READERS of the Times have been thanked for putting pen to paper and making a difference in the plight to save the Dartmoor pony.

The Times published information on its front page last week about the pioneering new research project by the Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust and partners to study the benefits of ponies as conservation grazers on Dartmoor.

The research is part of a project which will feed into the design of the new national agri environmental scheme from 2020 which is hoped will accommodate the Dartmoor pony for the first time.

But it is thanks to the Dartmoor Warriors campaign which was launched in May in response to Natural England representatives stating that ponies were not critical to achieve the biodiversity aims for Dartmoor, that this project has come about at all.

Dartmoor Warrior Joss Hibbs has expressed her thanks to the hundreds of people who responded to the campaign and wrote to James Cross, the chief executive of Natural England, asking him to intervene.

‘The Tavistock/ Okehampton Times was the first newspaper to cover this story and the first to contact Natural England,’ she said. ‘From that other newspapers picked up the story and, as a result, hundreds of people wrote letters to James Cross. He asked his local area manager to meet with the Dartmoor Warriors to find out what was going on and from that they came up with a plan.

‘We are so grateful to those people who bothered to write because they have made a difference to the preservation of ponies on Dartmoor.

‘We are confident that this project will tell us what we knew all along — that ponies eat differently than sheep and cows and create habitats through the way they eat, which in turn helps the moorland ecology.

‘We hope that, at last, the ponies that roam wild and free on the commons of Dartmoor, will be more valued within the environmental schemes that run on the moor.’

The new research project will involve Dartmoor Zoo, the University of Plymouth, Natural England and Duchy College. A case will be taken to DEFRA by Natural England with the aim of influencing future schemes from 2020.

Joss added that alongside the research project there would be a detailed stock take of the ponies on the moor so if anything changed they could plot the situation and a profitability calculation would be done for pony keeping.

‘We want to compare it with the cost of keeping cattle and sheep,’ said Joss. ‘There is concern that pony keeping is unprofitable and it is true that markets for ponies are disappearing but surprisingly the cost of keeping ponies and cattle is not that different.

‘Farmers have to go through very rigourous testing for TB in cattle which involves handling, jabbing and vet costs — that is one expense that ponies don’t incur because they don’t suffer from TB.

‘Ponies are particular to the South West yet all the agri environmental schemes in place at the moment account for the national picture and that mainly involves sheep and cows which are everywhere.’

‘We hope this will change but it certainly would not have happened without the public pressure that has been put on Natural England so thank you to each and every person who wrote a letter.’