A CLIMBERS' group is applying for permission to put up a 1.2-metre high Cornish hedge around the perimeter of its base at the Count House at Bosigran, near Zennor.

A public consultation for the planning application, which will be discussed at a Zennor Parish Council meeting on September 9, starts today and ends on September 27.

A planning officer for Penwith District Council said the club may be fencing around its entire boundary for which planning permission is not needed.

The application follows a planning application by the National Trust to build two cattle grids on the B3306 north coast road, each with stone hedging, a double gate, and a single track bypass.

The charity which owns the land wants its tenant farmer Bob Scambler of Bosigran Farm to be able to graze up to 75 beef cattle on the 150 hectare Carn Galva moorland, in its stated efforts to control bracken and promote a better habitat for birds and butterflies.

A spokesman for Cornwall County Council said management of heathland through grazing "is something CCC is very supportive of because of the area's archaeology and biodiversity".

He said the council trusted Natural England and the National Trust would do a good job and final details were being drawn up at County Hall to enable the works to go ahead.

"The only written objector to the plans was Zennor Parish Council, on which Liz Scambler, wife of Bosigran tenant farmer, and Jon Brookes, National Trust's property manager for West Penwith, currently have seats.

"All of a sudden you put cattle grids in and then you've got signs around stretching for miles," said parish councillor, Mike Hindley.

The plans show eight traffic signs; four on the approach to each cattle grid.

But Jon Brookes said grazing would "bring the moors alive" by clearing gorse away from rich archaeological burial sites long buried by it.

"You can't walk the moors because you will be ripped apart, the cattle make tracks in the gorse and stop it from being so dominant," he said.

"I've got surveys a metre thick, ranging from aerial photography, studies mapping the spread of species, RSPB surveys, you name it, that proves this is the right way forward for the moorland and you will not find a conservationist who will tell you otherwise.

"It works, why do you think I've been doing it for 30 years?"

However, opposition to the fencing is fierce among local and national residents.

Eddy Holmes, owner of Rosmurgy Tearooms, the closest business to one of the proposed cattle grids, said he wanted the area to stay as it was.

And Zennor Parish Council said there was "some disquiet" among residents who attended a council meeting.

"They were mostly concerned with people running into cattle during foggy weather. It's just not easy to move cattle once the fog comes and it comes so quickly," he said.

Bart O'Farrell, a member of the Cornish Archaeology Society who lives in Wiltshire, leads groups of walkers around West Penwith's moors.

He said Natural England's plans to graze cattle were "obnoxious on a number of levels".

"Right to roam is being damaged, the geology of the land is being damaged by fences, and fencing means ownership and once they're in it's really difficult to get rid of that."

Ian Cooke, coordinator of Save Penwith Moors, which is protesting the plan and has gathered 600 signatures opposing similar grazing plans at Nine Maidens site near Newmill, said: "Traffic flow statistics at Zennor on the B3306 during 2004 shows the August daily average was 1301 vehicles – some 40,000 in that month.

"If cattle are to be allowed to roam day and night across this road serious accidents are bound to happen."

Jon Brookes of the National Trust argued: "We don't have the resources to control gorse by hand. Grazing animals is the most sustainable way.

"This is an internationally important moor land and it's a crime that it has been neglected all those years.

"The habitat used to be woodland and that's what it all wants to get back to, and in some places we've got willow creeping back.

"The argument that cattle will disturb ground nesting birds is put into perspective when you realise that you can't have ground nesting birds on a moorland that is choking with bracken."

● Next week The Cornishman will look at the liabilities and demands placed on grazing farmers who qualify for the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme and the financial incentives involved.