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. 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. When the RSPB replaced sheep with cattle and ponies on its Haweswater site, local people cited world heritage status in opposition. “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. Aglionby disputed that revoking world heritage status was the answer.
