Continuing our Contested Landscape series, Martin Hesp has seen what can happen when the countryside gets a little too close to mankind

IF THE natural landscape had a voice, it would probably groan every time a human turned up. Mankind can't help but mess about with nature and sometimes we make a terrible mess in it. The more humans, the more the landscape groans. Stick a city close to a wilderness, and you'd probably hear it scream.

At least that's the impression you get when you tour southern Dartmoor, some of which lies within half a mile of the 15th most populated city in England.

The southern border of the national park is certainly beautiful, and must be a great joy to many Plymothians, but the frail wilderness does take a pasting from some of its sometimes selfish, thoughtless and inconsiderate neighbours.

Got a problem getting rid of unwanted junk? Why not dump it for free up in some quiet corner of the moors? Why not practise them in a remote car park down a dark Dartmoor lane? Dog need exercising? Get him to chase sheep. Need some kind of sledge when a rare snowfall hits the heights? Try using a bathtub – and if you're exhausted after hauling it up and down Hay Tor, just leave it for park rangers to clear up.

These questions, and their somewhat unbelievable answers, are a sad and commonplace reality around Southern Dartmoor. Most Western Morning News readers will find such things beyond the realms of belief, let alone acceptability, but alas there are many folk who regard open countryside as being nothing more than a wasteland in which they can do anything they please. I feel qualified in saying this after spending a day in the area with rangers from the Dartmoor National Park Authority – and I came away depressed.

There seems to be a simple equation at play: the more humans, the more mess, the more problems.

The parts of Dartmoor nearest to the urban conurbations are indeed a contested landscape. And it's a contest that exists between those who love and respect the wilderness, and those who don't give a damn about what it is or why it's there.

In just a few hours, we saw all manner of junk that had been thrown into otherwise virgin landscape; we heard about dog attacks on livestock, saw furtive looking figures lurking about lonely car parks and heard about the mayhem that happens when the snow falls.

That's when the hills really become a focus for those who otherwise might not wander up on to their altitudinous flanks. Hay Tor, in particular, becomes England's answer to the Alps when there's a bit of snow about – a couple of weeks ago there was gridlock up on the Bovey Tracy to Widdecombe road as more than a thousand sledgers and even skiers turned out to enjoy the white stuff.

"Looks like wall insulation," muttered Bill Allen, the national park's area ranger for Hay Tor, picking up several large broken bits of shiny-sided polystyrene. "I'll add it to the list of strange things people toboggan on.

"It's great people want to come up and enjoy it – but if we weren't here we would be wading in litter by now."

Hay Tor was our first port of call on a trip around Southern Dartmoor staged for us by Robert Steemson, who is head of the national park's natural environment service. Mr Steemson has seen it all before – in his long years as both ranger and manager, he has witnessed all manner of damage and destruction to the landscape.

Having said that, he is also keen to toe the party line – which in national park terms means being happily enthusiastic when it comes to welcoming the general public to a wilderness area.

"Obviously, anyone can come here, but what we ask people to do is come here and enjoy themselves and respect the countryside and to leave it as they see it," he said as we walked from the new Hay Tor visitor centre up towards the famous rocks.

"There is a great quote which says 'take only photos – leave only footprints'," he added. "Our role is to educate the public that come here, to manage the site so there's no detrimental effect on landscape, and really facilitate those people's enjoyment.

"The national park is privileged to own this landscape. And it is a busy spot. What we do here is low-key management – in conjunction with commoners and farmers – to subtly make the visiting public know that they are in the moorland and it needs to be looked after.

"In most people's eyes, this is as good as it gets as prime moorland – it's very accessible, there's an information centre and on a clear day you will see a fair amount of urban conurbation, town and villages, leading right down to Torbay and Teignmouth. And most people down there can look up and see here, it is something they focus on and come to see. It is a magnet of attraction."

Hay Tor's popularity means that it suffers far more than the odd discarded sledge. One of Bill Allen's many jobs is to look after the actual fabric of the landscape, which means dealing with footpaths that become badly eroded simply by the pounding of human feet.

"Where you've got high rainfall and sloping ground, you get problems with erosion, especially where you get a narrowing of the path," says Bill.

"We actually cut away some of surrounding vegetation and eventually we will bring in local turf and growan, which is a sort of broken-down decomposed granite. It works every well. A year after you've done the job you can't identify where the work was."

Even on a wet February morning, the car park by the new visitor centre underneath the tor was heaving with cars and tourist coaches, but our tour was to take us to a part of Dartmoor that was even busier.

"It's half a mile from the city boundary of Plymouth," said national park senior ranger Paul Salmon, describing the Southern limits of Roborough Common. "The pressures are brought about by sheer numbers of people and obviously not just at weekends, it's through the week and even at night. So it's 24-hour, seven- days-a-week, pressure.

"It is the careless behaviour, the thoughtless behaviour, which causes problems. Even the people coming out having a picnic or somebody coming out having a barbecue. They leave the beer cans, the old barbecues, behind. With a city of over a quarter of a million people, it is potentially an enormous problem for us."

As we drove around the southern limits of the common, we came across a line of rubbish thrown into a ditch just yards from the main Plymouth to Tavistock road. Paul showed us how the thick undergrowth that surrounded the small car park has been cut back so that it was no longer hidden from view.

This, we were told, had been done in the hope of deterring yet more fly-tipping.

Next we found another case of fly-tipping, this time way off the public road half a mile down a bumpy track.

"Strictly speaking, we have no responsibility for either litter or fly-tipping," sighed Paul, looking down at what must have been a quarter-ton of junk. "That's something that falls to the district councils and the landowners – which seems a bit unfair…

"Having said that, we do – because we care about Dartmoor – spend a lot of our time dealing with it, but of course there is a limit as to how much time we put in. If we are spending all our time doing that then we are not available for our other duties, doing all the practical stuff, speaking to the visitors, doing guided walks, that sort of thing."

There can be no doubt that the south eastern corner of Dartmoor is under far more pressure than the rest. "The majority of people aren't serious walkers, so we've got 368 square miles and most of that is available to people who just like the solitude and the loneliness," commented Paul.

"But a lot of people don't like that – which arguably takes the pressure off the more important landscapes. In a sense, having all the pressure absorbed in a relatively small area makes it easier to manage."

Part of that management process in recent times has seen the creation of a new job aimed specifically at overseeing problems that arise with livestock, largely because of people's pet dogs. Jane Cole is the livestock protection ranger for the national park and is partly employed by the Dartmoor Livestock Protection Society and the Dartmoor Commoner's Council.

"They had so many problems with dog attacks and dog worrying," explained Jane when we met her in the most popular corner of Roborough Common. "The first thing they wanted me to do was to patrol Dartmoor, but especially Whitchurch Down, Roborough Down and Princetown, which I've been doing.

"But it's evolved so that I'm also logging road traffic accidents involving livestock. We had seven sheep killed along that road [the A386 through Dartmoor] in three months, they are now cutting the gorse and bracken back so people can see the sheep before they just jump out.

"You can see the way the landscape is here," added Jane. "It is heavily used, particularly at weekends. It has a massive effect, it pushes the livestock back from there they would normally graze.

"I try and get out and speak to as many people as possible. We've handed out more than 2,000 cards with my number on and we are hoping the responsible dog owners – and that's the majority – can almost police themselves a bit.

"These ewes up here are in lamb and people don't realise that their dog, just chasing that ewe, can make it abort," said Jane, who also told us about a recent local case in which seven sheep had been mauled by dogs.

"If people see anything at all they can give me a ring. But the most important piece of advice is, if you cannot control your dog, please keep it on a lead. These ewes are heavily in lamb now and will be lambing in the next four weeks."

The subtitle of this series is: what is the countryside for? And at the beginning I claimed that nowadays a lot of people would probably say it is for our common enjoyment. But, as I saw only too clearly on Dartmoor last week, that enjoyment must be qualified. It actually comes with some very rudimentary responsibilities.

"The basic message is to take responsibility," says Paul Salmon. "Just be careful. We see things like a vandalised wall – it may have been someone attempting to climb over it – they didn't mean to knock the stones down, but once you've knocked a few stones off, the sheep get through and knock down a few more, and before you know it the wall is on the ground. And it is a lot of work to get it back up again.

"So just leave small footprints, and take nothing but photographs."

Which is a pretty good mantra for everyone who enters the countryside.