The Moor Murderers

This morning I got to my land and there was a National Parks truck parked at the top of the track. Ten minutes later, while I was feeding the goats, he came down with another truck which was towing a flail. Turns out, they’re here to flail the moor.

Thing is, I had a wonderful arrangement with National Parks, and with the hill grazers, that my horses would graze that moor. We put them on the moor and within weeks they had found dry paths, made walkways, trodden down all the bracken; the moor was for the first time since I’ve known it, passable, walk-able and useable. Unfortunately, this didn’t suit some people. They complained and complained to the grazers, to the National Parks, until eventually, reluctantly, they asked me to move my horses. I did, and over the summer, everything grew back.

Their grazing had been useful though, for those couple of months. There was loads more devil’s bit scabious growing there by late summer, which was the whole point of grazing the horses there. Devils bit scabious is the main food source for the marsh fritilary butterfly, and great steps are being taken to preserve it. The moor is national parks land, who have a policy to graze their land wherever possible, to maintain the ground in as natural way as possible. Now they’re down there with a flail, at the insistence of someone who insisted the horses were removed. And the cheek of it, their plan is to use the dry track that my horses discovered, and which was invisible before. I spoke to the nice guy in the van, poor bloke in the middle, confronted by me before 9am, and I told him if the flail goes to work today, then they’ll be in the paper this friday. He’s gone off to speak to someone in charge. We will see. And look. They’ve gone. Little victory.

This was written last week, and today I met with Geraint Harries from the National Parks. We spoke at length, but it seems an arrangement for a big victory in this situation is not to be.

His main concerns, he told me, are recreation and conservation. Let’s look at them separately. We’ve touched on conservation. By using grazing ponies the whole moor is maintained. By cutting a path instead, then one path sized area gets flailed and the rest is left to return to a state of being overrun with bracken, which stops the light hitting the ground, and makes the growth of wildflowers and the improvement of biodiversity impossible. Trees can’t regenerate, because they need light to grow. Seeds hit the ground, they start to grow in the spring, and then the vegetation takes over and they die. There was hardly any scabious there before. Now there’s loads. It seems that it will be allowed to die out again.

Geraint seemed to think that my point was, that I wanted to put my horses back there. I don’t, because they kept being let out onto the mountain, and then it would get reported that they were out. Funny that. They weren’t safe. I’ve moved them to pastures new, and wouldn’t put them back on the moor if they paid me. So now, even though Geraint told me it would be great to have ponies grazing the moor, they’re extremely unlikely to find anyone else with hardcore enough horses to do it, and so they’ve lost that opportunity. The thing is, as it’s common land, it’s not supposed to be fenced in, so by rights, it should be open, and the horses that graze the mountain would be able to just come in and graze this bit too. So why is it illegally fenced? And all the fuss about putting a bridle path to a gate which, once you go through it, you can’t really get any further. Even on foot it’s tricky, because it’s so boggy. So where are these phantom pony riders going to go? Across the moor and back again?

The reasoning for evicting my horses, was that I didn’t have grazing rights, but I was verbally given grazing rights by Dyfed Davies, who is the custodian of the land in question. Of course, once he started getting earache from complainers, he sort of had no choice but to get the parks to evict the ponios. Even though he also admitted it was good for the land. He used to graze his sheep there, but if they escaped over the bridge, people would complain, and so he stopped using the land. It’s been unused ever since, and is a wild tangled mass of bracken and not much else. The horses made wonderful tracks in all directions, carefully finding the driest passages, and the moor was accessible for the first time since I’ve known it.

So, recreation. Geraint’s other big point. You could walk for miles. Walkers began to use it. But one local couple, when taking their kids down for a wander to see the the hut on the moor which the father of the little family actually helped to build, he was told by the owner of the adjacent house that it was private property and they weren’t allowed to walk there. So much for recreational access. Again, the same people who are insisting that this flailing takes place, and who wanted the horses gone.

Are you seeing this theme emerging of complain, complain, complain?

The role of the National Parks is both conservation and recreation. I get that. But by flailing a bridle path, when the path was perfectly fine while there were grazing ponies there, is frankly, ridiculous. Geraint told me they’re extremely limited in resources. Yet this is their priority?

I asked Dyfed for the last word on why he withdrew the grazing rights. He hasn’t replied yet. But I bet you a crisp pound note, it was because of complaining. I looked into it, and the legalities are that really, he doesn’t have to allow it. He was doing me a favour essentially, and doing the land a favour too. Such a shame. And I feel bad that he was caught in the middle.

Ultimately. I tried. I tried to stop it. I tried real hard. But it’s not to be. They won’t do it before christmas, apparently, so the hibernating lizards won’t get crushed in their beds until the new year. I’ve got my work cut out, getting down there and trying to warn everyone to move. Thing is, it doesn’t all turn out nice like the Fantastic Mister Fox. The lizards will get their heads squished, the devils bit will die out, the marsh fritilary butterfly will fall in numbers again. The wildflowers will no longer grow, and the bit that the horse riders don’t require for their middle class pastimes will be completely ignored, becoming a desert of bracken once more. Another perfect example of Policy over logic, of rules over common sense.

I could see in Geraint’s heart he knew I was right. But he’s got a job to do. This is the problem. Everyone is so besmirched in the world of having a job to do, that they ignore the climate emergency like it’s not happening, and waste their limited resources on flailing land unnecessarily. The horses had done their job for them perfectly. They’d left a choice of paths to take. Now we have to make do with one, fake path, built on the blood of frogs and newts. And that my friends, it what your local National Parks are doing for you.

There was an OPD that was passed recently, not far from here, where the applicants went through hell because there was devil’s bit scabious on their land. It held up their application by months, caused them loads of stress, until eventually, common sense prevailed and they came to an arrangement with NRW to be guardians of the land, and preserve the character and the flora. If a farmer had bought that land, it would have just been ploughed, and no one would have noticed. Thing is, all that fuss made about the devil’s bit scabious on that bit of land, but here, barely half a mile away as the marsh fritilary butterfly flies, they’re quite happy to allow their habitat to disappear. Amazing. Climate emergency?