What's happening on Dartmoor?

[stangs]

Battle for Dartmoor's ponies over plan to limit grazing

Animal welfare groups claim the Government's advisory group's plan to protect habitats and wildlife will actually cause the loss of hundreds of unique Dartmoor Hill ponies - possibly even wiping them out

www.plymouthherald.co.uk

Dartmoor inquiry call from MPs into new limits on grazing

Farmers in the national park could be forced to significantly cut livestock numbers under Natural England plans to protect habitats and wildlife.

www.plymouthherald.co.uk

Nature on Dartmoor

Reflections from Wes Smyth, Natural England’s Area Manager on how we ensure Dartmoor’s unique wildlife is preserved for future generations. Dartmoor is special, a working landscape with wide open moorland framed by steep intimate wooded valleys and a pastoral moorland …

naturalengland.blog.gov.uk

Everything being posted by people involved with the breed seems to be saying that ponies have already been culled, and that this is going to destroy the gene pool. But then what Natural England's saying is pretty tame, looks to be focused on sheep, and certainly doesn't make it sound like there's going to be a rush to get ponies killed overnight.

What's irritating me is that I can't find any actual reports on what the state of the land is. Is there really a problem with the ponies overgrazing, or is this more a sheep and deer problem?

Petition for the ponies

 

[The Xmas Furry]

NE have run most of the free living Fell pony herds off the Fells in the name of ecology.
Very short sighted, trying to do same on Dartmoor now.

No doubt if they get their way, in a few yrs time they'll need grazing project ponies.... oh yes, the Konik ponies.....

 

[meleeka]

I seem to remember reading about the overbreeding and welfare of the ponies on Dartmoor. Does anyone know if that’s the case?

 

[ponynutz]

Signed.

 

[suestowford]

NE have run most of the free living Fell pony herds off the Fells in the name of ecology.
Very short sighted, trying to do same on Dartmoor now.

No doubt if they get their way, in a few yrs time they'll need grazing project ponies.... oh yes, the Konik ponies.....

Natural England are bullies with a very narrow view of the world. I didn't like what they did to the Potters at all. I think they would prefer no livestock at all.

 

[Spotherisk]

This is lifted directly from FB, written by hill farmer Anton Coaker, dated 20/3/2023.

MONDAY MESSAGE!!

Today is a post from the Anton Coaker column about Dartmoor and Natural England. Please share with your fellow farmers.

Eliminated
There’s only one story on Dartmoor this week, and that’s the emerging news that government agency Natural England intend to drive my hill farming culture and our livestock from their historic pastures, eliminating centuries of what we’ve done.

I realise this sounds unbelievable, and I’ve been hesitant to report it, as they’ve lately hit me very hard for speaking out about West Penwith last December. But it’s here, now, and you need to know.

Natural England will deny this, claiming that a few marginal cuts here and there are needed where some particular precious habitats are being damaged. We’ll come back to the underlying reasons for this smokescreen, first we’d better deal with the lie itself. Much of Dartmoors open land was legally designated SSSI – Sites of Special Scientific Interest- decades ago. More SSSIs are being planned, and as our colleagues in West Penwith have discovered, nowadays designation comes the clear intent to change the landscape, rather than preserve what’s there now

Sticking to Dartmoor, it hardly takes a very elastic imagination to realise that if something was precious enough to be so designated decades ago, and livestock had been grazing them for centuries previously, then the livestock themselves are probably part of the matrix. Now consider that in the last 20 years numbers of animals grazing Dartmoor have been roughly halved. After the Foot and Mouth culls claimed vast numbers of our stock, we were ‘encouraged’ into agreements where we accepted money not to fully restock.

And after 20 years of continuing incremental cuts, Natural England are now talking about a 100% reduction of remaining winter grazing sheep. This would be bad enough, as there is a nucleus of tough hill ewes who live out on the hill all year round. We’ve very carefully bred these resilient hardy sheep to persist on the poorest land. Bringing such flocks down into the ‘hay fields’ for the winter, or heaven forbid, indoors, would change the very nature of what they are. Managing to keep them on their acclimatised ‘lear’ miles out on the peat wilderness for a short summer season would become very difficult.

However, as we struggled with this news, one of our number asked to see the calculations for the rest of the year. And discovered, buried in NE’s paperwork is the clear intent to remove circa 80% of all livestock through the rest of the year. Effectively, a 90% reduction altogether.

This would be the end for many of the small family farms who run these flocks and herds. Straight forward working hill farmers who produce lamb and beef off beloved unimproved moorland pastures. I’ve oft pointed out, I gather a lot of mine on foot. They have a carbon footprint when they leave here of zero.

As I say, NE will bleat about this being necessary to protect and restore damaged habitats. Well, curiously, when a neighbouring farming family recently challenged such a draconian cut, they hired an ecologist to report on the area in question. He found that the damage was little to do with over-grazing, but a result of historic factors and a changing environmental – I’ve often observed, airborne pollution and warmer winters has changed the habitat around me.

After our friends had contracted this ecologist to do their study, NE unknowingly also approached him to survey the same SSSI. He rightly demurred, as he had already been retained. So, their own choice of expert is saying it isn’t the livestock that’s causing the change in habitats.

Another thing NE will soon raise is all of the money we’ve been paid- some of them sound like it comes out of their salary. In truth, we’re forced into their schemes- I once suggested I might not sign up for the next round… and was suddenly subjected to ‘random inspections’. My aforementioned friends declined the latest agreement, and were quickly told to remove their stock, agreement or otherwise. It’s not ‘carrot or stick’, it’s ‘stick- with optional carrot’. And it’s happening across the country.

Why are they really doing this? Because a large slice of urban society want to pretend that they’re going to save the world by rewilding the hills. They want to continue to fly in planes, shop in concrete and steel supermarkets, and have every consumer luxury….but it’ll all be OK because they read a trendy book about rewilding/tree planting/bog rewetting.

I need you to help stop this gross injustice. Write to your MP today. Tell him who you are, and demand he specifically acts to change this insanity.

I’m already being targeted for speaking out, and my poor dear Alison has begged me not to write this piece. But I owe it to both centuries of my grazing forebears, and –hopefully- my successors.

 

[Spotherisk]

Battle for Dartmoor's ponies over plan to limit grazing

Animal welfare groups claim the Government's advisory group's plan to protect habitats and wildlife will actually cause the loss of hundreds of unique Dartmoor Hill ponies - possibly even wiping them out

www.plymouthherald.co.uk

Dartmoor inquiry call from MPs into new limits on grazing

Farmers in the national park could be forced to significantly cut livestock numbers under Natural England plans to protect habitats and wildlife.

www.plymouthherald.co.uk

Nature on Dartmoor

Reflections from Wes Smyth, Natural England’s Area Manager on how we ensure Dartmoor’s unique wildlife is preserved for future generations. Dartmoor is special, a working landscape with wide open moorland framed by steep intimate wooded valleys and a pastoral moorland …

naturalengland.blog.gov.uk

Everything being posted by people involved with the breed seems to be saying that ponies have already been culled, and that this is going to destroy the gene pool. But then what Natural England's saying is pretty tame, looks to be focused on sheep, and certainly doesn't make it sound like there's going to be a rush to get ponies killed overnight.

What's irritating me is that I can't find any actual reports on what the state of the land is. Is there really a problem with the ponies overgrazing, or is this more a sheep and deer problem?

Petition for the ponies

The problems are massive for sheep farmers if this goes ahead. Deer aren’t a problem on the moorland, there are a few herds and some reds in Soussens but I suspect the high moor is too open for them. Have a look at the Anton Coaker piece I’ve just shared.

 

[SadKen]

If you don’t believe this, or see how serious it is, or think this isn’t coordinated activity to push farmers and ultimately farming and humans out of the landscape in favour of ‘rewilding’ take a look at what is happening in the Netherlands and be utterly outraged.

 

[Ddraig_wen]

From a conversation I've had it's a reduction in grazing pressures across certain areas worked out in livestock units rather than specific animals. Each common being allowed to work out what to remove. The 80-90% stock reduction when queried NE said no that isnt the case.

I heard of some colts being culled because the owner couldn't find homes for them but I've not heard of anything else being culled.

 

[Spotherisk]

From a conversation I've had it's a reduction in grazing pressures across certain areas worked out in livestock units rather than specific animals. Each common being allowed to work out what to remove. The 80-90% stock reduction when queried NE said no that isnt the case.

I heard of some colts being culled because the owner couldn't find homes for them but I've not heard of anything else being culled.

Sales of hill ponies increased (maybe during?) after covid, but prior to this sellers were told not to bring bay colts to the sales, They were best culled at home without the stress of going through sales.

 

[Clodagh]

@Spotherisk That column you shared there will encourage me to go and sign all petitions, and I will overlook the breed pictured.

 

[catkin]

There has been much research on the genes of the Dartmoor Hill ponies. They are unique and very old and they have been on Dartmoor for many thousands of years.
Also there has been scientific research into the ecological/conservation part they play on the moorland they inhabit which shows that the ponies reduce invasive molinia allowing the heather (and the birds and insects supported) to regenerate.
The ponies have recently been recognised by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust as a semi-wild breed and are recognised internationally for their genetics.

Have a look at the Friends of the Dartmoor Hill Ponies facebook page.

The local MPs have secured a debate in parliament about this on 14th April as they are very concerned at NE proposals and the impact on the culture and ecosystems of the Moor. If this concerns you then please sign the petition and email MPs

 

[millikins]

Signed and a small donation, NE are the quango that stopped the shooting of corvids during lambing aren't they? I rather like DHPs, not as good looking as the "real" darties but every one I've met has had a great temperament.

 

[MiLeTa]

Signed

 

[SilverLinings]

I wouldn't particularly object to the Dartmoor hill ponies going, they are a relatively modern invention and until quite recently couldn't find buyers other than the meat man. A lot of the hill ponies I've seen on Dartmoor have appalling conformation and are too small to be useful for anything other than a leadrein pony, but there isn't much of a market for feral ponies to be trained as LR pets. The Dartmoor Pony (actual breed) IMO should be preserved and continue to be allowed to graze on the moor as they have for millenia. Removing the hill ponies would be to the advantage of the true Dartmoor pony, which is now an endangered rare breed.

With regards to other farmed species on the moor (cattle and sheep), they have also been grazed on the moor since humans cleared the forest thousands of years ago, and they contribute to the moor being what we all know. If the gov't want to return the moor to how it was pre-early man then it will require almost the entire thing to be returned to dense forest, and they have overlooked the fact that many of the species around then no longer exist in the UK. I don't think the people pushing for this understand ecosystems and/or know what exact outcome they are after.

TBH the biggest harm to the moor is caused by man, mainly in the form of the badly behaved humans who drive on the moor, strew litter and let their dogs off the lead in areas where there are ground nesting birds. And it's humans who are causing the global temperature rise which will ultimately have the biggest effect on what places like Dartmoor look like in the future. I agree with the posters who have said this is just greenwashing, but to the detriment of people's lives and livelihoods.

 

[cobgoblin]

If you don’t believe this, or see how serious it is, or think this isn’t coordinated activity to push farmers and ultimately farming and humans out of the landscape in favour of ‘rewilding’ take a look at what is happening in the Netherlands and be utterly outraged.

All part of The Great Reset which isn't going to turn out great at all!
They don't want livestock and this is why there is so much investment into fake meat. The Netherlands have been fighting it for ages.

 

[dottylottie]

signed and donated!

 

[Dave's Mam]

I was always under the impression that the Hill ponies were a recent thing, the result of poor management & allowing all sorts of ponies to run, resulting in a very mismatched & not true to any breed stock.
The pure bred Dartmoor pony is a solid coloured pony with a well proportioned body. The DHPs are spotty, coloured & all shapes & sizes.

 

[SilverLinings]

I was always under the impression that the Hill ponies were a recent thing, the result of poor management & allowing all sorts of ponies to run, resulting in a very mismatched & not true to any breed stock.
The pure bred Dartmoor pony is a solid coloured pony with a well proportioned body. The DHPs are spotty, coloured & all shapes & sizes.

The DHPs supposedly have all sorts in their gene pool, from Shetland (more obvious) to TB (harder to see in them!) as well as welsh, and cross-breeding with the registered Dartmoor ponies. They were just raised for meat money and to make use of grazing rights, so little (if any) thought was put into their conformation, soundness and suitability for a job. They also vary massively in looks/size/type so I do struggle a bit with the people who say they should be a recognised breed in their own right.

 

[Lucky Snowball]

Many foals are culled before the sales every year. Various schemes to reduce the number bred have failed for various reasons. There is plenty of keep even though some farmers over stock their allocation.

 

[Lucky Snowball]

Dartmoor Hill ponies came about by farmers putting coloured and spotty stallions on the moor in order to get more money for prettier foals at the sales.

 

[paddy555]

What's irritating me is that I can't find any actual reports on what the state of the land is. Is there really a problem with the ponies overgrazing, or is this more a sheep and deer problem?

Petition for the ponies

well from where I'm sitting there would be less problem with over grazing if the gorse was swaled properly. What areas can be swaled are controlled by NE. Acres and acres of gorse some of which is taller than I am are useless. Nothing grazes them, neither animals or walkers can get through them. Most of all they are a serious fire risk and I am sitting below one such common with this serious problem that will only take one mistake in the middle of the summer from a tourist.

When I first came here over 50 years ago I took rides out and the riders wanted me to find them gorse bushes to jump. Sometimes that was a stuggle to find them. Now the same areas with the odd bit of gorse is impenetrable with the stuff. We used to have acres of heather, I've forgotten what it looks like. Now we have acres of bracken on the parts that don't have gorse.

There are far too many deer, they are everywhere, far from just being in Soussons (forest) they are all over and have been for a long time. I remember OH riding on one high open moorland common a few years ago and he was in the middle of 6 stags. He beat a retreat.

One common is a total sh*t heap due to cattle overgrazing this last winter. The damage tractors did to a track going to feed the cattle was considerable.

The standard of some of the farmers is brilliant. Some beautiful stock, the standard of others is beyond belief poor.

I wouldn't particularly object to the Dartmoor hill ponies going, they are a relatively modern invention and until quite recently couldn't find buyers other than the meat man. A lot of the hill ponies I've seen on Dartmoor have appalling conformation and are too small to be useful for anything other than a leadrein pony, but there isn't much of a market for feral ponies to be trained as LR pets. The Dartmoor Pony (actual breed) IMO should be preserved and continue to be allowed to graze on the moor as they have for millenia. Removing the hill ponies would be to the advantage of the true Dartmoor pony, which is now an endangered rare breed.

With regards to other farmed species on the moor (cattle and sheep), they have also been grazed on the moor since humans cleared the forest thousands of years ago, and they contribute to the moor being what we all know. If the gov't want to return the moor to how it was pre-early man then it will require almost the entire thing to be returned to dense forest, and they have overlooked the fact that many of the species around then no longer exist in the UK. I don't think the people pushing for this understand ecosystems and/or know what exact outcome they are after.

TBH the biggest harm to the moor is caused by man, mainly in the form of the badly behaved humans who drive on the moor, strew litter and let their dogs off the lead in areas where there are ground nesting birds. And it's humans who are causing the global temperature rise which will ultimately have the biggest effect on what places like Dartmoor look like in the future. I agree with the posters who have said this is just greenwashing, but to the detriment of people's lives and livelihoods.

there are few pedigree Dartmoor's grazing Dartmoor. Removing the hill ponies would make no difference to them one way or another.

the hill ponies are small as are the pure Dartmoors so there is a limited market but they are far from being lead rein ponies. They are excellent children's riding ponies. I have dealt with both and if I had a child it would be a hill pony. They also make good driving ponies. Once the foals are sold, weaned and move on to private homes they become amazing little ponies and blossom. I remember one dun foal a few years ago. The only thing in it's favour was it's colour. Sadly they was little else to recommend it. It went into a private home and 3 years later as it was being shown it was unrecognisable.

It's not so much the cattle and sheep but probably more the numbers of them.

I don't think there is much we can do about the ever increasing numbers of tourists. I'm not sure it would be legal to cull them.

So now the farmers, NE, the DNP will all argue about it plus the wild campers who are going to appeal.

 

[Spotherisk]

@paddy555 I remember well over 40 years ago walking on the moors with my dad, and lying down on banks of heather to listen and watching skylarks in deep blue skies.

 

[Caol Ila]

I don't think there is much we can do about the ever increasing numbers of tourists. I'm not sure it would be legal to cull them.

Hah! See the North of Scotland thread.

 

[Steerpike]

They are trying to do the same on the Cambrians here but with sheep farmers, a friend farms over 800 sheep on the mountains and they want her to cut down to 100, someone sat behind a desk doesn't realise that it's the sheep that keep the Cambrians as they are for the last 100s of years.

 

[palo1]

This is lifted directly from FB, written by hill farmer Anton Coaker, dated 20/3/2023.

MONDAY MESSAGE!!

Today is a post from the Anton Coaker column about Dartmoor and Natural England. Please share with your fellow farmers.

Eliminated
There’s only one story on Dartmoor this week, and that’s the emerging news that government agency Natural England intend to drive my hill farming culture and our livestock from their historic pastures, eliminating centuries of what we’ve done.

I realise this sounds unbelievable, and I’ve been hesitant to report it, as they’ve lately hit me very hard for speaking out about West Penwith last December. But it’s here, now, and you need to know.

Natural England will deny this, claiming that a few marginal cuts here and there are needed where some particular precious habitats are being damaged. We’ll come back to the underlying reasons for this smokescreen, first we’d better deal with the lie itself. Much of Dartmoors open land was legally designated SSSI – Sites of Special Scientific Interest- decades ago. More SSSIs are being planned, and as our colleagues in West Penwith have discovered, nowadays designation comes the clear intent to change the landscape, rather than preserve what’s there now

Sticking to Dartmoor, it hardly takes a very elastic imagination to realise that if something was precious enough to be so designated decades ago, and livestock had been grazing them for centuries previously, then the livestock themselves are probably part of the matrix. Now consider that in the last 20 years numbers of animals grazing Dartmoor have been roughly halved. After the Foot and Mouth culls claimed vast numbers of our stock, we were ‘encouraged’ into agreements where we accepted money not to fully restock.

And after 20 years of continuing incremental cuts, Natural England are now talking about a 100% reduction of remaining winter grazing sheep. This would be bad enough, as there is a nucleus of tough hill ewes who live out on the hill all year round. We’ve very carefully bred these resilient hardy sheep to persist on the poorest land. Bringing such flocks down into the ‘hay fields’ for the winter, or heaven forbid, indoors, would change the very nature of what they are. Managing to keep them on their acclimatised ‘lear’ miles out on the peat wilderness for a short summer season would become very difficult.

However, as we struggled with this news, one of our number asked to see the calculations for the rest of the year. And discovered, buried in NE’s paperwork is the clear intent to remove circa 80% of all livestock through the rest of the year. Effectively, a 90% reduction altogether.

This would be the end for many of the small family farms who run these flocks and herds. Straight forward working hill farmers who produce lamb and beef off beloved unimproved moorland pastures. I’ve oft pointed out, I gather a lot of mine on foot. They have a carbon footprint when they leave here of zero.

As I say, NE will bleat about this being necessary to protect and restore damaged habitats. Well, curiously, when a neighbouring farming family recently challenged such a draconian cut, they hired an ecologist to report on the area in question. He found that the damage was little to do with over-grazing, but a result of historic factors and a changing environmental – I’ve often observed, airborne pollution and warmer winters has changed the habitat around me.

After our friends had contracted this ecologist to do their study, NE unknowingly also approached him to survey the same SSSI. He rightly demurred, as he had already been retained. So, their own choice of expert is saying it isn’t the livestock that’s causing the change in habitats.

Another thing NE will soon raise is all of the money we’ve been paid- some of them sound like it comes out of their salary. In truth, we’re forced into their schemes- I once suggested I might not sign up for the next round… and was suddenly subjected to ‘random inspections’. My aforementioned friends declined the latest agreement, and were quickly told to remove their stock, agreement or otherwise. It’s not ‘carrot or stick’, it’s ‘stick- with optional carrot’. And it’s happening across the country.

Why are they really doing this? Because a large slice of urban society want to pretend that they’re going to save the world by rewilding the hills. They want to continue to fly in planes, shop in concrete and steel supermarkets, and have every consumer luxury….but it’ll all be OK because they read a trendy book about rewilding/tree planting/bog rewetting.

I need you to help stop this gross injustice. Write to your MP today. Tell him who you are, and demand he specifically acts to change this insanity.

I’m already being targeted for speaking out, and my poor dear Alison has begged me not to write this piece. But I owe it to both centuries of my grazing forebears, and –hopefully- my successors.

This has been so brilliantly explained by Anton Coaker - thank you for posting. What NE and several other national bodies are trying to do is appalling and will have dire consequences. We are hill farmers but with an enclosed hill and mostly older graziers; the pressure on some of these small farms and farmers is genuinely damaging. Thank goodness my OH has walked away from any and all schemes, subsidies, grants etc. What we do here will be on our terms and it is only because OH is prepared to work for 16 hour days that we can do that. The ecosystem on our hill IS, contrary to NE and other commentators views, incredibly precious and well understood. Our graziers are not ignorant or oblivious to new information and science about climate change and ecological damage. I just hope that as we are out of the NP and very small beer, our hill and the part of the Brecon Beacons that we are on will survive and thrive rather than fall victim to ill thought out and knee jerk schemes.

Anton Coaker's sentence 'Why are they really doing this? Because a large slice of urban society want to pretend that they’re going to save the world by rewilding the hills. They want to continue to fly in planes, shop in concrete and steel supermarkets, and have every consumer luxury….but it’ll all be OK because they read a trendy book about rewilding/tree planting/bog rewetting.' really, really resonates with us.

 

[cobgoblin]

I'm afraid they will be coming for all farms, not just hill farms, unless they are stopped. At the moment they are picking off the easy meat.
Everyone is supposed to live in 15 minute cities in the future.

 

[rabatsa]

Add in the return of beavers, wolves and lynx and there is a recipe for no farming of any sort over a large part of the country.

 

[catkin]

And be in no doubt - if farming goes so does equestrianism whether that is native ponies or Olympic sports and everything in between.
The horse world needs farming infrastructure to function.

 

[PurBee]

This has been so brilliantly explained by Anton Coaker - thank you for posting. What NE and several other national bodies are trying to do is appalling and will have dire consequences. We are hill farmers but with an enclosed hill and mostly older graziers; the pressure on some of these small farms and farmers is genuinely damaging. Thank goodness my OH has walked away from any and all schemes, subsidies, grants etc. What we do here will be on our terms and it is only because OH is prepared to work for 16 hour days that we can do that. The ecosystem on our hill IS, contrary to NE and other commentators views, incredibly precious and well understood. Our graziers are not ignorant or oblivious to new information and science about climate change and ecological damage. I just hope that as we are out of the NP and very small beer, our hill and the part of the Brecon Beacons that we are on will survive and thrive rather than fall victim to ill thought out and knee jerk schemes.

Anton Coaker's sentence 'Why are they really doing this? Because a large slice of urban society want to pretend that they’re going to save the world by rewilding the hills. They want to continue to fly in planes, shop in concrete and steel supermarkets, and have every consumer luxury….but it’ll all be OK because they read a trendy book about rewilding/tree planting/bog rewetting.' really, really resonates with us.

You post resonates palo - the government schemes and (paltry) subsidies for farmers to leave fields alone to rewild here in ireland are an attempt to tick boxes for the EU to satisfy environmental directives, while the government themselves take-over thousands of acres of established natural wild areas to grow monoculture spruce forests! They want farmers to give-up using ‘prime’ soils land, not farm it, while they use the wildlands to plant spruce! A complete farce.

If they had left even half the now spruce forested land to rewild itself…as it was before the planting of spruce - ireland would have already over-achieved any ecological directive….as it already had balanced eco-system wetlands/boglands before they moved-in with mega machinery to dig huge drains and to tight-plant spruce completely altering the species matrix within a decade, what had exisited for hundreds of yrs.

They have black and white thinking on these issues. Intensive agriculture is impacting flora/fauna species, polluting and altering soils and waterways, but re-wilding everywhere isnt the answer, as we have people to feed. Changing approaches to methods used in agriculture are needed. Not annihilation.
Governernments currently have a 2-faced approach to ecology - ‘re-wilding’ of common-land places and encouraging farmers to do the same, while agri-chemical lobbyists are given power to push their use intensively, globally.
It really is a case of them not wanting the left hand to know what the right hand is doing, as they say!
In the media they report an increase in ‘wild zones’ while also knowingly importing more environmental chemicals to pour over the land that growing season.

If they think farmers and ecologists dont see their ruse, they’re wrong!


As you pointed out Anton Coaker’s sentence really resonates :

'Why are they really doing this? Because a large slice of urban society want to pretend that they’re going to save the world by rewilding the hills. They want to continue to fly in planes, shop in concrete and steel supermarkets, and have every consumer luxury….but it’ll all be OK because they read a trendy book about rewilding/tree planting/bog rewetting.'

He has mentioned the elephant in the room! Remember during the first global covid lockdown, the reports globally that pollution levels were drastically reduced just after a few weeks of no transport?
What they failed to report, was that it wasn’t so much the reduced traffic on the roads that reduced the pollutants in the air - the Aviation Industry had immediately halved their flights daily, globally. Many dont realise there’s on average 150,000 - 250,000 flights per 24 hours over the skies of the entire earth. The exhaust from just 1 plane flying is equivalent to the exhaust emissions of hundreds of cars.
During lockdown, flights reduced to just 50,000 per 24hrs. An immediate cull of at least two-thirds of emissions in the air above us.
The weather effect of this, for the first time here in wet west of ireland, we actually had a ‘real’ spring, rather than continuous cloudy days with very little sunshine.
I’ve compiled data around lockdown aviation flying number figures correlating to climate at that time and can see that there is a tremedous change in rainfall and sunshine hours.

The emissions from the aviation indistry and how that ALONE affects climate and the environment is THE elephant in the room in this climate ecology debate the world is gripped-by.

The emissions from planes hang around in the upper skies, chemically attracting water vapour to attach to the molecules of the toxic exhaust emissions, forming clouds, which then, rain down. The increased cloud cover caused by flight emissions increases temperatures on earth as they trap heat, aswell as causing the extreme rainfall/flooding/snowfall globally.
The knock-on effect of the Aviation Industry is MEGA.
Increased rainfall washes soil of topsoil nutrients, causing farmers to increase their applications of chemical fertilisers, which increases pollutions in waterways which affects the health of water species etc etc. increased cloud, less sunshine means crop ohotosynthesis is not optimal causing more crop failures than we can imagine. (But we notice the increase in human/animal food prices, due mainly to dwindling supply due to crop failures due to extreme erratic weather)

There’s endless repercussions to the climate and environment soley due to the number of flights in the airs of earth.

Since the late 80’s, early 90’s, when cheap flights started to emerge, there has been a correlative sharp increase in adverse climate events with rising daily flight numbers.
Local old generation farmers to me said that 20yrs ago the irish climate wasnt so erratic and wet. They say it has radically changed in their lifetime. They farmed grains in the west! Now its far too cloudy, less sun and wet to mature fruit and seeds crops and keep them mould-free. Cows and sheep are raised in the west on the majority of the land.
These farming experiences are correlative to the sharp rise in flight numbers as cheap flights started to emerge and ever increase.

Removing a few ponies and sheep from the moors wont make a jot of difference to anything - except harm those farming as naturally as possible there.
Theses governing bodies have to be ‘seen’ to be ‘doing something’ about the environment to tick boxes.
While those at the top know about the elephant in the room that is the aviation industry, and soon, everyone else will know it too, instead of drowning in guilt that they aren’t doing enough to save the planet.
Truly, there‘s nothing we can do to help the climate or environment while there’s 250 thousand flights PER DAY in the skies over earth.
All we can do to reduce flights are to buy local goods, as half the flights are commercial import/export of goods.

Go to flightradar.co.uk to see for yourself the elephants…thousands of them!….in our skies, polluting and altering the atmosphere, earth and climate.

Here‘s a pic of the globe right now with the flights above us - you can barely see land! This is occurring 24/7/365.





I hope the moorland farmers fight these phony government green-hats all the way.