There are a number of good theories to describe how an ecosystem can be degraded and ultimately destroyed.

Such theory can employ the notion of a tipping point - that is the point of no return. What ecology does not describe well is the particular species or altered environmental characteristic which causes the sudden decline. That remains mysterious, and its effects come unannounced like a thief in the night.

A good example of such phenomena is hive-death among bees, where several factors play a part in a general degradation yet is is a particular component, be that a cold winter or the introduction of a new louse, which appears to suddenly kill-off the whole system.

In the Lakes I wonder if certain problems we are having, namely geese on the Glebe, the closure of the A591 after the floods, too concentrated visitors and too few Charr, might be indicators that the whole of the Lake District is now slipping towards its point of no return.

Although these problems are seemingly unlinked, in fact they may be. Our lack of understanding becomes only a problem of scale. But with the possibility of revisiting the question of the Windermere 10mph speed limit again in future it becomes important to at least try to understand.

Biological systems have a defined carrying capacity. Nobody can deny that the density of trippers and tourists coming to the region has increased over the past decades.

Why are the geese grazing the Gleb?. Well, I am not sure they are. Certainly the grass at the edge of the Glebe has vanished. But it is a largely windward slope on a freely draining soil (lots of gravel).

An alternative suggestion to geese is that there has been a shift in the hydrologic\edaphic regime. There may be geese on the Glebe but perhaps the weekly firework display at one or another hotel has displaced them. I cannot work out why these geese have not grazed the bit right by the wishing well, which is flat and suspiciously has tree canopy. We choose to blame the geese when the lack of lawn is equally possibly down to climate and possibly treading.

It is difficult not to notice that most of the new walls along the A591 at Thirlmere are positioned precisely at the point where a gully was previously clear felled, and we choose to blame the weather!

The Charr population in Windermere are further down the same line. Historical dredging, the catch of anglers and anthtropogenic Phosphorus loading has largely put paid to them and other lake populations.

All spring former South Lakeland District Council leader Cllr Peter Thornton waxed on about Cumbria being ‘open for business’. But the reason people came here in the first place was because of the natural environs and not the businesses.

The Lake District is not pristine, but neither is anywhere else (around 50 per cent of the earth’s dry land is managed pasture and rangeland), but it is the best we have and among that degradation still lie certain ecological pearls.

But we are destroying the Lake District by stealth, as our commercial expectation far outweighs any other consideration.

I have noticed how over the past 20 years the scene has changed. Trippers seem to have become more concentrated on particular times. Could this imply that some of the tourists, and possibly the ones the Lake District would most like to attract, are getting wind that the area is changing. Why should people want to spend time in an over commercialised and degrading place?

Tourists will continue to come, but will the conscientious ones who value pristine still bother?

Without a marked re-balancing each scenario continues the slide and we head towards a comprehensive tipping point.

Re-visiting the idea of the 10mph speed limit on Windermere may have merit. But to allow any further re-balancing while the checks on that balance are at best ineffective can only fuel the path towards such tipping point.

Dr Peter Jewell

Windermere