Fears grow for future of semi-feral Dartmoor ponies
Fears are growing for the time to come of the semi-feral ponies that wander Dartmoor next a pitiful sale of immature stock.
Numbers are downwardly together with prices depressed, raising fears alongside campaigners for the horses that the ancient exercise of farmers grazing them on the moorland may presently survive at an end.
Some foals at the recent Chagford Equus caballus marketplace failed to attract buyers, fifty-fifty at prices equally depression equally £10.
The depressed marketplace is a line concern for the semi-feral herds across Britain, equally unless in that location is a marketplace for the immature stock in that location is picayune incentive for farmers to maintain the practice.
The ponies are of import inwards maintaining the careful ecological residuum on the moorland. Without them, the moorland would perish overgrown. They too are a pop tourist attraction.
The Friends of the Dartmoor Hill Pony, a registered charity, has introduced several measures inwards recent years to trim back foal numbers, spell keeping the ponies on the moor.
These include gelding stallions, using long-term contraceptives inwards mares together with the removal of stallions from enclosed commons.
However, roughly immature stock has gone unsold inwards the drift sales this year, together with 1 study has suggested roughly animals may ultimately perish to slaughter.
The publish of Dartmoor Hill ponies has fallen from nigh 30,000 inwards the 1950s to nigh 850 today. They convey been on the moor for to a greater extent than than 3000 years.
The charity says: “The economical downturn has meant many foals are non selling at the annual drift sales together with without this income for the pony keepers the exercise of breeding these semi-feral loma ponies could stop.
“That would non solely survive a disaster for tourism – precisely too for maintaining the unique ecosystem on Dartmoor; it’s the selective grazing agency of the ponies that benefits invertebrates, mammals together with birds alike. Without them, Dartmoor equally nosotros know it cannot survive maintained.”
Officially, a Dartmoor Hill Pony is a pony that has been bred on the common of Dartmoor, past times a registered commoner, together with whose sire together with dam run on the commons.
They all hold off dissimilar together with in that location are many varieties of coloring together with type, precisely they all convey the same underlying tradition of hardiness together with the bulk a skilful temperament, the charity says.
In autumn, the ponies are herded off the common downwardly on to the farms.
The commoners banking concern check their herds, together with the foals are weaned from their mothers together with sent to the local pony sales.
The mares are permit out 1 time to a greater extent than together with provide to the commons.
Any revenue from the ponies that are sold hopefully goes toward the cost of keeping the ease of the herd.
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