
An example of ignorance at work concerns Brittle Bladder Fern at Gilwern Hill, said to be rare in Monmouthshire. The Citation does not mention that it is distributed worldwide from Anchorage to Vladivostok according to Kew Science, and is common as muck in wet cool woodland generally across the entire northern hemisphere. The same Citation also cites Ash trees which too are common as muck - and both these species occur naturally in my back garden. If not having something or much of it (because the local conditions do not favour it – like clay and mud abundant in Monmouthshire being disliked by ferns) then perhaps my garden can be scheduled too for not having banana plants or a herd of elephants and only rarely do I see a hedgehog or slow worm. To my mind, not having something at all, or not much of it locally, is nothing special at all because that species is only doing what nature dictates which is to live in those places which naturally favour it.
During my 10 years as the C&A Officer for Wales, there has been a definite shift in the outlook of officialdom away from the friendly, engaging, non-threatening advisory stance of the former CCW, towards one of confrontation, confliction, coercion and control as practiced by the present regime. What this means for caving is that my role, whoever does it, is now one where being on top of all relevant legislation going back a century, and having direct experience of commercial negotiation, ideally litigation too, is almost a necessity. But looking on the bright side: if NRW can’t afford to pay a botanist to go count ferns then they most certainly can’t afford a barrister.
