In July 2024 Wild Justice announced a legal challenge concerning over-grazing on Dartmoor Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). They wrote to the Dartmoor Commoners Council calling for Dartmoor Commoners to be ordered to reduce grazing on all Dartmoor SSSI’s.
Below is the response from our former Vice-Chairman Alan Endacott.
Dear Chris Packham and colleagues,
I have the greatest respect for your work to highlight and campaign on wildlife conservation issues but, having read your press release regarding the supposed overgrazing of Dartmoor’s Commons, I am very disappointed at the evident lack of background research or understanding of the issues and urge you to think again.
While it is true that some, but by no means all, commons were overgrazed under the CAP headage payment days of the 1970s and 80s, I fear the exact opposite to be the case now and the drastic reductions of stocking levels over the past thirty years have had an increasingly detrimental effect on biodiversity.
I speak with first-hand knowledge and experience, having been brought up on a small, traditional, hill farm on the north-eastern edge of Dartmoor. I was Curator of the Museum of Dartmoor Life from 1981-96, I am a former Chair of the Dartmoor Society and currently a PhD researcher at the University of Exeter, studying Dartmoor’s prehistoric ritual landscapes. I still live and work on the Moor and have gained a deep appreciation and understanding of its landscape and ecology and I find such ill-founded assumptions deeply frustrating and worrying as so much is at stake.
Anybody who has known the Moor intimately over many decades will tell you that it is becoming overwhelmed with invasive molinia, western gorse and bracken, which are smothering all other species and making large areas virtually inaccessible. There may be other factors, such as climate change at play but, this situation is undoubtedly worst on commons that have been de-stocked and, conversely, where they are well-managed by a mixture of grazing animals, a diverse range of flora and fauna survive. A good example of this can be seen in the findings of the Dartmoor Curlew Project (https://www.dartmoor.gov.uk/
I have always been immensely proud of my hill farming heritage and the way traditional farming practices have developed and maintained the habitats and biodiversity of upland Dartmoor, over thousands of years. To me, it was the exemplar of sustainable farming methods. Sadly, I am witnessing this wonderful symbiotic relationship being destroyed in a single generation by well-meaning but ill-informed external interference. Reducing or ceasing traditional grazing altogether is not ‘re-wilding’ or even conservation, it is wanton destruction of habitat and the divers species that are dependent on pastoralism. If the same approach were taken on long-established, traditionally-maintained habitats elsewhere in the world, there would be an outcry and, no doubt, you would be among those protesting the loudest.
Please, rather than attacking those best-placed to protect this beautiful landscape, come down and talk to them, and others with in-depth knowledge of Dartmoor, reconsider the evidence and, I would hope, support them and the various agencies and organisations who share the common goals to conserve it and the traditional way of life of its long-term guardians.
I attach an open letter that I sent to MPs last year and subsequently submitted to the Fursdon Review. This contains more information that you might find interesting and helpful.
With best wishes,
Alan Endacott MA
https://dartmoorsociety.com/letter-to-mps-by-alan-endacott/