The Dartmoor farmers raging against Chris Packham's eco-warriors

Telegraph

5 days ago

Everything has changed on Dartmoor since Richard Gray was a boy. Every winter his family farm at Holne would be cut off by thick snow for days at a time. Within his lifetime, winters have changed beyond recognition.
'We've gone from having 20 to 30 days of lying snow every winter to just five, an incredible difference,' says Gray, 46. 'We've lost hard frosts here.
'It's so different to what I remember as a child in the early Eighties when all the pipes would be frozen. We'd go sledging day after day and the snow ploughs coming past the farm would leave walls of snow higher than me.'
Climate change is not the only reason farmers in one of Britain's oldest national parks are feeling under siege. Environmental pressure groups, including Chris Packham 's Wild Justice, blame overgrazing and poor land management for a concerning decline in biodiversity on the moor.
There are 850 Commoners who jealously guard their ancestral right to graze livestock on Dartmoor. They include sheep, cattle and the world famous Dartmoor ponies. The Dartmoor Commoners Council was taken to the High Court earlier this month after Packham successfully campaigned for a judicial review, claiming the council is failing to enforce controls on grazing and the number of livestock.
The rights enjoyed by the Commoners were granted under the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985, which details the statutory responsibilities the Commoners Council has towards the conservation of the commons. These include restricting the number of animals each commoner is allowed to graze.
Wild Justice says that DCC has failed to meet these responsibilities, as well as neglecting its general duties under wildlife laws and regulations. Before the hearing, Chris Packham, co-director of Wild Justice, said: 'Sheep, subsidised by the public, are doing significant damage to lands which should be maintained in the public interest as rich repositories of biodiversity. We are paying many farmers and commoners to damage our own interests. And the sums run into millions of pounds each year. Greed is driving this abuse, pure and simple, and it needs to stop. Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] and Natural England have proved incapable of regulating this, so Wild Justice has stepped up. We are in a crisis – change is essential, and this reckless destruction needs to stop.'
In particular, Wild Justice has highlighted the spread of purple moor grass which forms impenetrable tussocks that make the moor difficult to negotiate on foot and is too tough for livestock to eat. They are also concerned about the decline of wild heather and the sphagnum moss, which creates the peat bogs for which Dartmoor is famous, and the decline of some moorland birds such as skylarks and ringed ouzels.
The Commoners, most of whose families have farmed on Dartmoor for generations, have simply got it wrong, says Packham. They confirm that Dartmoor is not what it was, but insist that climate change, which has effectively prevented frosts from keeping gorse under control, and restrictions on age-old ways of managing the moor such as burning, are more to blame than overgrazing.
Richard Gray's farm lies on the flanks of the plateau which forms much of Dartmoor's 400 square miles. From his door, he can see the sea at Teignmouth nearly 20 miles away. The home he shares with his wife and two teenage daughters is a wooden chalet formed from two static caravans squeezed beneath the eaves of an enormous barn. To supplement their modest income from farming, they have two large shepherds' huts on wheels that are rented to visitors.
Upland farming may be one of the least financially rewarding jobs in British agriculture, but those whose life it is say they do it because they love it. They say lowland farmers with lush green fields are able to follow trends and change their crop to follow food fashions. They have no such luxury.
Being a Dartmoor hill farmer entails long days in summer and shorter, colder, wetter ones in winter. Climate change has at least spared Gray one annual chore. 'The snowline on Dartmoor always used to be 1,000 feet, which is where our farm is,' he remembers. 'My dad and granddad talked about digging sheep out of the snow drifts. I've only had to do it twice in 20 years.'
Dartmoor is like a doughnut with common land known as the Forest of Dartmoor owned by Prince William's Duchy of Cornwall at its centre. The 'forest' is so called because it was once a royal hunting ground, not because it was covered in trees.
Commoners complain that frost and fire, their traditional allies in controlling the spread of inedible vegetation such as purple moor grass and gorse, are either restricted by law or no longer put in an annual appearance.
The centre of the doughnut is surrounded by a ring of Commons which in turn are enclosed by open moor, much of which is increasingly covered in the spiky gorse and inedible bracken which has forced the native heather into ever smaller enclaves. The reduction in burning has allowed the spread of pests such as heather beetle.
Until the Second World War, livestock would be driven from farms across Devon to spend summer on Dartmoor in much the same way as cattle spend months in lush meadows in the Alps.
Commoners say that contrary to Packham's claims, much of Dartmoor was more heavily grazed in those days than it is now simply because there was more livestock around. What happens when the cattle and ponies don't graze is that the vegetation has a chance to grow and soon becomes too woody to be appetising to the sheep who prefer younger, fresher shoots. It is a delicate balance to keep the animals moving between old and new pasture to ensure everything gets a gentle and appropriate trim and isn't completely nibbled to death.
Archaeologist Alan Endacott grew up in a traditional farming family and is a former curator of the Dartmoor Museum and former vice-chairman of the Dartmoor Society. He claims his family has been farming on Dartmoor since the Bronze Age. He is angry about how eco-groups portray Dartmoor farmers as damaging the area when, in fact, it is their lifeblood as well as their livelihood.
'This is an indigenous hill farming community,' he explains. 'If they were Native Americans or Aboriginals, people would be up in arms defending them. It's been proven by ancient DNA studies that Hill farmers on Bodmin Moor are a distinct group that also goes back to the Bronze Age.
'They don't go anywhere because you marry your neighbour's daughter and it's self perpetuating. It is a kind of cultural genocide. This whole business is killing off a way of life, a community going back all those thousands of years.'
Endacott says he met a farmer in tears because his family has lived on Dartmoor for at least 1,000 years and he didn't see a future there for his own children. 'He said, 'They don't want us any more. It's the end of it all'. It really did upset me. That's the end of that family's heritage, our heritage, the whole bl---y moor.'
Dartmoor breeds have to be hardy because they are kept outside all year round. As the common land is not enclosed they are taught to stay in their own areas, a practice known on Dartmoor as 'learing' and as 'hefting' elsewhere in the country. Once the livestock have been leared, they don't stray. The same appears to apply to Dartmoor's human residents.
Steve Alford and his wife Hayley from Elvan Farm near Throwleigh grew up in neighbouring villages. They hope their baby son Tommy will one day take over the farm.
Steve's father Crispin Alford, 73, bought his first sheep at the age of 12. He says the streams which flow freely across the moors suffer when they are under grazed because the hooves of livestock help drain the bogs and prevent deep patches of mud forming. 'We haven't got the stock out there keeping these places drained,' he explains. 'A lot of the crossing places you can't get in because it's too boggy.'
There have been severe restrictions on swaling [controlled burning], which the Commoners claim is responsible for the spread of heather beetle as they are no longer allowed to control it by burning 'fire breaks'. They also claim swaling encourages new growth because the heather seeds are activated by burning.
'Our family goes back generations here,' says Crispin. 'Generations farming the moor and using the moor pretty much for everything. What's the future for Tommy?'
Steve resents being told how to look after the landscape by people like Chris Packham and 'rewilders' who would like to see it covered in trees, something that hasn't been the case since at least the neolithic period 8,000 years ago. 'I feel that we are being attacked and I feel that they obviously don't want farmers and farming on Dartmoor,' he says.
'Farmers in general have been thinking about the environment for much longer than people think. We were thinking about the environment before any environmental schemes came in because we wouldn't want to damage it in any way because that would be against our interests.
'We try our best to get a mosaic of habitats. I think that we could do much more if we were allowed to. Because we are out on the moor so much, we see a lot of wildlife other people don't see, like two ring ouzels which are incredibly rare.
'There have been thousands of years of farming on Dartmoor. We are very passionate about Dartmoor and we love living here. It's a way of life.