A1: Stronger Together
Through My Eyes involves stakeholders in turn showing the others how a common works from their perspective and will happen on all 12 sites. The commoner will explain how they manage their sheep, the wildlife manager why a particular part of the site is so important for butterflies, the owner why they focus on water quality or recreational access. Everyone will have the opportunity to explain their priorities and challenges, and also to ask questions of each other to understand what decisions have to be made and why.
Common Knowledge: We are developing and delivering a shared monitoring scheme. This involves stakeholders – commoners, landowners and agencies – in identifying the priorities for monitoring (for example water quality, vegetation, farm economics) and then working together to agree baseline information and do the surveying, and in doing so learning and sharing skills such as plant ID, the use of drones and online mapping. The gradual development of trust, and a shared ethos is as much, if not more important than the results of the surveys per se.
Shepherding Service: this project will trial and investigate the benefits of introducing shepherding on the Stiperstones Common, comparing stock distribution before and after shepherding, whilst also raising the issue of uncontrolled dogs on grazing animals. The project will create a baseline of common stock movement in the absence of shepherding, move common grazing animals around the hill so as to encourage grazing on areas rarely reached and to see how effective shepherding is in distributing the grazing pressure across the hill. Finally, it will use the shepherd to raise awareness of dogs off-leads with dog owners.
Delivering the Visions (on two commons) will allow farmers to understand the financial value of their activities, in particular the business impact of different ways of managing the commons through pursuing Project Visions. In addition to helping them make those choices, the information will be readily available to support agri-environment (ELMS) applications in due course.
