I see you

On surveillance by man and dog and man on dogs

Earlier this week a woman named Heather Dawe, who I know of from fell running and who, by the way, is a writer and excellent artist, posted a picture on Twitter that shocked me. It was a large pole with a camera on top. No big deal in our over-surveilled world where things swivel and follow us apparently everywhere. But not everywhere. I do not run on the moors and expect to be filmed by a camera (except when it’s the Guardian doing the filming). But this surveillance camera is on the top of Ilkley Moor, facing the wonderful Twelve Apostles set of standing stones. And I think it is an abomination.

But then I began to question my fury. I said it was on Ilkley Moor, but actually looking at the boundaries of the moors, it isn’t.

The whole area of moorland is Rombald’s Moor. The red section, which most people would call Ilkley Moor, is owned by Bradford Council, and in 2017 the council voted against grouse shooting on its land. Good. But all the other parts of the moor, including Burley Moor, where the camera is, are privately owned. It baffles me that people can own land that is so commonly used but I suppose that’s right to roam for you. Full admission: I detest all forms of hunting, and that includes pest control. I definitely detest grouse shooting, because I detest hunting, and because it is an elite and elitist activity and because I love the outraged grouse who hurtle off when we run past and the moors would not be the same without their angry WHAT ARE YOU DOING, HUMAN squawks. (I do not disturb nesting birds; they just always squawk.)

So, who owns the moors? Now it gets interesting. I went immediately to the government land registry. There, you can search by postcode, which I did, and the result gave me three houses. By now there was a lively discussion on Twitter, and the social media person at the government land registry got involved and pointed out I could search by map, too. So I did. I found the right part of the world and the moor, and was then told that access to any valuable information — no, to any information at all — would require me to pay £3. I didn’t. Why should I? In France, if I wanted to know who owns the field behind the stream leading up the hill, I can stroll 30 metres from my house round to the Mairie and ask to see the plans. For nothing.

None of this would surprise Guy Shrubshole, who wrote Who Owns England and runs a very useful website that includes a map of all privately owned grouse moors. Power is controlled and land is power and so is information. From this review of Guy’s book: “For an individual to discover all that is known about land ownership in England would cost more than £72m.”

A friend who lives in Burley in Wharfedale sent a screenshot from the village Facebook page, which seems to indicate that the owner is this man:

Then another friend who doesn’t have to pay £3 to access land registry records shared this:

Curious. Different names, a different company name: other people had said that Burley Moor is owned by the Bingley Moor partnership.

But why the camera? According to Adam Stryker (who, rumour has it, really has a different name) (and wtf is that profile pic?), the camera is there to protect birds and sheep who are hassled by dogs being let off their leads. (Also, got to like the cheek of a man who says “if you cant read” and forgets the apostrophe.) He also wants to clamp down on cycling on Burley Moor. Cycling is allowed on Ilkley Moor but not on Burley Moor. So if you go a few metres beyond a boundary that isn’t always clearly marked, you’re in trouble. Except: how is Mr. Stryker going to enforce anything? Dogs don’t have numberplates and nor do bikes. From his Facebook activity, maybe he wants to publicly shame people:

Arrest that dog!

Seriously though, I often see dogs unleashed on the moor, when I know that there are sheep not too far away. That is irresponsible. And birds should definitely be protected, though that is irony coming from a man whose business is selling the right to shoot them.

Also, there are idiots who should be allowed nowhere near the moor, such as Mohammed Zulkifl, who in 2019 decided to start a fire on the moor with his lighter, “for the fun of it”, that required 70 firefighters to control. 50 acres of moorland were burned.

But I still don’t like the camera. I have accepted the absence of privacy in modern life. I know we are surveilled and tracked. But I go to the moors to feel free. I know that they are not free or commonly owned, but the camera is an ugly reminder that even the heather and the open sky and the fresh air can belong to someone, and that they can do what they like, that ownership gives them all the liberties to take ours away. That camera has burst my bubble; my belief that wildness is wildness. Yes I know it isn’t and that the moors are created and changed by human activity, over time and currently (as is clear whenever you fly over the moor and see the patches of burned heather and cut-back areas, a weird patchwork), but let me have my follies. The camera has changed the feeling of the moor and I loved the old feeling of being unleashed.

I will end with good news, which is that there can be responsible ownership of moorland, too. Both Bradford Council and the privately owned estate of Denton Park in Wharfedale are planning rewilding projects: Bradford has already successfully done peat restoration on Ilkley Moor and plans more. Good on you both.

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Reading corner

• This piece by Will Pavia, on bringing his father home to die, was extraordinary. Beautiful, moving, lucid. Superb.

• I subscribed to the New Yorker for about 20 years, until I found it getting dull and far too domestic. Also the fact that they offer extremely cheap subs to attract new subscribers but won’t reward loyalty gets my goat. But I keep an eye on it, and one day I will resubscribe, especially if it continues to publish pieces like this one by Rachel Aviv, on Alice Sebold and Anthony Broadwater, the man erroneously convicted of her rape. Stunning.

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Animal hero of the week

Trakr was a Czech German shepherd (does that make him a Czech shepherd?) who somehow got recruited to the Halifax Police Force in Canada, and was assigned to handler James Symington. In May 2001, the Halifax Police Force compassionately decided to kill all its retiring police dogs including Trakr, even though Trakr had detected $1 million of contraband over his career. Charming. Symington took a leave of absence in protest, and Trakr avoided the needle. In September, Symington saw the World Trade Centre attacks, and headed to New York on his own bat, with his own dog and with his friend Corporal Joe Hall. They arrived on September 12, and went to work.

Rescuers found little else but body parts, but on Thursday, September 13, Trakr began to show interest in one particular area of the rubble.

"We knew from his reaction that someone was down there, and it was just a matter of just how far underneath this debris the person might be," says Cpl. Hall. Having indicated the spot, Trakr, Const. Symington and Cpl. Hall deferred to emergency fire crews and moved on."We just kept moving," explains Cpl. Hall. "It was so chaotic there, and having a search dog really cuts down on the search time."

It was several hours before the heroic team would learn that the fifth and final survivor had been pulled from the twisted mass where Trakr had sensed someone.

The survivor was Genelle Guzman-McMillan, a staff member of the Port Authority on the 64th floor of the North Tower. After the planes hit, she set off downstairs and had reached the 13th floor when the building collapsed. Guzman-McMillan was the last survivor found. Time wrote about her a year later.

Trakr and Symington kept looking, for two full days, until Trakr collapsed, probably from smoke inhalation and god knows what else he had ingested.

The heroes returned to Halifax, Symington gave a TV interview, and was immediately suspended from the police force. (Both men had claimed to be sick when they were doing search and rescue, which probably did make them sick.)

Symington got the chance to return to work, but instead went to LA and began to act in soap operas using the memorable stage name Peter James. Huh? Trakr meanwhile WAS NOT STUFFED. But he was cloned.

Why couldn’t they let him procreate like a normal dog? Here’s Wikipedia on it. Nuts.

Before Trakr died in 2009, he suffered badly from degenerative myelopathy, a neurological condition probably caused by whatever he was exposed to at the World Trade Center. When he lost the use of his back legs, Symington got him a cart so he could still propel himself around. Yes! Trakr was the inspiration for Colin from Accounts!