Innovative Grazing Project Brings Fresh Optimism Over Future of Moorland - Exmoor National Park Authority
Grazing moorland with traditional hill livestock, combined with innovative low-cost techniques, may be as profitable as conventional upland sheep and beef farms and help improve habitat condition, an 8-year project on a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) on the fringe of Exmoor National Park has concluded.
The newly published findings form part of Graze the Moor - a unique collaboration between The Molland Estate, Exmoor National Park Authority, the Heather Trust, Natural England, local land owners and farmers, and leading academics and conservation bodies.
With the government’s future Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELM) due to be rolled out in 2024, the findings offer reassurance to upland farmers that scaling up delivery of environmental benefits and other ‘public goods’ is achievable without damaging the business. This will be critical in National Parks, where traditional farming techniques are relied on to sustain and enhance the landscape.
Sarah Bryan, Chief Executive of Exmoor National Park Authority, said: “The landscape today has been shaped by centuries of farming, with traditional ways of caring for the land creating opportunities for nature to thrive alongside iconic scenery quintessential of Exmoor. Graze the Moor has helped demonstrate how a grassroots approach involving all those who care about the moor can work to deliver meaningful results for the environment. This resonates with how farming subsidy is likely to work in the future and, in supporting these kinds of projects, we hope to bring that vision closer.”
Around 75 per cent of the world’s heather moorland exists in the UK. But this is in steep decline, with the Molland Estate’s own vegetation records indicating a drop of more than half (56.2 per cent) since 1947. A decline in traditional grazing management appears to be the major factor, but air pollution and climate change have also been implicated.
An overarching aim of the project was to find a solution to the dramatic loss of grazed heather, which over the years is being replaced by gorse, bracken and Molinia grass, and the increase in diseases associated with sheep ticks. In recent decades, these factors have contributed to many upland farmers turning to more intensive farming systems, leaving an uncertain future for this rare and iconic landscape.
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Posted On: 27/04/2020