Conservationists have launched a campaign to revoke the Lake District’s Unesco world heritage status, arguing that it promotes unsustainable sheep farming at the expense of nature recovery and local communities.
In a letter to Unesco, the ecologist Lee Schofield argues that the designation “promotes a false perception of farming, is not economically sustainable, is working against crucial efforts to restore the natural environment and mitigate the impacts of climate change, does not help sustain farming livelihoods, is not wanted by local people and is contributing to damaging overtourism.”
The campaign is backed by a report published by World Heritage Watch, co-authored by Schofield, Dr Karen Lloyd of Lancaster University and the University of Cumbria’s Prof Ian Convery. They argue that the inscription elevates sheep farming over equally traditional mixed farming that includes cattle, pigs, horses and poultry.
The Unesco designation celebrates the Lake District as a “cultural landscape” shaped by traditional agro-pastoral farming, with sheep farming a central part of its identity. Schofield notes that the word “sheep” appears 357 times in the Lake District’s 716-page nomination document, far exceeding mentions of other traditional livestock.
The authors calculate that the Lake District’s 673,000 sheep comprise 90% of medium-sized mammal biomass, with wild mammals representing 3%. Schofield calls sheep farming “both ecologically catastrophic and economically precarious”, linking it to the fact that only 20.7% of the Lake District’s sites of special scientific interest are in a favourable condition. Intensive sheep grazing can prevent tree regeneration, reduce biodiversity and cause erosion and compaction of soils.
“We’re in a biodiversity and a climate crisis. But as important as cultural heritage might be, we’re not in a cultural heritage crisis,” Schofield says.
The Unesco designation provides no financial support for the farming practices it celebrates, while, according to critics, hindering the transition to climate- and nature-positive farming that is the main focus of post-Brexit farming funds.
David Morris, of the bird and wildlife conservation charity RSPB, endorsed the report’s claims. He said the designation “has been misused to protect probably some of the most ecologically damaging and economically loss-making agriculture practices in the English uplands”.
Morris argued that the inscription enabled “nimbyism” against conservation efforts. When the RSPB replaced sheep with cattle and ponies on its Haweswater site, locals cited world heritage status in opposition. “People are able to use the world heritage thing to lobby against progressive change for nature recovery,” he said. The RSPB and other environmental NGOs are considering raising concerns directly with Unesco.
The concerns echo warnings from the Guardian columnist George Monbiot in 2017 that world heritage status would “lock the Lake District into its current, shocking state, ensuring that recovery becomes almost impossible” while boosting tourism unsustainably.
Visitor numbers have risen from 16.4 million in 2015 to more than 18 million a year, with 22 million projected by 2040. Lloyd says intense tourism is driving house prices beyond local families’ reach and overwhelming infrastructure. “The Lake District world heritage inscription is presiding over the death of the landscape and its communities – both wild and human.”
However, the view that world heritage status is hindering progressive farming is contested. Jane Barker, a farmer and former deputy chair of the Lake District National Park Authority, said the designation “hasn’t really made a difference” to her farm business. “I don’t recognise what [Schofield] has said in terms of [world heritage] putting a brake on things,” she said.
Farming within the designation could be “perfectly compatible with net zero, climate change, biodiversity, water quality”, she said, adding: “There is an appetite amongst the older and the younger generations [of farmers] to embrace that change.”
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Julia Aglionby, a professor of practice at the University of Cumbria and executive director of the Foundation for Common Land, argues that world heritage protection of traditional practices was necessary. “In parts of the Lake District, some people would like to take all the sheep off. I personally think that’s an erosion of cultural heritage,” she said.
Aglionby disputed that revoking world heritage status was the answer. She said: “The main issue is that we haven’t had an effective public money for public goods policy.” Rather than world heritage blocking environmental schemes, Aglionby said, “most farmers I know are really keen to get into schemes. Their concern is that there aren’t schemes available.”
If successful, the campaign would mark the second loss of UK world heritage status, after Liverpool’s waterfront was stripped of its designation in 2021.
Steve Ratcliffe, the director of sustainable development for the Lake District National Park Authority, said: “We recognise the urgent challenges facing biodiversity, climate and farming. Whilst changes in land management are necessary to support nature recovery and climate resilience, this should take place with consideration to the area’s cultural heritage.”
Unesco did not respond to a request to comment.
