Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History

Counting Sheep in the English Lake District: Rare Breeds, Local Knowledge, and Environmental History

26 4 In 2001, British television viewers were horrified to witness an apparent military assault on the nation’s ovine population. Civilian resources had proved inadequate to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and so the army was called in to expedite the destruction and disposal of sick animals as well as those considered at risk, which included apparently healthy herds and flocks living within a mile or so of any actual infection.1 This dramatic episode had serious political and economic implications. The British livestock industry was just beginning to recover from the protracted crisis caused by BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease), a crisis that had been significantly intensified by government mismanagement. Foot-and-mouth disease did not pose a serious threat to human health, and so the drastic eradication policy was based on economic rather than medical concerns; the farmers who lost their livestock nevertheless had many companions in suffering.2 Although outbreaks were scattered over much of the United Kingdom, they were concentrated in a few regions. Of the total cases, 45 percent occurred in Cumbria, which occupies the northwesternmost corner of England ; more than 1 million sheep were slaughtered in that county alone, along with more than 250,000 other animals (cattle, pigs, goats, and deer).3The videos that showed soldiers in battle fatigues beside flaming pyres of carcasses also featured some of Britain’s most celebrated country landscapes. Columns of black smoke are inconsistent with conventional notions of Rare Breeds, Local Knowledge, and Environmental History h a r r i et r it vo Counting Sheep in the English Lake District Counting Sheep in the English Lake District 265 rural beauty, and so this kind of free publicity had a predictably dampening effect on Lake District tourism. Perhaps more important, quarantine regulations imposed to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease via shoes and clothing meant that walkers were largely confined to paved public roads, and prohibited from tramping across fields and fells. Although advertisements announced that the Lake District was open, this claim turned out to refer primarily to teashops and pubs. Even the gardens and parks of many large country houses were off-limits; for the duration of the emergency, admission fees bought access only to the façades and the furniture. If potential tourists could express their unhappiness with this state of affairs by staying away, local residents had to endure the combined calamities on the spot, sometimes even confined to their farms along with their doomed animals. A study conducted by the Institute for Health Research at nearby Lancaster University concluded that many livestock owners suffered emotional traumas that significantly transcended their material losses.4 Dramatic though they were, however, most of the effects of the foot-andmouth crisis also proved temporary. The outbreak seemed under control by the autumn of 2001, and by the next tourist season both sheep and walkers had returned to the Cumbrian fells. As had been the case with the earlier BSE crisis, public hysteria and public memory gradually receded, along with Nero, a champion Herdwick ram, with his owner, 1870. (From Frank W. Garnett, Westmorland Agriculture 1800–1900 [Kendal, 1912], facing 152) h a r r i e t r i t vo 26 6 the frequency of alarming newspaper headlines and television reports. But at least one consequence of the draconian (if belated) response to the outbreak threatened to be permanent. Although most livestock animals in the United Kingdom, as elsewhere, belong to a few favored modern breeds, the island also hosts a selection of minority breeds, living reminders of the rich British traditions of animal husbandry and agricultural improvement. According to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, the organization that catalogues and monitors such breeds, those most at risk of disappearing—for example, Irish moiled cattle or Cleveland bay horses—may number only a few hundred individuals . They are likely to be concentrated in a few geographical areas, or even on a few farms, which means that either a fast-moving epizootic or a vigorous prophylactic cull could decimate a breed, or wipe it out completely .5 One of the strategies for ensuring the continuation of breeds designated as endangered, therefore, is to establish herds or flocks at widely separated locations. The dominant sheep breed in the Lake District never appeared on the Watchlist of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, since neither at the beginning of...