Recent tragic and near tragic incidents involving cattle and walkers highlight an important issue about the way we access the countryside and how this is affected by the necessary work done by the farming industry.
Not only the death of a walker in North Yorkshire and the alarming attack on David Blunkett but also the hundreds of messages sent to newspapers and the BBC Farming Today programme leave us in no doubt that great care is advisable when near cows.
This is not just when calves are present. Mr Blunkett was attacked when no calves were in the enclosure.
Some voices have been raised urging that cattle should not be allowed in fields crossed by public footpaths. I think this is probably unrealistic and disproportionate. But we should accept that many people wish to walk in parts of the countryside where there are no farm animals.
Until recently we were all able to do this on a large part of Blacka Moor on land given to the people of Sheffield not to be used as farmland but to be a recreation area and public open space and pleasure ground.
A petition to the council in 2005 raised nearly 800 signatures from walkers on the moor calling for no cattle grazing but it was ignored by the then ruling party.
Now it is time for the present council to look again at this issue. Since cattle were introduced many people no longer walk on Blacka Moor.
The problems between cattle and walkers on Blacka Moor are potentially much greater than on many farmers' fields where you can easily see the cows.
Here the high vegetation and groups of trees often mask the presence of the animals until you find yourself among them. They then react unpredictably sometimes rushing past in annoyance or panic.
I have previously tried to downplay the hazards of livestock for fear of discouraging visitors to this superb landscape, but have now given up trying to persuade my more timid (or more sensible?) friends and relatives from joining me on my regular walk.
The animals are not on Blacka Moor to serve the agricultural economy or provide meat and dairy consumers with products. They are there to follow a spurious scheme of 'conservation grazing', a practice increasingly being questioned across the country.
It is claimed that these animals are there to do conservation work but this is illusory. They do not eat the young birch in the heather and nor do they trample the bracken as we were told they would.
Instead they spend their time eating grass as they walk on footpaths, seriously eroding the surfaces and scattering peat into the streams.
We do not need to go any further with this absurd scheme to know that it is entirely misconceived.
I don't wish to elicit another inevitably predictable reply from Sheffield Wildlife Trust. They have become increasingly desperate in their defence of the policy.
The real responsibility here lies with the trustees of the land, Sheffield City Council, and with Natural England, our largest unelected centralised bureaucracy, which insists on its own approach to the countryside against the wishes of local people and then hides behind smaller organisations who are expected to enforce it.
Natural England's head office is now in Sheffield. Perhaps its chief executive could be prevailed upon to join Friends of Blacka Moor for a lunchtime walk to see the results of some of the organisation's policies?
