Nigel Witham

‘@WildJustice_org challenges Dartmoor Commoners’ Council in High Court to tackle deterioration of wildlife habitats’👏 Our national parks are wrecked by a tiny few whose ‘common’ grazing rights allow them continually to raze whole landscapes with their sheep. It would be easy for those with grazing rights in our national parks to transition away from highly destructive sheep ranching to a gentler, more traditional way of farming with native cattle, as was the case for centuries until just three or four generations ago. Being non native, the sheep themselves are miserable, dying in their droves from exposure and disease each year; nobody makes any money from sheep monocultures – it’s a hopeless business model; and the result for the rest of us is that our national parks are not worthy of the label. A wilder approach to farming in our national parks with native cattle instead of sheep, and an emphasis on nature recovery, is the best and only pathway to economic and social renewal in these remoter landscapes. Society is more than willing generously to support farmers in this transition under the new Environmental Land Management scheme. Change cannot come soon enough. Nothing ever changed in the past because of an endless flow of taxpayer-funded subsidies for the status quo. And as history shows over and over, an industry which lives for decades on an opioid drip of subsidy grows incapable of innovation. So we’re now told monocultures of sheep are the last and only ‘culture’ we can have in our national parks, forever, with no change countenanced. Forget the diverse, vibrant past of common land, the cutting of turf, collecting of fuel, honey, fruit and nuts, the domestic ponies, the ‘pannage’ putting out of pigs in the autumn - all gone, never to return. All we can have now is sheep in our national parks, in their tens of millions, forensically munching every last sprig of nature that emerges. Stuff that. The Commoners’ Councils are taking the rest of us for fools. If it takes a High Court action by one brave little NGO to move things along, so be it. wildjustice.org.uk/sssis/wil…