Prospect and Refuge

As relatively quieter valleys of the eastern Lake District, Riggindale and Haweswater were, until 2015, the territory of the last golden eagles in England. I climbed the ridge one hot summer day back in the late ‘90s, and lying back, alternating between binoculars and plain sight, shielded my eyes against the sun as the male and female circled on thermals towards vast cumulus clouds and peerless blue. The eagles’ bronzed forms, the female darker and somewhat larger, circled upwards and onwards through layers of sky with barely a shift of feather or wing, weaving in and out of each other’s trajectories, reaching an altitude where they disappeared from sight.

Watching the eagles like this were moments of what I might call ecstasy, or at least the nearest I have come to sensations of the numinous kind, though it’s a hard thing to pin down. I could say it was a kind of bearing witness, though that sounds a tad sanctimonious. Whenever I could get away, coming to see the eagles was an homage to something emblematic of a wild place, but even this isn’t quite right. Despite what the tourist board want you to think, the Lakes is hardly a wild place; there’s not a scrap of it that isn’t tramped over or swum in or farmed. 

Territory

During the breeding season the upper reaches of the Riggindale valley were closed to visitors, but half a mile in was a walled enclosure and garden shed that passed muster as shelter for the RSPB wardens who kept watch over the birds in the breeding season. Polish Stephan was often on duty, and in his usual laconic manner he’d keep us abreast of the news. Which of the three nests her mate built in the inaccessible crags each spring had the female eagle deemed good enough? Was she sitting on eggs? Any sign of hatching? How long had the male been absent from the valley, foraging? 

When the eagles obliged, Stephan zoomed in with the ‘scope to show us the female on the nest, or the male static amongst the boulder field. Eagles, I learned, can be tiresome things. I wanted them rising on thermals into the stratosphere. What I sometimes got was a well-fed eagle doing nothing much at all.

Prospect and Refuge

The catastrophic decline of wildlife and the way my home landscapes have been impacted by tourism overload are inescapably linked. The National Park say at least 18 million visitors come here each year. According to the tourist board in wider Cumbria it’s over 40 million, though I doubt most of those are visiting the more industrial landscapes of the south and west of the region. 

Back in the day, even Wordsworth caved in to growth. From petitioning against the coming of the railways because it signalled the end of ‘meaningful’ engagement (visitors of the right sort, was what he really meant, for whom the landscape manifested as ‘a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy’) he bought shares in the railway itself. The National Park talks about the need to develop ‘sustainable’ tourism. I’ve yet to understand exactly what this is, when no-one talks about limits and growth is the only certainty. 

Hill walking has grown steadily in popularity, and pressure on natural systems and wild species has grown accordingly. There is not a bit of river or lake that is off-limits to humans, even in the breeding season for water birds and otters. Paddleboarders are on every stretch of water, and on Windermere, at Low Wood Bay, the dabchick I have watched for over forty years have disappeared, most likely because of the busy marina just down the lake.

With a bunch of like-minded colleagues, I wrote an essay* about the principle of wildlife refuges, places from where humans are excluded so that ecological imperatives can play out. We expressed concern at the exclusion of people through historic land grabs and enclosures, but wanted to think about refuges in the wider UK and especially in the massively overcrowded Lake District. Sanctuaries are common elsewhere, such as in Hungary’s Pentezug National Park which is closed to visitors to allow rare breeds such as Przewalski’s wild horse to live as close to wild lives as possible. Wildlife refuges appear regularly in the Veluwe Forest National Park in the Netherlands, marked by simple signs asking the public to keep out, and they do. As I walked on the path past one of those refuges one early morning, a wolf rose from the tall grass, stretched unhurriedly and walked on. In the UK, my friend Simon has a woodland from which he even excludes himself. My friend Harold has a private wood, and I have his permission to go in though I respect his right to ask me to keep away. 

Territory

As news of the essay spread on X, there was general agreement with the idea of refuges as places to ameliorate the impact of human disturbance on wild species in an overcrowded island. Then came the second wave. 

We were anti-human. We were wrong. Our research was poorly done. Our information was biased. It was a hatchet job. In an exchange with one of my co-authors, a leading access campaigner and writer posted, ‘You seem rattled,’ which feels unsavoury at least. 

Prospect and Refuge

It feels remarkable to me that the notion of refuges for wildlife, places where animals and birds can live free of human disturbance, should be so contentious at a time when the rate of species decline is increasing and we absolutely know this is the case. As Thomas Nagel wrote in his essay ‘What is it like to be a bat?’: “to deny the reality or logical significance of what we can never describe or understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance”. We may never be able to truly describe or get inside the head or experience of a golden eagle, or a red squirrel, or a bat, for that matter, but the exercising of empathy for their basic needs should not be contentious. And part of the extension of that empathy is that we give them what they need, and part of that is our absence.

You seem rattled

I wonder what being rattled might feel like to a golden eagle. Goldies are highly susceptible to disturbance; too much and their breeding attempts can stop dead, which I imagine would be fairly rattling. Hunger too, would be rattling I don’t doubt, and the Lakes was mostly a failing ecosystem where food for eagles was scarce. Dave Walker, a former warden who lived just along the valley knew from close observation that the eagles weren’t finding enough food. He took to provisioning them with deer carcasses bartered with the local estate. More than once, Dave intercepted egg thieves whom he observed preparing climbing access ropes to get at and profit from selling the eggs to collectors once the female had laid.

Territory

Riggindale, meanwhile, offered a modicum of refuge to the eagles for whom the negative impacts of human disturbance are just a fact of life. For the sake of the eagles, the refuge signalled to us humans, ‘thus far, and no further’. Had they been white tailed eagles, it would be a different matter. You could have an ‘80s disco under a white tailed eagle’s nest and they’d hardly turn a feather. They’d probably join in.

The idea of refuges for wildlife in the UK now hangs, it would seem, on the fulcrum of humans wanting to be everywhere, many of whom have no awareness that disturbance is an issue. Some may well know about the issue of disturbance, but still, a person has the right, haven’t they? Still others understand the issue well enough, and wonder why we don’t just get on and set aside places for nature, accepting that this is not political, but pragmatism. To create refuges is an exercising of empathy that has its foundation in looking at the science and acting accordingly, because let’s face it, with a new Labour government telling us to forget bats and newts and go for yet more growth, those refuges are needed now more than ever. 

Prospect and Refuge

I hear there are plans afoot to attract golden eagles back to the Lakes, perhaps from the reintroduction just over the border in Scotland. A birding friend has seen juvenile eagles prospecting for new territory over the south Lakes, but even with the habitat put right, which, in Haweswater at least is happening, I imagine any self-respecting eagle would take one look at the crowds and suitably rattled, fly back to the relatively empty quarter of Galloway. How much are we prepared to remove ourselves, to protect what precious little wildlife remains? Of course, I want to walk amongst the fells and swim in the rivers and lakes, even though I know my presence is part of the problem, but should a handful of places be closed off, like Harold’s wood, or the eagle refuge in Riggindale, or areas of our lakes and rivers so that wild species can survive, then I am minded to comply. 

* https://theecologist.org/2024/jul/16/right-roam-whom

Cover photo credit: Polly Pullar