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

• Mr Milton’s sweeping stereotype of farmers as proud “custodians of the countryside” who also take pride in their “environmental achievements creating new habitats and protecting wildlife” is hard to swallow when my experience locally is of hedgerows taken out and replaced with barbed wire fences, scrub removed, trees cut down and areas of the beautiful South Downs ploughed up. Surely farming, in common with many other human activities, is rooted in the misguided belief that, as a superior species, we are justified in exploiting anything or anybody as long as they contribute to our health, wealth and/or happiness. Undoubtedly there are some admirable farmers who work in the way Mr Milton describes. But this must require levels of awareness and sensitivity that are hard to cultivate, let alone maintain, amid farming’s daily practices of subjugating and manipulating sentient beings and the natural world. So I question his assumption that, collectively, farmers must be protected from critical judgment.

Mary Jackson

Offham, East Sussex

• Andy Goldsworthy describes his “sheepfold” sculptures as challenging our preoccupations of the natural environment and enriching our perception of a cultural landscape that is as much about people as it is about wild nature. George Monbiot presents a different view of farming as showing little evidence of an authentic system of traditional husbandry, but emphasises desertification by sheep.

Pastoral commoning has shaped and been shaped by the environment from time immemorial and has adapted many times through custom; ie what works best in a particular place at a particular time, thus sustaining diversity and relevance. Commoning has a past, present and a future in which to adapt to new challenges. Far from being moribund, pastoral commoners and partners are working hard to deliver public goods which deserve to be understood and celebrated. Collaboration to enhance understanding will deliver reciprocity and respect, the glue of diverse rural communities. Brexit itself presents opportunities to rebalance top-down policies with bottom-up experience and expertise to enhance outcomes. Undermining indigenous rural husbandry systems is an unworthy cause.

Lin Ostrom, who shared the Nobel prize for economic science in 2009, primarily for her work on commons, congratulated the commoners of Cumbria for their progressive work.

Dr Andrew Humphries

Wetheral, Cumbria

• I grew up on the edge of the Lake District and spent my youth sailing, swimming and canoeing on the lakes and walking and rock climbing on the fells. After a long absence I moved back to the area a few years ago and still find it extraordinarily beautiful. However, I agree with George Monbiot about the destruction caused by overgrazing the hills with sheep. The lower slopes of the fells are almost devoid of vegetation apart from bracken and a few species of short grass. There are practically no bushes, trees or flowers and no animals apart from the odd raven and lark and… sheep. Free-roaming sheep prevent the growth of vegetation that would normally cover this type of terrain and provide a habitat for deer, foxes, birds, squirrels, pine martins and more.

There a few feeble attempts to plant trees by sticking saplings in plastic tubes and leaving most of them to die, such as I recently observed in Mardale. The best solution would be to fence off large areas of the fellsides to grow woodland without being damaged by sheep.

Dr Michael Green

Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria

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