Woke quango Natural England wants to cull every wild pony on Dartmoor, citing overgrazing concerns, despite a 2023 Government review recommending their numbers be increased. The Mail has the story.
A dozen or so Dartmoor Hill Ponies are huddled in small groups on the misty moor before us, with tails swishing, nostrils flaring gently and tangled manes blowing in the breeze.
Several are dozing with heads nodding low, bodies still. Others fuss over each other, nibbling at their backs with strong yellow teeth, satisfying the odd itch and gently whickering as their sweet, horsey smell drifts over.
A furry foal leaps and bounds and then takes shelter by her mother under the drizzle.
Two at the back are romping like teenagers – rearing up, play-fighting, jostling each other, then pausing to graze. Just as they have for nearly 4,500 years.
Because these wild ponies – none bigger than 12-and-a-half-hands high – are astonishingly hardy.
Ever since the Bronze Age, they have endured icy winters, blizzards and frozen streams, buffeting winds and hot, dry summers. Adapting and surviving thanks to their unique genetics, passed down through countless generations to today’s 1,000-strong herd.
And doing their bit to keep the 365-square-mile moor’s delicate ecosystem in balance.
But, sadly, not for much longer.
Because if Natural England gets its way, most of them will be culled in October – taken off the moors, euthanised with bolt guns and sent to the knacker’s yard. And the herd will be utterly decimated.
Yes, you read correctly, it is Natural England – the Government quango responsible for protecting the country’s land, flora and fauna – which has opened the door to a potential cull.
All of which has, not surprisingly, caused a right old furore.
It started when the organisation ruled that the “stocking density” – the number of livestock that farmers are permitted to keep – must be reduced on Dartmoor by between 50 and 89%, to prevent overgrazing, which reduces biodiversity.
And to the horror of farmers, landowners, conservationists and, particularly, members of the charity Friends of The Dartmoor Hill Pony (The Friends), for the first time wild ponies were regarded as livestock.
This means that farmers who graze their animals on the moor will be forced to choose between their cattle and sheep, which pay the bills, and their ponies, which don’t – despite attracting visitors from all around the world, as the emblem of Dartmoor National Park since 1951 and a crucial part of the heritage here. …
For as long as anyone can remember, the ponies have been part of the rugged landscape. Different colours and sizes, but all with the same genetic makeup.
Every autumn, they are gathered in ‘drifts’ from the local commons by farmers who run the different herds along with their commercial livestock, to give welfare checks, make sure they’re all branded and remove any surplus foals to be sold – so the population remains steady – before returning them to the wild.
“They are part of Dartmoor – part of the ecosystem and part of our lives. Have been for centuries,” says Jo Lovemore, a member of The Friends. “So all this feels crazy.”
It doesn’t help that the pervading feeling around here is that Natural England, branded ‘woke’ by its critics, either doesn’t fully understand the issues at stake or doesn’t want to.
There do seem to be some worrying disconnects.
For starters, the fact that the organisation chose to reject the findings of the 2023 Fursdon Review (the Independent Review of Protected Site Management on Dartmoor) which was commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to resolve disputes over habitat conservation.
In fact, under recommendation 27, the review urged that Dartmoor’s hill ponies be treated as invaluable for conservation grazing and managed separately from cattle in grazing limits.
“They said to increase the number of ponies, not cull them!” says Jo.
Instead, Natural England appears to have based its decision on research carried out in a different ecosystem in the northern uplands and Cumbria – with grazing pressures, but no wild ponies.
“Which is madness,” says Jo. “Because these wild ponies graze completely differently to other animals, eating the old wiry Molinia grass, which no other animals want, and which actively improves the biodiversity.”
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
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Yes, over-grazing reduces bio-diversity, but so does under grazing. That might be the problem here.
Where animals are not a key part of an environment, land reverts to scrub and bio-diversity suffers.
We must accept that these Civil Servants are experts and quite rightly should ignore ignorant farmers who know nothing after generations of management!
Here is a good example of what the twats at Natural England are like. Herstmonceaux Castle is an estate in Sussex where there has been a lot of change over the centuries. They are unfortunate in having a dormouse colony (which is a protected species) in their woodland where they are trying to eradicate the invasive rhododendrun. As a result they have Natural England on their case to make sure the “not-that-rare” dormouse survives. Then along comes Natural England to declare that their estate should be park land and that the woodland that has grown up needs to be felled to get it back to a listed park land. If the words ‘arse’ and ‘from a hole in the ground’ come to mind you would not be alone. The estate manager looked at the two conflicting Natural England demands and said which one sends me to prison? The park land people were told to eff off.
Quite a few years ago now in my former job, I was forced to fell a significant amount of healthy, native trees because some moron at Natural England prioritised some ancient, underground deposits from the ice age period …… and the tree roots might damage/disturb them.
It didn’t matter that the trees were mature and therefore their roots would have been deep and widespread – ie any “damage” was already done. The trees had to go …. but the roots obviously had to stay in place because trying to remove them would have caused even more disturbance/damage to the precious ice age deposits.
Please try and make it make sense. I couldn’t, but unfortunately the moron at Natural England was legally empowered to force the nonsense through in order to tick a box on his spreadsheet.
Dartmoor ponies are native. They have been there for thousands of years. Who the hell do Natural England think they are? Plus, any Google search shows they are good for the environment.
4,500 years is definitely long enough for them to be classed as native even though the wild horse went extinct in Britain long before the ancestors of the Dartmoor pony were brought over by humans. In conservation there’s a very strong argument that the role a species plays in it’s ecosystem is far more important than exactly which species it is. This is why a lot of conservation organisations use semi-wild horses or cattle in low densities to mimic the grazing patterns of extinct species of wild horses and cows. Ecosystems in the UK evolved alongside various grazing animals and need them to stay healthy/balanced. It seems like pretty much everyone knows this apart from some desk jockey at Natural England who may have a degree in land management but has probably never got their hands dirty working the land either as a farmer or doing hands on conservation work.
Tony Juniper CBE
Marian Spain
Professor Claire Fitzsimmons
Professor Lyn Dicks
These are the board members who think that killing animals is good for the environment, I suggest we write and tell them that we disagree, and perhaps they cause more damage to animals, the envirionment and people who are not part of their elite quango (which we incidentally fund, did you sign up for that?), and perhaps they should consider their own malign influence on the damage they are causing than the ponies who are a natural and ancient and much loved inhabitant of this Country. Something that this group are not.
Petition
https://www.change.org/p/dartmoor-s-hill-ponies-face-extinction-they-need-your-help-now
Over 200,000 already
I often wonder how much effect change dot orgs petitions actually have?
If the gov can ignore their own petitions website I suspect this private site is not going to achieve much more than harvesting email addresses so it can sell on your data.
As far as the self regarding elites, history and heritage are so yesterday.
Why don’t they all head off to North Korea where they will be happy/
The left just want to destroy our country.
When you try to think of these things from an animal’s point of view, Dartmoor is one of the few places on the planet where horses are allowed to run free on grasslands they help create, in herds, forming family and herd bonds as horses were meant to do. No saddles, no bridles, no bits, no stalls in barns where they sometimes burn alive, no humans training them or lashing them or riding them or forcing them to die in agony in steeplechases, or forcing them into city traffic or to pull heavy loads or to be gored by bulls in a bullring or to trot round & round & round a paddock like a hamster in a cage, or chopping off the only defence they have against biting insects (the naturally long hair on their manes, tails and forelocks), or taking away their colts.
It’s like those large, beautiful captive parrots must feel, spending the whole of their lives chained to a perch in somebody’s house, separated forever from their own group of parrots in their tropical homeland, never allowed outside to fly. They are only allowed to gaze out the window at the little sparrows flying free together… Read more »
I happen to agree with you from a purely moral perspective. However, there is a conundrum: how do you eat if you cannot herd and farm? Unless we are all to a) become vegetarians and b) go back to the dawn of time before tools, how does the human population survive without controlling animals in some way?
For what it’s worth, my view is that all animals, including humans, are part of a carefully balanced ecosystem that only lasts if there is consideration and respect. I believe we have lost both.
Yes, I’m no vegetarian! We have to eat something, and enjoy God’s bounty. Horses were essential in helping civilizations to advance, but we don’t need to exploit them for anything anymore, so why not set them free? And birds and other wild creatures as pets should be banned altogether in the West.
When are we going to start culling the sodding quangoes?
FFS.
we pay for them, when were we ever asked if we wanted to fund these parasites, if they think themselves and their beliefs so popular why don’t they free themselves from the tax payer and raise money from the public like any other charity. Their strapline could be like Ponies? we can serve them up on a plate for you today.
Never. The surge in quangos is down to the c*nt Blair who did so much to destroy this country that he should spend the rest of his days being dragged around the country behind a tractor.
I was going to post something along the same lines. “ Natural England “ would be first on my list.
This is obviously nuts – ‘Natural’ England presumably won’t be content until we get rid of all the invading mammal animal life and revert to arthropods and gastropods only.
Decimated does not mean what the author of the Mail article thinks it means.