In July 2024, Wild Justice announced a legal challenge concerning the over-grazing of Dartmoor Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). They wrote a letter to the Dartmoor Commoners Council calling for Dartmoor Commoners to be ordered to reduce grazing on all Dartmoor SSSI’s.
https://wildjustice.org.uk/general/were-challenging-over-grazing-on-dartmoor/
Below is the response from our former Chairman Tom Greeves.
Dear Wild Justice,
I have read your press release dated 22 July 2024 about ‘challenging the over-grazing of Dartmoor’s Commons’.
While I admire Chris Packham and his forthright stance on many issues, I am writing now to challenge your challenge, which I believe is flawed and based on misinformation and misinterpretation of evidence.
I am a cultural environmentalist aged 75 who has known Dartmoor all my life, and much of my professional work has been devoted to it. From 1998-2019 I was Chairman of The Dartmoor Society. I have attended numerous meetings of the Dartmoor Commoners’ Council (DCC).
It is quite wrong to assert that there has been a failure of the DCC ‘to prevent over-grazing’. Indeed, there is absolutely no issue of current overgrazing on the Dartmoor commons. There was indeed historic grazing pressure on the Dartmoor Commons, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, but since the mid-1990s the demands of Natural England (formerly English Nature) for graziers to reduce stock numbers by up to 80% on certain commons has caused widespread undergrazing, leading to excessive growth of molinia (Purple Moorgrass) and gorse (both Western and European).
The DCC is a body of hill farmers who are inheritors of a 5000-year-old management tradition of pastoralists. They have extraordinary skills in livestock husbandry and care for the Dartmoor commons, often in rigorous conditions. If any challenge is to be made against them, it might be for their failure to stand up to Natural England, but an equal failure can be laid at the door of Dartmoor National Park Authority and other bodies. The failings of Natural England were well aired in the recent Fursdon Review.
Statements in the national press by George Monbiot, Ben Goldsmith and others that Dartmoor is ‘sheep-wrecked’, especially by winter grazing of sheep, are without any foundation but unfortunately get repeated time and time again until people believe them to be gospel.
I attach a report by the Dartmoor Society about a day event on Gidleigh Common in 2019 https://dartmoorsociety.com/files/GidleighCommonDayReport.pdf
which illustrates well the changed condition of that common and the problem of undergrazing. This report also illustrates the beneficial consequences of historic grazing pressure which revealed the unsurpassed cultural landscape of Dartmoor which is of equal benefit to society alongside a healthy natural environment. Indeed, I would argue that culture and nature should have a symbiotic partnership, and must be considered together in any decision-making about the commons of Dartmoor.
I believe that your challenge will have no traction in a court of law as the evidence against it is overwhelming, and I urge you to withdraw your challenge as soon as possible.
Should you wish to discuss this further I would be happy to do so and could provide material (images and text) which would further illustrate the brief points I have outlined above.
Yours sincerely,
Tom Greeves
Tom Greeves MA PhD, cultural environmentalist; author of ‘Dartmoor & the Displacement of Culture – Analysis & Remedy’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association 147 (2015) 1-44 (available as download from academia.edu)